(This article was originally published in Jordan’s Living Well magazine)

When my father-in-law passed away last year, someone advised that his tombstone should not be raised above the ground. When I asked why, I was told that this is how it should be done in Islam, and that any structure erected above the earth level is forbidden.

Abu Khattab, God bless his soul, was a man whom I especially loved and admired, and of course, no amount of elaborate masonry would have done justice to his cherished memory.

But I was still furious at the prevailing presumption that Islam had wanted it to be that way, and that’s why the suggestion was swiftly overruled.

These widespread fallacies made me think again about the true rationale for this edict about inconspicuous graves. Don’t kid yourself, for it has nothing to do with austerity or any other spiritual explanation. These teachings are in fact an integral part of the larger “uglification” conspiracy and an essential tool of the concerted campaign to erase our history.

It’s a simple equation. Since Muslims have fascinated the world with their breathtaking mausoleums from India to Marrakesh, so why not hit them where it hurts the most, by decreeing that beauty and art are forbidden in such fields? And where better to start? Armed with this poisonous ideology, the Wahabist bulldozers set off to work razing to the ground the most sacred burial places in Islam, the graves of Al Baqe’e, the resting place for the companions (Sahaba) of the Prophet Muhammad in Medina, leaving unmarked bricks on barren land where domed enclaves once existed. The Sahaba’s old houses in Mecca did not escape the criminal destruction either and were also completely flattened.

Like the Buddhist statues of Bamiyan were dynamited by another Wahabist creation, today there is no archaeological trace of the old Mecca in order to chronicle the origins of the existence of Islam. It is gone forever and has all been replaced by ugly hotels and shopping malls. The madmen justified their actions by the ridiculous claim that it was feared Muslims would worship the shrines themselves, and hence it would constitute a return to idolatry which Islam had wiped out.

This assumption that Muslims are such a bunch of morons that they would today relapse into worshipping edifices built of stone after 1400 years of quitting the habit because they can’t tell the difference between a brick and a God perhaps should also make us demolish Al Ka’ba while we’re at it, lest we mistake it for a dark chocolate cube and eat it. These treacherous hands have even reached the tomb of the Prophet’s beloved wife, Khadijah, the first person to embrace Islam and the staunch incubator of the new faith. When you contrast the magnificent splendor that bejeweled the different mausoleums throughout our history, and when you see the current shameful shape of Khadija’s tomb, you will understand exactly why this was done and how they want Islam to look like in the eyes of the world: hideous and plain ugly.

These clerics with bulldozers claim that this is the correct Islamic way, and this begs my question: why do these 20^th century newcomers and their forged textbooks think that they know more about our religion and what it allows or forbids than the contemporaries of Islam’s revelation and their offspring, from the Rahsideen up to the Ottomans, whose testimonial monuments have, by God’s grace and His merciful providence, escaped the ruinous claws of the “uglifiers” and still stand tall for the whole world to marvel at? Read More »