It seems these are happening on as regular basis. I’d forgotten how bad it got:
This is appalling. I don’t say that the problem is with the Muslim crowds – large groups of people crowded together is a potential disaster waityin to happen, no matter who’s involved. Surely part of the problem is that there are no so many Muslims in the world, and a larger proportion of them are now capable of making the hajj, and it is, after all, an obligation. The fact that it’s confined to a relatively small region in space and to only a few days in the year only makes things worse.
I read Richard Burton’s Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Mecca ansd Medina several times over the years, and it fascinated me. But that was over 150 years ago, when far fewer people had the means and ability to make the trip, and nobody was helping them to do so. Nowadays, everything is organized. I purchased a National Geographic DVD this year, shot by Muslim cameramen, which followed three different Pilgrims on the journey (One, interestingly, an American woman who’d converted) They have done their best to accommodate large numbers of Pilgrims, building camps and hotels, covered walkways, multiple levels for Stoning the Devil, etc. But it’s like building superhighways – the more people you accommodate, the more you can accommodate, so even more peiople come.
My question (this is GQ, right? I have to put a question in here somewhere) is this – what are the Muslims goin to do in the future. This trend can’t continue, or things will get worse. But can they restrict access? Would it be unthinkable to only issue so many “passes” for a given year’s hajj? Would it be possible in any way to allow pilgrimages at different times of the year? If they don’t do either of these things, what will happen in the future with increasing numbers of Pilgrims.
(I’m really surprised that stampedes are the only reported problem. How much water can the well Zam Zam produce in a day? What are the logistics of providing enough animals for sacrifice and hauling away the wastes? Thanksgiving travel in the US is already a nightmare with people going to different places – I can’t imagine the strain on a transportation system of huge numbers of people all going to the same place at one time.)
I think the lesson is clear: don’t throw stones at the devil. I bet Pat Robertson wishes he could make a case as strong as this for divine retribution.
No. Hajj can only take place at its specified time. A pilgrimage to Mecca at any other time of the year is called `umrah, and while highly recommended, is not obligatory, and doesn’t satisfy the requirement to attend hajj or have someone do it for you.
Both of those ideas wouldn’t be acceptable, unfortunately. A Muslim must do the haj, if they are (physically and financially) able to do so, it’s the direct command of God that they do so:
How would one choose between them and decide who gets to fulfill their religious duty and who doesn’t? Having said that, one approach that the Saudi government has tried in recent years is to crack down on repeat pilgrims in favour of those doing the haj for the first time, but this has been unpopular.
As for shifting the timing of the haj, it is supposed to take place during the Islamic lunar month of dhu ul-hijja, literally “the haj one” or “the haj month”.
I know that this is what’s practiced and has been done all these years and is viewed as set in stone. But my question is deeper – under the impact of the sheer number of bodies descending on the cities during this brief span of time, is it at all conceivable that it’s possible to shift people elsewhere? I’ve got a whole shelf on Islam, but none of it prepares one for questions like this. Does the restriction on the hajj stem from a divine pronouncement? Does it rest on a declaration by the prophet? Is there any sort of “wiggle room”?
The reason I ask is that, in human societies, pressure leads to people traking advantage of any loopholes they can find. I want to know if there is such a loophole in this case.
And if there isn’t, what other options are there?
A gruesome day. A lot of families all around the world will be very worried until their Haji comes home safe and sound.
The Ministry for the Hajj is going to demolish the ‘bridge’ used for this ritual. (This was already planned.) IIRC, the present arrangement is three decks, people on each one. They may build another floor or so.
Still, there is only so much engineering can do. The requirements for the Hajj specify the exact day each ritual is done. This cannot be changed.
We need better traffic flow, we need the guards to strictly enforce the ‘no luggage’ rule. We need to do better.
I saw that National Geographic special too. It was fascinating how they built multiple floors around the pillars to reduce the people density. Clearly not enough though.
With hajj, like with any other Islamic religious practice, the command to do it comes from the Qur’an but the exact details are from what Muhammad did. There really isn’t any wiggle room – stuff has to be done the way the Prophet did it.
Have the quotas been kept the same? Or have they been increasing with time? If they haven’t been increasing, then why do there seem to have been more incidents in the recent past?
I don’t know what the situation is, but I suspect that , although they set limits, the limits have risen with demand.
Is there anything similar to a papal decree or Vatican council that exists in Islam? Is Quranic rule ultimately agreed upon by some defined committee, or is it more of a free-for-all?
For the Sunnis, it’s more of a free-for-all. That is, there’s a system of scholarship that tends to define Islamic law, but there’s no one person who can declare a definitive interpretation. The closest one can come to such a declaration is a fatwa (a judgment, a ‘memo’ on a point of Islamic law) issued by a particularly knowledgeable source, but one is not bound to follow it. It’s somewhat different for the Shiites.
As I understand it, many of the haj rituals, in particular the timing of the haj, stem from pre-Islamic precedent. There was always a holy month around that time, with no fighting etc accepted among the pagan Arabs around Mecca and Medina.
I found this passage, from the Toronto Star (www.thestar.com) interesting:
*“Shiite Muslim clerics have issued religious edicts allowing pilgrims to start the ritual in the morning, and many Shiites from Iraq, Iran, Bahrain, Lebanon and Pakistan took advantage to go early in the day.
“This is much better. We are now done with the stoning before the crowd gets larger,” an Iranian pilgrim, Azghar Meshadi, said hours before the stampede.
But Saudi Arabia’s Sunni Muslim clerics, who follow the fundamentalist Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, encouraged pilgrims to stick to the midday rule. “
*
I think actions like this are the only sensible solution. Clerics can relax some of the requirements so that religious duties can be fulfilled without such a tragedy. Not all Muslims would agree, but hopefully enough would follow relaxed requirements to lessen the load.
It shows that the deaths weren’t very close to the pillars this time, but in the entryway. It also mentions that they are build a new version of the “bridge” with 5 levels instead of 2.
When I awoke the this morning, the news was even worse. 345 dead, many more injured. Add to that those killed in the collapse of a hotel earlier.
It seems the authorities are blaming those unsophisticated pilgrims who do not think the rules (‘Do not sleep here,’ "No sitting’) do not apply to them. The authorities can only do so much. (Did they do all they could this year? I do not know.)
Dying on Hajj is not the worst way to go. Still it was a horrid day. (sigh)