Hajj: is it worth the cost?

An estimate 2.5, some say-3+ million pilgrims came to Muzdalifa, Saudi Arabia this week. The Hajj occurs on the eighth to the 12th day of Dhu’l-Hijjah, the last month of the Islamic calendar, outside the city of Mecca.

En route heavy rains, flooding, collapsing bridges and car crashes cost 77 pilgrims lives. One report said 900 people had to be rescued after being stranded by the floodwaters caused by rainfall of up to 3 inches.

Saudi health officials braced for an outbreak of swine flu. It vaccinated its health workers and advised those who would come to be get their H1N1 influenza shots two weeks before embarking.

The Hajj is touted as world’s largest annual religious gathering; millions of pilgrims from 160 countries come to Mecca, a trip Muslims are expected to take before they die. Before the week was out, four pilgrims died of swine flu and 70 have been infected according to Arab News.
Saudi Arabia must bear the burden of housing, feeding and overseeing the multitudes that come to throw stones at walls of the Jamarat Bridge to symbolize the rejection of the devil's temptations and drink from the Wells of Zam Zam, that by Islamic tradition are the waters that Hagar. Look back to 1990, 1,426 people were killed in a crush inside a tunnel leading to the holy sites. And in 2006, 363 people died in a stampede. In the USA Today (2/1/2004) listed disaster after disaster:
• Feb. 1, 2004: 244 pilgrims killed and a similar number injured, some critically, in a stampede during the devil-stoning ritual.
• March 5, 2001: 35 killed in stampede during stoning of the devil ritual in Mina.
• April 9, 1998: About 180 pilgrims were trampled to death when panic erupted after several fell off an overpass during the stoning of the devil ritual in Mina.
• April 15, 1997: Fires driven by high winds tear through a sprawling, overcrowded tent city at Mina, trapping and killing more than 340 pilgrims and injuring 1,500. Aid workers and diplomats said the death toll was at least 500.
• May 23, 1994: 270 pilgrims, most of them Indonesian, killed in stampede in Mecca as worshippers surge toward cavern for symbolic ritual of "stoning the devil."
• July 2, 1990: 1,426 pilgrims, many of them Malaysians, Indonesian and Pakistanis, killed in Mecca stampede in overcrowded pedestrian tunnel leading to holy sites. It was worst hajj tragedy of modern times.
• July 9, 1989: Two bombs explode in Mecca, killing one pilgrim, wounding 16. Saudi authorities blame Iranian-inspired terrorists and later behead 16 Kuwaiti Shiite Muslims for bombings. Iran denied involvement.
• July 31, 1987: 402 people, mostly Iranian pilgrims, killed and 649 wounded in Mecca when security forces clash with Iranian staging illegal anti-U.S. demonstration.
• Aug. 3, 1980: Pakistani jetliner carrying hundreds of Muslim pilgrims catches fire soon after take-off from Jiddah to Riyadh, Saudi capital, suffocating many as smoke spread through cabin. Aircraft's fuselage collapsed after emergency landing, killing more. A total of 301 people died. Investigators found fire probably caused when passenger lit kerosene stove in aisle to brew tea.
• Nov. 20, 1979: About 1,200 Sunni Muslim extremists storm the Grand Mosque in Mecca in what Saudi officials later said was an attempt to kidnap King Khaled and force him to abdicate. But monarch had stomach ache that day and did not go to mosque as scheduled. Most attackers escaped during the two-week siege, broken when government forces, aided by French commandoes, stormed mosque Dec. 4. Some 75 extremists, including their leader, killed in battle around 38-acre complex. Another 170 captured and many beheaded. Scores of Saudi military personnel also slain.
• Dec. 4, 1974: 191 people killed when chartered Dutch DC-8 airliner carrying home Indonesian pilgrims crashes in Sri Lanka.
Transportation to Meccah demands planes, trains, thousands of buses and cars. Anticipated high speed trains between Riyadh and Meccah is six years off. The Saudi economy, that is the biggest in the Arab world, also must bear the burden of accepting the money that the pilgrims pay along the way to bring gifts to Allah.

Religious zeal displayed in the hajj by Muslims poses the question of whether their faith is superior to that of Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Confucian, or any other of the many world’s religions. And whether all the truly faithful of every religion are similar in the way they bend low in various rituals, expend their money, and naively risk health and limb in pilgrimages as their clergy has prescribed.

Braving the usual congestion is to be expected and not even Allah knows what else, or if Allah does know, he she or it has made no apparent effort made to prevent it. This year’s real risk of pandemic should be but evidently the millions of pilgrims have not weighed the risk against the blessing of being faithful. How long will they continue to come to Mecca? Probably for years and years.