Sorry, yes, Riverworld.
This doesn’t directly address all the question in the OP, but it gives a day by day description of what to do during your haaj. And it does give a sense of the time frame.
I wanted to point out that the Islamic calendar is currently moving the date back each year for the Hajj (in relation to the seasons). It should be cooler going forward for some time. It will give the Saudis some time to prepare for hotter weather in the decades to come.
The Gregorian calendar is solar based and the Islamic calendar is lunar based so it looses about 11 days each year in comparison.
Not just currently. As you point out, the Muslim calendar loses eleven days relative to the Gregorian one per year, so the dates of the Muslim calendar (including the Hajj, but also, for instance, Ramadan) cycle through the seasons over the course of about 33 years.
Slight side tangent but I remember reading at some point the Saudi government had Western security consultants in Mecca to provide advice on safety and security, and they had some quickie “conversion” ceremony to allow them to step onto Mecca grounds.
Does anyone else know more about this? I’m assuming the moment they left Mecca they let their Muslim status “lapse”.
I find it impossible to believe that there aren’t enough Muslim security experts in the Western world that they would have to resort to that and I don’t think there is any such things as letting a conversion lapse in any meaningful sense.
You mean, they committed apostasy, a crime punishable by death in Saudi Arabia? (Although the courts are iften more lenient)
Yeah, i don’t know a lot about Islam, but it’s not a religion that just “lapses”. There is zero chance that story is true.
I’m more willing to believe that they consulted non-Muslim experts in crowd control.
A quick Google search shows interviews with a number of professors of engineering at a number of Western schools who did indeed advise Saudi Arabia on the topic, but they are also Muslim. So no conflict there.
Particularly not if all they did was to advise the Saudi government.
Well, no, if their advising requires surveying the site (and one would assume you’d want that), non Muslims ARE a problem, since by both Islamic and Saudi law, non Muslims are forbidden from entering Mecca.
I’ll try to find the story.
It was basically members of American Delta Force that went over to Mecca to advise on security measures and the Saudi Arabian government already had a system in place to “convert” them to Muslims on the spot.
Technically, no. Apostasy is a three point process, which includes (2) public statement or action, (3) refusal to repent when given the opportunity.
If (it seems unlikely) American soldiers were sworn in as Muslims (a simple action that takes seconds), they could simply leave the country and be of no further interest to anyone. “Apostasy” is a crime. “Not believing” is a religious failing which will be answered at Judgement.
It’s not like an American court would extradite someone for apostasy.
Saudi Arabia is an absolutist monarchy. If someone high up in the Saudi government wants these people to work in Mecca (because they possess some particular skill that is needed), there’s nobody going to stop that person from simply waiving the non-Muslim ban in this particular case.
I can believe that the Saudi government would decline to make much noise about an American, and especially a highly-placed American, committing apostasy. But I can’t believe that they would deliberately set up a situation contrived to make it likely that they would subsequently commit apostasy.
Especially when they had so many other options, like waiving the Muslims-only rule for this one specific case, or finding qualified security consultants who were already Muslim, or sending Muslims to other countries to be trained there on security consulting, or finding at least a few qualified Muslims and hiring infidels for other aspects of the project that didn’t require actually setting foot in Mecca (an expert in New York can look at the maps, photographs, and other data collected by someone on site, and advise based on that, for instance).
What about Zoom calls? Can a non-Muslim have a Zoom call with someone in Mecca? I.e. is a “virtual” presence allowed or is that also forbidden? I have to think the Saudis have ruled on this.
If it’s allowed, that would be another option for our infidel security experts.
All of this talk of ad hoc temporary Islamification of non-Muslims reminds me of a situation a friend of mine got himself into. At the time he raised goats for milk, and his farm’s Facebook page started getting interest from Muslim grocers in nearby St. Louis. The issue is that in order for his goat meat to be halal, he (the animals’ caretaker and eventual killer) must himself be Muslim, or the goat must be butchered in accordance with some Muslim ceremony, or something. Bob realized that he could simply lie and/or go through the motions, but he thought it unseemly and disrespectful.
It’s certainly possible for a non-Muslim to raise and slaughter halal meat. Aside from alcohol, the rules for halal are less strict than the rules for kosher, and so any non-alcoholic kosher food can be presumed to also be halal. Of course, kosher slaughter still requires use of specific techniques, and certain prayers, and so on, so it’d still be a barrier (if not necessarily an insurmountable one) for a gentile farmer/butcher.