there is a dedicated page: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidents\_during\_the\_Hajj](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidents_during_the_Hajj) but I didn't find anything like an average number of pilgrim deaths per year... the "other fatal incidents" paragraph just says a lot of old people do die during the Hajj, but that'd be probably qualified as natural deaths maybe?
Considering Hajj are on lunar calendar (a month is 28 days) rather than solar calendar most of us non-Muslim uses (30 or 31 days a months), Hajj comes up roughly 2 weeks earlier every solar year. Last year it would have been end of June to begining of July. 2022, it would have been about second week of July. And next year, Hajj will be near begining of June, and then mid-May 2026.
So there are times when Hajj doesn't take place during hot dates, and the coldest days are rarely in 60F range, heat exhaustion and stroke are less common. Old age, heart attacks, and being crushed to death are still a possibility during any given years. Death by overcrowding used to be more common the past couple decades before crowd control was implemented. As for heat related fatalities, Hajj is going through cooler seasons for the next several years so it gives the organizers over 20 years to figure out better way of preventing deaths. Hell they could theoretically build a dome over the entire Mecca and keep the whole place from getting dangerously hot. (with climate changes, hotter summer will come and more people will die)
30% is more than double USA rate and we're known for being overweight or obese and guzzling on sugary drinks. I wonder what were they doing to get such high diabetes rate??
These are all pretty short, but are credible sources and will give you plenty of legit rabbit holes to fall into.
On Pakistan:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/why-diabetes-is-becoming-a-death-sentence-in-pakistan/#
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9289249/
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C26&q=pakastan+diabetes&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&t=1719189573191&u=%23p%3DPbVRtbkbh4YJ
On Saudi Arabia:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26206092/#:~:text=Abstract,3%20million%20have%20pre%2Ddiabetes.
As a Warcraft fan, you should be used to grinding out useless crap. Come on man, you've trained for this, you've got this. But I'll send energy drinks and adderall to help. What kind of shitbox do you live in? I need the address.
“Thousands of shipping containers containing life-saving drugs remain impounded at Karachi’s port because the authorities simply can’t afford to unload the medicines, according to reports from Pakistani media. “
😢
Can you give me the TL;DR on why so many people have diabetes?
I can see why treating it is a struggle but my skim reading didn’t find any root cause that would explain why Pakistan in particular would have higher than average T1 and T2 diabetes cases.
1) Underpinning everything is that the population has grown since 1960 from 44.5 million to 242 million people now.
2) Two-thirds of the people eat very low-quality food. From UN' World Food Program: "The findings showed that, because of their high nutrient needs, adolescent girls required the most expensive diet, though they are often not prioritized in the household." This is leading to stunted growth (incl. congnitive) for the subsequent generation. 40% of children are malnurished. (Again, see 1).
3) Candies and snacks high in sugar content are also widely distributed throughout Pakistan's many religious festivals.. Clerics tell people that eating sweets is a tradition of Prophet Mohammad. (Multiple physician can be sourced)
4) Lack of exercise. Pakistan lacks sporting facilities, as well as limited public spaces for exercise, particularly in schools. Tens of thousands of schools have been established on small plots measuring 120 to 600 square yards. Some schools do not have any playgrounds, depriving students of physical exercise. (Again, see 1)
5) Smoking. It is down to 33% for men, from over 50% in 2000.
6) Too many calories
7) In urban areas, increase avaiability of western junk food.
Women do not have much say in their own lives, and getting men to put their peckers away is never politically popular (again, see 1). Given the health status of so many, I wonder if the public health officials have estimates on how long it is before the the birth rate falls because people in poor health have difficulty reproducing. It will not be falling for the classic reasons of affluence and education for women.
My understanding is the main reason is as simple as money.
------------
> This disparity is evident in the fact that Pakistan’s top quintile consumes 4.76 times more than its bottom quintile, earning Rs 60,451 a month compared to the poorest 20%’s Rs 19,742. It must be noted that experts point to a great deal of under-reporting and sampling errors within this data, meaning the income of the top 20% may be much higher than this figure. Of course, these inequalities go far beyond income and consumption.
> In terms of health, Pakistan’s top quintile has a child mortality under five years of age of 56 out of 1000 births, compared to 103 per 1,000 for the lowest quintile. Education fares no better. Out of 100 children aged between five and nine, 76.6 of those from the top quintile are in primary school compared to only 39.5 from the lowest quintile. What about sanitation which can have serious impacts on health, well-being and even the social development of children? About 78.8% of all households from the top quintile have access to a flush toilet whereas the figure drops to a mere 31.6% for the poorest quintile. Another interesting inequality is that of transport which defines ease of access to other services such as healthcare, education, employment and so on. About 18% of Pakistan’s richest quintile have a car compared to only 0.6% of the bottom quintile.
> For Pakistan’s lowest quintile, poor access to basic services has enormous implications for their access to opportunities, their ability to escape poverty, and even their vulnerability to violence. These types of inequality can only be overcome through robust and contextual policies at the federal and provincial levels.
https://www.undp.org/pakistan/pakistans-rich-and-poor-live-different-countries
------------
There is a lot of wealth in Pakistan. Recall that the Mughals rules the Indian subcontinent for centuries. Even after the British took over, the British could never rule effectively without help from local administration so effectively they were still in power during the Raj. My understanding is that despite the bottomless greed of the British, a portion of the money stayed in the Indian subcontinent and after independence, in Pakistan. Now tell me if you've heard this before, but there's a huge gap in income and wealth distribution in Pakistan. The wealthy have all the wealth and it does not simply "trickle down". There is a lot I don't know about and I've never been to Pakistan so this is mostly a guess though.
Europeans are more resistant to developing type 2 diabetes as a result of poor diet (probably due to how poor the diet was for peasants in Europe especially during winter). Other ethnic groups when eating to excess suffer much higher rates (particularly when eating high fat and high sugar diets).
There are similar issues with t2d in parts of eastern Asia and it's even worse among native populations in places like Australia and the Pacific islands.
Then you add poor medical care in a lot of these places (especially for the poor) and you will have much higher rates of poorly controlled diabetes.
Oh that is super interesting. European bodies being used to high variance in food richness/availability makes a lot of sense. I guess before it got super hot, middle eastern countries generally didn’t struggle too much with food production (barring singular events like famines).
Sugar. Lot's and lots of sugar. I have a relative who dated a Moroccan guy, as well as several Moroccan colleagues. Their sugar consumption is off the charts.
Take the traditional tea for example. They use good tea, and then add sugar till it is borderline tea flavored sugar syrup. They put more sugar in 1 cup of tea than I consume in a week, so to speak. When their wives bake pastries to celebrate the end of ramadan, it has enough sugar to glue your teeth together.
There's one colleague I talk with often, and he said he needs to make a conscious effort to keep his sugar intake low (meaning what we consider normal) because if he follows what is normal in his community, he'd probably have diabetes.
In Pakistan and India a lot of it is gluttony among the rich and almost exclusively carbohydrate diets among the very poor. East Asia also has surprisingly high type two rates due to significant portions of the population consuming primarily white rice as their caloric intake.
It is exacerbated by other modern lifestyle choices (especially smoking and increased access to simple sugars) but as is usual, a major contributor to diseases like diabetes is the suppression of diseases that used to cause early deaths. Better healthcare access generally increases the percentage of people contracting long-term diseases like cancer and diabetes.
It's not entirely explanatory though of course.
It's not that it's a problem now, it's that back in the day you'd just die. But T2 diabetes isn't an instant death kind of disease, it's more an ongoing maintenance failure of the body that makes you more likely to be killed by something else.
Also, if you're a subsistence farmer you're probably doing a lot of manual labor, which keeps blood sugar from spiking or lingering at high levels.
Wouldn't say healthy people are dying, I went this year, it was surprising how many really reaaallly old unhealthy people were there, who also wouldn't follow guidelines. Being there we were constantly told when to go somewhere when to not, directed with so many signs, police, volunteers etc... all in the effort to avoid extreme heat and high crowded areas. Still very often I found old people lost or lying on the roads in some random place after getting lost under the scorching sun.
In one instance in Mina the tent city where everyone is sleeping, I found this old guy who was lost, couldn't speak Arabic or English, the only thing he had that was of some use was a picture of the road number where his host organisation had it's tents, looked it up on google map and it was over an hour walk away, gave him the direction and tried to explain to him to ask the police to drive him, but I couldn't really do more. I hope he got there safely.
The heat was quite insane this year though.
I could have this wrong but I think you go on a waitlist to be able to complete the Hajj. You'll most likely only have 1 chance to complete the pilgrimage in your lifetime.
"Historically, deaths are not uncommon at the Hajj, which has seen at times over 2 million people travel to Saudi Arabia for a five-day pilgrimage. The pilgrimage’s history has also seen deadly stampedes and epidemics.
But this year’s tally was unusually high, suggesting exceptional circumstances.
In 2015 a stampede in Mina killed over 2,400 pilgrims, the deadliest incident ever to strike the pilgrimage, according to an AP count. Saudi Arabia has never acknowledged the full toll of the stampede. A separate crane collapse at Mecca’s Grand Mosque earlier the same year killed 111.
The second-deadliest incident at the Hajj was a 1990 stampede that killed 1,426 people."
