Holy Pilgrimage: Grand Mufti calls for shunning factionalism

"Muslim leaders should resolve problems through religious teaching, not violence," says the Grand Mufti.

MOUNT ARAFAT:

Vast crowds of Muslim pilgrims flocked to Mount Arafat on Thursday to perform Hajj rites as Saudi Arabia’s top cleric called on Muslims to be free from nationalist sentiment and Muslim infighting as Hajj reached its climax near Makkah.

The message of the Grand Mufti, the most senior Saudi cleric, comes against a backdrop of divisions among Muslims, as Iran and countries like Saudi Arabia and Turkey back opposing sides in Syria’s civil war.

“We want the call of the faithful, not a factional one.  Avoid raising national and factional slogans,” the Grand Mufti, Sheikh Abdulaziz Al al-Sheikh said in his sermon in the Grand Mosque.

He said Muslim leaders were responsible for the well-being of their people and should resolve problems through religious teaching, not violence.

Nearly three million Muslims stood at Mount Arafat in western Saudi Arabia on Thursday in the most important ritual of Hajj. Most had spent the night at nearby Mina. According to Mecca governor Prince Khaled al-Faisal, around 1.7 million people had travelled from abroad for the pilgrimage, many of them from Middle Eastern countries which have been shaken by Arab Spring uprisings.

NIGHT PRAYERS

Thousands of tents were pitched alongside the main roads to Mount Arafat. As the sun rose, pilgrims were still streaming in and others who had already secured their spot were sleeping in tents or on slabs of rock.

“It’s impressive to see the amount of people from all backgrounds asking Allah for forgiveness,” said Babacar Diagne, 47, a Canadian originally from Senegal in West Africa. He looked down the mountain towards a sea of people all dressed in simple white robes.

After dusk, pilgrims will head to the plain of Muzdalifah to spend the evening there in preparation for the ritual stoning of the devil in Jamarat.

STAMPEDE RISKS

Saudi authorities have spent billions of dollars in recent years improving Hajj infrastructure to avoid a repeat of accidents which have killed hundreds of people. But with nearly three million Muslim pilgrims descending on Makkah, disaster is a constant fear.

The last big accident was a stampede in 2006 at Jamarat causing 380 deaths. Two other stampedes at the same place in 1994 and 2004 killed more than 500. In other years, the pilgrimage was marred by deadly fires in the massive camp city.

Hundreds of cameras and other monitoring devices are fixed around the main sites of Hajj, including the Grand Mosque, Mount Arafat and Jamarat Bridge, to monitor crowd levels.

“We’re using technology that allows us to take the right decisions at the right time,” said Mansour al-Turki, the Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman.

“If we notice that the number of pilgrims is increasing in one area we can take preventive measures so that the intensity doesn’t grow in a way that harms the pilgrims.”

At Jamarat, the authorities built extensive new facilities to ease the flow of pilgrims seeking to hurl pebbles at three pillars representing the devil. They replaced the pillars with long walls and built a multi-storey bridge around them, creating far more space for the pilgrims to stand on the bridge levels and perform the rite.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 26^th, 2012.