MAD MECCA!
100,000 Saudi security for hajj pilgrimage
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
December 4, 2008
JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Saudi Arabia deployed some 100,000 security personnel to keep order as Muslim pilgrims flooded into the holy city of Mecca in preparation for the annual hajj, beginning on Saturday.
Nearly 3 million pilgrims from around the world are expected to perform the hajj in Mecca and its nearby holy sites this year, according to Saudi authorities.
Every year sees a massive security deployment for the pilgrimage — mainly to manage traffic of the crowds, prevent friction and ensure safety.
Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz said security forces had "no information" suggesting any threat of violence during the hajj. "We must be ready and not rule out the occurrence of anything that might take us unawares," Saudi television quoted Nayef as saying Thursday after touring hajj facilities.
The hajj takes place just over a week after terror attacks in Mumbai, India's financial capital, in which suspected Islamic militants killed 171 and injured more than 300 others in assaults on upscale hotels, a restaurant and other sites across the city.
Last year, Saudi police arrested 28 militants who were allegedly planning to attack sites around the holy cities of Mecca and Medina during the hajj.
Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Gen. Mansour al-Turki told The Associated Press there were no fears of any attacks this year. He said the security deployment was similar to last year's of 90,000.
The most pressing security concern during hajj is to prevent accidents like fires or stampedes that have killed hundreds in past pilgrimages as the millions of faithful move among holy sites over five days, staying in sprawling tent cities.
Saudi officials say they have set hundreds of thousands of fireproof tents in Mina, a site outside Mecca where pilgrims will camp for three days beginning Monday.
The government has banned cooking in tents, threatened fines for anyone using a gas stove, and butane gas cylinders will not be allowed at the holy sites. Caterers contracted by the Saudi government will use electric cookers to provide food.
Top security police chief, Gen. Saeed al-Qahtani, said in remarks published Thursday that pilgrims will not be allowed to use portable tents. Most pilgrims stay in official camps, but every year, hundreds of thousands of "unregistered pilgrims" squat on the streets in makeshift tents, complicating movement for the crowds. Saudi officials have tried with little success in the past to bar them.
"A special security unit has been established to prevent the use of portable tents," he was quoted as saying.
All able-bodied Muslims are required by their faith to perform the hajj at least once in their lives, if they can financially afford it, to cleanse their sins. Traveling to Mecca for the ceremonies of prayer and contemplation is a lifelong dream of many of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims.
It is also an annual test for Saudi Arabia's organizational skills, and the kingdom is constantly adapting infrastructure to avert tragedies that have marred past pilgrimages.
In 1990, 1,426 people were killed in a crush inside a tunnel leading to the holy sites. In 2006, 363 people died in a stampede at Mina as they passed through the Jamarat, a giant platform where pilgrims throw stones at three walls representing the devil.
This year, the platform has been expanded to four stories to avoid congestion.
Sheikh seeking to 'terminate' Jews
honored
Awarded 'Islamic Personality of the
Year' at international event
Posted: October 26, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
WorldNetDaily.com
A Muslim cleric who has prayed to "terminate" the Jews was awarded Islamic Personality of the Year at a ceremony in which he called Islam a religion of "harmony and kindness" that rejects terrorism.
As WorldNetDaily reported, Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al Sudais – the veteran Quran reader and imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia – prayed to Allah in 2003 in front of 2 million followers to "terminate" the Jews, who he called "the scum of humanity, the rats of the world, prophet killers ... pigs and monkeys."
But he was honored Sunday during the closing ceremony of the Dubai International Holy Quran Award, an annual event in the United Arab Emirates capital during Ramadan aimed at promoting Islam's main text.
According to the event's website, the Islamic Personality of the Year "must have an honorable history in serving Islam and Muslims."
In his remarks upon receiving the award, the sheikh said, "The message of Islam and Muslims is modesty, fairness, security, stability, sympathy, harmony and kindness."
In his April 2003 address in Mecca, however, Al-Sudais urged Arabs and Muslims to abandon peace initiatives with Israel – comments carried worldwide by Reuters and the Associated Press.
While some media at the time suggested his racist characterization of Jews was a singular occurrence, Al-Sudais has described Jews variously as "evil," a "continuum of deceit," "tyrannical" and "treacherous," WND reported.
Last December, Al-Sudais was listed as a "specially invited guest" of an Islamic conference in Florida. Following media exposure, however, his name disappeared from conference materials.
On the International Holy Quran Award website, the event's organizing committee said Al Sudais "has been selected for his devotion to the Quran and Islam."
"His remarkable and ear-catching intonation of the Quran during the Haj [pilgrimage] season and during the Taraweeh [special night prayers during Ramadan] in the holy mosque has made him very famous and beloved among the Muslim community," said Saeed Hareb, vice chairman of the organizing committee.
Al Sudais reflects a bright picture of Islam and Muslims, Hareb added.
"He became a recognized personality among the Muslim community through his Quran reading and working as a specialized professor in Fuqoh [Islamic jurisprudence]," he said.
The award selection is carried out through nomination by states, universities and specialized institutions, according to the website.
The winner's "writings or stances should be universally recognized," it says.
Al Sudais was born in 1961 in the Al Qaseem area of Saudi Arabia where he reportedly memorized the Quran at the age of 12.
