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Abdelzahar Abdo Salem, 81, decided to make the pilgrimage from Egypt to Mecca two years ago to get his youngest son Mahmoud married.
His son Mahmoud said, “This was his last wish.” “He could not perform Hajj before that due to lack of money and because I was about to get married and there were a lot of expenses.”
Due to the high cost of the Hajj through legitimate channels – 150,000 Egyptian pounds ($3,091), plus plane tickets – Salem hired an unlicensed company to arrange travel, at a lower cost of about 100,000 Egyptian pounds. Had taken help of advisor. ($2,061).
However Salem never returned to Egypt. He was one of more than 1,300 pilgrims who died during this year’s Hajj as temperatures in Saudi Arabia hit record levels.
The Saudi government said most of those who died were not licensed to perform rituals.
The tragedy has drawn attention to the shadowy business of unauthorized pilgrimage brokers, with some of the highest numbers of people dying on the Hajj pilgrimage in the past few years. They seek to fulfill their spiritual functions by leading pilgrims on possibly dangerous journeys, bypassing legal processes that benefit Muslims.
The Saudi government said many of those who died “walked long distances in direct sunlight, without adequate shelter or rest” as temperatures reached a record 125 °F (51.7 °C).
For Salem, the method of getting to Mecca involves obtaining a private trip with a visa to Saudi Arabia in exchange for a separate Hajj visa that would entitle him to access to the holy cities and pilgrimage facilities, including air travel. Air-conditioned spaces and scientific products and services. On the other hand, the visa with visa imposes restrictions on entry into Mecca, so its holders are forced to travel through a desolate path, often on foot, to gain the right to enter the holy city.
Salem, who was traveling with his wife, was promised by a representative of an Egyptian transport company that a bus would be arranged to transport the crowd. However, his son Mahmoud said, there was negative shipping for them from Mount Arafat, so the two had to head to Mina, about 8 miles away, to complete the ritual of “stoning the devil”.
On the way, Salem’s wife got tired and sat down on her side. The ambitious husband had to walk on foot to complete the ritual. Mahmood said, he promised his wife that he would go back.
But hence contact with Salem was lost. His wife searched for him for five days until she found his name on the list of the dead at Al-Ma’ism Hospital in Mecca.
“Our mother informed us of the news through a voice message on WhatsApp. This news was a tragedy for us,” Mahmood said. “Our mother is in shock there and there is no one to console her.”
Every year, the Saudi government grants licenses to criminal pilgrims granting them the right to enter Mecca. Those licenses entitle worshipers to air-conditioned transportation and access to accommodation facilities. Alternatively, the selection of licenses is limited – 1.8 million this year – and they can cost several thousand dollars.
Each nation is allocated a number of licenses that are proportional to its Muslim population. This process excludes those who are not able to pay for licenses or are not integrated within the allocation.
Hajj is a once-in-a-lifetime spiritual legal obligation for every able-bodied Muslim. Many Muslims wait their entire lives to receive a loan, often delaying pilgrimage in their senior month until they have accumulated enough cash and completed their public duties. Alternatively, thousands upon thousands of people become frustrated when they cannot maintain their position through legitimate means.
Each nation would historically get one Hajj license for every 1,000 Muslims – that’s a zero.1% fee. However, Egypt, a Muslim-majority country with a population of 110 million, was allocated 50,000 Hajj licenses this year, a rate of about 0.05%, according to Egyptian officials quoted in state media.
This has given rise to a profitable business of transfer companies that contract to bring pilgrims to Saudi Arabia informally, often with delivery and accommodation conditions that are not met or are below standard. With the last summer of this year, it became a tragedy for many pilgrims.
While previous deaths among pilgrims have not been uncommon (there have been more than 200 deaths at the end of the year), this year’s collection was held amid particularly high temperatures. The Hajj season changes every year according to the Islamic calendar and this year it fell in June, one of the hottest months in the kingdom.
Atef Eglan, a member of the Egyptian Walk Brokers Association, says many Egyptians lack awareness of the hajj procedures, which allows green tour operators and some mosque imams to siphon money while promising a less expensive hajj. . Without proper visa or accommodation and delivery.
