Word: meccas
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...whose enthusiasm for something high-tech occupies a little more brain space than the normal person would dedicate to, say, a metal-plated canine robot. Because Japan is the source for so much of this addictive technology, it's not surprising that these fetishists view the country as the mecca of techno-cool. Fittingly, Japan is also the birthplace of the word otaku, an almost untranslatable phrase that describes a person whose fascination with something has reached, well, loopy proportions. Below, meet five American otaku and see how even the sanest of people can be transformed by a simple machine...
...Chulada is a real musician, you understand. He has paid his dues all across the American West Coast, jamming on his keyboards at smoky coffeehouses for more than a decade before cutting three albums with his band SadSadFun. Which is why when the 29-year-old Chulada deejays at Mecca, a velvet-draped club in San Francisco, he only uses Technics SL-1200 direct-drive turntables to spin his favorite vinyls. "When I used the Tech 12s, I feel like I'm playing a real musical instrument," he says, his fingers, with blue-varnished nails, keeping time to the lush...
Jerusalem was central to the spiritual identity of Muslims from the very beginning of their faith. When the Prophet Muhammad first began to preach in Mecca in about 612, according to the earliest biographies, which are our primary source of information about him, he had his converts prostrate themselves in prayer in the direction of Jerusalem. They were symbolically reaching out toward the Jewish and Christian God, whom they were committed to worshipping, and turning their back on the paganism of Arabia. Muhammad never believed that he was founding a new religion that canceled out the previous faiths...
...Arabs, venerates the great prophets of the Judeo-Christian tradition. It speaks of Solomon's "great place of prayer" in Jerusalem, which the first Muslims called City of the Temple. Only after the Jews of Medina rejected Muhammad did he switch orientation and instruct his adherents to pray facing Mecca, whose ancient shrine, the Kabah, was thought by locals to have been built by Abraham and his son Ishmael, the father of the Arabs...
Afghanistan's Taliban has destroyed the two towering statues of Buddha in the Bamiyan Valley [WORLD, March 19]. The assertion of a Taliban leader that "all we are crushing are stones" is amazing. Isn't the holy city of Mecca made of stone too? How would millions of Muslim hajj pilgrims feel if a Buddhist fanatic took revenge by blowing up Mecca's "stone"? As an imperfect Buddhist bound by vows and aspirations, I can only sit calmly through my frustrations and exercise reluctant tolerance. But I do wonder if I haven't given in to a bully yet again...