Mon 9 Jan 2006
More than two million Muslim pilgrims made the climactic ascent to Mount Arafat, Islam's most sacred site, to pray for salvation, and Saudi Arabia's top cleric called for Islamic unity in the face of what he called the West's war on Islam.
After offering prayers on the mount, tens of thousands of the faithful rushed down the hill to the Muzdalifah, a few miles distant, where they collected pebbles to use in one the last rituals of the hajj, the stoning of the devil.
Under a fatwa, or religious edict, issued two years ago, the stoning now may begin before dawn prayers on Tuesday.
The decree was an attempt to ease the terrible crowding at the site of the stoning, the al-Jamarat, where hundreds of pilgrims have died in stampedes over the past quarter century.
"It's better to go now before the crowd gets too big. They have had a lot of problems - stampedes and other horrors. We want to finish early," said Turkish pilgrim Jawat Ahmet.
Speaking at a mosque on the plain of Mount Arafat, Sheik Abdul-Aziz al-Sheik, the kingdom's grand mufti, said Muslims were facing critical challenges, among them accusations of terrorism and human rights abuses and calls for revisions in their school textbooks, many of which make nonbelievers, especially Jews.
"Oh, Muslim nation, there is a war against of our creed, against our culture under the pretext of fighting terrorism. We should stand firm and united in protecting our religion," he said.
"Islam's enemies want to empty our religion from its contents and its meaning," said al-Sheik, the Saudi kingdom's top religious authority.
"But the soldiers of God will be victorious," he said.
The faithful called out: "Amen."
Hajj pilgrims: Death to Israel and America
Islamic
pilgrims shout hateful slogans, hear speech on 'satanic policies of Zionism'
Yaniv Berman
As two million Muslim pilgrims flooded Mecca for the annual Hajj pilgrimage, a speech said to have been written by Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah 'Ali Khamanai was delivered by his representative for Hajj affairs, Muhammad Muhammadi Reyshahri.
The speech - one of the Hajj’s first events - spoke of "the mercenary government of Israel" and the "satanic policies of international Zionism," as well as targeting the United States.
Typical was an attack on the "colonial methods" used by the "Great Satan." During the speech, many members of the audience held up yellow placards reading "Death to America" and pink placards reading "Death to Israel.”
Comments of this nature made by the Iranian regime are far from new. But as The Media Line's analysts explain, the fact that they were expressed by an Iranian official on Saudi Arabian soil in the language of the Saudis (and not in Farsi, the Iranian language), should be a source of concern to Washington. Saudi Arabia is considered one of America's most important allies in the Middle East.
Following are some excerpts from the Khamanai speech, as read by Muhammad Muhammadi Reyshahri:
"The Muslim nations face today a post-modernist colonialism. They have to benefit from their experience, and prevent the enemy from repeating the unsheathing of its sword in the shape of oppression against their values and fate."
'Great Satan'
"Today, the fleets of the arrogants are advancing once again, using cunning methods to perpetuate and strengthen their rule over the Muslim nations. The slogan of spreading democracy and human rights is one of the deceiving methods used. The Great Satan (common phrase in Iran, depicting the United States) is incarnating evil and violence against mankind, while raising the flag of defending human rights, and calling the Middle East nations to democratize."
"America and all other usurpers mobilized all their media outlets and political forces, in order to thwart the Islamic renaissance, or to oppress it if they can. The Islamic nations must understand the situation today, and to follow it with caution. The religious clerics, the religious authorities, the intellectuals, the students, the writers, the poets, the artists, the youth, and the elite – must all take with all seriousness the appropriate initiative, in order to prevent greedy America from beginning a new phase in its colonial rule over the Islamic nations."
"The Muslim world has to get rid of the constant state of learning from others, and to rely on its own resources, aiming at scientific creativity."
"The blind and brutal terror, which the occupiers use as an excuse to attack Islam and Muslims, and to continue their military invasion, is something that the Islamic values reject and denounce."
When The Media Line presented the above excerpts to the U.S. State Department for comment, a spokesman replied that, “Remarks such as these are outrageous and unacceptable. These remarks reflect an openly anti-Semitic and anti-U.S. platform from Iranian leadership that we find both troubling and destabilizing. We have been very clear about the troubling nature of Iranian behavior including its support for international terrorism, its pursuit for weapons of mass destruction, its deplorable human rights record, and its opposition to regional peace-making efforts.”
Saudi Arabian officials and the Ministry of Hajj failed to respond to numerous requests for comment by The Media Line.
Saudi Arabian cleric slams veil remarks
Saturday, November 18, 2006
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Saudi Arabia's top Muslim cleric described the Egyptian culture minister's recent criticism of the veil as a "calamity," a Saudi satellite channel reported on Saturday.
Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni expressed nostalgia for the days in Egypt when women did not feel compelled to don headscarves. The remarks followed significant gains by Islamist groups in Egypt's legislative elections in November and December last year.
"It is a calamity that struck Islamic lands and contradicts the teachings of the Quran," Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti, Sheik Abdul-Aziz al-Sheik responded. "It is truly painful to hear such declarations from within Islamic lands, from people who are considered Muslims," he added in a statement aired by Al Majd television, a religious channel.
The response to the Egyptian minister's remarks highlights the growing conflict between conservative Muslims and secularists in the Arab world.
Other Muslim leaders also criticized Hosni's remarks, with some saying that officials should not make such comments.
