A foot full of offence

In other Middle East news, I see that there has been a hot controversy over a Saudi policeman who was caught in a photo which makes it look like he had a somewhat casual stance beside the sacred cube thingee known as the Kaaba in Mecca.   Either that or it's just a unlucky shot of a man leaning back to avoid falling off a perch and being crushed to death under a mass of humanity.    Here's the photo:



As Gulf News explains: 

In Arab culture, displaying the sole of one’s foot or touching someone, or something sacred, with a shoe or with feet is considered highly offensive.  A picture of the policeman leaning on the sacred cube triggered a heated debate on social networks in the Muslim world with reactions ranging from gentle understanding of his condition after hours of confronting challenges to outright condemnation for not respecting the sanctity of the place.

And the story contains the first time I have ever heard the phrase "rubber sockets":

Officials initially said that the security man was not wearing shoes, but rubber sockets that staff at the Grand Mosque used regularly.

The seriousness of the issue is indicated by comments to the Gulf News, which indicate that even the publication is taking a risk by running the photo.  A sample:

Well, I hope I'm not marking myself for a Rushdie style fatwa for republishing it. I mean,  I don't think this is a very appropriate photo from inside a Roman church:

but I'm not going to freak out if appeared on the Daily Mail website, either.  (Chances are it probably did.)

Anyhow, the story made me realise I didn't know anything about what was in the Kaaba, except a vague recollection that it probably contained a meteorite which had been deemed holy.  I wasn't even sure it had an accessible interior, but the Wikipedia entry sets it all out in considerable detail:



It seems it has been around a long time, although it's rather improbable that it was built by Abraham in 2130 BC.    Some version of it was there already as a "pagan" shrine at the time of Mohammed, and if they find this policeman's action's offensive, I'm not sure they would appreciate the old time worship:

According to Ibn Ishaq, an early biographer of Muhammad, the Ka'aba was itself previously addressed as a female deity.^[18] Circumambulation was often performed naked by male pilgrims.

In any event, the Wikipedia entry explains that the thing has been burnt, stoned, collapsed and repaired/rebuilt several times in its history, with the present granite appearance only being in place since 1629.   I'm not entirely sure that many freaking out Muslims know that it is only of the same era as St Peter's Basilica (current version finished in 1626 - a bit of a co-incidence.)

And as for what the interior is used for:  well, it doesn't sound like much:

The building is opened twice a year for a ceremony known as "the cleaning of the Kaaba." This ceremony takes place roughly thirty days before the start of the month of Ramadan and thirty days before the start of Hajj.

The keys to the Kaaba are held by the Banī Shayba (بني شيبة) tribe. Members of the tribe greet visitors to the inside of the Kaaba on the occasion of the cleaning ceremony. A small number of dignitaries and foreign diplomats are invited to participate in the ceremony.^[52] The governor of Mecca leads the honoured guests who ritually clean the structure, using simple brooms. Washing of the Kaaba is done with a mixture of water from the Zamzam Well and Persian rosewater.^[53]

There's a very clear Youtube video of this on line, at least from the outside, which is rather long and rather dull.  I have scrolled through it, and as far as I could see, the apparent image of the interior shown as the start before you play the video, is not actually in the video.   (Someone who watches the whole 47 minutes can correct me if I am wrong.)

But it is interesting at the 8min 40 sec mark, for showing the Black Stone in the corner, apparently the meteorite, in pretty close detail.  In fact, now that I look at the photo of the policeman again, it appears his shoe (sorry, "rubber socket") might have been resting on the silver surround of the sacred rock.   Damn it, I'm starting to understand the offence a bit better! 



Then if you go to the 15 min mark, it doesn't really look like the VIP cleaning crew just outside the door are exactly in awe of their surroundings.

A rather funnier video from 2009 can be viewed below, which spends an awful lot of time building up the mystery, only to show some shaky but detailed video of the inside of the place, again by Arabs who look to be not exactly awestruck, to put it mildly:



The interior is, then, quite a let down to the foreign eye.  Perhaps even to the Muslim eye.

Going back to the Black Stone, the detailed Wikipedia entry notes that, as with the building itself, it's been smashed, re-stuck together, stolen, returned, and even (possibly) this:

In 1674, according to Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, someone smeared the Black Stone with excrement so that "every one who kissed it retired with a sullied beard". The Shi'ite Persians were suspected of being responsible and were the target of curses from other Muslims for centuries afterwards, though explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton doubted that they were the culprits; he attributed the act to "some Jew or Greek, who risked his life to gratify a furious bigotry."^[19]

Well, I hope the fighting in Syria hasn't got anything to do with that.

Anyway, my taste in the sacred runs more to gloomy interiors with the gentle light of candles and old stained glass.   Notre Dame in Paris, which I remember as being not at all bright inside even on a sunny day, felt much more like a place to encounter God than the bright, airy interiors of many English Cathedrals I visited, even the old ones.   It's odd to see that despite its global drawing power, the Kaaba does not seem to have much in the way of an air of mystery at all.