Between the Petronas Towers and the Burj Dubai

The Petronas Towers in KL, Malaysia

Burj Dubai in Dubai, the UAE

If you look at those two pictures above, you would know that those two skyscrapers are the world's tallests. The Petronas Towers (452m) are the past world's tallest building in the world while Burj Dubai (810m) is the future world's tallest building in the planet. Burj Dubai will be completed circa 2008. The world's tallest building today at the time this article is written is Taipei 101 (509m) in Taipei, Taiwan. Actually The Mubarak Tower (1001m) in Kuwait City will be the next tallest building in the world, the only building in the planet that hits the mark of kilometer, but the tower is only still proposed.

As a Muslim, of course, at first if I looked at those two buildings I would be proud of them. Because those two are built in the 'land' of the muslimin. But soon my pride of them began to fade away as the bitter fact came to surface. What was that? It all began when I watched the National Geographic Channel's (NGC's) Mega Structures which tells us about the large or unusual man-made constructions in the world. One of the episodes is about the Petronas Towers in KL, Malaysia. In the episode, the proccess of constructing the towers is revealed completely and in an awesome detail. But as the show rolled on, I became so surprised and a bit disappointed to realise that Petronas Towers are impossible to be completed without the hands of western engineers! The episode has also left strong impression that the toughest jobs of the engineering can only be done by the western engineers with their technologies! I was so saddened then I asked myself "Are there no muslim engineers who can build such huge enormous towers?" "Are we so backward that we cannot build anything big and important in this world?". The case is also true for the Burj Dubai. In the next episodes I found the 'solid' facts through the episodes that those all magnificent and out-of-this-world structures in Dubai like Burj al-Arab, The Palm and The World involving loads of top-notch western know-hows and state-of-the-art western technologies! pitty us!

Well, as I am not an engineer nor a scientist, all I can do is to call upon the bros and the sisters to open a new frontier of jihad! A new frontier of jihad?? Yes let's establish a 'holy war' against our own backwardness! Let us outskill or outdo them in science and technology instead of killing them or killing the innocent people! That would bring Islam to the glory, and any deeds that can bring Islam to the glory could be called Jihad I think. And inshallah, Allah will reward us for doing such jihad. And inshallah if we can bring Islam to the glory, we will also gain respects from all the corners of the world!

That's it for tonight! Wassalamu 'alaikum wr wb