A Hajj Closer To Normal: 1 Million Muslims Begin Pilgrimage

MECCA, Saudi Arabia (AP) — It is a scene that stirs hope — and relief — for Muslims around the world.

A million pilgrims from across the globe gathered on Thursday in the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia to perform the initial rites of the hajj, marking the largest Islamic pilgrimage since the coronavirus pandemic upended the annual event — a key pillar of Islam.

The hajj is a once-in-a-lifetime duty for all Muslims physically and financially able to make the journey, which takes the faithful along a path traversed by the Prophet Muhammad some 1,400 years ago. Pilgrims spend five days carrying out a set of rituals intended to bring them closer to God.

That includes praying around the cube-shaped Kaaba, the holiest shrine in Islam. At the center of the Grand Mosque’s courtyard on Thursday, thousands of unmasked pilgrims circled the Kaaba.

The crowds, visibly thinner than usual, moved counter-clockwise around the granite building in a blur, their hearts tilting toward the structure meant to symbolize the oneness of God in Islam. Wherever they are in the world, observant Muslims face the Kaaba to pray daily.

Pilgrims appeared to throw COVID-19 caution to the wind this year as they thronged the Grand Mosque — in sharp contrast to the social distancing and mask requirements of the past two years.

“This year the number of pilgrims is huge, thank God,” said Mohammad Qabbani, a pilgrim from Sudan. “There are no high numbers of COVID-19 cases. The situation is good.”

But there were still signs of vigilance. Typically, worshippers would fight the crowds for a chance to touch and kiss the black stone on the Kaaba’s eastern corner, but the government has again banned this practice, for the third year. Saudi authorities also distributed bottles of water from the holy Zamzam well instead of allowing pilgrims to drink from cups at the mosque. Thousands of medical workers were on hand to assist those in need.

This year, the hajj is open to just 1 million foreign and domestic pilgrims who have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, tested negative for COVID-19 and are between 18 and 65 years old. Authorities estimate 85% have arrived from abroad.

While this year’s attendance is far below the pre-pandemic influx of 2.5 million pilgrims, it represents a significant step closer to normal after the kingdom restricted the event to a small number of Muslim residents for the past two years.

The ritual was almost scrapped in its entirety in 2020, when as few as 1,000 residents of Saudi Arabia were permitted to take part. Some 60,000 residents attended last year. The unprecedented restrictions sent shockwaves through the Muslim world and devastated many believers, who often save up and wait for years to make the pilgrimage.

Although no longer in the shadow of the pandemic, this hajj is taking place amid Russia’s war on Ukraine — a conflict that may be thousands of miles from the homes of many Muslims but that has sent the prices of staple foods soaring and spread misery across the world.

This year’s hajj also showcases de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s latest efforts to loosen social restrictions and transform the kingdom. Saudi Arabia officially began allowing women to perform the hajj without a male guardian, or “mahram,” last year.

The hajj in Islam is meant to be a great equalizer and unifier among Muslims. Pilgrims wear simple clothing: For men, it’s typical to wear a white draping garment, while women wear conservative dress and headscarves, forgoing makeup, nail polish and perfume to draw closer to God.

But even Mecca cannot escape the world’s wealth gaps: The well-heeled may pay some $3,000 a night for five-star hotels overlooking the Kaaba. For most people, however, the pilgrimage means sleeping in simple accommodations or on the ground around the mosque to perform daily prayers ahead of the hajj.

With many more people applying to perform the hajj each year than the kingdom can accommodate, the Saudi government controls the flow of visitors through annual quotas based on each nation’s Muslim population.

The visa regulations have grown stricter after deadly incidents in recent years. In 2015, several thousand pilgrims were crushed to death in a stampede. This year, those quotas were sharply reduced. Indonesia sent just over 100,000 people, the world’s largest contingent. The United States sent over 9,500.

Shiite powerhouse Iran, Saudi Arabia’s regional foe that in 2016 barred its citizens from making the pilgrimage amid an escalating sectarian rivalry, sent 39,000 worshippers — less than half of its attendance in 2019. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s special envoy for the hajj did not receive a visa because he is over 65, Iranian media reported.

As tensions eased between the rivals amid regional negotiations and a cease-fire in Yemen, hajj officials from the countries met last month for the first time in years.

Although the pandemic is far from over, with hundreds new infections a day in the kingdom, the government is glad of the influx. The event is a critical source of prestige and tourism for Saudi Arabia.

