Russian Muslims ask Moscow to lobby Saudis for increased haj quota to Mecca
Spiritual leaders from Russia’s large minority of Muslims asked President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday to press Saudi Arabia to increase the number of worshippers allowed to perform the annual Haj pilgrimage. Almost three million Muslims flock to Mecca every year for Haj, a duty every able-bodied Muslim who can afford it must perform at least once in their lifetime. Riyadh allocates quotas for Muslims around the world.
Russia, home to 20 million Muslims, or around one seventh of the population, is allowed to send 20,000 Muslims a year for Haj, Mufti Ismail Berdiyev told Medvedev. They were attending a meeting with other Muslim leaders in Kabardino-Balkaria’s capital Nalchik in the mainly Muslim North Caucasus.
“So many people want to go. Maybe you could bring this up in talks with Saudi Arabia?” asked Berdiyev, who heads the Muslim community in Karachay-Cherkessia, not far from Nalchik.
Since the fall of Communism 20 years ago, Russia’s Muslims have embraced a spiritual revival after decades of Soviet authorities forcing all religions underground. Mosques across the North Caucasus are swelling in number, learning Arabic has become popular amongst the young and Muslim media outlets are sprouting up across the country. Around half of Russia’s Muslims live in the North Caucasus, a patchwork of mountainous republics on its southern fringe, also home to a growing Islamist insurgency.
Medvedev vowed to bring it up with Saudi officials next time they meet. “We have open dialogue with them on all issues,” he told Berdiyev and other muftis.
Read the full story by Denis Dyomkin here.
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Saudi Arabia less rigid with Muslims during haj
Saudi Arabia’s religious police keep such a low profile during the haj, it’s hard to imagine that you are in Islam’s holiest city.
The kingdom, where Islam first emerged around 1,400 years ago, applies a strict form of Sunni Islamic sharia law that imposes gender segregation, forces shops to close during prayer times and prohibits women from driving.
But in Mecca, the enforcement of many of these rules is relaxed during the haj, a duty for every able-bodied Muslim. And with the government investing billion of dollars in recent years to make pilgrimage safer and more comfortable, many pilgrims end up going home as goodwill ambassadors for the country.
“We have to thank Saudi Arabia for their services. It’s getting better and better every year,” said Ritha Naji, a U.S. pilgrim performing a “stoning of the devil” rite that has been the scene of numerous deadly crushes in recent years.
The Grand Mosque, home to the Kaaba shrine which Muslims around the world turn to in prayer every day, is the only place in the desert kingdom where women and men can pray together. Western diplomats say this tolerance is part of wider efforts to improve the country’s image over the past decade after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington in which Saudis were involved.
Polite policemen guide pilgrims around the vast Grand Mosque, while the religious police turn a blind eye to pilgrims taking the kinds of photographs that they had frowned on in previous years.
Amazing photo of Eid travellers in Bangladesh
An overcrowded train approaches as other passengers wait to board at a railway station in Dhaka, November 16, 2010. Millions of residents in Dhaka are travelling home from the Bangladeshi capital to celebrate the Eid al-Adha holiday on Wednesday. Muslims around the world celebrate Eid al-Adha to mark the end of the haj by slaughtering sheep, goats, cows and camels to commemorate Prophet Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Ismail on God’s command. Reuters photo by Andrew Biraj.
The symbolism and relic of a stone age, archaic religion. Modern Muslims: Move on!
Haj pilgrims flock to Mount Arafat to beg forgiveness
Millions of Muslims gathered around Mount Arafat, where the Prophet Mohammad delivered his last sermon, to beg for God’s forgiveness on Monday, the spiritual climax of the annual haj pilgrimage. Pilgrims flocked mostly on foot to Arafat, a rocky outcrop in a dusty plain a few kilometers away from Mecca, to pray until sunset. They set up tents where they could, squatted on the side of the road in shelters or stayed at the nearby Namira mosque.
A record of at least 2.5 million pilgrims have come to Saudi Arabia to perform this year’s haj, one of the world’s biggest displays of mass religious devotion. So far, the authorities have reported none of the major problems or disasters that marred the event in previous years, such as building collapses and deadly stampedes caused by overcrowding.
But the sheer number of pilgrims was still a worry for the Saudi government. Around 100,000 security forces have been deployed to the oversee the pilgrimage, security officials said.
“I thank God for sending me to haj but it’s really difficult with so many people here and the heat,” Mohammed Ramzi, a pilgrim from Egypt, said as he cooled off under one of thousands of water sprinklers erected by the authorities against temperatures of up to 40 degrees Celsius. “I’ve just lost a friend in the crowd … but God will give me the strength to perform haj despite the difficulties.”
