Which version of Islam? Slim or Fat?

Talking about Islam nowadays is cheap – cheapened by the general sectarian atmosphere that surrounds each and every group that aims to squander unabashed public acclaim. No group feels vindicated unless it comes fortified with visible ‘online’ credentials – no Sunni, Shi”i, Sufi, Ismaíli or Newbie Muslim worth his or her salt can afford to be seen outside his or her own generic laptop-driven, coffee-laden universe of frothy,worldly drivel, endless cheesecake- smothered gossip and haughty homespun diatribes about the ‘wonders of being Muslim’. These ‘wonders’ range from Malaysian golf-playing business executives discussing the importance of fasting during Ramadan while high on anti-depressants (Malaysian businessmen are among the world’s most stressed after the Chinese and the Swedes the least stressed) to Jean-hugging, Hijab-clad teenage Saudi TV hosts misreviewing the latest grotesquely infantile Hollywood movie Block Busters. The yesteryear sins of post-modern Western consumer society – hideous Gold-encrusted Gucci handbag et al- are today the darkened virtues of all ‘progressive” Muslims everywhere. While the developed Western nations are busy off-loading their own post-industrial waste through activities such as alternative medicine, sponsored runs, countryside hikes, herbal and organic farming, longer holidays and scholarly pursuits (enrolling for higher second and third degrees) – enjoying substantially healthier and happier family oriented lifestyles – Muslim societies, by contrast, are engaged in the sordid gorging of the rotten carcass of the modern urban lifestyle, self-glorified as the pig-proud but fallen priests of high consumerism. Most modern Muslim cities are now showing all the signs of having become the cradles of  the world’s dystopia congealed.

There are no traditional arts and crafts of the Muslim world; the streets are nicely laced-up with China’s industrial waste – tons and tons of plastic smelling office furniture, children’s toys, Chandeliers, buckets, steel knives and forks, plates and cups, prayer rugs – even inscriptions bearing the name “Allah” – all made in China – are being shipped, as we speak, to Islam’s holiest places. Just take a walk to Souk Uwais in Riyadh on a Wednesday. Traditional Islamic craftsmen, architects and calligraphers have long disappeared from the scene, taking up part-time jobs as hospital porters, Taxi drivers, pirate DVD sellers and handy-men, existing only as citified human cockroaches in damp and caliginous alleys that sprawl unceasingly into the urban nightmare. Western luxury goods like 24 carat Gold Rolex watches and Dunhill Cigarette Lighters are always available in the pretentious boutiques where poorly paid staff wait, hand on foot, on uninformed purchasing “elites” and their families, shovelling in without the slightest  knowledge of any questionable aesthetic impropriety or malice.

If, by chance, a modern Muslim city were to have anything so typically inglorious as as a Library or even a “University” you can bet your last Riyal on the likelihood that it will house only the finest stalwarts of urbane sophistication -salary-hugging officials who cut ribbons while putting money into undeclared off-shore Bank accounts. The middle management are, of course, ever ready to show their (in)sincerity to higher education- to the “ethos”of the Academy – by unfurling even newer purpose-built H-Blocks filled with yet more opaque, airless cells equipped with the latest Taiwanese software. There, in the antechamber of academe, in the bosom of Beijing’s noveau ameublement and audio-visual razzamatazz, lies the ghost of the absent teacher, beaten to the post by so and so’s cousin who knows the Dean. If the airless cells did not kill him, love for education certainly did not save him.

Food, glorious food! You are what you eat – Muslim cities have been reduced, en mass, to Kebab and Burger fastfood conglomerations – yes, there are a few good restaurants in these cities but the overwhelming emphasis on red meat has wrecked the very notion of Islamic cuisine – which has always been pro-vegetable and fruit, fish and fresh bread. The arrival of rice has been relatively late in the offering especially within the Arabian peninsular. Traditional Saudi Kabsa may be eaten with guests but never as daily consumption. Eating habits can change the course of civilizations.

What is it about the number of hospitals and the health of a nation?  Any country like Saudi Arabia can, if it chooses, employ a strong enough argument to show that the large number of modern high-tech hospitals in the Kingdom are a sure sign of the good health of the nation. But is this really a strong argument? If anything, the number of hospitals is, unfortunately, a sign of the exact opposite of this argument. Nothing is so genuinely disturbing than to witness the relatively large-scale routine hospitalization of many ordinary Saudis. Heart disease, diabetes, obesity and the chronic lack of exercise are the biggest killers of both young and old Saudis – No need to wait for an invading army from the East or the West, no need to wait for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – all that is required is a suicidal Drive-thru lifestyle, one that strictly forbids walking on pavements or mistakenly opening the car door to walk to the grocery store (young Saudi drivers only need to honk and the poor Indian grocery man will come out to his car) – even Drive-Thru ATM machines, just in case you are tempted to make a quick dash for some more money for the mobile coffin. This is not just another Saudi-bashing  blog ; similar shocking scenes are being replicated and copied across the Muslim World; in Iran, in Syria, in Iraq, in Egypt. It is hoped that Saudi Arabia will emerge as the real moral bench mark for the entire region and the rest of the Islamic World.

