Fervor and Fears as Millions Make the Hajj

Feb. 11, 2003 -- At sundown on Monday, they began their descent from the rocky slopes of Mount Arafat in the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia — a vast sea of humanity in pristine white robes collectively cleansed of its sins after completing a central ritual of the annual hajj pilgrimage.

Down from the holy mount, in the Mina Valley today, millions of Muslim pilgrims celebrate Eid ul-Adha — the feast marking Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son at God's request — slaughtering sheep in a symbolic commemoration of man's ultimate accedence to God's will.

It's just one in a detailed list of prescribed rituals that make up the hajj, an awesome display of faith that sees millions of Muslims of different racial, linguistic and cultural backgrounds from more than 70 countries gather together in an essentially egalitarian community, where all Muslims are brothers and sisters.

For the Saudi authorities, guardians of Islam's holiest sites, the hajj is at once a gala public relations event and a massive logistical headache.

In a conservative country, where at normal times a potential influx of outsiders is kept firmly in check by a strict entry visa policy, the hajj sees an estimated 1.3 million non-Saudi citizens make their way into the oil-rich kingdom.

A little over a year after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, with the threat of a widely unpopular attack on Iraq looming, the fear this year is that a mammoth gathering of Muslims could serve as a recruiting ground for al Qaeda sympathizers. In a world where the U.S.-led war on terror has dominated the global agenda, security has been a major concern during the hajj.

The anxiety was highlighted on Friday, when U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that the government had elevated the national terror alert to "high" amid an "increased likelihood that al Qaeda may attempt to attack Americans in the United States and/or abroad in or around the end of the hajj, a Muslim religious period ending mid-February 2003."

"It's a real organizational challenge," says Sandra Mackey, Middle East expert and author of the book The Saudis: Inside the Desert Kingdom. "Millions of people enter the country during a short period of time and millions of people have to be in the same place at the same time."

Logistical issues such as crowd control, sanitation and security during the hajj have dogged the ruling House of Saud ever since the kingdom of Saudi Arabia was formed in the early 1930s. But every decade seems to throw up a different set of challenges for the authorities.

Linking the Hajj to Terrorism

Aschroft's association of the hajj with terrorism promptly raised alarm bells in the American Muslim community. In a statement released over the weekend, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a prominent national Islamic civil rights group, condemned what it called an "unnecessary linkage."

"Hajj has nothing to do with terrorism," said CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad. "To imply otherwise is an insult to the American Muslim community. Attorney General Ashcroft needs to clarify his position on this important issue."

Some intelligence and terrorism experts have also raised doubts about Washington linking the annual pilgrimage with a heightened terrorist threat. "I don't agree with that," says Vince Cannistraro, an ABCNEWS consultant and former CIA counterterrorism chief. "I think that they're getting that from Web sites talking about the end of the hajj. I think intelligence indicates that al Qaeda is looking to coordinate its activities with a U.S. invasion of Iraq, when the U.S. is focused on the start of the operation in Iraq."

Many experts say al Qaeda in general does not have a record of marking anniversaries, when security alerts would be high. Following fears of a terrorist attack on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks last year, the government elevated the national terror alert from yellow to orange on Sept. 10. The first anniversary of the attacks on America passed without incident.

Given the widely perceived notion earlier this year that an attack on Iraq was likely to start around Feb. 15 — following chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix's Feb. 14 report to the U.N. Security Council — some experts say the hajj merely happened to fall within a critical security period.

But for many American Muslims, the Bush administration's connection of terrorism with one of Islam's most sacred obligations has been deeply disturbing.

"This hurts me right now, it really hurts me," said David Hawa, a 29-year-old graphics designer from Washington, D.C., currently making the hajj in Mecca. "I just don't like this linkage between terrorism and Islam. If anyone came here and saw this, they would see the beauty of Islam, the beauty of so many people coming together."

Along with his 25-year-old brother, Basim, and three of their childhood friends from California, Hawa said he came to Mecca to "actually see" the Kaaba, the large cube-shaped stone structure that Muslims around the world face during their prayers.

When Politics Seeps Into a Pilgrimage

But despite the spiritual and symbolic sanctity of the hajj, the hurly-burly of politics and the prevailing tensions of international affairs have periodically plagued the pilgrimage.

Following the 1979 Islamic revolution in Shiite-dominated Iran, the 1980s saw a series of political demonstrations, mostly by Iranians, during the annual pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, a Sunni stronghold. The disturbances reached a head in 1987, when protesters stormed the Grand Mosque in Mecca, sparking a riot with Saudi police in which an estimated 400 people were killed.

