On the one hand a multi-billion dollar organization that revolves around the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, a real 15 billion dollar business system, on the other agencies that offer trips at prices much lower than the official ones. In the middle, more than a thousand pilgrims who died from the heat, left to celebrate the feast of sacrifice and honor one of the five pillars of Islam and became sacrificial victims of climate change but above all of human greed.
Yesterday – after days of tension – Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly has ordered the withdrawal of the licenses of 16 travel agencies and referred their leaders to the prosecutor’s office for illegally facilitating the travel of pilgrims to Mecca, demanding that they be forced to pay compensation to the families. According to diplomats, 658 Egyptians have died, 630 of them unregistered pilgrims.
Hajj permits are allocated to countries with a quota system and distributed through a lottery. But even with the official pass, a «Hajj package» from Egypt costs between 5,000 and 9,000 dollars, price out of reach of most Egyptians. Saudi Arabia has set a quota of 72,000 Hajj visas from Egypt for 2023, but only 32,000 have been granted permission. This gap highlights the difficulties Egyptians face. Furthermore, the irregular route, which can save pilgrims thousands of dollars, has become increasingly popular since 2019, when, post-Covid, Saudi Arabia introduced a tourist visa that made it easier to enter the Gulf kingdom .
However, those who enter with a tourist visa and not with a pilgrimage permit cannot access a whole series of refreshment services: refrigerated tents, medical assistance and logistics. Often elderly and without means, after having scraped together their savings to fulfill a religious duty, the pilgrims found themselves in a hot trap, with temperatures that this year exceeded 50 degrees. Furthermore, some leave at the very end of their lives hoping to be buried in Mecca, which explains such high numbers of deaths.
One of the most critical moments was last Saturday, when pilgrims gathered for hours of prayer under the scorching sun on Mount Arafatand Sunday, when they participated in the «stoning of the devil», ritual in Mina. Effendiya, a 70-year-old mother of five from Egypt’s northern Menoufiya province who sold her jewelry to pay for her trip, died while she performed her rituals after entering Saudi Arabia without a hajj visa. «The bus dropped them off about 12 kilometers from Mount Arafat and left. She had to walk the whole way.” he told the BBC Tariq, Effendiya’s eldest son. «Every time I video called her, she poured water on her head. She couldn’t stand the boiling heat. In our last phone call she seemed exhausted.”
The issue obviously does not concern Egypt alone. Jordan said on Friday it had arrested several travel agents also accused of facilitating the trip to the Mecca. Meanwhile, Tunisian President Kais Saied has fired the Minister of Religious Affairs after local media reported the deaths of 49 Tunisians, many of whom were unregistered pilgrims.
In recent years Saudi Arabia has increased security measures to ensure the safety of pilgrims during the Hajj – in the past hundreds of them died due to the crowds – yet it is still criticized for not doing enough, particularly for not registered. No one from Riyadh has yet commented publicly on the deaths. But the massacre of the pilgrims could cause diplomatic tensions between the various Middle Eastern countries, already grappling with the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.
