At least 717 people have been killed in a stampede at the annual Hajj pilgrimage, Saudi Arabia’s civil defence directorate said, as the death toll continued to rise.The directorate said at least 863 other pilgrims were injured in Thursday’s stampede, which took place in Mina, on the outskirts of the holy city of Mecca.The injured have been evacuated to four different hospitals in the Mina region, according to a civil defence spokesman.Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Prince Mohamed bin Nayef, ordered a probe into how the tragedy had occured. The incident comes even as Saudi Arabia took precautions to ensure the Hajj pilgrimage is not hampered by accidents or terror attacks, especially after the deadly crane crash on 11 September, in which 111 pilgrims were killed and 394 injured. The pilgrimage, the world’s largest annual gathering of people, has been the scene of deadly disasters in the past, including stampedes, tent fires and riots. The last major stampede incident in hajj took place in 2006, when at least 346 pilgrims were killed as they attempted to perform the stoning of the devil at Jamarat. Hajj has been relatively accident free in the last decade and much of it could be attributed to the massive expansions carried out at the holy sites. Such disasters are politically sensitive for the kingdom’s ruling Al Saud dynasty, which presents itself internationally as the custodians of its holiest places in Mecca and Medina. Naturally the Saudi government has much to address in the wake of these very distressing incidences; can these be attributed to lapses in management, coordination and security or simply to God’s will? The case to make Hajj’s management an international matter is doubly justified when we see the response of Saudi officials in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy. Trying to absolve the administration of any blame, Health Minister Khaled al-Falih laid the blame squarely on the pilgrims themselves for not “respecting the timetable” established by the authority. If anything, a failure to follow poorly given instructions by a group of linguistically diverse people reflects a management breakdown. The head of the central Hajj committee, Prince Khaled al-Faisal, was even more odious in his response as he seemed to be resorting to racism when he put the blame on “some pilgrims with African nationalities”. The indifference with which top members of the Hajj administration are responding to a tragedy on this scale makes one shudder. Conveniently making the suffering pilgrims a scapegoat is not only obtuse, it may turn out to be a criminal falsehood, as according to the head of Iran’s Hajj organisation, the two paths close to the scene of the incident had been inexplicably closed off by the Saudi authorities, resulting in the build-up of pilgrims.The Hajj is an event for all Muslims, and yet Saudi Arabia claims the sole right to organise it, purely on the grounds of geography. The Saudi regime is barely a century old; it has no innate right to lord over this global event. Though the ruling Saudi royals have made incremental changes and efforts to accommodate more pilgrims, their approach of marrying laissez faire capitalism with an exclusionary puritanical Wahhabi Islam has proved to be not only inadequate, but also a cause of anguish to the heterogeneous Islamic community. The constant building and rebuilding of hotels, high rises and commercial centres around the holy sites and the desecration of historical sites that hold meaning for many Muslims reveals a commercially interested, insensitive regime. The Muslim community should work towards achieving a collective responsibility for organizing Hajj to avoid such a disaster in the future. It is lamentable that Eid-ul-Azha, an event of celebration, will be overshadowed by such gloomy circumstances.
pk.shafaqna.com