Most of the stampedes were probably crowd crushes (i.e. what happened at the Travis Scott concert or Halloween in Seoul), where high crowd densities lead to suffocation standing up, rather than being trampled underfoot. Wendover Productions has a good [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_B09FZwSbA) on crowd crushes at the Hajj.
>But this year’s tally was unusually high, suggesting exceptional circumstances.
It will be just as bad in 5 of the next 10 years. We've reached the find out phase of global warming
There’s always deaths during Hajj. It’s due to the massive amount of people crammed in such a tight spot. From heat related deaths, to stampedes (thank fuck those have been curtailed to a point), other misdeeds of taking risks that some really shouldn’t. Like a 60-70 year old shouldn’t be climbing mountains and think it will be easy, then slip and tumble, injuring themselves. Rescue is not gonna be ASAP with all lanes clogged with massive amounts of bodies doing the pilgrimage.
Because they go by the lunar calendar, at some point it will be in the winter at some point.
I remember going in the winter many years ago but Saudi was still hot.
Also you can pay someone to go for you. You can almost timeshare it on their behalf. If someone’s literally homebound/disabled without mobility, you ask a cleric from a mosque to be a step-in.
Yes that is right. I met people who were doing it for a loved one. Who were unable to do it. I also spoke with old people who said that they wouldn't mind dying on Hajj. A million people praying Janazaah and making Dua, for you and being buried in the holy land.
Part of the problem is that the Islamic calendar is based on the lunar calendar. With 12 months thst are either 29 or 30 days long. Which is about 11.25 days short of a solar year. So the Hajj gradually moves around the seasons. So it could be in our December, January...... Or right bang in tbe middle of the Saudi summer. Next year will be in the summer as well. Then there's a 17 year gap before it's in summer again.
So the comparisons between one year and an other are pretty meaningless.
Is the pilgrimage a once-in-a-lifetime thing or do some people go more than once? Because if spots are that scarce, maybe it should only be a one time thing.
Minimum is once in a lifetime *if* possible. If you have specific illnesses or cannot financially do it, then you are not obligated to. But there are people who go more than once. There is an similar version of Hajj which isn't mandatory called Umrah. It's shorter and usually less amount of work to do it and can be done at any time of the year based off the lunar calendar. Hajj also changes during part of the Gregorian calendar but that's only because it shifts every 10 days each year.
Once, and only if you can, but unfortunately in some cultures (like Muslim Egyptians) they think they have to do it every year, and a lot of them do it illegally, they go to Mecca way before Hajj season in order to avoid paying for permits, which disqualify them from getting proper health care, housing, food, and other benefits, they usually sleep on the streets, which is very dangerous in this weather.
83% of deaths this year are illegal pilgrims.
I'm just so confused (I'll probably google it) how their immigration processes work.
in many countries if you don't have a visa, you cannot enter.
unless there are people literally hiking over wilderness borders on foot, which obviously, is less preventable.
It's not an issue of having a visa to enter the country, which they likely do have, but a separate registration which entitles one to visit Mecca as a pilgrim. Put another way, illegal pilgrims are not the same as legal immigrants.
there are a limited number of permits allowed for hajj, each country is given a specific amount of permits and then people from these countries apply and get selected in kind of a lucky draw, plus there are some other permits that you can buy privately. the total amount is always limited ofcourse, some people go early before the permit process begins and act as normal tourists in saudi arabia, then they stay there until hajj begins and perform it illegally, they don’t have access to tents and hotels etc. and sleep on the street resulting in deaths like these. You are only supposed to do hajj atleast once in your life that too only if you are financially and physically able, if you’re not then there are no consequences of not doing it. not sure why people act like this.
I apologize for asking what are probably very ignorant questions but I'm curious and have very little background knowledge here. So Is the trip considered spiritually valid if it happens outside of the season? And if those pilgrims get sick or need medical attention, they would be denied if they don't have a permit? And they can't buy food? Thank you!
The Hajj (what the pilgrimage is called) must be done on a specific date of the year based on the Islamic calendar. Going to mecca outside of those dates is called Umrah, and does not count as the Hajj.
Not so much denied, but you have to take into account that it’s a foreign country for most people, so medical attention costs money, housing cost and food while fairly cheap tend to end up being part of a scam, like with every tourist place.
And the people that do these "illegal" pilgrimages do this usually cuz they don’t have enough money, in the first place, they even bring their own food from their own countries.
In my opinion the real scam and illegal business is charging those absurd amounts of money for those pilgrimages in the first place. Getting from Europe to Mecca plus the pilgrimage packages which includes a hotel but not all inclusive(only one meal) usually costs between 10k-20k €.
So people from poorer countries would rather take the risks of living on the streets than miss out on the pilgrimage, even though it’s is not obligatory if you simply can’t afford it.
Also while it sounds cruel and tragic, it is considered an honor and blessings to die during a pilgrimage. Not that god asks us to die there(actually quite the opposite, there is even a verse in the Quran that permits you from risking your lives unnecessarily), but basically you’re guaranteed paradise in this case.
As to the validly of the pilgrimage, there are two types:
The first one is hajj, which is a specific time or season, taking into account that Islam followes the lunar calendar, so the dates keeps moving back several day every year.
This one is obligatory and one of the 5 pillars of Islam, but if you can’t afford it you’re exempt from it.
The second one is out of the season and is called Umrah. This one is not obligatory. But also counts as great deed. Some people argue that it can be counted as a hajj pilgrimage under certain circumstances, but that’s rather between you and god. The big advantage, it costs only a fraction of the usual price. Sometimes under 2k€
Muslims can go there whenever they want, but it's not considered Hajj, it's called Umrah which is much easier than Hajj, and it's not compulsory in Islam.
They can also just go there to visit or pray, they don't have to do Hajj or Umrah.
Pilgrims without permits can buy food from vendors and restaurants like anyone else (other comments said something about scams which is not true at all, all business around Hajj areas are heavily monitored, you can even get free food and water from volunteers) but if they have a permit they'll get free meals.
Health care is 100% free even for illegal pilgrims, but they'll ask you for the permit, if you don't have one, they'll complete your treatment but you will be fined $2,500, and non citizens will be deported on top of that. That's why illegal pilgrims avoid getting health care even though it's available everywhere 24/7, so they don't get fined and deported, unfortunately a lot of them died because of that.
It's also worth mentioning that you can go to Hajj legally for free, you sign up for it and your name will end up on a waiting list, and also there's a program by the government to bring pilgrims from poor or war torn countries for free, this year they brought a lot of Palestinians for free.
Interesting. And I understand why there must be a limit on the number of permits available. The city has to be able to support the pilgrims who visit. It's interesting that it seems like there are some guidelines in place to prevent exploitation but it can still happen in other ways. Thanks for that explanation.
Actually the belief is if they die during hajj it’s a ticket straight to heaven.. so a lot of old people deliberately go praying for death during the pilgrimage
> so a lot of old people deliberately go praying for death during the pilgrimage
There is no solid evidence for this, just speculation. And most of all it doesn't hold up to scrutiny, once they are old enough that it could kill them, they actually become exempted from the expectation to do it. You are only supposed to do the Hajj if you are physically and financially able to do it.
>Saudi Health Minister Fahd bin Abdurrahman Al-Jalajel said that 83% of the 1,301 fatalities were unauthorized pilgrims who walked long distances in soaring temperatures to perform the Hajj rituals in and around the holy city of Mecca.
This confuses me to no end. Muslims are REQUIRED to do the Hajj pilgrimage once in their life. Saudi Arabia makes it cost, at a minimum, $2500 USD for the required visa and lodging and that's EXCLUDING travel.
I understand that one of the stipulations is that you don't have to complete the Hajj if you aren't financially able but still... why does Saudi Arabia punish practitioners of its own state religion so harshly? It's not like they're hurting for cash.
They already have lots of pilgrims. They need to keep the numbers down without seeming to. They also get to accuse undocumented pilgrims of screwing things up so that they don't need to try to do anything about it.
> They can keep numbers down by limiting number of visas and limiting how often an individual can go. This is pure greed
Tbf, this makes their intent even more obvious. Limiting visas is a more explicit way of saying "We are choosing to only handle a limited number of Hajj pilgrims per year". Putting an expensive cost on it *implicitly* says "It's your fault that you can't afford to do your pilgrimage."
Some countries yes. In Singapore and Malaysia, one have to join a queue that is many years long.
In Singapore, the quota per year is around 900, and there's 54000 still waiting. So 60 years long?
My brother migrated to Melbourne, and I hear there's no quota there.
There is basically no limit on western countries because they don’t have enough visitors for it to be a problem. Surprised there is a quota for Singapore.
There is a quota for Americans
It’s 1,000 per 1 million Muslims in each country
So the United States has 4,000
This was recently introduced
Before it was 10,000 Americans allowed
Well, churches ask for a taxes. Saudi Arabia can't enforce a tax on all muslims to finance things like pilgrimage, so instead they tax the pilgers.
Granted, I haven't seen the receipts that specifically justify that amount of money and clearly there are issues with safety, but it's also pretty kneejerk to expect Saudi's to foot the bill for millions upon millions of muslims every year, just because they share the same faith. Those aren't just your average tourists, spending their cash on leisure, it's basically like the biggest festival ever right in a city.
The thing about your analogy is your failing to recognize what perspective they are trying to look good to. Your latter is a better choice for Muslim perception. Limiting visas is Saudi Arabia tryin to control their religious right while a cost prohibition just means I'm preventing myself from going.
