Volume 53, Number 13 · August 10, 2006
The Time of the Shia
By Max Rodenbeck
Reaching for Power: The Shi'a in the Modern Arab World
by Yitzhak Nakash
Princeton University Press, 226 pp., $19.95
The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future
by Vali Nasr
Norton, 287 pp., $25.95
The Mosque of the Prophet at Medina makes a splendid showpiece for the lavish piety of Saudi Arabia's rulers. Fully air-conditioned, richly carpeted, accessible by multiple escalators from a giant underground parking garage, clad in the costliest of polychrome marbles and embellished with nine soaring minarets, the stadium-sized building, which was massively expanded in the 1980s, hosts millions of pilgrims every year. The faithful come to pray here because this city is where their prophet found refuge, started the first Muslim community, spent most of his life, and was buried, at the site now marked by the green-domed shrine attached to his mosque.
Review, 4976 words
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