“Haj is difficult with the crowds and heat but God will help us,” said Abdulrahman Kado, a pilgrim from Nigeria.
Saudi Arabia opens Chinese-built haj pilgrimage train
Hoping to decrease accidents and boost tourism, Saudi has built a railway line to improve transport for millions of Muslims who flock to the kingdom on the annual haj and move en masse from one holy site to another. At least 2.5 million pilgrims are expected to perform the haj, which began on Sunday. One of the world’s biggest religious gatherings, it has been marred in the past by stampedes, accidents and political demonstrations.
Authorities say the 6.6 billion riyal ($1.76 billion) project will lessen congestion of the pilgrim route swollen with some 70,000 cars and buses jamming the roads. The railway is the first such project in more than half a century in the world’s top oil exporter. It will ferry pilgrims around holy sites outside Mecca to perform rites such as the “devil’s stoning”, when pilgrims stone a wall in ritual defiance of the devil and temptation.
The 18-km train line has stops at Mina, Arafat and Muzdalifa, haj sites that Islamic tradition says Prophet Ibrahim — the biblical patriarch Abraham — once visited and that Prophet Mohammad established as a pilgrim route 14 centuries ago. The Chinese-built train is the latest high-tech addition to the haj after Saudi Arabia built electric stairways in the Grand Mosque and showers to cool off pilgrims following the haj route. The ticket, good for a week, costs $70.
The project was completed in about a year but much still needs to be done — many buildings have Chinese signs but no windows or walls yet. The train will transport 180,000 passengers this haj, said Habib Zein Al Abideen, assistant minister for municipial and rural affairs. Due to its limited capacity, the train will only be open this year to Saudis and Gulf Arabs and next year will open to others, he said.
“We will have a capacity of 72,000 passengers per hour next year. This year we operate at 35 percent capacity. Next year we could have 500,000 to 600,000 passengers,” Abideen said, sitting in an airconditioned makeshift container office.
Apart from a city metro in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) launched in 2009, the haj train is the first passenger railway completed on the Arabian Peninsula for more than half a century. The only other overland passenger line remains a railway built in the 1950s linking the capital Riyadh and Dammam on the Saudi’s east coast, home to most of its oil reserves. The railway was built by Saudi oil giant Aramco, owned then by U.S. firms.
Saudi Arabia plans to eventually link the line to Islam’s holiest city Mecca, the second holiest Medina and to the Red Sea port of Jeddah where most pilgrims arrive.
At least 2.5 million Muslim pilgrims begin haj
At least 2.5 million Muslims began the annual haj pilgrimage on Sunday, heading to an encampment near the holy city of Mecca to retrace the route taken by the Prophet Mohammad 14 centuries ago.
Traveling on foot, by public transport and in private cars, the pilgrims will stream through a mountain pass to a valley at Mina, some three km (two miles) outside Mecca. The path is the same as the Prophet himself took on his last pilgrimage.
The haj, one of the world’s biggest displays of mass religious devotion, lasts for five days. In the past it has been marred by fires, hotel collapses, police clashes with protesters and deadly stampedes.
Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef said on Wednesday the kingdom could not rule out an attack by Al Qaeda’s regional wing, although the kingdom’s forces were ready to combat any such operations. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula on Sunday denied it had any intentions of targeting Muslim pilgrims at haj.
Islam is now embraced by a quarter of the world’s population and haj is a duty for all able-bodied Muslims who can afford it. Many wait for years to get a visa.
To minimize the risk of overcrowding and to lessen congestion on the roads the authorities will for the first time be operating a Chinese-built train that will call at haj sites.
Mecca goes upmarket but commercialism unnerves some Saudis
Sitting in the marble lobby of a luxury hotel in Mecca, Moroccan bank director Mohammad Hamdosh gets a breather from the cacophony of pilgrims bustling around the Grand Mosque in Islam’s holiest city. Millions have flocked to the city in Saudi Arabia for the annual haj pilgrimage, a duty for every able-bodied Muslim who can afford it. But some can afford more than others, and a controversial construction boom is catering to their needs.
“Every pilgrim comes according to his means. God gave me money, so why shouldn’t I stay in this hotel?” says Hamdosh, on a trip that has cost him 12,000 Euros ($16,545). “Haj is tiring so it’s good to have a room to rest.”
Inside the mosque, all pilgrims are equal as they circle the black stone known as the Kaaba toward which Muslims around the world turn in prayer every day. But outside an array of towering five-star hotels have sprung up where the wealthy can bask in a 24-hour view of the Kaaba. The high-rises dwarf the mosque and the surrounding town, nestled in the mountains in the hinterland of the port city Jeddah.
It is part of a wider project to expand the mosque and bring more Muslims to the holy city for salvation, according to the writs of Islam — something Saudi Arabia sees as its duty.
