Saudi's Lavish Buildings Threaten To Overwhelm Mecca Site

[Music] Mecca Saudi Arabia for Muslims the holiest place in the world birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad and home to the Kaaba the focal point of all of Islam Mecca today is home to an extraordinary new building the a barrage albeit or Mecca royal clock tower at 600 meters tall it is easily the largest clock tower in the world the clock faces are 43 meters across the gear mechanism is intended to last over a hundred years and each gigantic clock hand weighs six tons it is undoubtedly a remarkable feat of engineering and design the mecca clock tower project however has been dogged by controversy from its inception many see it as a beautiful monument to one of the world's great religions and a symbol of Mecca to stand alongside Paris's Eiffel Tower and London's Big Ben but others find its scale and opulence in Congress with the acetic Islamic faith for them it's eerie green glow emblem 'it eise's all that is wrong with saudi arabia's form of islam the commercialization of religion and destruction of sites of incalculable historical value the mecca royal clock tower is part of a mixed residential and commercial development composed of seven buildings and constructed for an estimated 15 billion dollars they sits directly beside the Grand Mosque the largest structure in the world by surface area which was recently expanded at a cost of 20 1.3 billion u.s. dollars its new capacity is hard to believe two million people and the Grand Mosque houses the Kaaba the black cube shaped building which is Islam's most sacred site for centuries pilgrims have been coming here as part of the Hajj the pilgrimage to Mecca that every Muslim who is physically and financially able must make in their lives as part of the Hajj they circle the Kaaba seven times like the Jewish Tabernacle the Kaaba is considered the house of God all Muslims face it in their daily prayers and each year 3 million of them visit the Kaaba as part of the Hajj it can be hard to understand the sheer scale of these numbers the Hajj is the largest annual gathering of people in the world but the density of the resultant crowds also makes it extremely dangerous this is Jamarat bridge where the stoning of the devil ritual takes place here as part of the Hajj pilgrims throw pebbles at three pillars that Jamarat in the last twenty years alone stampedes have led to the deaths of over 3,000 people on jamarat bridge to improve safety and security the old bridge was demolished and a new bridge was constructed at a cost of over 1 billion dollars it's five stories tall extensive reconstruction of this type is widely recognized to be necessary as cheap jet travel and rising incomes make the harsh more accessible to Muslims worldwide the number of people making the yearly pilgrimage is only expected to rise by 2025 an estimated 17 million people will visits Mecca annually but for some the royal clock tower is a step away from well-meaning renovation and a step towards distasteful opulence it certainly constitutes a triumph of human engineering at 607 meters it's the third tallest building in the world and is visible from 24 kilometers in any direction it breaks over 30 world records from largest clockface in the world 35 times larger than that of London's Big Ben to longest minute hand as 23 meters its construction was particularly challenging many of the architects engineers and designers assembled to planet were unable to visit the site as only Muslims are permitted in Mecca and the clock posed many engineering challenges every component from the carbon fiber clock hands to the bronze alloy gear mechanism had to be custom-designed and precision engineered meanwhile a 12,000 ton steel structure was required to support the immense weight of the clock and withstand speeds of up to 324 kilometers per hour the load-bearing framework resembles the Eiffel Tower another task of gigantic complexity was the gold leaf mosaic encrusting the clocks exterior it was to be assembled from 93 million glass tiles but where to find them the designers turned to Venice Italy where mosaic glass has been produced for over a thousand years their order the largest ever required developing robotic production methods the resulting 12,000 square feet of mosaic are enough to cover two football fields another hurdle was ensuring visibility at night lighting engineers from Austria ruled out illumination from outside all within settling instead on embedding LED lights in the surface of the clock and it's hands over two million LEDs were produced for the mecca royal clock tower together with 32 laser beams visible from over 30 kilometers away they form the largest light show in the world and their peak consumption of 2.2 megawatts is enough to power a small town meanwhile the sound system mounted at the top of the tower is the most powerful in the world thanks to computer-aided acoustic modeling it can broadcast seven kilometers in every direction without deafening those at the base of the tower [Music] but the mecca clock tower has also attracted controversy it stands on the former site of a 1781 stone Citadel called the adjured fortress whose destruction in 2002 sparked global outcry the Turkish culture minister called it a crime against humanity and a cultural Massacre yet it is only one small piece of the ongoing demolish Minh tuff such structures Saudi Arabia's state-sponsored strain of Islam Wahhabism a hard-line theology which has been described as ultra conservative even fundamentalist considers historical religious sites to encourage sinful idolatry as a result mosques burial sites and historical locations associated with Muhammad and other early Islamic personalities are regularly demolished up to 95 percent of mecca's millennium old buildings have been destroyed it is this contradictory legacy that critics cite in decrying the construction of the average are white towers which house a five-story shopping mall and a luxury hotel its creators hope that the tower would not only be a clock tower and minaret but also a sublime symbol and timeless manifest for the Islamic faith [Music] [Music] but some wonder if the early destructiveness of Wahhabism paved the way to a hardline islam whose offshoots include al-qaeda does the Mecca Royal Clocktower point to a new lavishly expensive vision of Islam taking route to a Mecca Rican sieved as Las Vegas one thing is certain driven by the same Petro dollars that fueled Wahhabist expansion the paradoxes of modern Saudi Arabia will continue to delight and outrage the world you

Channel: Journeyman Pictures

Views: 1,207,204

Rating: 4.4093394 out of 5

Keywords: Journeyman, Journeyman Pictures, Mecca, Mecca Clock, Makkah, Saudi, royal clock tower, Muslim holy site, journeyman pictures, Islam, world news, current affairs, Arabia, news, Hajj, documentary, building, architecture, religion, money, muhammad, holy site

Id: cmtCtP5UXRk

Length: 10min 3sec (603 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 06 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/CX-001]

Always wondered: how's the foot stench? Was at the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul once, all the tourists had to take off their shoes after hikin about all day and the smell genuinely ruined my ability to appreciate the artistry of the building. But i didn't have to kneel and bow behind a thousand other dudes, so...

[u/Mistoku]

It's like the Tower of Babel. Imagine an atrocity like that at the birthplace of Buddha or Jesus. Their "House of God", i.e. the Ka'aba, looks tiny compared right next to that gigantic shopping mall.

[u/kerelberel]

What is it with Arab developers and shopping malls?