Manama: Authorities in Saudi Arabia have arrested a man who was allegedly trying to set the Kaaba, the cubic building at the centre of Islam’s most sacred mosque in Makkah, ablaze.
A video clip circulating on social media platforms showed the security men of the Grand Mosque carrying away a man wearing the Ihram, the seamless white cloth worn by men circumambulating the Kaaba as part of the Umra rituals.
“As I was circling the Kaaba at around 11.40pm on Monday, I saw a man pouring gasoline from a bottle on Kaaba and uttering takfiri expressions [pronouncing that someone or something is un-Islamic],” Ghazi Darweesh, a Saudi citizen, told Saudi news site Sabq.
“I immediately held him and called for assistance from the people around me who helped foil his attempt to burn down the Kaaba. The security men rushed to the scene and took him away.”
Kaaba is central for all Muslims who are required to look its direction when they perform their prayers five times a day, and during the Haj or Umrah, pilgrims walk counterclockwise around it seven times.
Muslims believe the Kaaba was originally built by Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) and his son Esmail (Ishmael) who also placed the sacred black stone in one of its corners.
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