Although small, spontaneous anti-Israel protests have been known to break out among some hajjis — as the pilgrims are called — experts say the lessons of 1987 have been well learned by the ever-suspicious House of Saud.

"Political expression during the hajj is actively discouraged," says Richard Murphy, a senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations who served as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1981 to 1983. "Unlike what is said about the hajj, when the Muslim world comes together to discuss the problems facing the Islamic world, they don't want to see anyone making speeches or demonstrating."

Winning the PR War

Days after the 1987 storming of the Grand Mosque, the Saudi government got a fatwa, or religious edict, from Sheik Abdulaziz Bin Abdullah Bin-Baz, the grand mufti (priest) of Saudi Arabia, granting it "permission" to make the highly sensitive move to send armed forces into the mosque.

In the following years, monitoring cameras were set up at strategic spots. And there have been periodic complaints that the Saudi authorities have manipulated the national quotas — which determine the number of pilgrims allowed in from different countries — to put a lid on the number of mostly Iranian Shiite pilgrims. It's a charge the Saudi government has consistently denied.

Despite the tenuous position the House of Saud enjoys in the hearts and minds of many Muslims — due to its track record of corruption, the strict controls it exercises over the Saudi people, and dissatisfaction over its decision to allow the continued presence of U.S. troops on Saudi soil — experts say the post-1987 Saudi attempt to divide politics and religion during the hajj enjoys widespread Muslim support.

"I think the House of Saud really won that PR war," says Mackey. "Basically, the hajj is seen as religious obligation, and for most Muslims it's a once-in-a-lifetime chance to actually do it. I think the idea of going to Mecca is a largely nonpolitical one."

Biometrics and Religion

Nevertheless, Mackey — who lived in Saudi Arabia for four years, when she clandestinely wrote about the secretive Islamic kingdom — acknowledges that the hajj throws up some thorny issues for the royal family.

"It really is a dilemma for them," she says. "On the one hand, they do not want to deny visas for the hajj, on the other, they do not want to see the political excesses that were displayed in the past."

Following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Saudi authorities installed eye-scanning and fingerprinting devices at King Abdul Aziz International Airport in Jeddah, the Red Sea port city that sees the largest number of hajjis entering the country.

More than 90 percent of overseas pilgrims arrive by air, 4 percent arrive by sea and 3 percent by land, according to Saudi estimates.

Machines were also installed to detect false passports and visas, a common problem for Saudi security, according to Nail Al-Jubeir, a spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington.

"We have to be careful about forged visas with 1.3 million people coming into the country in a short period," he says. "But our security at the airport checks to ensure the validity of visas and passport and to make sure they are turned back."

According to Al-Jubeir, most of the cases of fake visa result from mostly poor and illiterate hajjis being duped by unlicensed travel agents and con men, a fate he calls "tragic."

Creating a Stir in Mecca

But hajj security, says Al-Jubeir, depends on coordination with a number of governments.

"You can't do it yourself. You have to coordinate with other governments," says Al-Jubeir. "We don't chose who comes to do the hajj; those decisions are make by other countries. Saudi missions overseas get a list of people selected and will ensure the passport matches the list given by governments. We don't think governments will provide us with a list of known terrorists or people on wanted lists."

For Hawa, the idea of terrorists lurking among the hajjis he has met in Mecca strikes him as absurd.

"You should just see the people here," he says during a phone interview with ABNEWS.com from his hotel in Mecca. "I met this Bangladeshi hajji and then an Indonesian man. I couldn't communicate with them really, we had no language in common, but we just smiled. It's astonishing how many smiling people there are here."

With his brother and their three friends, all in their 20s, Hawa says his group has been creating quite a stir in Mecca.

"Firstly, we're young. People want to know why didn't we wait until we get older and can pile up our sins," he says with a chuckle. "Then, we're American. The first question I'm asked after I say I'm American is, 'Do they let you practice your religion?' I'm surprised how much in the dark people are about Muslims in America."

For Hawa, the 29-year-old son of Palestinian immigrant parents who came to the United States from Jerusalem in the 1960s, the hajj has been an experience he will never forget.

"It was about 2:30 in the morning when we arrived in Mecca and immediately set out to start the umrah (a minor version of the hajj, which can be done at any time). That's when I saw the Kaaba for the first time. Just seeing something I've been praying toward all my life ... I couldn't hold it in, I was crying. I put my hand over my face so people couldn't see me crying. My friend was next to me and although I couldn't see him, I could tell he was crying, too. It was such an emotional moment, I will never forget it."