The Mosque built by HaririI've been wanting to post this one for a while, but without enough bandwidth to upload pictures this post was a little moot. After a couple weeks, here it is.
Rafic Hariri was Lebanon's prime minister and at one time rated among the world's 20 richest individuals. Most of his money came from working in Saudi Arabia doing what I'm not exactly sure. He was murdered in February 2006 by pro-Syrians for being anti-Syrian. Many of Lebanon's people regardless of religion believe him to be a hero of the people. He spent literally billions of dollars of his own money to help build infrastructure in Lebanon. He built an enormous mosque near downtown Beirut right behind the Maronite Cathedral. In between the two religious buildings are some of the Roman ruins I'd mentioned which are being turned into a garden, to be named "The Garden of Forgiveness."
He also built lots of street lights, helped improve sewage systems, built at least one university and essentially donated it to Lebanon. His mission at the time of his death was to bring back the powerful and well educated Lebanese back to Lebanon to fix up the country.
The Hariri memorial is really touching. It is adjacent to the mosque he built and open to everyone. I was fortunate enough to go in three times during my trip to Lebanon and you can see Christians and Muslims and Druze alike paying homage to a truly good man. Below are a few pictures to demonstrate:
I'm told the flowers on all these memorials are changed daily. I believe it is true. Everytime I went the flowers had been changed and were fresh smelling as if they'd been cut that very morning.
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The men assassinated with Hariri
"Most of his money came from working in Saudi Arabia doing what I'm not exactly sure." Maybe you just mean that you personally don't know where his money came from. Otherwise it sounds very suspicious.
ReplyDeleteI once had a friend who identified himself as a Palestinian Muslim and had moved frequently in his life though his passport listed him as Serbian. He had a special interest in Lebanon for reasons I didn't really understand. Wow, I hope he wasn't involved in anything shady. He was a nice man.
Maybe everyone is innocent and I've seen too many mafia and espionage films.
Indeed, this is where some of the controversy about hariri arises. It's not certain that he was totally clean. Many people say he made is money in oil, but again, what the hell does that mean? There are lots of ways to make money. Either way, he was a savvy investor and a champion of the people. Doing something shady in the middle east is almost expected, so I can forgive him for anything he might have done in that vein, perhaps he was the only honest man, I'm not exactly sure.
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