(Mecca) More than a million and a half Muslim faithful are in Mecca, in western Saudi Arabia, to perform the great annual pilgrimage, which takes place in the shadow of the war in Gaza.
Pilgrims are preparing in Islam’s holiest city for the start of hajj rituals on Friday, which will take place over several days in average temperatures of around 44 degrees, according to official forecasts.
At the heart of the Great Mosque, numerous pilgrims dressed in two-piece white cloth for men and outfits covering the entire body for women have already begun to circle around the Kaaba, a black cubic structure towards which all Muslims turn to pray.
“It’s beautiful,” says Mariam Comate, a 48-year-old Ivorian from Abidjan. “When I first saw the Kaaba, I was amazed.”
Until Monday evening, 1,547,295 pilgrims had arrived from abroad, most of them by plane, the official news agency said on Wednesday, not counting the faithful from inside the kingdom.
The hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam and must be undertaken at least once by Muslims who can afford it.
This year, the hajj takes place in the shadow of the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which has ravaged the Gaza Strip for more than eight months.
The continuation of this deadly war “sparks a lot of anger in the Muslim world”, and could give rise to expressions of solidarity that would not be to the taste of the host country, underlines Umer Karim, expert on Saudi politics at the University of Birmingham , UK.
The Saudi monarchy announced this week that it would welcome 1,000 pilgrims from the families of victims in the Gaza Strip, bringing the total number of Palestinians in Mecca to 2,000.
However, she warned, through her Hajj Minister, Tawfiq al-Rabiah, that “no political activity” will be tolerated, the pilgrimage must be strictly devoted to prayers.
Saudi Arabia has never recognized Israel, but a possible normalization was on the table before the war that broke out on October 7. Since then, discussions have continued with the United States, but they are conditional on the creation of a Palestinian state.
The authorities will seek “to control the dissemination of any political message or demonstration,” which could become “uncontrollable” and target the kingdom’s leaders, Umer Karim believes.
The hajj is a source of legitimacy for Saudi rulers, with the ruler bearing the title “custodian of the two holy mosques” of Mecca and Medina.
But it also gives them immense power, that of preventing a Muslim from fulfilling their religious duty, recalls the London-based Saudi academic and opponent Madawi al-Rasheed.
And “they want the hajj to remain a platform to assert their legitimacy in the Muslim world,” she adds.
More than 1.8 million Muslims took part in the hajj in 2023, about 90% of them from abroad.
Welcoming such a number of pilgrims in limited spaces is a “logistical feat,” underlines Princeton University professor Bernard Haykel.
The great pilgrimage has experienced several tragedies in the past, notably in 2015 when a gigantic stampede left 2,300 dead. But the authorities have since made significant adjustments and put in place systems to streamline crowd movements.
They have also put in place processes to manage health risks, with Mecca having “historically been a place of transmission of diseases between people from different parts of the world,” says Mr. Haykel.
In 2020 and 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the kingdom to restrict the number of pilgrims to a few thousand, compared to 2.5 million in 2019 and a record of more than 3.1 million in 2012.
But one of the main risks for worshipers, who must perform most of the rites outdoors in and around Mecca, is expected to be the weather again this year, in one of the hottest regions in the world.
As the dates of the hajj are determined according to the Muslim calendar, based on lunar cycles, the rituals are expected to take place in scorching temperatures.
According to Saudi authorities, more than 2,000 pilgrims suffered heat-related illnesses last year, ranging from simple cramps to serious cardiovascular problems.