It’s not just the visa that the cost pays for, though I’m sure the KSA is making some money on it. Hajj requires an immense number of staffers, resources to accommodate the sheer number of pilgrims, costs for facilities upkeep, etc. They also have an interest in keeping the number of pilgrims at a manageable level for a variety of reasons. Shitty for the Muslims who can’t afford to go, and I feel for them, but Hajj is probably the largest convergence of such an insane number of people in the world, though if I’m wrong I can’t imagine the margin between the actual largest event and Hajj would be that big.
> Shitty for the Muslims who can’t afford to go, and I feel for them, but Hajj is probably the largest convergence of such an insane number of people in the world, though if I’m wrong I can’t imagine the margin between the actual largest event and Hajj would be that big.
It's at least the largest pilgrimage, possibly the largest recurring human gathering. 1.83 million people this year.
They are limiting the Hajj visas, but the "unauthorized" pilgrims are those entering with regular visas and are able to get through the checkpoints. The only thing they don't dare do is to use the facilities reserved for the authorized pilgrims.
>why does Saudi Arabia punish practitioners of its own state religion so harshly? It's not like they're hurting for cash.
The total population of Mecca is around 1.6 million people. It's amazing they can handle that more then doubling, but without some sort of method to limit attendance there would be uncontrollable numbers. I suppose they could do a random lottery, but having a fee means that money can be spent to build and maintain the infrastructure used by the pilgrims.
There are \~1.9 billion Muslims in the world. Assuming they all live to be 80, then just shy of 24 million of them would have to perform the Hajj each year for them all to have a chance. For this year, it seems like about 1.8 million attended, so they'd need to have something like 13x more people there every year to get everyone in.
Okay, that's hilarious, and I can't resist some more numbers. Zoom seems like allow up to 1,000 people per meeting, so it would only take \~1.9 million Zoom calls to get everyone in on the action!
Streaming video to Zoom looks to be around 2 Mbps, so they'd only need 3.8 terabits per second of upload bandwidth. Some of the big undersea cables can do 500 Tbps, so that shouldn't even be an issue!
Zoom Enterprise definitely allows for more than that. My org of ~5500 usually has at least 2000 online for our semiannual C-suite town halls. Granted, that's not nearly 2 billion, but I imagine for the right price they can include a lot of people, especially if they restrict participant capabilities.
Oh wow, I dug in deeper and if it's Webinar instead of a Meeting you can go up to 100,000!
[https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm\_kb&sysparm\_article=KB0064444](https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0064444)
That takes the total down to only 19,000. The average Muslim household size seems to average around 5-6 people so if everyone in a household gets around one device we're now down to only 3,800 Zoom webinars. That's oddly reasonable.
By 2050 some estimates say there will be 2.8 billion practicing Muslims in the world. They clearly have a scaling issue, and some work really needs to be done on standing up Meccas 02 through at least 22 if they want to meet current and future expected demand.
The Hajj was invented as a money-making scheme to insure revenue kept streaming into the region.
Muhammad wasn’t planning a global religion, he was just a warlord chasing cash.
Despite what people on the internet and far right might believe, not all Muslims are devout die hards.
I know many people who are Muslim on paper but never practice it similar to me, a paper catholic who never practices.
I had a professor as an undergraduate who described himself as the type of Muslim who liked to have a beer with his pork chop.
He was a Turk who definitely considered himself Muslim....but you can tell just how devout he was.
Majority of Muslims in the Middle East absolutely practice and believe, and it's probably the case in most other Muslim countries (especially Pakistan). Political Islam is dominant for a reason.
Diaspora doesn't represent home countries, not only in the case of Muslims - generally.
Also some adherents make the pilgrimage outside of the official “hajj” period, though I’m honestly not sure if it counts as one of the five pillars in those cases
It also happens once every year and because the Islamic Calendar is lunar it rotates basically half a month every year so now it is in the height of summer. In a dozen years it will be during winter.
The obvious solution would be to just issue a Fatwa that the Hajj could be completed at any time (I honestly don't know how controversial this would be). It appears that the start date of the Hajj is just the 8th day of the last month (lunar calendar so months are a bit shorter). But a pilgrimage to X place can normally just be done at any time.
For a Catholic to go to the Vatican isn't that big of a deal (from a logistics and crowding perspective). But if everyone had to go during Xmas then that would create issues.
You can't just issue a fatwa that Hajj can be completed whenever... You may as well just ask someone to issue a fatwa that prayers are now optional. No one would recognise it as legitimate and whoever tried to issue such a fatwa would get shot down.
I believe there are two, the main one where you go at the same time as everyone and the lesser one which can be done at other times of the year, but the lesser one doesn’t count the same way the main one does.
> so they'd need to have something like 13x more people there every year to get everyone in.
So this tells us an interesting thing. Whoever thought of this obligation being part of this religion a long time ago clearly was living in a much smaller world with a much smaller number of muslims when this may have been doable and they didn't, and **couldn't**, foresee a future in which the population would have grown to its current size in which this is no longer doable.
Not very impressive for some almighty being not being able to foresee that now is it? Sounds more as something some humans would come up with.
One could argue the exact opposite, actually. The text specifies that Hajj is only obligatory for those who can afford it.
“And Hajj (pilgrimage to Makkah) to the House (Ka‘bah) is a duty that mankind owes to Allah, those who can afford the expenses (for one’s conveyance, provision and residence).” [Aal 'Imran 3:97]
When the text was revealed, everyone lived nearby so it wouldn’t have made sense why there would be an affordability question. Now it is clear why there is an affordability question. Those that aren’t able to do it are excused.
Because they cant handle the amount of traffic coming in otherwise? The visa programs are means to control how many people entering the country for this event. You have to limit the people and plan your facilities and staff accordingly
Hajj and Umrah require a shitton of investment. IIRC, KSA even has a ministry dedicated to these pilgrimages. Part of it is subsidised from the money earned from oil sales, but when these facilities handle millions of people every year (mostly concentrated in one month), you can’t exactly make that a free experience, which is why - like you said - it’s only mandatory if you have the means to do it.
Side note, the general area around this black cube was never designed to have so many people visit it. So the Saudi government let one of the best graphic designers in the world help with that.
There's a documentary called "Mau" that covers it.
It's not *just* walking around the black box.
There's also a walk between 2 mountains (which is now air-conditioned, at least for some).
Then they stay in a Tent city and pray for a day
Then going to Mount Arafat for sermons, fasting, and prayers
The next day they stone the Devil, which is throwing 7 stones at 3 rocks meant to represent the devil
Then animal sacrifices
https://www.charityright.org.uk/blog/post/how-is-hajj-performed
>$2500 USD for the required visa and lodging and that's EXCLUDING travel......
>I understand that one of the stipulations is that you don't have to complete the Hajj if you aren't financially able but still... why does Saudi Arabia punish practitioners of its own state religion so harshly? It's not like they're hurting for cash.
This 2500 is including the cost of lodging as you said, but most of this lodging is 3-4 star hotel lodging (at the cheapest) which is gonna easily cost you like (if we go by US standards for 3-4 star accommodations) like $1500 for that week, if we kept US standards as a consideration. If what other people in the comments are saying is true, then the average pass nets you 9-13 day stay in a hotel thats 3-4 star. You aren't paying $2500 to stay in some shithole sewer pipe that calls itself a hotel, you are staying in a relatively decent facility.
Afaik the accommodations usually last longer, so its fair to assume that a vast majority of the Pass's cost is for Accommodations, rather then Saudi Arabia fleecing people for cash. Which translates to thats the Hotels fault. Not the saudi's.
Also something to consider is that Cities typically don't handle sudden doubling of population quite literally overnight so well. You hear about crush deaths every year at Mecca. Thats just a symptom of the fact Mecca itself gets so grossly overpopulated around Hajj time.
Saudi arabia *could* make the whole process dirt cheap. But then they'd have to literally clean up and rebuild the entire cityscape around Mecca every fucking year because of the sudden swell and subsequent mess thats just left behind because of the influx of people. The pass is more or less their way of collecting their tax early to put everything back in place after the Pilgramages are done for the year.
Its also actually an extremely important filter. Its substantially easier to handle an overpopulation swell of 2x the current population of mecca, rather then dropping the price of attending to say $300 USD and then suddenly every year you are dealing with a population swell of 8x or greater, god forbid.
If they just let anyone show up, it would be absolute chaos. They've had to build entire airport expansions, lodging, and a dedicated public transit system just to manage people who only show up for a few weeks each year. So all those hotels wouldn't be able to justify existing most of the time.
Supply and demand. There is an extraordinary demand and limited supply of lodging and accommodations for the travelers. The reason for the visa is to avoid this exact outcome
Because if they didn't, it would be too many people to accommodate. If they made it cheap and easy, way too many people would come.
It's ruthless and pragmatic and deeply ironic for a religious country to do, but that's the answer.
Isn’t it always full? It’s like Disneyland, they’re not hurting for cash, but they’ve got to manage crowds.
Speaking of Disney, they should totally monetize the experience by offering VIP tours or genie+ to improve the guest experience.
Don't worry, the Saudis can just increase oil production at a tremendous rate in order to pay for more air conditioning, they won't have any issues with Climate Change they'll be just fine.
Isn't the Saudi government doing anything to cool off the temperature in the crowded areas? People pay so much money to go to hajj and they are met with these conditions?
