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This year’s Hajj will be conducted in accordance with strict safety regulations to curb the spread of Covid-19.
On Monday, Muslim pilgrims climbed Mount Arafat in Saudi Arabia during the peak of this year’s Hajj. They were scaled down and restricted by the coronavirus for the second year in a row.
Only 60,000 people, all citizens or residents of Saudi Arabia, were selected to participate in this year’s hajj, and foreign pilgrims were once again banned.
Believers in masks spent the night in a camp in Mina Valley and gathered on Mount Arafat, where it is believed that the Prophet Muhammad delivered his final sermon, the most important pilgrimage ceremony.
Believers will gather on the 70-meter (230-foot) hill and the surrounding plains for hours of prayer and Quran recital to atone for their sins, and stay there until the evening.
After sunset, they headed to Muzdalifah (Muzdalifah) between Arafat and Mina, where they would sleep under the stars and then perform a symbolic “stoning the devil”.
This scene is completely different from the past pilgrimages that have attracted as many as 2.5 million people. This year there is no large crowd of people who have poured in in previous years.
Privileged minority
Selma Mohamed Hegazi, a 45-year-old Egyptian, said that as one of the lucky few, “makes you feel that our God is forgiving and chose us to come to this place.” “May God bless and our prayers will be accepted.”
“My whole body is trembling,” she told AFP as she stood among other emotional pilgrims. She was wearing ihram, a traditional seamless white dress worn during the Hajj.
Believers describe a sense of tranquility on the mountain, which is also known as the “Mountain of Compassion.”
Baref Siraj, a 58-year-old Saudi national, said: “Become one of only 60,000 pilgrims…I think I am a member of a (privileged) group that can reach this place.”
Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam. It is also a must-attend event for healthy Muslims to travel at least once in their lives. It is usually one of the largest religious gatherings in the world.
Participants were selected from more than 558,000 applicants through an online review system, and the event was limited to fully vaccinated adults 18-65 years old and without chronic diseases.
Safety first
The authorities are seeking to repeat last year’s successful event, which is the smallest event in modern history, with only 10,000 participants, but no virus outbreak has been detected.
Saudi health authorities said on Sunday that no case of COVID-19 has been reported among pilgrims this year.
To date, the kingdom has recorded more than 509,000 cases of coronavirus infections, with more than 8,000 deaths. In this country of more than 34 million people, approximately 20 million doses of vaccine have been vaccinated.
Hajj usually crowds a large number of people into crowded religious places, which may be a super spreader of the virus.
But Saudi Arabia said it is deploying “the highest level of health precautions” in light of the pandemic and the emergence of new variants.
Pilgrims were divided into groups of 20 to limit potential contact, and “smart hajj cards” were introduced to allow contactless access to camps, hotels, and buses to transport pilgrims around religious sites.
Black and white robots have been deployed to dispense holy water bottles from the Seesen Spring in the Mosque of Mecca, which is built around the Kaaba, which is a black cube structure where Muslims around the world pray.
Ibrahim Siam, a 64-year-old Egyptian pilgrim from Dammam in the east of the country, said the high-tech procedures used to manage the Hajj “make things a lot easier”.
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