One of Islam’s most revered holy sites ”“ the tomb of the Prophet Mohammed ”“ could be destroyed and his body removed to an anonymous grave under plans which threaten to spark discord across the Muslim world.
The controversial proposals are part of a consultation document by a leading Saudi academic which has been circulated among the supervisors of al-Masjid al-Nabawi mosque in Medina, where the remains of the Prophet are housed under the Green Dome, visited by millions of pilgrims and venerated as Islam’s second-holiest site.
The formal custodian of the mosque is Saudi Arabia’s ageing monarch King Abdullah.
The thousand-year-old buildings around the Grand Mosque in Mecca are also being destroyed. I wonder if the radicals realize that the logical extension of this campaign against “idolatry” should entail the destruction of the Kaaba itself, since it is the primary object of veneration in Islam.