It’s Mecca Time

The largest clock in the world has about its face the inscription In the Name of Allah.

It's Mecca Time

The conflation of commerce and religious fervor is intriguing.  Surely the Abrajal Bait towers are a monument to Islam’s centralized focus – literally focused on the ancient rock at the heart of the Islamic world.

Time shifts 3 hours off GMT to realign itself with mecca – Arabia Standard Time.  The clock, by mimicking Big Ben, declares in no uncertain terms that the western world no longer owns our time.  That the world is decentralised and complex and that even time itself is up for grabs.

In the Name of Allah

John Harrison’s meridian was drawn for those at see but now we find it may with the sands.

Time, we see, is a powerful symbol of the former colonial powers.  Time itself becomes a symbol of colonial anachronism.

The clock declares “In the Name of Allah”.  But the architecture declares something else: commercial and cultural power.

Declaring the colonial anachronism

Genesis 11 says  “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

The difference is striking – Make a Name for Ourselves and In the Name of Allah.  The social, political and commercial project of Arab enterprise is entirely conflated with its spiritual underpinnings.  In Genesis the people were disbursed for making a name for themselves.  Perhaps, in the Abrajal Bait Towers, we will see the Islamic people united in the name of Allah.

An old type. The conflation of Commerce and Spirituality. Who's up for a game of indulgences?