Faith in the Age of Concrete: A Journey Through Makkah and Medina
As a child, my first encounter with Makkah was through gilded frames of the Kaaba, hanging on walls and etched into my family’s collective memory. The Kaaba's iconography extended beyond framed images—it adorned the prayer rugs scattered throughout our home, in various sizes, each one a quiet testament to safety, purity, and wisdom. These images, steeped in reverence, spoke of a holy sanctity—a place where time paused and divinity touched the earth. Family members who had visited would recount their journeys in hushed tones, their voices imbued with awe and gratitude. The Kaaba was the axis of our spiritual world, the heart of our faith.
Years later, standing in the shadow of its towering presence, I felt something unexpected: heartbreak. Makkah and Medina, the holiest cities of Islam, had become unrecognisable to me. Where was the modesty, the simplicity, the egalitarian ethos the Prophet (PBUH) so passionately championed? Instead, I saw high-rise hotels clawing at the heavens, luxury malls gleaming with global brands, and fine dining establishments nestled alongside Starbucks and MacDonald outlets. The towering Makkah Clock Tower cast its gilded shadow over the Kaaba, a dissonant symbol of unchecked consumerism. The surrounding mountains had vanished from sight, swallowed by a skyline dominated by modern high-rises. The landscape felt suffocated, stripped of its natural beauty, leaving behind a harsh, unsettling ugliness. Where was the outrage? Millions of muted Muslims continue to flock like automatons each year to perform Umrah and Hajj, their numbers swelling with each passing season. And yet, the transformation of these sacred cities into spectacles of opulence and consumerism goes largely unchallenged.
The intellectual and spiritual landscape of Hijaz was once rich and vibrant, home to diverse theological thought and deep historical roots. But the Saudi regime’s vision has reshaped it into a dystopian concrete jungle. Homes of the Prophet’s companions lie demolished, reduced to rubble to make way for sterile developments. Even Hazrat Khadija’s (Prophets first wife) house, a sanctuary of Islam’s earliest days, has been desecrated—converted into a public toilet. The memory of these spaces, their sanctity, is being suffocated under layers of marble and glass.
It is a brutal irony. The Prophet’s message was one of humility, simplicity, and the rejection of excess. Even the Kaaba itself is no longer a symbol of simplicity and humility; it has become the backdrop for selfies, the centerpiece of a sprawling capitalist enterprise. How can we reconcile the Prophet’s message of modesty with the blasphemous spectacle of wealth flaunted atop his sacred house? Pilgrims urged to pray, shop, and dine in seamless, sanitised loops. What does it mean when the rituals of devotion are framed by five-star comfort and retail therapy? Is this faith, or a commodified facsimile sold back to us, brick by overpriced brick?
"The towers loom above the Kaaba like a dystopian nightmare—a city of God overshadowed by a kingdom of gold."
I sought solace from the oppressive sterility of these new Makkahs. Under the scorching sun, I wandered into the forgotten alleys and backstreets, where the shadow of the sacred still lingers. It was there, over shared cups of chai with migrant workers, that I found fragments of the humanity I had longed for. Their stories—of sacrifice, resilience, and the cost of hope—were both humbling and harrowing. They lived on the fringes of the city’s opulence, invisible yet indispensable, their sweat and toil woven into the very fabric of this so-called "holy land."
The deeper I looked, the more unsettling the juxtaposition became. In these sacred cities, where faith is meant to unite, a hierarchy flourished: luxury for the wealthy, hardship for the poor. I wondered if the pigeons perched on the blazing concrete understood the absurdity of it better than the pilgrims beneath them.
When I arrived in Medina, the heartbreak deepened. Its air, once heavy with history and reverence, felt sterile. The city’s soul, like Makkah’s, was veiled beneath an unforgiving tide of modernity. The Prophet’s Mosque gleamed, its imposing new wings erasing the intimacy of older structures. The ancient, sacred whispers of Medina now competed with the relentless hum of progress, and they were losing.
People ask me if I took anything positive from this journey. My answer is blunt: no. What happens when you turn a sacred pilgrimage into Disneyland? When faith becomes an attraction, piety a brand, and spirituality another product on display? If you wish to experience this, by all means, go. But for me, the Kaaba I prayed toward as a child, the one that lived in my heart, is unreachable amidst this cacophony. I would rather find Allah in the quiet corners of my life, far from this manufactured spectacle.
When you back corrupt rulers and turn faith into profit,
When you erase history and call it progress,
When you support tyranny in the guise of piety,
No Hajj or Umrah can save us.
The truth is stark: in this age of desecration and erasure, pilgrimage feels more like a sin than a salvation.