
A mosque rebuilt once a year - MiriamWeiner
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20190801-the-massive-mosque-built-once-a-year
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kartan
This mosque is portrayed in How Climate Changes Art:
[https://youtu.be/dvQocRS3RdE?t=412](https://youtu.be/dvQocRS3RdE?t=412)

The video has other examples like this mosque and asks the question of how to
preserve art for future generations.

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markdown
There makes up part of one of the BBC Human Planet episodes. An absolute must-
watch show.

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00llpvp/episodes/guide](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00llpvp/episodes/guide)

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_iyig
I wonder whether people would care more about infrastructure if all buildings
required this kind of annual, public, participatory maintenance? Could a less
durable structural design on paper produce a higher quality of upkeep in
practice?

Reminds me of a problem with the Kindle e-readers. Anecdotally, when the
battery life was closer to a month or more, customers would forget that the
device needed charging and ultimately let the battery run down. When the
battery life was closer to a week, the need to charge it would stay fresh in
their minds and they’d keep it from running all they way down.

~~~
jimmaswell
Seems like you wouldn't bother building well if you had to redo it every year

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mikekchar
Though nowhere near the epic event this is, one of the things I enjoy about
watching Japanese shrines is when they go around and rebuild stuff. Sometimes
they even tear the whole thing down and build it again. The first time I saw
it, I was in shock -- Why are they tearing down the shrine? But, no. They
built it again. Sometimes they build it differently than before. I'm not sure
if this is due to finances or other constraints, or if there is some other
reason. The one thing that is constant is the trees. You can almost always
spot a shrine in Japan -- you see this weird outcropping of 500 year old trees
:-) Especially in the city it's a bit like an oasis of nature -- an anchor to
a more stable world. Though I say more stable, really it changes all the time,
but looks like it's been like that forever.

I really enjoy these things. I am not a religious person and I have next to no
education in various religions. However, these kinds of activities really
speak to me. I'm always lost as to how to express that side of my nature in my
very secular lifestyle.

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Jugurtha
Yesterday's Nat Geo's article on Timgad got a bunch of things wrong. Today's
BBC article is downright click-bait: the mosque isn't _rebuilt_ once a year.
They simply do renovation.

Also it's _le_ crépissage.

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metaphor
> _La Crépissage is the one day of the year that women are allowed to enter
> the mosque..._

Is this practice generally considered normative in the Muslim community?

For 5 years, I lived within walking distance of the largest mosque in my city
and it never once struck me that this was a thing.

~~~
anticensor
No, most mosques admit both sexes all the year, although some segregate.
Segregation during prayers has no real Islamic basis, unlike segregation in
social life, which is covered in Quran in detail.

~~~
faissaloo
Not quite, segregation during prayers is compulsory and this is well
established, it is the creation of physical separators that you're probably
referring to, which while permitted is not required.

One such example:

"I offered the funeral prayer behind the Prophet (PBUH) for a woman who had
died during childbirth and he stood up by the middle of the coffin." [Bukhari
1331]

~~~
anticensor
The hadith you quoted says nothing about seggregation during prayers. It is
about Janaza, the Islamic funeral ritual, which is a very short passage of
stand-up prayer.

External accounts say segregation during prayer did not exist when Quran was
being authored, not even when being compiled; in stark contrast to segregation
during regular social life, which was well documented, and was part of nomadic
Arabic culture well before Quran, though not as far as practiced by Muslims.
Hadith books are not completely reliable; authentic narrations are
intermingled with made-up passages (even authors themselves state that), Quran
is the only fully reliable source of Islam (although more than 30 variants are
found, the constitutional parts are consistent with each other, and variations
are minor literal differences, some of which affect core theology).

~~~
faissaloo
I provided one example, there are countless other hadith indicating the same
thing. Also, Quranism is not a widely held belief, please stop trying to pass
off something fringe as if its what most Muslims would be inclined to believe.
If we were to discard the hadith we simply could not practice a number of
tenants of our religion, since they contain explanations for things like how
to perform hajj, janaza and prayer. You shouldn't discard something that's
been so well authenticated (as the sahih have been) simply because there are 3
hadith in their entirety over which there is slight doubt (which most have
scholars have concluded was unwarranted).

