DESERT FANTASIES - Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism - page 133

buildings, its history and its layout that treated the faithful as equals. The new develop-
ment, he argues, destroys that physical declaration that all are the same in the eyes of the
Lord. Instead, only the wealthy can now afford to live in the center of the holiest of holy
spots, in those new luxury hotels and apartments, while the poorer pilgrims are pushed out
into the faraway suburbs.
“We are witnessing now the last few moments of the history of Mecca,” he said in 2005,
when he realized the campaign to save the antique treasures of Mecca was lost. “Its layers
of history are being bulldozed for a parking lot.”
It seems counterintuitive that the socially conservative Saudi government, which for-
bids women to drive and puts severe restrictions on the mingling of the sexes based on
Islamic tenets, would be in favor of tearing down old Mecca and replacing it with a com-
mercial development along the lines of the luxury tourist destinations of Dubai. Isn't ma-
terialism the antithesis of religion?
Wahhabism, the dominant Islamic doctrine of Saudi Arabia, believes that historic pre-
servation of buildings associated with the Prophet Mohammed or holy sites might become
a form of idolatry. Developers seized this interpretation to win approval for the Mecca
projects in what is considered a holy sanctuary, throwing up those glamorous new towers
and making glamorous profits at the same time. They argue that they are creating more
space for the annual Hajj and Umrah pilgrimages, which are expected to grow to some
20 million annually by the next decade. Those old buildings, they say, were hovels, and
the residents were more than happy to sell them and spend the profits on new homes in
the suburbs. And they are improving the infrastructure, building a light rail system from
Jeddah to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
These are the reasonable responses you might expect from a tourist official in Dubai.
The goal is to increase hotel rooms to accommodate more travelers with an emphasis
on high-end visitors and rational transportation. In that sense, the religious pilgrimages
to Mecca fit firmly in the model set by Dubai that is transforming the tourist industry
throughout the Middle East, especially on the Arabian Peninsula.
Competition over pilgrim tourists is familiar to Palestinians. The only way foreign
Christians can make a pilgrimage to the West Bank town of Bethlehem, birthplace of Je-
sus, is through Israeli checkpoints, including the wall built on three sides of the town. In
an affront to Christian Palestinians, the Jewish state has won control over the traffic and
Israeli tourist agencies reap most of the profits from the pilgrimages.
By contrast, the thousand-year-old European Christian pilgrim's route to the northern
Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela is no longer a strictly religious venture. It is now
an official World Heritage Site, preserving the physical way to the great cathedral that is
believed to hold the relics of Saint James the Apostle. The Christian faithful now share the
road with tourists—who may or may not believe anything about the religion but share an
esthetic appreciation for the sacred route and a love of exercise. Somehow, this has revived