Free Republic

One million people, including 850,000 from abroad, are allowed at this year's hajj after two years of drastically curtailed numbers due to the pandemicWhite-robed worshippers from around the world have packed the streets of Islam’s holiest city ahead of the biggest hajj pilgrimage since the coronavirus pandemic began. Banners welcoming the faithful, including the first international visitors since 2019, adorned squares and alleys, while armed security forces patrolled the ancient city, birthplace of the Prophet Mohammed. “This is pure joy,” Sudanese pilgrim Abdel Qader Kheder told AFP in Mecca, before the event which officially starts Wednesday. “I almost can’t believe...

Saudi Arabia has banned Muslims from outside the kingdom from performing the annual hajj pilgrimage this year in an attempt to control the spread of coronavirus. The nation has seen 161,005 cases of COVID-19, with 1,307 confirmed deaths, the biggest outbreak in the Gulf region. But the pilgrimage ban marks the first time in Saudi Arabia's recent history that Muslims outside the kingdom have been barred from performing the hajj, which last year drew 2.5 million people.

A Saudi official said Tuesday that the hajj pilgrimage, which usually draws up to 2.5 million Muslims from all over the world, will only see at the most a few thousand pilgrims next month due to concerns over the spread of the coronavirus. The kingdom’s Hajj Minister Muhammad Benten said a “small and very limited” number of people — even as low as just 1,000 from inside the kingdom — will be allowed to perform the pilgrimage to ensure social distancing and crowd control amid the global virus outbreak. “The number, God willing, may be in the thousands. We are...

The coronavirus outbreak disrupted Islamic worship in the Middle East as Saudi Arabia on Wednesday banned its citizens and other residents of the kingdom from performing the pilgrimage in Mecca, while Iran canceled Friday prayers in major cities. The decisions in Riyadh and Tehran affected both Sunni and Shiite Muslims alike. The Saudi move expands a ban last week on foreigners visiting Mecca and Medina, home to the holiest sites in Islam. That decision alone disrupted travel for thousands of Muslims already headed to the kingdom and potentially affects plans later this year for millions more ahead of the fasting...

Saudi Arabia on Thursday halted travel to the holiest sites in Islam over coronavirus fears just months ahead of the annual Hajj pilgrimage, as the Middle East recorded more than 220 confirmed cases. The extraordinary decision by Saudi Arabia prevents foreigners from reaching the holy city of Mecca and the Kaaba, the cube-shaped structure the world's 1.8 billion Muslims pray towards five times a day. It also said travel was suspended to Prophet Muhammad's mosque in Medina

The following is compiled from Roger Stone's "Is former CIA Director John O. Brennan a Muslim?," WND, a videotaped speech by John Brennan in Saudi Arabia, and a Juan Guandalo interview with Tom Trento. Roger Stone posted a controversial Instagram suggesting John Brennon should hang for treason. A former Marine and combat veteran, Juan Guandolo worked for eight years in the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division as a “subject matter expert” in the Muslim Brotherhood and the global spread of Islamism. Guandolo created the Bureau’s first counterterrorism training/education program and twice received United States Attorney’s Awards for investigative intelligence. Guandolo is also...

<p>DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — More than 1.5 million Muslims are gathering for the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, where Saudi Arabian authorities have boosted security amid concerns about demonstrations against a possible U.S.-led war in Iraq.</p> <p>Saudi officials expect 500,000 pilgrims from inside the kingdom to join more than 1.3 million foreigners in the five-day ritual starting Saturday.</p>

More than one million pilgrims have already arrived in Saudi Arabia, days before the kingdom prepares to host its mammoth annual Hajj pilgrimage, according to state media. The Hajj, which is expected to draw more than two million pilgrims this year, represents a key rite of passage for Muslims and a massive logistical challenge for Saudi authorities – as these stunning images show.

FAISALABAD, Pakistan — The father of Imran Awan — an IT aide to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz who investigators concluded made “unauthorized access” to House servers — transferred a USB drive to a Pakistani senator and former head of a Pakistani intelligence agency, the father’s ex-business partner, Rashid Minhas, alleged. Minhas told The Daily Caller News Foundation that Imran Awan’s father, Haji Ashraf Awan, was giving data to Pakistani official Rehman Malik, and that Imran bragged he had the power to “change the U.S. president.” Asked for how he knew this, he said that on one occasion in 2008 when...

An award-winning Iranian nuclear scientist, who disappeared last year under mysterious circumstances, has defected to the CIA and been resettled in the United States, according to people briefed on the operation by intelligence officials. Shahram Amiri, a nuclear physicist in his early 30s, went missing last June three days after arriving in Saudi Arabia on a pilgrimage, according to the Iranian government. The officials were said to have termed the defection of the scientist, Shahram Amiri, "an intelligence coup" in the continuing CIA operation to spy on and undermine Iran's nuclear program. A spokesperson for the CIA declined to comment....

