Activists in cities around the world rallied over the weekend to protest what they describe as Saudi Arabia’s systematic destruction of holy sites. The process has gone on for nearly a century, and, the protesters say, it has gained momentum in recent years, with the Saudi government moving to make dramatic — perhaps irreparable — changes to the face of Mecca and Medina, Islam’s two holiest cities.
About 700 people gathered in Washington, D.C., and marched toward the Saudi Embassy on Saturday. Similar protests were also held over the weekend in Los Angeles, Houston, New York, London, Karachi and Hyderabad in Pakistan and Melbourne, Australia.
The demonstrators called on the Saudi government to rebuild the Jannatul Baqee cemetery in Medina, a western Saudi city that is second only to Mecca in its importance for Muslims around the globe. The cemetery contains the graves of many members of the Prophet Muhammad’s family as well as some of his closest companions. The Saudi royal family demolished the shrines on top of the graves in 1925, saying that tombstones are un-Islamic, and replaced them with single unnamed stones.
Wahhabism, the Muslim sect whose tenets are official doctrine in Saudi Arabia, frowns on visits to shrines, tombs and religious historical sites, on the grounds this might lead to worshiping anyone other than God — Islam’s gravest sin. Many other Muslims, however, do not view offering prayers at sites like Jannatul Baqee as idolatry and believe the practices imposed by the kingdom’s rulers prevent them from paying proper respect at it and other holy sites.
“The Wahhabi sect of Islam stands to denounce the building of shrines on holy personalities, but the rest of the 71 sects [of Islam] want to go to these sites and pay respect to these personalities,” says Zaineb Hussain, a director at Al-Baqee, the group that organized the protests.
Al-Baqee is a Shia group based in Chicago that has been trying to bring attention to these issues since the 1990s. It started organizing protests each year on the eighth day of the 10th month of the Islamic calendar to mark the anniversary of the cemetery’s destruction. In 2007 it began busing people to the Saudi Embassy in Washington to demonstrate. The group says several sects are usually represented at the protests, including some non-Muslims.
The group says it submits a memorandum every year to Saudi officials. This year its letter called for the government to “immediately halt the destruction and desecration of shrines, graves, cemeteries [and] relics and in good faith begin the process of rebuilding these sacred sites to their original beauty.”
“We submit our memorandum to them every single year, and every year we do not get an official response from them, not even an acknowledgment that they received our memorandum,” says Hussain.
Al Jazeera was unable to reach Saudi officials for a response.
An unnamed nongovernment source says that the projects should not be seen as destruction but as expansions of existing holy sites — necessary to accommodate the growing number of pilgrims traveling to Saudi Arabia each year for hajj. (This year’s pilgrimage will take place during the second half of September.) When the Saud family took control of Mecca and Medina in the mid-1920s, crowds of about 50,000 were considered large for the annual pilgrimage. In 2012 more than 3 million faithful made the journey, according to the Saudi Embassy in Washington — and that figure does not include tourism outside the annual pilgrimage season, which has also grown dramatically.
Construction in both the holy cities — especially around the Grand Mosque in Mecca, toward which all Muslims turn when praying, and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, where Muhammad is buried — has often been controversial. Some dissidents have compared Mecca’s emerging skyline to Las Vegas’. Recent projects include a modern clock tower hotel, decked with shopping malls, ballrooms and Jacuzzis. The structure rests on the site of what used to be an 18th century Ottoman citadel.

Saturday marks 20 years since the genocide at Srebrenica, a town in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, during the Bosnian war. Serbian forces killed more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in the massacre, and about 20,000 civilians were forced to flee the area. Historians say it was the worst episode of mass murder in Europe since World War II.

The Bosnian war lasted more than three and a half years and reached a climax in July 1995 when troops commanded by Gen. Ratko Mladic overran the U.N.-designated safe haven in Srebrenica. Mladic was later indicted for war crimes at The Hague, along with former Serbian and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic. Milosevic died in prison in 2006; Karadzic and Mladic are still facing the war crimes tribunal.
According to The Guardian newspaper, a new survey of evidence shows that the fall of Srebrenica was part of a policy by Britain, France, the United States and the United Nations to pursue peace at any price, something that happened at the expense of Srebrenica. Although the superpowers could not have predicted the extent of the massacre, they were aware of Mladic’s rhetoric calling for the Bosniak Muslim population of the region to “vanish completely.”
The war was finally brought to an end with the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords in December 1995 in the U.S. after an agreement was reached among the presidents of Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia.
This Saturday, heads of state will gather at a memorial in Srebrenica to remember those killed. They will be welcomed by the mayor of Srebrenica and representatives of victims’ associations. Former President Bill Clinton, under whose administration the Dayton Accords were signed, is expected to lead a U.S. delegation at the ceremony.
During Al Jazeera America’s Sunday night segment The Week Ahead, Del Walters spoke to Ivica Puljic, the Washington, D.C., bureau chief of Al Jazeera Balkans, and to Adisada Dudic, an attorney and a witness of the massacre at Srebrenica, who joined the conversation from Sarajevo.
Puljic said that not addressing what happened in Srebrenica is a lack of political will. “People feel betrayed all over the region,” he said. “They couldn’t find a solution or justice all of these years. They’re expecting the United Nations to do something on their behalf.”
Last week U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon paid tribute to the victims of Srebrenica at a U.N. commemorative event, saying, “The United Nations, which was founded to prevent such crimes from recurring, failed in its responsibilities to protect the lives of innocent civilians seeking protection from the conflict and violence around them. The U.N. Secretariat, the Security Council and member states share the blame.”
Serbia has asked Russia to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution on the genocide in Srebrenica. It was drafted by the U.K. to mark the 20th anniversary and is expected to be voted on this week, but Belgrade says adopting the resolution would only deepen ethnic divisions in Bosnia.
“This is definitely a shame on the international community that we cannot stand together and actually call this genocide,” said Dudic. “The systematic murders that happened in the span of a few days were premeditated, deliberate murders. It’s been established by years of testimony, evidence and witnesses reliving horrific events during the trials. It’s been established by the ICJ [International Court of Justice] and ICTY [International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia] as genocide. So today the international community should respect the victims and honor their pain and suffering and call it by the proper name so we can begin some process of reconciliation.”
Puljic agreed and said the 20th anniversary of signing the Dayton Accords is a good opportunity to focus on Bosnia. “To all the people who are denying that something happened in Srebrenica, denial is the last stage of genocide. The United Nations and the U.S. government have documents proving that it was genocide.”
Regarding former leaders being charged with war crimes 20 years later, Dudic said, “I must admit the trials are slow, but the people of Srebrenica are grateful that they’re happening. We do want the trials to proceed, and we do want the people who are responsible to face their trials and actually hear the testimonies of the witnesses.”
Dudic said financial compensation may be an option but added, “I don’t know how you can put a price on all this. The debate should be more about how a lot of the families — including mothers, sisters, daughters and sons — are left with no way of feeding themselves. Bosnia is still in disarray, and many people from Srebrenica are still in financial ruin. Financial compensation may help provide an education for someone or help them start their lives over, but there is no way to put a price tag on the pain that they are suffering and will likely continue feel for the rest of their lives.”