So, finally, the question of the hour is: which version of Islam do Muslims deplore? Forget Sunni, Shia, Salafi or Sufi- these are grossly over politicized terms that have now become meaningless in the context of which we speak – there are today only two versions from which to choose; the Slim or the Fat?

Can’t buy me love

Money, or ‘faloos’ as it is called in modern colloquial Arabic, can and cannot do certain things. The Beatles famously sang ‘can’t buy me love’ , a modern day version of an old classic truism; one that reveals not only the surprising sagacity of a new generation of emancipated youth but that of many a wise observer throughout the long channels of human history.

Faloos, notoriously, cannot buy love, love of people, love of nation, love of heritage, love of education, nor love of God – that one single commodity most needed from the town planners in Riyadh and from those claiming to be guardians of the City’s prosperity. Despite the wealth of its many citizens, Riyadh still cannot boast  a legitimate public transport system, unless we are forced to cite the abysmal 2 Riyal Bus Service used exclusively by poor Indian migrant workers, even for all the love of money. It does not matter which way round we wish to examine it, but Riyadh remains  poorly placed for the likes of the 21st century and the needs of its soaring adolescent population. The traffic congestion is hideous in extremis and disorientating, inviting major hemorrhage – inducing blockages in all the main arteries at each and every rush hour and at most other times. The poor design of the roads, with virtually no pavements for pedestrians, nor conveniently placed U-Turns, makes Riyadh the most spectacularly un-modern of modern cities. Riyadh boasts great riches and proof of opulent lifestyles is much in evidence but it still ranks as the poorest city in terms of its major road design flaws. It is a driver’s apocalypse -  an urban graveland where experienced owners of nice cars need not apply. Nice cars are for nice cities. Bad cars are for bad cities – so maybe the phantom-like oddity of the 2-Riyal Bus expressed a subliminal message after all? The presence of nice cars in bad cities is a crime for their owners and especially the car manufacturers and so Riyadh has finally emerged as the inglorious antithesis of everything the modern motorist most viscerally holds dear; the almost total absence of clean largely uncluttered roads, adequately planned country or desert lanes, ample U-Turning opportunities, hard shoulders, scenic views and ecologically friendly engines. And do not just take my word for it – go hire a car and check it out for yourselves; you can always watch the entire series of Top Gear as a consolation prize on your return.

But pity faloos, poor faloos for having anticipated such sublime niceties for the residents of Riyadh – for nothing is so characteristic of the abandonment of love for the love of faloos than the near total absence of Islamic art and architecture from a major Muslim city of the 21st Century. If the past is what helps to situate us in the present then Riyadh is neither in the present nor in the past, nor yet in the future. According to a report published in Saudi Aramco World, [Volume 31, No.4] “despite the opportunities that construction of this magnitude offers – throughout the kingdom as well as in Riyadh – no specifically Arab-Islamic style of architecture has emerged. Instead, Riyadh and most other centers of growth have imported not only the building technology of the West but also its architectural themes“. Einstein famously remarked that nothing is so unintelligible than the unintelligibility of the world and so nothing is surprising in the observation of the almost total absence of ‘specifically Arab-Islamic’ architecture – why? Because faloos cannot buy love and without love no education let alone traditional architecture is possible – Nothing surprising about that. Nothing whatsoever.

The icing on the cake and proof – if needed – that Riyadh is poor all but in name is the Sauron-like beast, the bottle-opener-in-the-sky, the unflattering anti-tribute to all bottle-opening aficionados and fans of J.R.R.Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings everywhere – Mamlaka Tower or the eponymously named ‘Kingdom Tower’. Here, in full daylight and in the deathly darkness of the night, stands this creature, this Eye of Sauron, blocking out both the rays of the Sun and the Moon as well as the aspirations of all traditional Islamic architects everywhere. In many famous Hadith, the Prophet Muhammad himself warned against the construction of high-rise buildings – why? Not because he was untrained in modern architectural methods nor for that matter because he did not countenance the opportunities available to future generations but because without aesthetic continuity – where the material ambiance breaks with the spiritual values of Islam – an unpleasant, ungodly vacuum is created, a void made up of entirely new elements, foreign both to the soil and heritage of Arabia. Nothing demonstrates the unceasing and disproportionate love of money more poignantly than the near complete replacement of traditional Islamic architecture with unappealing modern substitutes of the worst possible kinds. Even in Rome, in London, in Naples, in Venice, in Prague, in Moscow, in Paris, in Athens -  in all the major European cities – continuity is both respected and practised for this very reason. What would happen if the citizens of Rome woke up one morning to find that all of their ancient monuments, buildings, and archaeological sites had been bulldozed, while they slept, to make room for kitschy 5 star hotels and nail salons? No doubt, one can only imagine the uproar. No society worthy of its name, no culture that respects its own heritage could, would or wish to achieve the unimaginable – namely, the elimination of itself from the cultural and aesthetic map of the world. No amount of money, even it be in the billions, is worth this kind of cultural auto-destruction. Every human knows this, every human sings it- only faloos does not.