Mecca has just inaugurated the world’s largest clockface perched Big Ben-style on the front of a high-rise hotel facing the Kaaba, while some 20 cranes next to the mosque herald more luxury accommodation. The spending spree in Mecca and the second holy city Medina is valued at some $120 billion over the next decade and at present there are $20 billion of projects underway in Mecca alone, according to Banque Saudi Fransi. A square meter land in Mecca costs some 50,000 riyals ($13,333).
Mecca hopes to revive pilgrim tourism during haj
Rashed Abdullah displays Oriental perfumes on a glass table to late-night shoppers in his small shop in Mecca ready for what he hopes will be a sales bonanza during this month’s haj pilgrimage. He is confident of attracting customers after fears of a swine flu outbreak kept many away last year.
“This year will be the best. There is really strong demand,” he said, standing behind an incense collection in one of dozens souvenir shops around the Grand Mosque in Mecca.
Business has picked up in Islam’s holiest city since Ramadan, the Islamic fasting month which fell in August and September when many visit Mecca. In 2009, the number of pilgrims fell to about 2.5 million but a record 4 million are expected next week when the haj begins.
While last year hotels had trouble filling rooms in Mecca and the nearby port city of Jeddah, where most arrive by air, this year hotels are almost entirely fully booked.
“People are really interested and everyone is trying to make up for last year … things will be much better this year,” said Walid Abu Sabaa, head of the tourism and hotels committee at the Mecca chamber of commerce.
Sarkozy says Muslims should not feel singled out by full veil ban
France attempted the arguably impossible on Wednesday by presenting a bill to ban Muslim face veils and asking Muslims not to feel it was singling them out in the process.
President Nicolas Sarkozy made a brave effort of it at the cabinet meeting that approved the government’s draft “burqa ban” that we reported on here. Justice Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie, who Sarkozy’s UMP party always seems to call on when things get tough, did her best in an interview (here in French) that got the part about Mecca wrong. There will be more of this in the months ahead as the bill moves through the National Assembly and Senate.
It’s hard not to single out Muslims when they’re the only ones who wear full face veils. The bill avoids mentioning them as such, saying only that the ban applies to “concealment of the face in public.“ But nobody’s fooled, a fact Sarkozy acknowledged in his comments to the cabinet: “This is a decision one doesn’t take lightly. It’s a serious decision because nobody should feel hurt or stigmatised. I’m thinking in particular of our Muslim compatriots, who have their place in the republic and should feel respected. Laïcité means respect for all beliefs, for all religions.
“But we are an old nation united around a certain idea of personal dignity, particularly women’s dignity, and of life together. It’s the fruit of centuries of efforts. The full veil that fully conceals the face violates these values that are so fundamental for us, so essential to the republican contract. Dignity cannot be divided and in the public sphere, where we meet each other, where we are with others, citizenship should be lived with uncovered faces. So ultimately there can be no other solution than a ban in all public places.”
To critics who say the ban would victimise women who want to wear the veil, Alliot-Marie – seen at left leaving the cabinet meeting (photo: Jacky Naegelen) said: “As we see it, these women are victims. It would be ideal if these sanctions didn’t have to be imposed on them.”
She also rejected the argument that a ban would violate the free choice of women who wanted to cover up: “I personally think that the text is a fair balance between the various principles of our Constitution. It is a difficult balance, precisely because it is at the intersection of several equally essential principles: individual freedom, equality between men and women, respect for the dignity of women and the rules of living in the society. To my knowledge, however, the prohibition of walking naked in the street is not challenged on behalf of individual liberty.”
But the minister overdid the argument when she was asked if the ban would single out Muslims and put France at odds with Muslim countries. “Our country is not the only one to go down this route. Some Islamic countries have also banned this practice,” she said, using ‘Islamic’ when ‘Muslim’ would probably have been better.
Muslim washing rite goes hi-tech with “wudu” machine
A Malaysian company has invented a machine it says will help Muslims purify themselves before prayers without excessively wasting water. The ornate, green-colored machine comes with automatic sensors and basins to curb water usage during wudu, an Arabic word used to describe the act of washing the face, arms and legs before prayers.
The wudu, or ablution, rite precedes the five daily prayers Muslims are obligated to perform. There are more than 1.7 billion Muslims in the world, with the majority in Africa and the Middle East where water supplies are scarce.
Inventors AACE Technologies is counting on rich countries in these two regions to snap up the machines that will be available in the next six months and cost $3,000-$4,000 a piece.
“During the Haj, two million people used 50 million liters water a day for wudu. If they introduce this machine they are saving 40 million liters per day,” AACE Chairman Anthony Gomez said, referring to the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.
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It looks like it even has a foot dryer. Thanks be to God!
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