Celebrating Eid Al-Fitr in Baghdad this year came with the reopening of the Kadhimiya shrine domes! The domes, that had been already coated with pure gold hundreds of years ago, were re-coated with new shining, pure gold tiles. I first heard about the news today when a coworker of mine shared the photos with me. I was literally shocked and disturbed at the same time. I sighed and thought about all of the money, gold and the resources that were used to carry out that project.
Secretary General of the Kadhimiya Shrine Fadhil Al Inbari talked to Noon website (Arabic):
“The [project] was directly funded by the Shiite Endowment. The total of number of tiles used to cover the dome is 10261. The work process lasted 6000 hours (equivalent to two years of continuous work). The total weight of the pure gold that was used to cover the dome is 112,400 Kilograms, and that 300 workers, engineers and technicians worked on it.”
This doesn’t end there! Al Inbari told the website that they have started a new phase of rebuilding the minarets of the same shrine with 3600 Kilograms of pure gold as well, in addition to building a new shrine for Mohammad Al-Sadr, the Imam who was murdered by the Saddam regime and whose son Moqtada Al-Sadr’s militia was responsible for the murder of thousands of Iraqis during the sectarian war.
I thought about the barely-functioning power grids, the absence of clean and sanitized water in rural areas, the lack of security, the dying agriculture, the Baghdad greenbelt that should protect the city from the dust storms, the orphans who go to bed hungry, the elderly who cannot afford medicine … and the list goes on and on. What is sad about this is that there are millions of people who supported and believed in this “reconstruction” process. They preferred that this money goes to such a project and not their very own country’s infrastructure, which they have been suffering from for a while.
I guess those who supported it should stop complaining about water and electricity and let the late Imam whose grave is covered with a golden dome fix the electricity and bring them clean water.
It is really ironic that the very same people, who criticized Saddam for the very same reason of spending Iraq's money on building gigantic mosques, do the exact same thing.