He proposed criminalizing the phenomenon because “it has become a profession for people who don’t have a profession.”
“This is a premeditated murder because this pimp knows the temperature is above 50 degrees (Celsius), and he knows these people don’t have good housing,” Eglan said.
Eglan says that while a Hajj package from an authorized company costs pilgrims about $4,760, speed unauthorized trips cost about $3,700.
According to the latest data, the typical annual household source of revenue in Egypt is $1,429 as of 2019.
The tragedy also underlined the Saudi government’s lack of ability to curb unauthorized pilgrimages or hand out adequate support for the many who embark on such journeys, which have become a playground for years.
It is unclear how many unauthorized pilgrims attended this year’s hajj, but Saudi news outlet Al Sharq Al Awsat reported on Tuesday that 141,000 such pilgrims received substandard medical treatment during the hajj season. This number is about 8% of this year’s 1.8 million pilgrims.
In contemporary decades, the sheer size of the Hajj crowd has been a factor in horrific incidents during the pilgrimage, including a stampede in 2015 that killed more than 700 people.
Looking at the commercial potential of religious tourism, Saudi Arabia plans to increase the number of Hajj pilgrims to 5 million by 2030, from less than 2 million currently.
However, some pilgrims have lamented the moneyless infrastructure and grouping of the Hajj. Even those on legitimate excursions may spend much of their week out strolling in the scorching heat.
A conference was held in Egypt to announce the pilgrimage after Hania Hassan Salama, a 65-year-old Egyptian housewife requested her children to draw a picture of the Kaaba on the wall of her home. The week the mural was completed, the children lost contact with him. The public was next informed that he had died, his family members told CNN. Salama had purchased a Hajj package deal from an authorized tour operator.
His nephew Mustafa Mohammed said the Saudi government partly bears responsibility for the vast majority of deaths.
“This year there was negligence, medical negligence. People were dying in the streets and no one was helping them,” he told CNN. “Even if some people went on visas not specified for Hajj, they do not deserve to be left to die on the street without receiving medical attention.”
Two alternative pilgrims who recently returned from the hajj told CNN that there were inadequate medical or modest facilities to protect worshipers from the effects of the extreme heat in the final month in Saudi Arabia. Even those pilgrims who progressed through legitimate channels noted that the government did not provide adequate water, shade or scientific assistance to worshippers.
Some observers have told CNN how they saw worshipers losing consciousness and walking away with their bodies wrapped in white cloth.
A 44-year-old Indonesian man, who wanted only to be called Ahmed, recalled several deaths caused by the heat.
“On the way home, I saw many pilgrims who died. Almost every few hundred meters there was a dead body covered with ihrom (white cloth).”
CNN has contacted the Saudi government regarding its allegedly inadequate response to this year’s heat wave and has yet to hear back.
Ahead of the start of this year’s Hajj season, the Saudi government warned pilgrims against the use of brokers promoting unauthorized Hajj programs and liaised with alternative governments with the aim of dividing this trend. The government had also arrested some illegal touts and threatened people helping unauthorized pilgrims of consequences.
Ahead of this year’s pilgrimage, Lt. Gen. Muhammad bin Abdullah al-Bassami, director of public security and head of the Hajj Security Committee, announced the efforts to curb unauthorized pilgrims in a televised address, saying “the security of pilgrims is a red flag.” Rekha.” This fact has been noted in regional newspapers as having resulted in over 300,000 people being barred from performing the ritual.
Since the tragedy, the Egyptian government looks to crack down on unauthorized companies. The federal government has ordered the cancellation of licenses of 16 Hajj tourism corporations involved in organizing unauthorized pilgrimages to Mecca and referred their managers to the national prosecutor.
Salem, an 81-year-old Egyptian who died during the Hajj, was buried at the Al-Baqi cemetery in Medina, Saudi Arabia, in accordance with the Islamic tradition that if a pilgrim dies he or she is buried in the Holy Land. Only through pilgrimage. His wife plans to return to Cairo on Friday after completing the rituals.
Mahmoud said that until she returns, people are “trying to contact her to calm her down and console her, and urging her to take care of herself because she is alone there.”