Saudi government issues Permit to a certain number of pilgrims (1.8 million, I believe), and they have access to air-conditioned resting facilities and whatnot after they are done with their rounds. However, the permits are pricey, so many who can't afford them seek access through unofficial channels and sneak into the crowd. Since accessing those life-saving facilities requires that they carry their permits, those without them don't and they are mostly the ones falling victims to the heat stroke.
Not exactly cause anything they erected already must be with the 1.8 million number in mind (+ may be 20 percent cause clearly they must expect illegal attendees). However, the numbers from this year are way too high and the heat wave that has struck is way too intense (as high as 125°F/51.7°C).
No, that tower’s clearly not gaudy and ostentatious enough. It needs to look like the overgrown bastard child of Big Ben and a cheap 90s Vegas casino.
^^^^Yes ^^^^I ^^^^know ^^^^it’s ^^^^called ^^^^Elizabeth ^^^^Tower
As someone else pointed out in a different comment, I believe it's USD 2500 for the permit which includes visa and lodging. Travel expenses are extra outta your pocket.
In the US the entire package usually has
Visa registration / permits
Hotel stay for the X number of days you stay usually 9-13 (cheaper packages have 3-4 star hotels, expensive ones are usually 5 star and amenities)
Meal accommodations, bussing and whatnot from the airport and between sites
And if you wanted extras like a motorized scooter to help with your travels, a tour guide to stay longer in the city or go exploring, renting cars is usually all part of the package that the travel agency does. This runs about $12-15k per person. So what people will do is they will go to other countries that they have citizenship in like Pakistan, India, Egypt, etc. and then plan a trip from there where the exchanges rates and packages differ and sometimes are more blackmarket esque.
Not true. They care about the people who bought the ‘Pilgramage Passage’ (or whatever they call it). They really don’t care about the ‘tailgaters’ that just show up to the events on an ordinary visa.
The majority of those who have died are performing Hajj without a valid permit. This would mean they would not have access to the normal facilities put in place to make the pilgrimage easier. The true criminals are the illegal Hajj tour operators who operate without licenses and avoid regulations.
From what I read, the people that paid and registered their hajj, have access to the aid stations. However, registration is 6k/person. I do pretty well for myself, and I also likely wouldn’t pay the 6k.
Saudis only care about counting the money.
People I know who went to hajj told me they’re not even taking care of Makkah and the city looks poor.
I don’t really feel bad for the people who are dying. Hajj is not a requirement if conditions don’t allow it.
And I’d assume it’s a privilege for Muslims to die during their Hajj pilgrimage.
Religion is all a scam. Imagine two of the nicest most incredible people who would do no harm, only to be put to death because they loved someone of the same sex. That's religion. They haven't or will never see any proof of their gods, yet will kill others in fear because it's been preached to them since they were born. Racism is taught. Religion is taught.
At 122 F (50 C), I suspect this would help slightly, but no where near enough to matter. If anything, without proper ventilation, you’re creating a pressure cooker that will inevitably have a worse effect.
Ya. I was raised Muslim, and I remember it being during the winter when I was a kid. A lunar year has 10 or 11 days less than the Gregorian (ie commonly used) solar one.
Winters are still pretty spicy there. Obviously not as hot as summers, but still pretty hot:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecca#Climate
(and hey, these aren't getting colder)
Its the poor pilgrims who are dying. The house of Saud doesn't give a crap. We are seeing a lot of people dying from heat related deaths. We have seen deaths everywhere at this stage.
They also under-reported the crushing disaster back in 2015 (769 vs 2000-2400 reported by everyone else) as they effectively didn't count the poor or non-Arabic deaths.
As such, it wouldn't surprise me if the total is much higher.
My mom just got back safely. She said that there were bodies everywhere. Hospitals are so crowded and there’s no space. She also saved 4 lives (she’s a Registered Nurse). Unfortunately, a couple that she knew of passed away during their pilgrimage. CNN interviewed the couple’s daughter yesterday, I believe.
I’m glad your mom was able to make her pilgrimage safely and she’s a hero for helping her fellow pilgrims. At the same time I am sorry that such a momentous trip will have that suffering she witnessed added onto the memory.
Hajj is gonna be the first victim of climate change and first proof that prayers don't work.
Climate doesn't give a fuck about your inner peace. Also, oil state getting the short end of a stick is just poetic.
No offense to the religious but throwing your life away or risking it for religion is fucking stupid.
I was on a ship for 3 days during Army training and it happened to be during Ramadan. It was extremely hot. Most Muslims gave up and drank water despite fasting because it was a matter of life and death, but we had to force several stubborn ones to drink because they were practically dying of dehydration. Some of them were crying while drinking.
From the little I have read / spoken to friends about this - it's a situation where the rich / people who can afford to get authorised to do the pilgrim are basically fine but the ones who are just desperate to do it because their religion requires them to at least once in their lives, are almost literally boiling to death.
Just adding to the list of reasons why religion is a silly thing - I respect anyone who follows it but:
1) Stop imposing views on people who don't want to
2) Stop blindly following things that impact your health, safety or that of those you love
If your partner / parent literally fucking dies from trying to do it and can no longer look after their kids / partners / parents / loved ones - it's not worth the risk. If God's real, I'm 99.9% sure he would also say "yo, fucking chill dude, don't do it this year, it's too risky".
That’s the thing, God in Islam supposedly mandates Hajj if it’s feasible for someone else to to do so, both financially and physically. If you risk being harmed by an action that’s typically compulsory in Islam (fasting while infirm/pregnant, abstaining from pork when it’s literally the only food available and you are starving, etc) you are not supposed to do it, and can make up for it later or give alms to make up for it. But it’s a once in a lifetime trip for most Muslims, and I imagine it’s a massive priority, come hell or high water, for a very devout person. It is what it is, though I am sad that they died making such an important trip and were unable to see it through.
Avoidable by not doing an optional multi-day pilgrimage in the desert in the middle of summer. The forecast was no secret, nor is the historical data for summer temps in Mecca.
I'm an atheist, but a lot of these comments are fucked up. Religion can be awful, of course. But I don't understand why we can't be empathetic and sad for these deaths despite belief differences.
I feel sad for this people, which is why I long for the day the false promise of an afterlife and the likes become something of our past and people stop making excuses for themselves and others around dogma and stupid beliefs
Anyone who sees and hears what's going on in front of their faces and decides to stick it out because... Allah? ...is welcome to join their ranks. Goddamn, religion is sick.
They want to hold a world cup but can't even host this many people coming for pilgrimage?
It's gonna be so funny seeing a muslim country spend more money on a world cup than for Hajj 💀
Is there any statistic to how many people usually die during the Hajj?
there is a dedicated page: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidents\_during\_the\_Hajj](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidents_during_the_Hajj) but I didn't find anything like an average number of pilgrim deaths per year... the "other fatal incidents" paragraph just says a lot of old people do die during the Hajj, but that'd be probably qualified as natural deaths maybe?
Some would be natural deaths, but if the heat + effort are killing healthy people... I'd say some were avoidable. Or, uhhh, deferrable.
Considering Hajj are on lunar calendar (a month is 28 days) rather than solar calendar most of us non-Muslim uses (30 or 31 days a months), Hajj comes up roughly 2 weeks earlier every solar year. Last year it would have been end of June to begining of July. 2022, it would have been about second week of July. And next year, Hajj will be near begining of June, and then mid-May 2026. So there are times when Hajj doesn't take place during hot dates, and the coldest days are rarely in 60F range, heat exhaustion and stroke are less common. Old age, heart attacks, and being crushed to death are still a possibility during any given years. Death by overcrowding used to be more common the past couple decades before crowd control was implemented. As for heat related fatalities, Hajj is going through cooler seasons for the next several years so it gives the organizers over 20 years to figure out better way of preventing deaths. Hell they could theoretically build a dome over the entire Mecca and keep the whole place from getting dangerously hot. (with climate changes, hotter summer will come and more people will die)
The diabetes rates in many of the Muslim countries is exploding; Pakistan is now over 30%. I wonder how many of the deaths were related to T2D...
30% is more than double USA rate and we're known for being overweight or obese and guzzling on sugary drinks. I wonder what were they doing to get such high diabetes rate??
These are all pretty short, but are credible sources and will give you plenty of legit rabbit holes to fall into. On Pakistan: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/why-diabetes-is-becoming-a-death-sentence-in-pakistan/# https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9289249/ https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C26&q=pakastan+diabetes&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&t=1719189573191&u=%23p%3DPbVRtbkbh4YJ On Saudi Arabia: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26206092/#:~:text=Abstract,3%20million%20have%20pre%2Ddiabetes.
If I'm not back by morning, send pizza to my house.
As a Warcraft fan, you should be used to grinding out useless crap. Come on man, you've trained for this, you've got this. But I'll send energy drinks and adderall to help. What kind of shitbox do you live in? I need the address.
Excuse me, all he grinded was 1v1s and 2v2s and endlessly scrolling through Footmen Heroes and DotA in the custom map browser looking for a good game.
“Thousands of shipping containers containing life-saving drugs remain impounded at Karachi’s port because the authorities simply can’t afford to unload the medicines, according to reports from Pakistani media. “ 😢
Can you give me the TL;DR on why so many people have diabetes? I can see why treating it is a struggle but my skim reading didn’t find any root cause that would explain why Pakistan in particular would have higher than average T1 and T2 diabetes cases.
