Hajj to go ahead after Mecca crane collapse kills 107

Yahoo – AFP, Kamal Idris, 12 Sep 2015

A picture taken on September 11, 2015 in Saudi Arabia's holy Muslim city of Mecca

shows a construction crane after it crashed into the Grand Mosque (AFP Photo)

Mecca (Saudi Arabia) (AFP) - Saudi authorities said Saturday that Islam's annual hajj pilgrimage will go ahead despite a crane collapse that killed 107 people at Mecca's Grand Mosque, where crowds returned to pray a day after the tragedy.

Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims had already arrived in Mecca for the hajj, a must for all able-bodied Muslims who can afford it, when the massive red and white crane collapsed during rain and high winds on Friday.

Parts of the Grand Mosque, one of Islam's holiest sites, remained sealed off Saturday around the toppled crane, which also injured around 200 people when it fell into a courtyard.

But there was little mourning among pilgrims, who snapped pictures of the wreckage and continued with their prayers and rituals.

"I wish I had died in the accident, as it happened at a holy hour and in a holy place," Egyptian pilgrim Mohammed Ibrahim told AFP.

The accident occurred only about an hour before evening mahgrib prayers on the Muslim weekly day of prayer.

A massive construction crane crashed into Mecca's Grand Mosque in stormy

 weather on September 11, 2015, killing at least 107 people and injuring 238. (AFP

Photo/STR)

Om Salma, a Moroccan pilgrim, said "our phones have not stopped ringing since yesterday with relatives calling to check on us."

Indonesians and Indians were among those killed when the crane collapsed, while the injured included Malaysians, Egyptians and Iranians.

A Saudi official said the hajj, expected to start on September 21, would proceed despite the tragedy.

"It definitely will not affect the hajj this season, and the affected part will probably be fixed in a few days," said the official, who declined to be named.

An investigative committee has "immediately and urgently" begun searching for the cause of the collapse, the official Saudi Press Agency said.

The contractor has been directed to ensure the safety of all other cranes at the site, it added.

The cranes poke into the air over the sprawling mosque expansion taking place beneath the Mecca Royal Clock Tower, the world's third-tallest building, at 601 metres (1,972 feet).

For years, work has been underway on a 400,000 square metre (4.3 million square feet) expansion of the Grand Mosque to allow it to accommodate up to 2.2 million people at once.

Abdel Aziz Naqoor, who said he works at the mosque, told AFP he saw the massive construction crane fall during the storm.

"If it weren't for Al-Tawaf bridge the injuries and deaths would have been worse," he said, referring to a covered walkway which broke the crane's fall and surrounds the holy Kaaba.

The Kaaba is a massive cube-shaped structure at the centre of the mosque towards which Muslims worldwide pray.

Saudi governer of the Mecca region Khaled al-Faisal (C) listens to aides of the

 Grand Mosque of Mecca after a construction crane crashed into it on 

September 11 (AFP Photo/STR)

A witness said the winds were so strong that they shook his car and tossed billboards around.

'Act of God'

Pictures of the incident on Twitter showed bloodied bodies strewn across the courtyard, where part of the crane came to rest atop an ornate, arched and colonnaded section of the complex.

A video on YouTube showed people screaming and rushing around following a loud crash.

Saudis and foreigners lined up in the street to give blood in response to the tragedy.

Irfan al-Alawi, co-founder of the Mecca-based Islamic Heritage Research Foundation, suggested that authorities were negligent by having a series of cranes overlooking the mosque.

"They do not care about the heritage, and they do not care about health and safety," he told AFP.

Alawi is an outspoken critic of redevelopment at the holy sites, which he says is wiping away tangible links to the Muslim Prophet Mohammed.

But an engineer for the Saudi Binladin Group, the developer, told AFP the crane was installed in "an extremely professional way" and there was no technical problem.

"It was an act of God", he said.

A picture taken on October 5, 2014, shows construction cranes at the

 Grand mosque in Mecca. (AFP Photo/Mohammed Al-Shaikh)

Saudi Binladin Group belongs to the family of the late Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Sheikh Ahmed al-Ghamdi, former head of Mecca's religious police, told AFP the accident is a "test" from God.

"We need to accept what happened," he said, calling at the same time for a thorough investigation.

Condolences came in from around the world, including from Arab leaders, as well as from Britain, Canada, India and Nigeria.

This was not the first tragedy to strike Mecca pilgrims, though the hajj has been nearly incident-free in recent years.

In 2006, several hundred died in a stampede during the Stoning of the Devil ritual in nearby Mina, following a similar incident two years earlier.

Minimizing the mosque

Zenin Adrian, The Jakarta Post

A couple of years ago, I attended a seminar on Islamic architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The seminar discussed specifically the development of mosque architecture in different regions and how it had adapted to local context.

The discussions were circled around how Western African mosque design influenced design throughout the world. With its dome and minaret (tower/lighthouse) configuration, it was decorated to fit in with the local traditional architecture style. Towards the end of the seminar, there was a critical discourse to rethink the use of dome and minaret elements and their relevance in practical modern mosque architecture.

Traditionally, domical form has been used in many religious buildings other than mosques because of its geometrical characteristic. A dome has centralized geometry and provides an edgeless ceiling. These embedded characteristics enhance our sense of upward direction, which is why the ceiling of a dome is usually perceived as a representation of the sky or, most of the time, heaven.

On the other hand, the use of the minaret is believed to have traces of the ancient concept of male (tower) and female (dome) symbols. In most cases, especially in modern times, the minaret is perceived as a symbol of establishment rather than religious value.

This application of symbolic forms was the core of the discussion that the modern mosque architecture should move away from symbols and extravagant decoration and focus on creating a more meaningful prayer space.

Some contemporary architects in Indonesia have been struggling to propose modern ideas in mosque design, and most of them have to be confronted with the rooted perception and strong preference for the dome and minaret configuration typical of mosques in the Middle East.

However, some struggles come with victories. The Ar-Royan mosque in Galaxy Bumi Permai, Surabaya, was designed to accommodate the need to have a meaningful praying space. Designed by Jakarta-based architect Ahmad Djuhara, the mosque does not apply the traditional dome.

As opposed to the dome ceiling, which enhances the mosque's verticality, Djuhara designed a compressing curve ceiling which increase the feeling of horizontality.

The curved ceiling accommodates the two stories of prayer space where the upper floor is reserved for females. Although the mosque is square in plan -- 15 by 15 meters -- the ceiling gives a strong directionality towards the Qibla wall.

The prayer space is minimally decorated with inscriptions of the 99 names of Allah on the Qibla wall. Small openings at the bottom of the wall provide a glimpse of the fish pond behind the Qibla wall which inherits a poetic meaning within the sound of the flowing water from the pond.

I perceive these design gestures as an effort to emphasize the quality of self-revelation and social interactions. The embedded values seemed to contrast with traditional mosque design where distractive symbolic representation and unnecessary decorations dominate the prayer space. Djuhara's minimalistic and functional approach shows us that religious space can be built upon modernity and still maintain our religious practice and commitment.

Zenin Adrian has a website www.zadl.net and can be reached at zenin.adrian@zadl.net