Word: meccas
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...came from the Saudi bin Laden Group, built by Osama's father Mohamed, who had four wives and 52 children. Mohamed had had the good luck of befriending the country's founder, Abdel Aziz al Saud. That relationship led to important government contracts such as refurbishing the shrines at Mecca and Medina, Islam's holiest places, projects that moved young Osama deeply. Today the company, with 35,000 employees worldwide, is worth $5 billion. Osama got his share at 13 when his father died, leaving him $80 million, a fortune the son subsequently expanded to an estimated $250 million...
...time ever. Like many other Muslims, bin Laden was offended by the Army's presence, with its Christian and Jewish soldiers, its rock music, its women who drove and wore pants. Saudi Arabia has a singular place among Islamic countries as the cradle of Islam and as home to Mecca and Medina, which are barred to non-Muslims...
...covers the mouth, a "zone of pollution ... disrespectful to expose before others." Each man adjusts his veil subtly, constantly, in response to others and in accordance with status. One of high rank may let the veil fall. "Only someone who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca," Keenan writes, "can divest himself entirely...
...Seurat, most would answer. But there was at least one other: Seurat's friend and luminous fellow painter, Neo-Impressionist Paul Signac (1863-1935). Signac, an avid yachtsman, helped create the French Riviera as a subject for painting--and Saint-Tropez, where he settled from 1892 on, as a mecca for tourism. His pursuit of pure color sensation, the yellow of beaches and the purple of shade under the umbrella-pines, made his canvases radical in their time. Yet to a modern eye, his paradisiacal view of the world--a world now hopelessly fouled by mass tourism--offers undiluted pleasure...
...sarongs, prayer caps and head scarves mingle with the more familiar conical hats and trousers, and people make a living fishing, farming and weaving cloth in traditional Cham patterns. The area has no fewer than 12 mosques, and town elder Ismail has just returned from a cherished journey to Mecca. Ismail has never seen My Son or the other Cham ruins in central and southern Vietnam. He wouldn't mind seeing them, he says, but what's important is teaching Cham children religion not ancient history. "The past is the past," he shrugs. "We don't teach about that...