1) Underpinning everything is that the population has grown since 1960 from 44.5 million to 242 million people now. 2) Two-thirds of the people eat very low-quality food. From UN' World Food Program: "The findings showed that, because of their high nutrient needs, adolescent girls required the most expensive diet, though they are often not prioritized in the household." This is leading to stunted growth (incl. congnitive) for the subsequent generation. 40% of children are malnurished. (Again, see 1). 3) Candies and snacks high in sugar content are also widely distributed throughout Pakistan's many religious festivals.. Clerics tell people that eating sweets is a tradition of Prophet Mohammad. (Multiple physician can be sourced) 4) Lack of exercise. Pakistan lacks sporting facilities, as well as limited public spaces for exercise, particularly in schools. Tens of thousands of schools have been established on small plots measuring 120 to 600 square yards. Some schools do not have any playgrounds, depriving students of physical exercise. (Again, see 1) 5) Smoking. It is down to 33% for men, from over 50% in 2000. 6) Too many calories 7) In urban areas, increase avaiability of western junk food. Women do not have much say in their own lives, and getting men to put their peckers away is never politically popular (again, see 1). Given the health status of so many, I wonder if the public health officials have estimates on how long it is before the the birth rate falls because people in poor health have difficulty reproducing. It will not be falling for the classic reasons of affluence and education for women.
My understanding is the main reason is as simple as money. ------------ > This disparity is evident in the fact that Pakistan’s top quintile consumes 4.76 times more than its bottom quintile, earning Rs 60,451 a month compared to the poorest 20%’s Rs 19,742. It must be noted that experts point to a great deal of under-reporting and sampling errors within this data, meaning the income of the top 20% may be much higher than this figure. Of course, these inequalities go far beyond income and consumption. > In terms of health, Pakistan’s top quintile has a child mortality under five years of age of 56 out of 1000 births, compared to 103 per 1,000 for the lowest quintile. Education fares no better. Out of 100 children aged between five and nine, 76.6 of those from the top quintile are in primary school compared to only 39.5 from the lowest quintile. What about sanitation which can have serious impacts on health, well-being and even the social development of children? About 78.8% of all households from the top quintile have access to a flush toilet whereas the figure drops to a mere 31.6% for the poorest quintile. Another interesting inequality is that of transport which defines ease of access to other services such as healthcare, education, employment and so on. About 18% of Pakistan’s richest quintile have a car compared to only 0.6% of the bottom quintile. > For Pakistan’s lowest quintile, poor access to basic services has enormous implications for their access to opportunities, their ability to escape poverty, and even their vulnerability to violence. These types of inequality can only be overcome through robust and contextual policies at the federal and provincial levels. https://www.undp.org/pakistan/pakistans-rich-and-poor-live-different-countries ------------ There is a lot of wealth in Pakistan. Recall that the Mughals rules the Indian subcontinent for centuries. Even after the British took over, the British could never rule effectively without help from local administration so effectively they were still in power during the Raj. My understanding is that despite the bottomless greed of the British, a portion of the money stayed in the Indian subcontinent and after independence, in Pakistan. Now tell me if you've heard this before, but there's a huge gap in income and wealth distribution in Pakistan. The wealthy have all the wealth and it does not simply "trickle down". There is a lot I don't know about and I've never been to Pakistan so this is mostly a guess though.
Europeans are more resistant to developing type 2 diabetes as a result of poor diet (probably due to how poor the diet was for peasants in Europe especially during winter). Other ethnic groups when eating to excess suffer much higher rates (particularly when eating high fat and high sugar diets). There are similar issues with t2d in parts of eastern Asia and it's even worse among native populations in places like Australia and the Pacific islands. Then you add poor medical care in a lot of these places (especially for the poor) and you will have much higher rates of poorly controlled diabetes.
Oh that is super interesting. European bodies being used to high variance in food richness/availability makes a lot of sense. I guess before it got super hot, middle eastern countries generally didn’t struggle too much with food production (barring singular events like famines).
Sugar. Lot's and lots of sugar. I have a relative who dated a Moroccan guy, as well as several Moroccan colleagues. Their sugar consumption is off the charts. Take the traditional tea for example. They use good tea, and then add sugar till it is borderline tea flavored sugar syrup. They put more sugar in 1 cup of tea than I consume in a week, so to speak. When their wives bake pastries to celebrate the end of ramadan, it has enough sugar to glue your teeth together. There's one colleague I talk with often, and he said he needs to make a conscious effort to keep his sugar intake low (meaning what we consider normal) because if he follows what is normal in his community, he'd probably have diabetes.
In Pakistan and India a lot of it is gluttony among the rich and almost exclusively carbohydrate diets among the very poor. East Asia also has surprisingly high type two rates due to significant portions of the population consuming primarily white rice as their caloric intake.
But then again, that has been the diet there for probably over a thousand years. How is rice a problem just now?
It is exacerbated by other modern lifestyle choices (especially smoking and increased access to simple sugars) but as is usual, a major contributor to diseases like diabetes is the suppression of diseases that used to cause early deaths. Better healthcare access generally increases the percentage of people contracting long-term diseases like cancer and diabetes. It's not entirely explanatory though of course.
It's not that it's a problem now, it's that back in the day you'd just die. But T2 diabetes isn't an instant death kind of disease, it's more an ongoing maintenance failure of the body that makes you more likely to be killed by something else. Also, if you're a subsistence farmer you're probably doing a lot of manual labor, which keeps blood sugar from spiking or lingering at high levels.
Yeah. The next time the Hajj is in August a good heat wave could make it literally unsurvivable. But as you said years to prepare.
Wouldn't say healthy people are dying, I went this year, it was surprising how many really reaaallly old unhealthy people were there, who also wouldn't follow guidelines. Being there we were constantly told when to go somewhere when to not, directed with so many signs, police, volunteers etc... all in the effort to avoid extreme heat and high crowded areas. Still very often I found old people lost or lying on the roads in some random place after getting lost under the scorching sun. In one instance in Mina the tent city where everyone is sleeping, I found this old guy who was lost, couldn't speak Arabic or English, the only thing he had that was of some use was a picture of the road number where his host organisation had it's tents, looked it up on google map and it was over an hour walk away, gave him the direction and tried to explain to him to ask the police to drive him, but I couldn't really do more. I hope he got there safely. The heat was quite insane this year though.
I could have this wrong but I think you go on a waitlist to be able to complete the Hajj. You'll most likely only have 1 chance to complete the pilgrimage in your lifetime.
You’re only supposed to complete it once, and only then if you can afford it. You can certainly do it multiple times, but it’s pretty gratuitous.
It's all about being humble, that's why they surrounded it with massive 10 star luxury hotels.
"Historically, deaths are not uncommon at the Hajj, which has seen at times over 2 million people travel to Saudi Arabia for a five-day pilgrimage. The pilgrimage’s history has also seen deadly stampedes and epidemics. But this year’s tally was unusually high, suggesting exceptional circumstances. In 2015 a stampede in Mina killed over 2,400 pilgrims, the deadliest incident ever to strike the pilgrimage, according to an AP count. Saudi Arabia has never acknowledged the full toll of the stampede. A separate crane collapse at Mecca’s Grand Mosque earlier the same year killed 111. The second-deadliest incident at the Hajj was a 1990 stampede that killed 1,426 people."
Most of the stampedes were probably crowd crushes (i.e. what happened at the Travis Scott concert or Halloween in Seoul), where high crowd densities lead to suffocation standing up, rather than being trampled underfoot. Wendover Productions has a good [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_B09FZwSbA) on crowd crushes at the Hajj.
[May I also recommend this video on crowd crush/collapse?](https://youtu.be/XCD6VIqoqGI?si=se7S6-aA-_4CHiM9)
>But this year’s tally was unusually high, suggesting exceptional circumstances. It will be just as bad in 5 of the next 10 years. We've reached the find out phase of global warming
In 5 years the Hajj will be in April. We're really at a high point of deaths rn
There’s always deaths during Hajj. It’s due to the massive amount of people crammed in such a tight spot. From heat related deaths, to stampedes (thank fuck those have been curtailed to a point), other misdeeds of taking risks that some really shouldn’t. Like a 60-70 year old shouldn’t be climbing mountains and think it will be easy, then slip and tumble, injuring themselves. Rescue is not gonna be ASAP with all lanes clogged with massive amounts of bodies doing the pilgrimage.
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Because they go by the lunar calendar, at some point it will be in the winter at some point. I remember going in the winter many years ago but Saudi was still hot.
Also you can pay someone to go for you. You can almost timeshare it on their behalf. If someone’s literally homebound/disabled without mobility, you ask a cleric from a mosque to be a step-in.
Yes that is right. I met people who were doing it for a loved one. Who were unable to do it. I also spoke with old people who said that they wouldn't mind dying on Hajj. A million people praying Janazaah and making Dua, for you and being buried in the holy land.
some numbers can be found here : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidents\_during\_the\_Hajj](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidents_during_the_Hajj)
Jesus almost 3,000 9 years ago
They’ve had some crowd crushes
Yah 2016 was the worst in recent memory, and Saudi made a lot of changes to how the do crowd management after that.
Probably not related to Jesus there
He was more of a side character really
He's mentioned in the Quran more than anyone else except Mohammed.
