Despite 'added security', hundreds of people were trampled and/or asphyxiated in Saudi Arabia on the final day of Hajj. This eclipses the 251 who died in the same way in 2004.

It's hard to know what to say, other than I feel for the dead, injured, their families, and all those who witnessed such terrible suffering. Though their deaths were horrific, I hope they are now closer to their God.

Stories: Hajj ABC and Hajj BBC

Ing oh Ing, your unhappy smiley face indicates to me that you are not a muslim. To be killed at Hajj is considered to be a blessing by those of the "true faith". That fact alone should bring a smile to anyones face.

This whole religious event is aptly summed for me by the Dilbert cartoon writer Scott Adams. "I think it's interesting that when you pray to God for a new bike, it hardly ever materializes in your bedroom within seconds,but when you throw stones at the devil, quite often you get an immediate response. That's an example of good customer service."

After reading of the thousands of deaths [and sanitation problems] over the years at Hajj I certainly wont ever be lining up to be the first to cast stones! But that`s also because I`m: a] not insane, b]not myself a believer, feel free to decide for yourself the most appropriate reason.

I honestly believe you should change the title of this thread to "345 Blessed To Death".

I can't imagine being in a crowd so big that that many people get killed (or blessed, whatever your take is.) Saturday morning at the shops is enough for me.

No, I am not a Muslim, but I am a living, sentient being, and as such the loss of life is generally sad to me. I wonder how the families and friends of the people who died are feeling; "blessing" it may be, but does that preclude sadness and mourning?

I just don`t know how the family and friends of those trampled to death are feeling Ing. The mindset of those that throw stones at a larger stone is a totally alien one to me and not something that I could understand or would even bother trying to understand. The first thought I had when reading the news was "what a lot of morons".

Perhaps they do feel happy to believe that their crushed loved ones are going to,well wherever they are going.

The quote below is one muslims description of his Hajj experience.

Quote:

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I went to Saudi Arabia to perform the hajj. When I tried to confirm my ticket to Mecca, the fully veiled Egyptian woman at the Egypt Air counter charged me a non-existent ‘confirmation tax’—her attempt to swindle me occurring just moments after the noon call to prayer. I wondered why she bothered to wear a headscarf at all.



In Mecca, I found the same mixture of confusion, oppression and apathy I thought I had left behind in Egypt. But as in Egypt, nothing worked, even at the blessed hajj, for we were visitors not to an Islamic state but to yet another cynical Arab kleptocracy which only pretended to adhere to the true ideals of Islam.


The Saudis couldn’t even organize the hajj safely. Each day, as I performed the rituals of the hajj, I was part of massed crowds of Muslims from all over the world: Turks and Pakistanis, Nigerians, Malaysians, Arabs. We would shamble forward without order or seeming direction, endangering lives as we knocked over women, the lame and the elderly in our hurry to get from one ritual to the next. Once, in a street so filled with pilgrims that I could not take one step forward, I was forced to jump into the back of a truck to avoid being killed in a stampede.


At night, I would wander through the pilgrim camps, disgusted by the sight of the mud-faced pilgrims who were only too happy to sleep on the filthy streets. In the morning, the streets would be clogged again, and veiled women who had trouble walking because they’d so rarely been let out of their homes would waddle slowly before me. At the stoning ritual, I watched little girls fall under the crowds of pilgrims: Turks shoving Arabs, Africans shoving Indians until each day a few more pilgrims were trampled to death. The next day I would read of the incident in the Saudi Times (FOURTEEN PILGRIMS KILLED IN STAMPEDE) which would quote a hajj official who never took any responsibility for the deaths. He would only say that since the pilgrims had died on hajj they would ‘surely enter Paradise’. There was never any promise to cut the number of hajjis or control the outsized crowds to prevent these needless deaths.


The mutawan, the dreaded Saudi religious police who enforce the rigid observance of Wahhabi Islam, patrolled the streets, beating or arresting anyone they caught missing a prayer; it was impossible ever to know if the native Meccans prayed out of genuine piety or to avoid a whipping.

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From here.

The whole Hajj business sounds like hell on earth to me actually.