Two million Muslims from around the world have arrived in Mecca for the hajj pilgrimage two years after a deadly stampede killed more than 2,000 worshippers. Shiite Muslims from Iran returned to Mecca in Saudia Arabia, following the biggest catastrophe in the history of the hajj. Last year the tragedy killed nearly 2,300 pilgrims with 464 Iranians among the fatalities, leading to officials in Tehran criticising Saudi Arabia's organisation of the pilgrimage.

MAKKAH: Economic experts have said Hajj and Umrah revenues are poised to exceed $150 billion by 2022 in light of the expected mergers of economic blocs and groupings to meet the growing demand on Hajj and Umrah economics in terms of transport, commercial stores and expansion in small, medium enterprises (SMEs). Muhsin Al-Sharif, a member of the Committee of Real Estate and Investment, said Hajj revenues will feed the national economy and, therefore, an integrated plan should be worked out to control revenues and financial resources in a manner that will serve Vision 2030. This will also serve the national...

Millions of hajj pilgrims are preparing to head home, after five days performing ancient rites, revering a God omnipresent in the city of Mecca. They have stoned figurative devils, they have slept in the world’s largest tent city, they have drunk water from the Zamzam well together: a heaving throng of nearly two million people from all over the world. Circling the Kaaba, the black cubic epicentre of this sanctuary city, pilgrims would have looked up to see one of the minarets of the Grand Mosque, dwarfed by Abraj al-Bait clocktower, a much-maligned luxury hotel and commercial complex and the...

The Philadelphia School District will add two Muslim holidays to its calendar, placing it among the first in the nation to do so. In what would be an even rarer step, Mayor Kenney said Tuesday he also hopes to adopt the holidays for city workers. He has created a task force to determine how the change can be accomplished. A spokesman from the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington said his group is not aware of any cities that have included the holidays, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, in their municipal calendars. "Philadelphia's history is based on being a place...

An Iranian delegation wrapped up its visit to Saudi Arabia on Friday without signing a final agreement on arrangements for the annual Hajj pilgrimage, the Saudi Ministry of Hajj and Umrah has said. The ministry said the delegation decided to return to Tehran without signing the final agreement despite two days of extensive talks. “The Iranian Organization of Hajj and Visit will be held responsible before God and the people of Iran for the inability of its pilgrims to perform Hajj this year,” the ministry said in a statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency. The ministry said it offered...

'The situation was one of sheer hopelessness,' says Sajjad Shah from Pakistan. 'Those who could afford to stay and search for their dead loved ones did so. The others just had to go home.' Almost three months after the deadliest Hajj crush in 25 years, the Saudi government’s official death toll still stands at 769, but most sources put the figure closer to 2,000. Shah, a hotel-owner from Mirpur, spent a month searching for his dead sister, but claims he met resistance from Saudi officials who covered up the full extent of the tragedy. Just before 9am on 24 September,...

The September Hajj stampede killed at least 2,411 pilgrims, a new count shows, making it the deadliest in the history of the annual pilgrimage The September Hajj stampede killed at least 2,411 pilgrims, a new count shows, three times the number of deaths acknowledged by Saudi Arabia. The figures establish the crush on September 24 as the deadliest in the history of the annual pilgrimage. Saudi's official death toll of 769 people has not changed since September 26, and officials have yet to address the discrepancy. The kingdom rebuffed criticism from its regional rival Iran and efforts by other countries...

A man who was linked Wednesday to the San Bernardino, Calif., shootings was described by someone who identified himself as his father as a Muslim who was "very religious." NBC News has reported that one of the suspects killed by police after the shootings at the Inland Regional Center is Syed Farook. Farook and a woman were killed in a gunfight with police in nearby Redlands after the rampage at the center that killed 14 people and wounded 17 others. San Bernardino County records showed that someone with that name was an employee at the county's Environmental Health Department. The...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The crush and stampede that struck the hajj last month in Saudi Arabia killed at least 2,177 pilgrims, a new Associated Press tally showed Monday, after officials in the kingdom met to discuss the tragedy.

There's strange news coming — and being redacted — from the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Heath about the death toll of Saturday's Hajj stampede in Mina. As the baffling fatality numbers have shown, this is the worst disaster to strike Hajj since 1990. But just how large those numbers are is a debate still raging days after the accident. The ministry's Arabic website said Tuesday some 4,000 people died in the crush. The announcement's since been wiped from the page, but not before people (including Al Bawaba) managed to capture a screen shot. See it below. Here's the translation: The...