"These are the last days of Mecca. The pilgrimage is supposed to be a spartan, simple rite of passage..."

"... but it has turned into an experience closer to Las Vegas, which most pilgrims simply can�t afford," says Irfan Al-Alawi, director of the UK-based Islamic Heritage Research Foundation. "The city is turning into Mecca-hattan... Everything has been swept away to make way for the incessant march of luxury hotels, which are destroying the sanctity of the place and pricing normal pilgrims out."

The Grand Mosque is now loomed over by the second tallest building in the world.... The hotel rises 600m (2,000ft) into the air, projecting a dazzling green laser-show by night, on a site where an Ottoman fortress once stood � razed for development, along with the hill on which it sat.

The list of heritage crimes goes on, driven by state-endorsed Wahhabism, the hardline interpretation of Islam that perceives historical sites as encouraging sinful idolatry � which spawned the ideology that is now driving Isis�s reign of destruction in Syria and Iraq. In Mecca and Medina, meanwhile, anything that relates to the prophet could be in the bulldozer�s sights. The house of Khadijah, his first wife, was crushed to make way for public lavatories; the house of his companion Abu Bakr is now the site of a Hilton hotel; his grandson�s house was flattened by the king�s palace. Moments from these sites now stands a Paris Hilton store and a gender-segregated Starbucks.

ADDED: Do you think much about the problem of idolatry? It's strange where such thinking leads people, but one reason it is strange is that we've lost touch with idolatry as a significant sin. We use the word "idol" with complete casualness.