By Thursday evening, most pilgrims were arriving in Mina, a small village east of Mecca, where they will spend the night in a sprawling tent city grouped according to the part of the world they come from. On Friday, they rise at dawn to march to the sacred hill of Mount Arafat, where they ask for forgiveness for their sins.

Hajj Scams: What Muslims Will Do To Get To Mecca

Some Muslims are apparently ready to go to any lengths to participate in the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Strict quotas and expensive travel have pushed some pilgrims to smuggle drugs, forge passports and paperwork, and, in some cases, enter Saudi Arabia illegally.

In August, 177 Indonesians were arrested after attempting to use fake Philippine passports to travel to Medina by means of a massive passport scam. It was also reported that another 500-700 Indonesians managed to enter Saudi Arabia using forged Philippine passports. A further 229 Indonesians were detained by the Saudis for not having proper permits. And, a Nigerian woman was found guilty of attempting to smuggle cocaine in order to pay for her Hajj.

The Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam and every Muslim has to fulfill this duty once in his or her life,” Stephan Rosiny, a research fellow at the German Institute of Global and Area studies told The Media Line. “Saudi Arabia controls the Hajj because it takes place in its territory and the Saudi king calls himself the protector of the two holy sites, Mecca and Medina.

While this journey is only required for all able-bodied and financially stable Muslims, it is not only expensive, but nearly impossible to perform unless a pilgrim goes through a travel agency. Travelers to the kingdom are required to apply for special Hajj visas and each country has a quota of pilgrims it may send.

“You have something like 1.5 billion Muslims nowadays and you cannot allow all Muslims to take part each year. Each country has a fixed quota of people who can come every year,” Rosiny said. “It is a major source of income for Saudi Arabia. The pilgrimage and Hajj have always been connected to business.”

The quotas limit the number of Muslims allowed to enter Saudi Arabia because the country does not have the infrastructure or resources to support the massive amount of people who wish to perform the Hajj. Not having proper documentation to travel to Mecca can result in imprisonment and exile.

With approximately 250 million Muslims, Indonesia has the largest population of Islamic devotees in the world, comprising over 12 percent of the world’s Muslims. However, the Saudi government has capped their quota at 168,000. The Indonesian waiting list to go to Mecca for the Hajj is 15 years.

Historically, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia have a fraught relationship due to competing views on Islam. “It’s a complicated relationship in terms of how they (Saudi Arabia and Indonesia) each view their own hierarchy. Saudi Arabia does not think Indonesia is very high in terms of other Muslim countries and Indonesia has a self-consciousness about that,” Aaron Connelly, research fellow at the Sydney-based Lowy Institute for International Policy told The Media Line. “The important thing about the relationship with Saudi Arabia is that many Saudis don’t really consider most Indonesians to be good Muslims.”

Many Saudis also see Indonesians as domestic workers, which contributes to the contentious relationship, Connelly added.

While many of the pilgrims go through third party syndicates to help them get to Saudi Arabia, others resort to illegal activities.

Binuyo Basari Iyabo, a 55-year-old mother of three, was arrested at the international airport in Abuja, Nigeria by the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency for smuggling cocaine. Iyabo, who excreted some 82 cocaine pellets, was taken into custody while trying to board an Emirates flight on her way to Saudi Arabia as a Hajj pilgrim.

According to Vanguard, a Nigerian newspaper, Iyabo admitted to trafficking the narcotics to help cover her trip to Saudi Arabia. “I wanted to expand my cosmetic business but I have no money. My sponsor offered to foot my expenses to Saudi on pilgrimage. This was how I got involved in the act. I was excited until the issue of drugs was introduced,” Iyabo said in an interrogation.

Not only is the pilgrimage expensive, but it can be dangerous as well. Last year, there was a stampede that killed some 2,236 pilgrims.

“Mecca gets really, really crowded,” Shahed Khaled, a Saudi medical student told The Media Line. “People die yearly because of that. It is, however, very organized if you stay calm and follow the rules.”

The Hajj began on Friday, September 9 and ended September 14.

Travelore News: World's Largest Hotel To Be Built In Mecca

The biggest hotel in the world is being built in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, offering 10,000 rooms, helicopter pads and convenience for the Masjid al-Haram

The world's largest hotels up until now have been in Las Vegas  Photo: dargroup

The world’s largest hotel is being planned for Mecca, Saudi Arabia, a remarkable structure that will rise out of the desert and apparently contain 10,000 rooms for worshipers.

The hotel will be part of a mixed-use development at Abraj Kudai, a $3.5bn (£2.25bn) project intended to look like a desert fortress, that encompasses a ring of towers standing on top of a podium.