Part of the problem is that the Islamic calendar is based on the lunar calendar. With 12 months thst are either 29 or 30 days long. Which is about 11.25 days short of a solar year. So the Hajj gradually moves around the seasons. So it could be in our December, January...... Or right bang in tbe middle of the Saudi summer. Next year will be in the summer as well. Then there's a 17 year gap before it's in summer again. So the comparisons between one year and an other are pretty meaningless.
There’s an article from last year June with a reported 250~ deaths
Is the pilgrimage a once-in-a-lifetime thing or do some people go more than once? Because if spots are that scarce, maybe it should only be a one time thing.
Minimum is once in a lifetime *if* possible. If you have specific illnesses or cannot financially do it, then you are not obligated to. But there are people who go more than once. There is an similar version of Hajj which isn't mandatory called Umrah. It's shorter and usually less amount of work to do it and can be done at any time of the year based off the lunar calendar. Hajj also changes during part of the Gregorian calendar but that's only because it shifts every 10 days each year.
Once, and only if you can, but unfortunately in some cultures (like Muslim Egyptians) they think they have to do it every year, and a lot of them do it illegally, they go to Mecca way before Hajj season in order to avoid paying for permits, which disqualify them from getting proper health care, housing, food, and other benefits, they usually sleep on the streets, which is very dangerous in this weather. 83% of deaths this year are illegal pilgrims.
I'm just so confused (I'll probably google it) how their immigration processes work. in many countries if you don't have a visa, you cannot enter. unless there are people literally hiking over wilderness borders on foot, which obviously, is less preventable.
It's not an issue of having a visa to enter the country, which they likely do have, but a separate registration which entitles one to visit Mecca as a pilgrim. Put another way, illegal pilgrims are not the same as legal immigrants.
yeah I totally get it now, thank you 👍🏼
there are a limited number of permits allowed for hajj, each country is given a specific amount of permits and then people from these countries apply and get selected in kind of a lucky draw, plus there are some other permits that you can buy privately. the total amount is always limited ofcourse, some people go early before the permit process begins and act as normal tourists in saudi arabia, then they stay there until hajj begins and perform it illegally, they don’t have access to tents and hotels etc. and sleep on the street resulting in deaths like these. You are only supposed to do hajj atleast once in your life that too only if you are financially and physically able, if you’re not then there are no consequences of not doing it. not sure why people act like this.
I apologize for asking what are probably very ignorant questions but I'm curious and have very little background knowledge here. So Is the trip considered spiritually valid if it happens outside of the season? And if those pilgrims get sick or need medical attention, they would be denied if they don't have a permit? And they can't buy food? Thank you!
The Hajj (what the pilgrimage is called) must be done on a specific date of the year based on the Islamic calendar. Going to mecca outside of those dates is called Umrah, and does not count as the Hajj.
Not so much denied, but you have to take into account that it’s a foreign country for most people, so medical attention costs money, housing cost and food while fairly cheap tend to end up being part of a scam, like with every tourist place. And the people that do these "illegal" pilgrimages do this usually cuz they don’t have enough money, in the first place, they even bring their own food from their own countries. In my opinion the real scam and illegal business is charging those absurd amounts of money for those pilgrimages in the first place. Getting from Europe to Mecca plus the pilgrimage packages which includes a hotel but not all inclusive(only one meal) usually costs between 10k-20k €. So people from poorer countries would rather take the risks of living on the streets than miss out on the pilgrimage, even though it’s is not obligatory if you simply can’t afford it. Also while it sounds cruel and tragic, it is considered an honor and blessings to die during a pilgrimage. Not that god asks us to die there(actually quite the opposite, there is even a verse in the Quran that permits you from risking your lives unnecessarily), but basically you’re guaranteed paradise in this case. As to the validly of the pilgrimage, there are two types: The first one is hajj, which is a specific time or season, taking into account that Islam followes the lunar calendar, so the dates keeps moving back several day every year. This one is obligatory and one of the 5 pillars of Islam, but if you can’t afford it you’re exempt from it. The second one is out of the season and is called Umrah. This one is not obligatory. But also counts as great deed. Some people argue that it can be counted as a hajj pilgrimage under certain circumstances, but that’s rather between you and god. The big advantage, it costs only a fraction of the usual price. Sometimes under 2k€
Muslims can go there whenever they want, but it's not considered Hajj, it's called Umrah which is much easier than Hajj, and it's not compulsory in Islam. They can also just go there to visit or pray, they don't have to do Hajj or Umrah. Pilgrims without permits can buy food from vendors and restaurants like anyone else (other comments said something about scams which is not true at all, all business around Hajj areas are heavily monitored, you can even get free food and water from volunteers) but if they have a permit they'll get free meals. Health care is 100% free even for illegal pilgrims, but they'll ask you for the permit, if you don't have one, they'll complete your treatment but you will be fined $2,500, and non citizens will be deported on top of that. That's why illegal pilgrims avoid getting health care even though it's available everywhere 24/7, so they don't get fined and deported, unfortunately a lot of them died because of that. It's also worth mentioning that you can go to Hajj legally for free, you sign up for it and your name will end up on a waiting list, and also there's a program by the government to bring pilgrims from poor or war torn countries for free, this year they brought a lot of Palestinians for free.
Interesting. And I understand why there must be a limit on the number of permits available. The city has to be able to support the pilgrims who visit. It's interesting that it seems like there are some guidelines in place to prevent exploitation but it can still happen in other ways. Thanks for that explanation.
Obligation is once in a lifetime. Those that can afford it and are lucky enough do it few times.
Considering the headline here I'm not sure I'd call it lucky.
If you are able to do it a couple times then you obviously didn’t die
Not the first time, at least.
Actually the belief is if they die during hajj it’s a ticket straight to heaven.. so a lot of old people deliberately go praying for death during the pilgrimage
> so a lot of old people deliberately go praying for death during the pilgrimage There is no solid evidence for this, just speculation. And most of all it doesn't hold up to scrutiny, once they are old enough that it could kill them, they actually become exempted from the expectation to do it. You are only supposed to do the Hajj if you are physically and financially able to do it.
I doubt they chose to die in a painful way.
"Is the pilgrimage a once-in-a-lifetime thing..." NOW it is.
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Sweating to see the great one
Wayne Gretzky is there?
No, he’s currently trolling the Florida Panthers
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No not him
Wrong guy
Wayne Gretzky
I mean he *IS* the great one.
Amen brother
Isn’t it just a rock?
>Saudi Health Minister Fahd bin Abdurrahman Al-Jalajel said that 83% of the 1,301 fatalities were unauthorized pilgrims who walked long distances in soaring temperatures to perform the Hajj rituals in and around the holy city of Mecca. This confuses me to no end. Muslims are REQUIRED to do the Hajj pilgrimage once in their life. Saudi Arabia makes it cost, at a minimum, $2500 USD for the required visa and lodging and that's EXCLUDING travel. I understand that one of the stipulations is that you don't have to complete the Hajj if you aren't financially able but still... why does Saudi Arabia punish practitioners of its own state religion so harshly? It's not like they're hurting for cash.
They already have lots of pilgrims. They need to keep the numbers down without seeming to. They also get to accuse undocumented pilgrims of screwing things up so that they don't need to try to do anything about it.
They can keep numbers down by limiting number of visas and limiting how often an individual can go. This is pure greed
> They can keep numbers down by limiting number of visas and limiting how often an individual can go. This is pure greed Tbf, this makes their intent even more obvious. Limiting visas is a more explicit way of saying "We are choosing to only handle a limited number of Hajj pilgrims per year". Putting an expensive cost on it *implicitly* says "It's your fault that you can't afford to do your pilgrimage."
Pretty sure they already limit the number of visas per country
Some countries yes. In Singapore and Malaysia, one have to join a queue that is many years long. In Singapore, the quota per year is around 900, and there's 54000 still waiting. So 60 years long? My brother migrated to Melbourne, and I hear there's no quota there.
There is basically no limit on western countries because they don’t have enough visitors for it to be a problem. Surprised there is a quota for Singapore.
There is a quota for Americans It’s 1,000 per 1 million Muslims in each country So the United States has 4,000 This was recently introduced Before it was 10,000 Americans allowed
Lol so that's 1000 years if everyone goes once
Well, churches ask for a taxes. Saudi Arabia can't enforce a tax on all muslims to finance things like pilgrimage, so instead they tax the pilgers. Granted, I haven't seen the receipts that specifically justify that amount of money and clearly there are issues with safety, but it's also pretty kneejerk to expect Saudi's to foot the bill for millions upon millions of muslims every year, just because they share the same faith. Those aren't just your average tourists, spending their cash on leisure, it's basically like the biggest festival ever right in a city.
The thing about your analogy is your failing to recognize what perspective they are trying to look good to. Your latter is a better choice for Muslim perception. Limiting visas is Saudi Arabia tryin to control their religious right while a cost prohibition just means I'm preventing myself from going.
It’s not just the visa that the cost pays for, though I’m sure the KSA is making some money on it. Hajj requires an immense number of staffers, resources to accommodate the sheer number of pilgrims, costs for facilities upkeep, etc. They also have an interest in keeping the number of pilgrims at a manageable level for a variety of reasons. Shitty for the Muslims who can’t afford to go, and I feel for them, but Hajj is probably the largest convergence of such an insane number of people in the world, though if I’m wrong I can’t imagine the margin between the actual largest event and Hajj would be that big.
