February 22, 2006

I've always liked Muslim architecture. In the Metopolitan Museum of Art's Near East wing, they have an entire interior room from an 18th-century Arabian residence, with a small fountain pool in the center of its tiled floor, and walls covered with intricately carved wooden panels depicting verses from the Koran in the elegant calligraphy of Arabic. It's a peaceful place, and whenever I visit it I want to hop over the velvet rope, close the elaborately worked doors, and have a nap on one of the low benches that line the room. Similarly, I am entranced by the museum's prayer niche, with its blue and white tiles, and by all of the various bits and pieces of mosques that are on display. The integration of the ephemerally sacred into earthly structures fascinates me. We in the West have our cathedrals - which I also appreciate - but they are isolated outbursts of piety and wealth. Aside from the Hindus, no culture has taken sacred architecture as far as the Arab Muslims.

So it saddens me that, in yet another example of their stupid, barbarous malignance, the "insurgents" in Iraq have blown up the golden-domed al-Askari mosque in Samarra. Once again, what is sacred to one sect of Islam is merely a target for terrorists whose only real faith is in murderous destruction.

Remember the Imam al-Mahdi, the messiah-style person whose return President Ahmadinejad apparently thinks will be hastened by his acquisition of nuclear weapons? The now-shattered golden-domed shrine of the mosque contained the tombs of the 10th and 11th Imams, Imam Ali al-Naqi and Imam Hasan al-Askari, who was the father of the Imam al-Mahdi. Right next to it is the shrine called Maqam Ghaybat*, which was supposedly built on the cellar into which the Imam Mahdi disappeared before his occultation in 873. Or so the Shia believe. The Sunnis who subscribe to the Mahdi tradition believe that he will be born anew in Medina, and that, like the Prophet Muhammad, his father will be named Abdullah.

Nothing like smashing up the beauty your culture has produced in order to prove...what? Your piety? Your bad motherfuckerness?

Idiots.

Before the appearance of the one who will rise, peace be upon him, the people will be reprimanded for their acts of disobedience by a fire that will appear in the sky and a redness that will cover the sky. It will swallow up Baghdad, and will swallow up Kufa. Their blood will be shed and houses destroyed. Death will occur amid their people and a fear will come over the people of Iraq from which they shall have no rest.

So said the 6th Shia Imam, Jafar al-Sadiq, speaking of the Mahdi's return. I'm sure that blowing up the golden dome moved things right along, prophecy-wise...especially for those who have a vested interest in moving things along.

*Updated to correct information about the two shrines on the mosque site.

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Omar at Iraq the Model reports on the mood in Baghdad.