It is due to be completed in 2017 and is being situated in the Manafia area of Mecca’s central zone, just 2.2km south of the Masjid al-Haram (holy mosque).

• Saudi Arabia's travel highlights

DesignMENA reported that the hotel will have 10,000 rooms in 12 separate towers, which are 44 storeys high, that will also include 70 restaurants, rooftop helipads, royal floors and a full size convention centre.

Two of the towers will offer five-star facilities, according to the hotel’s architects Dar Al-Handasah. The other ten will provide four-star accommodation.

The interiors are expected to be in keeping with the opulent style found elsewhere in the region.

• The best hotels in the world

"Due to its unparalleled size, height as well as distinguished location, exposure and architectural style, the building appears as a striking landmark with a profoundly modern multifunctional identity relating to both the Saudi locality and the Islamic universality of its expected users, “ said architects Dar Al-Handasah on its website.

^{PHOTO: (dargroup)}

The site, which will also include residential facilities, a shopping mall and plenty of car parking for those visiting the mosque and black kaaba, has an approximate total site area of 60,000msq and a total built-up area of 1.4million msq.

Abraj Kudai is not the only one new hotel planned for Mecca. Hilton, the worldwide brand, is developing the Conrad Makkah, due to open in 2016, which, once built, will "help to meet the demands for a wider variety of accommodation from the rising number of pilgrims visiting Saudi Arabia every year."

• The world's most unusual hotels

It will be the first Conrad in the country. The Hilton Makkah Convention Hotel also opened recently, while the new Hyatt Regency Makkah is accepting reservations from July.

^{PHOTO: (dargroup)}

The world's largest hotels up until now have been in Las Vegas. The Venetian and The Palazzo, which operate as a single hotel, offers 7,117 rooms. TheMGM Grand in Las Vegas is close behind in terms of number of room keys, with 6,852 rooms available.

Contributed by Natalie Paris, wwwthetelegraph.co.uk

Follow us onTwitter: @TraveloreReport

Saudi Overhaul Reshapes Islam's Holiest City Mecca

Contributed by Aya Batrawy, AP

FILE - In this Sept. 7, 1954 file photo, Muslims visit the Kaaba, the Sacred House of Allah, during a pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. As Muslims from around the world stream into Mecca for the annual hajj pilgrimage this week, they come to a city undergoing the biggest transformation in its history. (AP Photo, File)

 As a child, Osama al-Bar would walk from his home past Islam's holiest site, the Kaaba, to the market of spice and fabric merchants where his father owned a store. At that time, Mecca was so small, pilgrims could sit at the cube-shaped Kaaba and look out at the serene desert mountains where the Prophet Muhammad once walked.

Now the market and the homes are gone. Monumental luxury hotel towers crowd around the Grand Mosque where the Kaaba is located, dwarfing it. Steep rocky hills overlooking the mosque have been leveled and are now covered with cranes building more towers in row after row.

"My father and all the people who lived in Mecca wouldn't recognize it," said al-Bar, who is now Mecca's mayor.

As Muslims from around the world stream into Mecca for the annual hajj pilgrimage this week, they come to a city undergoing the biggest transformation in its history.

Decades ago, this was a low-built city of centuries-old neighborhoods Over the years, it saw piecemeal renewal projects. But in the mid-2000s, the kingdom launched its most ambitious overhaul ever with a series of mega-projects that, though incomplete, have already reshaped Mecca.

Old neighborhoods have been erased for hotel towers and malls built right up to the edge of the Grand Mosque. Historic sites significant for Islam have been demolished. Next to the Kaaba soars the world's third tallest skyscraper, topped by a gigantic clock, which is splashed with colored lights at night.

"It's not Mecca. It's Mecca-hattan. This tower and the lights in it are like Vegas," said Sami Angawi, an architect who spent his life studying hajj and is one of the most outspoken critics of the changes. "The truth of the history of Mecca is wiped out ... with bulldozers and dynamite. Is this development?"

Critics complain the result is stripping the holy city of its spirituality. They also say it is robbing the hajj of its more than 1,400-year-old message that all Muslims, rich or poor, are equal before God as they perform the rites meant to cleanse them of sin, starting and ending by circling the Kaaba seven times.

Mecca is revered by hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide. They face the Kaaba every day in their prayers. The Grand Mosque is one of the few places in the world where Muslims of all stripes gather - Sunnis and Shiites, secular Muslims, mystics and hard-liners.

Overseeing Mecca is also a key source of prestige for Saudi Arabia's monarchy. The past two kings - the current one, Abdullah, and his predecessor, Fahd - have adopted the further title of "custodian of the two holy mosques" to boost their status, referring to Mecca's Grand Mosque and Muhammad's mosque in nearby Medina.