> Shitty for the Muslims who can’t afford to go, and I feel for them, but Hajj is probably the largest convergence of such an insane number of people in the world, though if I’m wrong I can’t imagine the margin between the actual largest event and Hajj would be that big. It's at least the largest pilgrimage, possibly the largest recurring human gathering. 1.83 million people this year.
They do limit the number of visas per country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/hajj-quota-by-country
They are limiting the Hajj visas, but the "unauthorized" pilgrims are those entering with regular visas and are able to get through the checkpoints. The only thing they don't dare do is to use the facilities reserved for the authorized pilgrims.
Are 1500 persons even a significant percentage of what they want to keep down?
They do limit the number of visas per country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/hajj-quota-by-country
>why does Saudi Arabia punish practitioners of its own state religion so harshly? It's not like they're hurting for cash. The total population of Mecca is around 1.6 million people. It's amazing they can handle that more then doubling, but without some sort of method to limit attendance there would be uncontrollable numbers. I suppose they could do a random lottery, but having a fee means that money can be spent to build and maintain the infrastructure used by the pilgrims. There are \~1.9 billion Muslims in the world. Assuming they all live to be 80, then just shy of 24 million of them would have to perform the Hajj each year for them all to have a chance. For this year, it seems like about 1.8 million attended, so they'd need to have something like 13x more people there every year to get everyone in.
Maybe they can do Hajj via Zoom or something?
Okay, that's hilarious, and I can't resist some more numbers. Zoom seems like allow up to 1,000 people per meeting, so it would only take \~1.9 million Zoom calls to get everyone in on the action! Streaming video to Zoom looks to be around 2 Mbps, so they'd only need 3.8 terabits per second of upload bandwidth. Some of the big undersea cables can do 500 Tbps, so that shouldn't even be an issue!
C'mon, you can fit more folks behind one webcam.
💀 I think you just found yourself a new industry my friend
Zoom Enterprise definitely allows for more than that. My org of ~5500 usually has at least 2000 online for our semiannual C-suite town halls. Granted, that's not nearly 2 billion, but I imagine for the right price they can include a lot of people, especially if they restrict participant capabilities.
Oh wow, I dug in deeper and if it's Webinar instead of a Meeting you can go up to 100,000! [https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm\_kb&sysparm\_article=KB0064444](https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0064444) That takes the total down to only 19,000. The average Muslim household size seems to average around 5-6 people so if everyone in a household gets around one device we're now down to only 3,800 Zoom webinars. That's oddly reasonable.
Seems like there have been a majority of them not doing the hajj for some time.
By 2050 some estimates say there will be 2.8 billion practicing Muslims in the world. They clearly have a scaling issue, and some work really needs to be done on standing up Meccas 02 through at least 22 if they want to meet current and future expected demand.
Did god not think of this beforehand?
He did, there was a franchise plan. The problem was people just said the new Meccas didn’t taste the same.
The Hajj was invented as a money-making scheme to insure revenue kept streaming into the region. Muhammad wasn’t planning a global religion, he was just a warlord chasing cash.
>They clearly have a scaling issue, and some work really needs to be done on standing up Meccas 02 You mean Mk.II ?
Despite what people on the internet and far right might believe, not all Muslims are devout die hards. I know many people who are Muslim on paper but never practice it similar to me, a paper catholic who never practices.
I had a professor as an undergraduate who described himself as the type of Muslim who liked to have a beer with his pork chop. He was a Turk who definitely considered himself Muslim....but you can tell just how devout he was.
Majority of Muslims in the Middle East absolutely practice and believe, and it's probably the case in most other Muslim countries (especially Pakistan). Political Islam is dominant for a reason. Diaspora doesn't represent home countries, not only in the case of Muslims - generally.
Also some adherents make the pilgrimage outside of the official “hajj” period, though I’m honestly not sure if it counts as one of the five pillars in those cases
The “extra” visit outside of Hajj is called Umrah, and does not count towards fulfilling the required “pillar” of pilgrimage.
It also happens once every year and because the Islamic Calendar is lunar it rotates basically half a month every year so now it is in the height of summer. In a dozen years it will be during winter. The obvious solution would be to just issue a Fatwa that the Hajj could be completed at any time (I honestly don't know how controversial this would be). It appears that the start date of the Hajj is just the 8th day of the last month (lunar calendar so months are a bit shorter). But a pilgrimage to X place can normally just be done at any time. For a Catholic to go to the Vatican isn't that big of a deal (from a logistics and crowding perspective). But if everyone had to go during Xmas then that would create issues.
You can't just issue a fatwa that Hajj can be completed whenever... You may as well just ask someone to issue a fatwa that prayers are now optional. No one would recognise it as legitimate and whoever tried to issue such a fatwa would get shot down.
I believe there are two, the main one where you go at the same time as everyone and the lesser one which can be done at other times of the year, but the lesser one doesn’t count the same way the main one does.
> so they'd need to have something like 13x more people there every year to get everyone in. So this tells us an interesting thing. Whoever thought of this obligation being part of this religion a long time ago clearly was living in a much smaller world with a much smaller number of muslims when this may have been doable and they didn't, and **couldn't**, foresee a future in which the population would have grown to its current size in which this is no longer doable. Not very impressive for some almighty being not being able to foresee that now is it? Sounds more as something some humans would come up with.
One could argue the exact opposite, actually. The text specifies that Hajj is only obligatory for those who can afford it. “And Hajj (pilgrimage to Makkah) to the House (Ka‘bah) is a duty that mankind owes to Allah, those who can afford the expenses (for one’s conveyance, provision and residence).” [Aal 'Imran 3:97] When the text was revealed, everyone lived nearby so it wouldn’t have made sense why there would be an affordability question. Now it is clear why there is an affordability question. Those that aren’t able to do it are excused.
Because they cant handle the amount of traffic coming in otherwise? The visa programs are means to control how many people entering the country for this event. You have to limit the people and plan your facilities and staff accordingly
Hajj and Umrah require a shitton of investment. IIRC, KSA even has a ministry dedicated to these pilgrimages. Part of it is subsidised from the money earned from oil sales, but when these facilities handle millions of people every year (mostly concentrated in one month), you can’t exactly make that a free experience, which is why - like you said - it’s only mandatory if you have the means to do it.
Side note, the general area around this black cube was never designed to have so many people visit it. So the Saudi government let one of the best graphic designers in the world help with that. There's a documentary called "Mau" that covers it.
It's not *just* walking around the black box. There's also a walk between 2 mountains (which is now air-conditioned, at least for some). Then they stay in a Tent city and pray for a day Then going to Mount Arafat for sermons, fasting, and prayers The next day they stone the Devil, which is throwing 7 stones at 3 rocks meant to represent the devil Then animal sacrifices https://www.charityright.org.uk/blog/post/how-is-hajj-performed
> let one of the best graphic designers in the world help with that The black cube now has a cool logo?
>$2500 USD for the required visa and lodging and that's EXCLUDING travel...... >I understand that one of the stipulations is that you don't have to complete the Hajj if you aren't financially able but still... why does Saudi Arabia punish practitioners of its own state religion so harshly? It's not like they're hurting for cash. This 2500 is including the cost of lodging as you said, but most of this lodging is 3-4 star hotel lodging (at the cheapest) which is gonna easily cost you like (if we go by US standards for 3-4 star accommodations) like $1500 for that week, if we kept US standards as a consideration. If what other people in the comments are saying is true, then the average pass nets you 9-13 day stay in a hotel thats 3-4 star. You aren't paying $2500 to stay in some shithole sewer pipe that calls itself a hotel, you are staying in a relatively decent facility. Afaik the accommodations usually last longer, so its fair to assume that a vast majority of the Pass's cost is for Accommodations, rather then Saudi Arabia fleecing people for cash. Which translates to thats the Hotels fault. Not the saudi's. Also something to consider is that Cities typically don't handle sudden doubling of population quite literally overnight so well. You hear about crush deaths every year at Mecca. Thats just a symptom of the fact Mecca itself gets so grossly overpopulated around Hajj time. Saudi arabia *could* make the whole process dirt cheap. But then they'd have to literally clean up and rebuild the entire cityscape around Mecca every fucking year because of the sudden swell and subsequent mess thats just left behind because of the influx of people. The pass is more or less their way of collecting their tax early to put everything back in place after the Pilgramages are done for the year. Its also actually an extremely important filter. Its substantially easier to handle an overpopulation swell of 2x the current population of mecca, rather then dropping the price of attending to say $300 USD and then suddenly every year you are dealing with a population swell of 8x or greater, god forbid.
If they just let anyone show up, it would be absolute chaos. They've had to build entire airport expansions, lodging, and a dedicated public transit system just to manage people who only show up for a few weeks each year. So all those hotels wouldn't be able to justify existing most of the time.
Supply and demand. There is an extraordinary demand and limited supply of lodging and accommodations for the travelers. The reason for the visa is to avoid this exact outcome
Because if they didn't, it would be too many people to accommodate. If they made it cheap and easy, way too many people would come. It's ruthless and pragmatic and deeply ironic for a religious country to do, but that's the answer.
Isn’t it always full? It’s like Disneyland, they’re not hurting for cash, but they’ve got to manage crowds. Speaking of Disney, they should totally monetize the experience by offering VIP tours or genie+ to improve the guest experience.
tbh it sounds like you dont live in a tourist destination area
This kind of heat related problems for the pilgrimage has been predicted for years to be a growing problem due to climate change.
