DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – Muslim pilgrims, dressed in masks and moving in small equipment after days of isolation, begin arriving Wednesday at the holiest site of Islam in Mecca to begin a traditionally exclusive and reduced hajj experiment, reshaped through the coronavirus pandemic.
Hajj is one of the highest vital demands of Islam, which is realized once in its life. It follows a direction that the Prophet Muhammad traveled about 1,400 years ago and intends to hint at the footsteps of the prophets Ibrahim and Ismail, or Abraham and Ishmael, as they are called in the Bible.
The hajj, which is not easy physically and spiritually, aims to bring about greater humility and unity among Muslims.
Instead of status and prayer aspect to appearance in a sea of other people from other backgrounds, this year’s pilgrims distance themselves socially, setting aside status and moving in small teams of 20 to restrict the exposure and possible transmission of the coronavirus.
The pilgrimage is an adventure that Muslims historically live with those who enjoy. In recent years, it has not been unusual to see men pushing their elderly parents into wheelchairs to finish hajj, and parents with children behind their backs. The network sentiment of more than 2.5 million people worldwide (Shiites, Sunnis and other Muslim sects) praying in combination, dining in combination and repenting in combination has long been a component of what makes hajj an unheard of and stimulating experience.
This year, however, pilgrims are dining packaged food alone in their hotel rooms and praying some distance from others. The Saudi government will pay all the travel, accommodation, food and fitness prices of pilgrims.
Although delight is radically different, it remains an opportunity for pilgrims to erase beyond sins and deepen their faith.
Ammar Khaled, a 29-year-old Indian pilgrim who was born and raised in Saudi Arabia, said he is alone in the hajj, which prays for his loved ones.
“Words are not enough for how blessed I feel and how amazing the arrangements have been,” Khaled said. “They took every single precaution possible.”
For the first time in Saudi Arabia, the government has banned Muslims from entering the kingdom to perform hajj in order to restrict exposure to coronavirus.
By contrast, only another 1,000 people already living in Saudi Arabia have decided to participate in hajj this year. Two-thirds are foreign nationals among the other 160 nationalities who would have been represented in the hajj. A third is the Saudi security workers’ corps and the medical corps of workers.
The pilgrims, who decided after applying through an online portal, had to be between 20 and 50 years old, without terminal illness and without symptoms of the virus. Preference is given to those who have never done hajj before.
Pilgrims have been screened for the coronavirus, gained wristbands that stick to their phones and monitor their movements, and have been asked to quarantine the property and in their hotel rooms in Mecca before the hajj begins on Wednesday. They will also have to be quarantined for a week after the end of the hajj on Sunday.
Mecca was cordoned off for months before the hajj, and the smaller pilgrimage of the Umra, the year, was suspended before this year, the pilgrims who were already in the city at that time returned home.
The international media has been unable to hide hajj since Mecca this year. Instead, the Saudi government on Wednesday transmitted live images of the Grand Mosque showing a limited number of pilgrims, moving several meters away, circling around the Kaaba in the form of dice in the first hajj rituals.
The Kaaba represents God’s metaphorical space and God’s unity in Islam. Practicing Muslims around the world face the Kaaba in their five prayers.
During hajj, women abandon makeup and fragrance and wear loose clothing and an inside headdress. Men dress in seamless white sponge clothing designed to emphasize the equality of all Muslims and prevent the richest pilgrims from differentiating with more elaborate clothing.
During the early rites of hajj, Muslims surround the Kaaba seven times counterclockwise while reciting prayers to God, then walk between two hills where Ibrahim’s wife, Agar, allegedly ran as he sought water for his dying son before God brought him. a well that flows to this day.
This year, pilgrims will only be able to drink water from this Zamzam well wrapped in plastic bottles. The stones to hunt the evil that are collected through the pilgrims along the hajj routes will be sterilized and sanded in advance.
Pilgrims also won their own prayer mats and special clothing to wear hajj, supplied with nanoscale silver generation which, according to the Saudi government, is helping to kill bacteria and makes clothing water resistant. They were also given umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun, towels, soaps, disinfectants and other essentials, as well as online sessions in other languages on what to expect from the hajj and current regulations.
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will have to put these measures in place so that we can be informed of this experience,” said Dr. Hanan Balkhy, a Saudi infectious disease specialist and director of the World Health Organization.
“The kingdom and the world will work together to be informed about the most productive way to mitigate the transmission of such events,” said Balkhy, deputy director general of the antimicrobial resistance department at WHO headquarters in Geneva, who has worked beyond hajj missions. .