Now the city is being molded to a particularly Saudi vision that bolsters the rule of the Al Saud royal family.

Two forces shape that vision. One is raw, petrodollar-fueled capitalism. Mecca's planners are largely catering to wealthier pilgrims by focusing on construction of five-star hotels, surrounding the Kaaba in marble-sheathed luxury. Nearby pilgrims can shop at international chains, including a Paris Hilton store and a gender-segregated Starbucks.

The other force is Wahhabism, the strict, puritanical interpretation of Islam that the Al Saud rulers elevated to the country's official doctrine. In return, Wahhabi clerics staunchly back the monarchy. The monarchy has long given Wahhabi clerics a monopoly of preaching at the Kaaba.

One tenet of Wahhabism is that Muslim tombs or sites connected to revered figures - even the Prophet Muhammad, his family and companions - should be destroyed to avoid veneration of anything other than God. It's the same iconoclastic zeal that has prompted militants from the Islamic State group to blow up Muslim shrines in Iraq and Syria.

In Mecca, hardly any site associated with Muhammad remains. Many were destroyed in previous expansions of the Grand Mosque in the 1980s and 1990s, and the new development is finishing off much of what remains. In 2008, for example, the house of Abu Bakr, Muhammad's successor as leader of the Muslim community, was razed to make way for a Hilton.

The country's top religious official, Grand Mufti Abdul-Aziz Al-Sheik, backed such demolitions last year, saying "the removal of such things within the expansion is necessary."

The urban renewal is necessary, Saudi officials say, to accommodate hajj pilgrims whose numbers are expected to swell from around 3 million currently to nearly 7 million by 2040.

The $60-billion Grand Mosque expansion will almost double the area for pilgrims to pray at the Kaaba. Around half the cost went to buying about 5,800 homes that had to be razed for the expansion, said al-Bar, the Mecca mayor. Domes and pillars dating back to rule by the Ottoman Empire are being pulled down to put up modern facilities.

Another mega-project is Jabal Omar, a hill on the mosque's west side. The hill - a landmark in the city - was levelled and in its place, construction of around 40 towers is underway, mostly for luxury hotels providing some 11,000 rooms. The first of the Jabal Omar hotels, a Hilton Suites and the Anjum Hotel, just opened in the past few months.

On the mosque's south side stands the 1,972-foot (600-meter) clock-tower skyscraper, part of a completed seven-tower complex that was built after tearing down an Ottoman fort on the site.

Also underway is the Jabal Sharashif project, in which a slum that largely houses Burmese and African migrants is to be torn down to build a new neighborhood for Saudis, along with hotels. A four-line metro system is planned for the city along with a high-speed rail line to the port city of Jiddah, where the area's airport is located, and to Medina.

The Grand Mosque's expansion is being headed by the Saudi Binladin Group, which also built the clock tower. The Binladin family has been close to Al Sauds for decades and runs major building projects around the country. Al-Qaida's late leader Osama bin Laden was a renegade son disowned by the family in the 1990s.

Speaking at a public forum in Jiddah in May, Nawaf Binladin, whose father is chairman of the conglomerate, said people are constantly asking if all this construction is needed.

"This can be answered in one moment in this image," he said, flashing a picture of tens of thousands of worshippers praying in the street because there was not enough room inside the Grand Mosque.

But many in the audience were not convinced. Saeed al-Ghamdi, a former Saudi diplomat, said he thinks greed is the main motivator.

Muslims around the world have an "intimate bond" with Mecca, he said. "It is not a place for one businessman or one company."

Mecca's planners didn't have to build so close to the Kaaba, overwhelming the simple cube-shaped structure, said Irfan al-Alawi, a Saudi who heads the London-based Islamic Heritage Research Foundation. The hotels could have been built miles away and transportation improved.

"Already we are losing the spirituality," he said. Pilgrims admire the clock tower instead of "looking at the Kaaba and admiring the house of God."

Essam Kalthoum, managing director of the government-owned Bawabat Makkah Company, which is involved in a number of projects around the city, acknowledged that "it would be a farce" to say financial motivations are not coming into play.

But he said the main goal is to increase space for pilgrims.

Kalthoum showed a gift from a Turkish foundation he had just received: a photo of Mecca from the late 1800s.

"This is painful," he said. "For those of us who witnessed some of this (past), it brings back memories."

But he pointed to the Kaaba in the photograph. "Because of this place," he said, the old markets and buildings had to go.