~~~
anticensor
Why do all hadith chains and Quran compilation stories start at 9th century if
Islam arose in 7th century? Deliberate omission of recordings is the only
sound explanation, because common Arab slave owners and traders were not
illiterate (Muhammad, or who used that name, was definitely not, in fact, same
hadith books -also verified by external accounts- say he avoided peace
treaties and forced remove his name from one such treaty). I am well aware you
cannot practice Islam so far without hadith, but as a _former_ Muslim, it's
their problem, not mine. In addition, hadith as a source has its limits, e.g.
you cannot invent a crime out of hadith, unless it is already hinted at Quran;
because that would be equivalent to inventing a new Quranic verse, which is
forbidden by Quran.

~~~
faissaloo
>Why do all hadith chains and Quran compilation stories start at 9th century
if Islam arose in 7th century?

Because the Arabs before then primarily transmitted information via oral
tradition, while Arab slave owners and traders were literate the majority of
people were not so it would have been useless to primarily transmit in writing
back then. Secondly the idea that the Qur'an didn't exist in written form in
the 9th century is patently false [0] and every authentic hadith transmission
chain must go back to the time of the Prophet (PBUH) or it wouldn't be
authentic.

>I am well aware you cannot practice Islam so far without hadith, but as a
former Muslim, it's their problem, not mine.

It's no one's problem because almost no one subscribes to the belief system
you're arguing in favor of.

>you cannot invent a crime out of hadith, unless it is already hinted at
Quran; because that would be equivalent to inventing a new Quranic verse

Anything a hadith says is valid by virtue of us being told to follow the
instructions of the Prophet (PBUH) in the Qur'an.

[0] [https://www.livescience.com/51638-quran-manuscript-oldest-
kn...](https://www.livescience.com/51638-quran-manuscript-oldest-known-
copy.html)

~~~
anticensor
The source you cited at [0] is incomplete. They analysed it and found only the
part with violent verses (so-called Medinan ones), not the part which
resembles Biblical passages.

> every authentic hadith transmission chain must go back to the time of the
> Prophet [Muhammad Abdullah]

The thing is, we cannot prove his real identity (e.g. Mecca, where he had been
allegedly born, has no historic traces apart from Kaaba), and some of the
members, hence not a real chain up till 9th century. That was what I meant
there were no hadith chain going before. You cannot cite a narration chain to
an imaginary hero and call it authentic.

> Anything a hadith says is valid by virtue of us being told to follow the
> instructions of [Muhammad] in the Qur'an.

Hanafi and Jafari sects would not arise if that were the commonly held belief.
The verse exists, but it does not automatically mean _all hadith are as valid
as they were in Quran_. See where stoning penalty applies, reckon that thing
is documented in hadith but thrown away from Quran. Hence we conclude stoning
penalty does not exist. (according to Islamic precedence, Quran always
prevails Sunnah)

~~~
faissaloo
>They analysed it and found only the part with violent verses (so-called
Medinan ones), not the part which resembles Biblical passages.

So what? It's still evidence it existed.

>hence not a real chain up till 9th century

This is obviously nonsense historical revisionism.

>The verse exists, but it does not automatically mean all hadith are as valid
as they were in Quran

Firstly I didn't say that and secondly neither hanafism nor jafarism are
sects.

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xallace
go to reddit and post it there, I mean reddit is perfectly fine for this time
of sh-postings. r/beamazed, r/woahdude, r/mildlyinteresting

do we really need another reddit here?

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interfixus
Still not entirely clear to me how this account is still allowed posting on
HN. 359 posts so far - all of them links to articles on bbc.com, where the
poster just happens to be a travel editor or some such thing. And no
engagement: Never once has any of these many postings prompted a comment form
their submitter.

It may well be me being unreasonable here, but this pattern of sort-of-
automated sort-of-spamming does repeatedly annoy me.

~~~
oh_sigh
Presumably this person? [https://muckrack.com/miriam-
weiner](https://muckrack.com/miriam-weiner)

I learned a lot about Jewish genealogy by googling that name.

