Is the Hajj a Juggernaut or Ritual Massacre?

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

Garden City, New York

Sept. 26, 2015

E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

It is extremely painful and difficult to learn and write about the latest fatal stampede in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Nevertheless, what is uniquely perplexing about this year’s stampede at Mecca which, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reports, resulted in the deaths of some 717 pilgrims this year – the body count could be a little higher – is that it is absolutely nothing new (See “Hajj Stampede: At Least 717 Killed in Saudi Arabia” BBC World News / MyJoyOnline.com 9/24/15). Ever since I was born, and I am a little over a half-century old, pilgrims have been dying by the tens of hundreds during the annual performance of the Hajj to Mecca, alleged to have been exhorted by the Prophet Mohammed, may Allah be merciful to his soul, as well as the souls of the 700-plus victims who perished during the Hajj this year.

I have one particular worry which, I suppose, may equally be on the minds of millions of other people, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, who feel morally and emotionally invested in the safety of devout practitioners of Islam who undertake the Hajj annually. The Hajj constitutes the apogee of the Five Pillars of Islam. The stampede and deadly crush at Mecca occurs annually as a result of the apparently poor organization and/or coordination of the movement of pilgrims going to and from the holy site of Mecca’s Central Mosque, where pilgrims have to ritualistically hurl seven stones at the scriptural Devil. The deadly annual crush of pilgrims invariably occurs as a result of the collision between pilgrims returning from having hurled stones at the ritual Devil and fellow pilgrims attempting to access the site.

And so one would have thought that the Saudi authorities would have by now devised an effective means of conducting the massive crowds which annually converge on Mecca, thus drastically reducing any incidents of fatalities or mayhem. We are told that the place where such deadly crush has become an annual orgy, practically speaking, is called the Jamarat Bridge. The Saudi authorities are also reported to have remarkably improved traffic to and from the site in the form of architectural redesigning of the Jamarat Bridge. If this information has validity, then there clearly appears to be something ironic or paradoxical about the entire process of the redesigning and upgrading of the Jamarat Bridge Section of the Hajj.

The entire running deadly annual ritual bizarrely recalls the famous short story by the American writer Shirley Ann Jackson titled “The Lottery,” a story based on an ancient ritual of selecting one resident from the village of the setting of the narrative through a raffle-like picking of a black-ink spotted strip of paper among a bunch of others placed in a box. Any village resident unfortunate enough to pick the ink-spotted white strip of paper is immediately stoned to death. This painful ritual, like the Hajj, is conducted annually; the ritual seems to have lost its original meaning and purpose, and yet it continues to be conducted every year by the villagers. The ballot box which contains the deadly pick is picturesquely described as exuding a casket-like aura. Anyway, at least 43 Iranian nationals have been officially reported to have perished in this year’s Jamarat Stampede. Iran’s state news agency has also been reported by the BBC to be claiming that two access routes to the Jamarat Bridge had been “inexplicably blocked” or shut down by the local organizers of this year’s Hajj, thus causing a sharp increase in the flow of human traffic which resulted in the crushing death of the 700-plus pilgrims.

If the preceding report is accurate, then the Saudi authorities have a few questions to answer. One, how do the Saudi organizers and hosts of this year’s Hajj expect the rest of the world to interpret this disconsolately bloody annual occurrence at Mecca’s Central Mosque? That the Devil has been predestined to win the battle between Good and Evil in perpetuity? What bothers me, albeit all-too-predictable, is the scandalous attempt by some Saudi officials to fault some African Hajj pilgrims who are alleged to have “savagely” breached the schedule established for accessing the Jamarat Bridge portion of the Hajj. “All-too-predictable” because in our day and age, it is routine or quite pedestrian to blame the most vulnerable when things go awry.

My own well-considered position regards the apparent failure of Hajj organizers and authorities to redesign the entire festivity into two annual programs, in order to drastically reduce the virtually ritualized fatal occurrence of the annual stampede. I understand that the only way to be inducted into the College of El-Hajjis and Hajjias is for one to undertake the Hajj during the Ramadan season of the year. And so my next question is as follows: Why has the safety of pilgrims woefully failed to soberly inform global Islamic scholars and the Saudi authorities on the imperative need of preserving lives by re-scheduling the Hajj to take place at least twice a year, and then strictly ensuring that the number of pilgrims allowed to annually make the trip to Mecca is remarkably reduced for the sake of safety? Or is it because somebody higher up the hierarchy or a cabal of movers and shakers is wickedly and capriciously invested in the bloody annual fatalities that occur in the Jamarat Bridge section of Mecca?