Hajj is organized with precision and skills, but providing services to close to 2 million visitors in Mecca remains challenging even with the best organization and ultra-modern facilities, hospitals, and goodwill in place.
With rising temperatures, elderly pilgrims’ death is an unavoidable side effect of this otherwise amazing, spiritual, and highly unique mass event.
Today, worried relatives diligently searched hospitals in Mecca and made desperate pleas on the internet, fearing the worst for missing loved ones.
During the scorching Saudi summer, approximately 1.8 million individuals, including numerous elderly and physically challenged participants, joined the multi-day pilgrimage conducted predominantly in outdoor settings, hailing from various corners of the globe.
Among the dead, 600 pilgrims were from Egypt. One of the participants said that those unregistered without an official hajj permit trying to participate were turned away from air-conditioned facilities that allow pilgrims to cool down.
Images of individuals who are unaccounted for and appeals for any available details have inundated various social media platforms.
The Hajj, a fundamental duty of Islam, must be undertaken by all financially capable Muslims at least once. The outdoor rituals have been held mainly during the sweltering Saudi summer for several years.
Besides 600 Egyptian citizens among the deaths, fatalities are also among pilgrims from Jordan, Indonesia, Iran, India, Senegal, Tunisia and Iraq.
On Sunday alone, Saudi Arabia reported more than 2,700 cases of heat exhaustion, but it has not disclosed any information regarding fatalities.
Over 200 pilgrims, predominantly from Indonesia, lost their lives during the previous year.
What is Hajj?
Here I am at your service, oh Lord, here I am – here I am. No partner do you have. Here I am. Truly, the praise and the favor are yours and the dominion. No partner you have.
These are the words chanted by some two million people from across Saudi Arabia and worldwide, heading to one spot on Earth as if pulled by a magnet.
As has happened every year for 14 centuries, Muslim pilgrims gather in Makkah to perform rituals based on those conducted by the Prophet Muhammad during his last visit to the city.
Performing these rituals, known as the Hajj, is the fifth pillar of Islam and the most significant manifestation of Islamic faith and unity.
Undertaking the Hajj at least once is a duty for Muslims who can physically and financially journey to Makkah. The emphasis on financial ability ensures that a Muslim takes care of his family first.
The requirement that a Muslim be healthy and physically capable of undertaking the pilgrimage is intended to exempt those who cannot endure the rigors of extended travel.
The pilgrimage is the religious high point of a Muslim’s life and an event that every Muslim dreams of undertaking. Umrah, the lesser pilgrimage, can be undertaken at any time of the year; Hajj, however, is performed during five days from the ninth through the thirteenth of Dhu Al-Hijjah, the twelfth month of the Muslim lunar calendar.
In the past, and as late as the early decades of the last century, few people could “make their way” to Makkah for the pilgrimage.
This was due to the hardships encountered, the length of the journey, and the expense associated with it.
Pilgrims coming from the far corners of the Islamic world sometimes dedicated a year or more to the journey, and many perished during it due in part to the lack of facilities on the routes to Makkah and also in the city itself.
The circumstances of the Hajj began to improve during the time of King Abdul Aziz Ibn Abdul Rahman Al-Saud, the founder of the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Significant programs were introduced to ensure the pilgrims’ security and safety, well-being, and comfort. Steps were also taken to establish facilities and services to improve housing, health care, sanitation, and transportation.
Today, though the rituals at the holy sites in and near Makkah have remained unchanged from the time of the Prophet, the setting for the pilgrimage and the facilities available to the pilgrims is a far cry from those that existed at any time in history.
Hardship was once expected and endured as part of the pilgrimage. Muslims who embarked on this undertaking traditionally assigned a relative or trusted community member as the executor of their wills in case they did not return from the journey.
Muslims today easily undertake the pilgrimage, receive a warm welcome on their arrival in Saudi Arabia, and are provided with the most modern facilities and efficient services possible. Without the distractions that their forebears had to contend with, today’s pilgrims are free to focus solely on the spiritual aspect of the Hajj.
Preparing to Welcome the Guests of God
“It is truly amazing,” said Rajeeb Razul, a journalist from the Philippines, as he stood on the roof of the Ministry of Information building near the Nimera Mosque in Arafat, watching a column of pilgrims that stretched to Mina almost eight miles in the distance make their way past the mosque toward the Mount of Mercy.
“To organize a gathering of humans this large, to house them, to feed them, and to meet their every need year after year must be a monumental task,” he observed.
Saudi Arabia considers serving God’s guests an honor and dedicates vast manpower and financial resources to the proper conduct of the pilgrimage.
Over the past four decades, it has spent billions of dollars expanding the Holy Mosque in Makkah and the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah and establishing modern airports, seaports, roads, lodging, and other amenities and services for the pilgrims.
The establishment of these facilities by itself does not ensure a successful Hajj.