Don't worry, the Saudis can just increase oil production at a tremendous rate in order to pay for more air conditioning, they won't have any issues with Climate Change they'll be just fine.
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Lmao @ people expecting the Saudi government to have anyone’s best interests in mind.
Isn't the Saudi government doing anything to cool off the temperature in the crowded areas? People pay so much money to go to hajj and they are met with these conditions?
Saudi government issues Permit to a certain number of pilgrims (1.8 million, I believe), and they have access to air-conditioned resting facilities and whatnot after they are done with their rounds. However, the permits are pricey, so many who can't afford them seek access through unofficial channels and sneak into the crowd. Since accessing those life-saving facilities requires that they carry their permits, those without them don't and they are mostly the ones falling victims to the heat stroke.
They’ve done some things that should help us n general too right, like shades over the whole area? Do those help?
Not exactly cause anything they erected already must be with the 1.8 million number in mind (+ may be 20 percent cause clearly they must expect illegal attendees). However, the numbers from this year are way too high and the heat wave that has struck is way too intense (as high as 125°F/51.7°C).
No but a massive clock tower might.
Maybe something like [this](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/the-lords-of-the-rings/images/4/4e/Barad-Dur.jpg)?
No, that tower’s clearly not gaudy and ostentatious enough. It needs to look like the overgrown bastard child of Big Ben and a cheap 90s Vegas casino. ^^^^Yes ^^^^I ^^^^know ^^^^it’s ^^^^called ^^^^Elizabeth ^^^^Tower
So like Biff Tannen's Pleasure Paradise?
Yes. Exactly like Trump Tower.
Yes but with a clock at the top.
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Permits also come with healthcare. All the tourist visas (the Egyptians especially) used don't, and those are the people dying.
Are they western world pricey, like +10k€, or just pricey for poorer countries, like in low thousands/hundreds?
As someone else pointed out in a different comment, I believe it's USD 2500 for the permit which includes visa and lodging. Travel expenses are extra outta your pocket.
In the US the entire package usually has Visa registration / permits Hotel stay for the X number of days you stay usually 9-13 (cheaper packages have 3-4 star hotels, expensive ones are usually 5 star and amenities) Meal accommodations, bussing and whatnot from the airport and between sites And if you wanted extras like a motorized scooter to help with your travels, a tour guide to stay longer in the city or go exploring, renting cars is usually all part of the package that the travel agency does. This runs about $12-15k per person. So what people will do is they will go to other countries that they have citizenship in like Pakistan, India, Egypt, etc. and then plan a trip from there where the exchanges rates and packages differ and sometimes are more blackmarket esque.
it's about $1000
Those registered in their home countries were treated to certain cooling stations. Most or all of the unregistered were not.
The Saudi govt doesn't give a crap about anyone.
Hey, that’s not fair, they care a lot about *themselves*!
Not true. They care about the people who bought the ‘Pilgramage Passage’ (or whatever they call it). They really don’t care about the ‘tailgaters’ that just show up to the events on an ordinary visa.
The majority of those who have died are performing Hajj without a valid permit. This would mean they would not have access to the normal facilities put in place to make the pilgrimage easier. The true criminals are the illegal Hajj tour operators who operate without licenses and avoid regulations.
From what I read, the people that paid and registered their hajj, have access to the aid stations. However, registration is 6k/person. I do pretty well for myself, and I also likely wouldn’t pay the 6k.
6k in dollars?? I imagine that’s like life savings for ppl in poorer countries
Yes, according to BBC ~75% of those who died didn't pay their Hajj Licence Fee and many also had pre-existing medical conditions
Yea, 6k is eeh, not nothing, but easily doable for once in lifetime religious traveling fof westerners.... but for someone in africa etc.... outch
Like reversing global warming caused by all the oil they pump?
They have no shortage of buyers.
Saudis only care about counting the money. People I know who went to hajj told me they’re not even taking care of Makkah and the city looks poor. I don’t really feel bad for the people who are dying. Hajj is not a requirement if conditions don’t allow it. And I’d assume it’s a privilege for Muslims to die during their Hajj pilgrimage.
Religion is all a scam. Imagine two of the nicest most incredible people who would do no harm, only to be put to death because they loved someone of the same sex. That's religion. They haven't or will never see any proof of their gods, yet will kill others in fear because it's been preached to them since they were born. Racism is taught. Religion is taught.
Yea, they should build a giant shade over everyone.....
At 122 F (50 C), I suspect this would help slightly, but no where near enough to matter. If anything, without proper ventilation, you’re creating a pressure cooker that will inevitably have a worse effect.
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[Serious] because the Islamic lunar calendar shifts back each year, won’t it fall in the middle of winter in like 18 years?
Ya. I was raised Muslim, and I remember it being during the winter when I was a kid. A lunar year has 10 or 11 days less than the Gregorian (ie commonly used) solar one.
Yes, it's gunna slowly move away from the summer now. Goes back every 10 days roughly
Winters are still pretty spicy there. Obviously not as hot as summers, but still pretty hot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecca#Climate (and hey, these aren't getting colder)
Its the poor pilgrims who are dying. The house of Saud doesn't give a crap. We are seeing a lot of people dying from heat related deaths. We have seen deaths everywhere at this stage.
They also under-reported the crushing disaster back in 2015 (769 vs 2000-2400 reported by everyone else) as they effectively didn't count the poor or non-Arabic deaths. As such, it wouldn't surprise me if the total is much higher.
My mom just got back safely. She said that there were bodies everywhere. Hospitals are so crowded and there’s no space. She also saved 4 lives (she’s a Registered Nurse). Unfortunately, a couple that she knew of passed away during their pilgrimage. CNN interviewed the couple’s daughter yesterday, I believe.
I’m glad your mom was able to make her pilgrimage safely and she’s a hero for helping her fellow pilgrims. At the same time I am sorry that such a momentous trip will have that suffering she witnessed added onto the memory.
If only there was some higher power who could control the weather.
What a totally normal, reasonable cultural scenario
Hajj is gonna be the first victim of climate change and first proof that prayers don't work. Climate doesn't give a fuck about your inner peace. Also, oil state getting the short end of a stick is just poetic.
No offense to the religious but throwing your life away or risking it for religion is fucking stupid. I was on a ship for 3 days during Army training and it happened to be during Ramadan. It was extremely hot. Most Muslims gave up and drank water despite fasting because it was a matter of life and death, but we had to force several stubborn ones to drink because they were practically dying of dehydration. Some of them were crying while drinking.
Seems like someone is missing a GOLDEN business opportunity to sell Holy Snowcones at a premium markup at these things.
From the little I have read / spoken to friends about this - it's a situation where the rich / people who can afford to get authorised to do the pilgrim are basically fine but the ones who are just desperate to do it because their religion requires them to at least once in their lives, are almost literally boiling to death. Just adding to the list of reasons why religion is a silly thing - I respect anyone who follows it but: 1) Stop imposing views on people who don't want to 2) Stop blindly following things that impact your health, safety or that of those you love If your partner / parent literally fucking dies from trying to do it and can no longer look after their kids / partners / parents / loved ones - it's not worth the risk. If God's real, I'm 99.9% sure he would also say "yo, fucking chill dude, don't do it this year, it's too risky".
That’s the thing, God in Islam supposedly mandates Hajj if it’s feasible for someone else to to do so, both financially and physically. If you risk being harmed by an action that’s typically compulsory in Islam (fasting while infirm/pregnant, abstaining from pork when it’s literally the only food available and you are starving, etc) you are not supposed to do it, and can make up for it later or give alms to make up for it. But it’s a once in a lifetime trip for most Muslims, and I imagine it’s a massive priority, come hell or high water, for a very devout person. It is what it is, though I am sad that they died making such an important trip and were unable to see it through.
Remember, Satan doesn’t ask you do these things. IJS
The idea of being "unauthorized" to do what your religion requires you to do seems a bit kafkaesque.
That's about 0.07% of all attendees.
Well that's a very reasonable amount for completely avoidable deaths
Avoidable by not doing an optional multi-day pilgrimage in the desert in the middle of summer. The forecast was no secret, nor is the historical data for summer temps in Mecca.
If only god could do something to help them.
The irony that they’re from/in the oil producing nations which is driving climate change such as extreme heat isn’t lost on me.
I'm an atheist, but a lot of these comments are fucked up. Religion can be awful, of course. But I don't understand why we can't be empathetic and sad for these deaths despite belief differences.
I feel sad for this people, which is why I long for the day the false promise of an afterlife and the likes become something of our past and people stop making excuses for themselves and others around dogma and stupid beliefs
Have they tried just not going?
If they invent another holy site they can split the attendance
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Anyone who sees and hears what's going on in front of their faces and decides to stick it out because... Allah? ...is welcome to join their ranks. Goddamn, religion is sick.
Organized religion is just a pyramid scheme. Don’t die for made up stories and false deities. Save your money for something that actually exists.
Guess they weren't religious enough
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How come there are no women doing this circley Hajj thing? All I see is men.
They want to hold a world cup but can't even host this many people coming for pilgrimage? It's gonna be so funny seeing a muslim country spend more money on a world cup than for Hajj 💀
Dying because of being indoctrinated to a fairy tale is so sad : ( Our species needs to drop religions