Mountain prayers for Hajj pilgrims
Nearly three million Muslims from around the world will spend today in prayer on Mount Arafat, in the first major ritual of their annual hajj pilgrimage.
For many, it is a once in a lifetime chance to cleanse their sins in one of the most important rites of Islam.
This year’s hajj takes place amid increasing worries across the Islamic world - over the bloodshed in Iraq, violence in the Palestinian territories and a new war in Somalia.
Amid the crises, tensions have increased between the two main sects of Islam, Sunnis and Shiites, who come together in the five days of hajj rituals centred around Mecca, the Saudi Arabian birthplace of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed.
“We will not allow sectarian tensions from any party during the hajj season,” Saudi Arabia’s interior minister Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz said before the rituals.
“The pilgrimage is not a place for raising political banners … or slogans that divide Muslims, whom God has ordered to be unified,” Islamic affairs minister Sheikh Salih bin Abdulaziz told pilgrims yesterday.
However, for most pilgrims the top concern was not politics, but faith.
Yesterday morning, hundreds of thousands opened their pilgrimage in Mecca by circling Islam’s holiest site, the Kaaba, the black cubic stone that Muslims face when they perform their daily prayers.
“For us it is a vacation away from work and daily life to renew yourself spiritually,” said Ahmed Karkoutly, an American doctor. “You feel you are part of a universe fulfilling God’s will. It’s a cosmic motion, orbiting the Kaaba.”
Massive crowds of pilgrims packed the streets surrounding the Kaaba, some prostrating in prayer, others diving into the traditional outdoor markets to buy perfumes, fabrics, prayer beads and other souvenirs.
In gleaming shopping malls overlooking the Kaaba, pilgrims checked out the goods at stores like The Body Shop or lined up at a Cinnabon.
The crowds then streamed into the tent cities outside the city, dressed in seamless white robes symbolising the equality of mankind under God and chanting: “Labbeik, allahum, labbeik” – Arabic for: “I am here, Lord.”
The heartier ones walked, carrying food and water and bags. Others packed into buses and minibuses, some riding on the roof alongside the baggage, jamming the roads in the hajj’s annual epic of traffic control.
Most pilgrims went to Mina, a region in a desert valley eight miles outside Mecca. But tens of thousands of others went directly to Mount Arafat, where all the pilgrims will gather today for the first major ritual of the pilgrimage.
Saudi authorities estimate nearly three million pilgrims are attending this year’s hajj. More than 1.6 million come from abroad. The rest are Saudis or foreigners resident in the kingdom.
More than 30,000 police and other security forces have fanned out around the holy sites to help smooth the pedestrian traffic and avoid the deadly stampedes that have marred previous pilgrimages.
More than 360 people were killed during last year’s hajj in a stampede at Mina during a ritual symbolising the stoning of the devil. The rush began when some pilgrims stumbled over luggage.
Saudi Arabia has spent more than £530 million during the past year to renovate the stoning site, where the massive crowds hurl stones at three stone walls symbolising the devil.
After last year’s stampede, the huge platform on which pilgrims stood to throw the stones was torn down and replaced by one with more exits and entrances. In the coming years, the complex will be expanded to offer multiple storeys for the stoning.
Today pilgrims will spend the day and night in prayer and meditation at Mount Arafat, the site where Mohammed gave his final sermon in 632. They then return to Mina for the stoning ritual.
