I feel this urge inside of me to react to this dreadful event. If you are watching the news you might have heard that some 2000 people have died in the Muslim Pilgrimage season this year mostly due to the fact that Saudi authorities tolerated many unregistered pilgrims who had no AC accommodation and ended up killing themselves trying to walk a 20 km distance toward mount Ararat in temperatures above 125 degree Fahrenheit.
I’m not going to go into the science of this but most of these people have died like the illegal migrants trying to reach their dreams by crossing the Chihuahua Desert (who are also dying mostly of dehydration). So this event is a form of climate denialism in a way.
What happens is that even if you go back to relatively closer periods like the beginning of the the 00’s, such scorching temperatures did not exist. There were still deaths in every Haj season but that was mainly due to mismanagement etc. I did spend several summers in Syria in the late 90’s. We had no AC, only a limestone building and a swimming pool and it wasn’t that bad if you stayed indoor during the hottest parts of the day. The same goes for places like Baghdad, Koweit City, or even Riyadh. Riyadh is actually built on an Oasis. In the times when climate change wasn’t as obvious as today, when there was no such urbanization. People used to cool down with natural methods like wind towers for instance. It really wasn’t that bad. + In the evening, you had cold air coming from the desert (I experienced that in Aleppo in the 90’s. people were going out at night – That’s how Arabs manage those heats and I remember taking a jacket or a sweat shirt when I went to take a walk in the city).
So times have changed now. That’s my first point here. If I was the authority here I would spread all of those pilgrims to the cooler part of the year. Issuing Haj permits in the hottest months only to people between 25 and 50 years of age who are advanced sports practitioners. All the rest will have to come between September and May. And I’m sure many scholars would agree with me because that’s our new reality now.
But the reason why I opened this thread is more spiritual. See I believe in the importance of pilgrimage of all sorts. It is good to travel long distances and to finally get to those “spiritual” places where you can visit the place in which your favorite saint has lived or one of the great teachers has been buried etc. There are many such trajectories in the Western Parts of Europe. In Spain you get to hike for a week or so, staying in tents or in one of those simple yet beautiful hostels (by yourself or with a few friends). You get to enjoy nature, be alone with your own thoughts, make a revision of the life you lived so far or whatever, than you get to this place where you make a small offering, comply to a ritual, do some prayer whatever.
The idea here is that there has to be some loneliness and calm to allow some form of introspection. Not huge crowds. I believe in the energy of those places. I also believe that this energy is disrupted wherever there is a too important number of unconscious people. So the benefit will be smaller.
Several people that I know did this Haj thing. I’m happy for them. The Secularist Major of Istanbul (whom I support) also did that trip in the “Umrah” form. (They call it Umrah if you refuse to do it in the scorching temperatures of June). For the time being, I don’t intend to go there at all. In fact people who go there now are seeing it as a sort of obligation, a mandatory ritual that has to be accomplished by every Muslim because God wants us to do it (even at the cost of our own lives).
My approach is so different. In the old days you would travel by train, by boat, on the back of a camel, etc. It was really an adventure of some sort at the end of which you would get to experience this state of “union” of so many different people from so many parts of the world. And as I said, It wasn’t that bad at all. But with 2000 people simply dying because of management (with similar figures every year). I think I’ll pass
https://www.yahoo.com/news/hajj-pilgrim-...p_catchall
I’m not going to go into the science of this but most of these people have died like the illegal migrants trying to reach their dreams by crossing the Chihuahua Desert (who are also dying mostly of dehydration). So this event is a form of climate denialism in a way.
What happens is that even if you go back to relatively closer periods like the beginning of the the 00’s, such scorching temperatures did not exist. There were still deaths in every Haj season but that was mainly due to mismanagement etc. I did spend several summers in Syria in the late 90’s. We had no AC, only a limestone building and a swimming pool and it wasn’t that bad if you stayed indoor during the hottest parts of the day. The same goes for places like Baghdad, Koweit City, or even Riyadh. Riyadh is actually built on an Oasis. In the times when climate change wasn’t as obvious as today, when there was no such urbanization. People used to cool down with natural methods like wind towers for instance. It really wasn’t that bad. + In the evening, you had cold air coming from the desert (I experienced that in Aleppo in the 90’s. people were going out at night – That’s how Arabs manage those heats and I remember taking a jacket or a sweat shirt when I went to take a walk in the city).
So times have changed now. That’s my first point here. If I was the authority here I would spread all of those pilgrims to the cooler part of the year. Issuing Haj permits in the hottest months only to people between 25 and 50 years of age who are advanced sports practitioners. All the rest will have to come between September and May. And I’m sure many scholars would agree with me because that’s our new reality now.
But the reason why I opened this thread is more spiritual. See I believe in the importance of pilgrimage of all sorts. It is good to travel long distances and to finally get to those “spiritual” places where you can visit the place in which your favorite saint has lived or one of the great teachers has been buried etc. There are many such trajectories in the Western Parts of Europe. In Spain you get to hike for a week or so, staying in tents or in one of those simple yet beautiful hostels (by yourself or with a few friends). You get to enjoy nature, be alone with your own thoughts, make a revision of the life you lived so far or whatever, than you get to this place where you make a small offering, comply to a ritual, do some prayer whatever.
The idea here is that there has to be some loneliness and calm to allow some form of introspection. Not huge crowds. I believe in the energy of those places. I also believe that this energy is disrupted wherever there is a too important number of unconscious people. So the benefit will be smaller.
Several people that I know did this Haj thing. I’m happy for them. The Secularist Major of Istanbul (whom I support) also did that trip in the “Umrah” form. (They call it Umrah if you refuse to do it in the scorching temperatures of June). For the time being, I don’t intend to go there at all. In fact people who go there now are seeing it as a sort of obligation, a mandatory ritual that has to be accomplished by every Muslim because God wants us to do it (even at the cost of our own lives).
My approach is so different. In the old days you would travel by train, by boat, on the back of a camel, etc. It was really an adventure of some sort at the end of which you would get to experience this state of “union” of so many different people from so many parts of the world. And as I said, It wasn’t that bad at all. But with 2000 people simply dying because of management (with similar figures every year). I think I’ll pass
https://www.yahoo.com/news/hajj-pilgrim-...p_catchall
![[Image: 7151bc275de2d3d422106a4008215efe.jpg]](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/71/51/bc/7151bc275de2d3d422106a4008215efe.jpg)
