By Kagan Rowland Credit: The Myriad News
The event is one of the biggest on earth
Every year as many as 2.5 million people from around the world fill the Saudi Arabian city of Mecca as a part of the hajj, a sacred pilgrimage native to the Islamic religion. However this year, the number of those in attendance will be closer to 1,000, with only local Saudi’s being permitted to visit the holy site.
This catastrophic event has spelled global disappointment for this year’s hopeful visitors as well as their lifelong dreams to fulfill the Islamic pilgrimage.
Mohammad Tariq from the Cavan Mosque in Ireland said his friends who had intended to travel to Mecca had had their lifelong dreams interrupted. “They were not sad, they were more than sad. Like if someone was preparing to see their Lord’s house and they cannot go,” Tariq said.
With many Muslims waiting their entire lives to complete one of the integral obligations of Islam, the frustration transcends the feeling of simply having a summer holiday cancelled, according to Sean McLoughlin, a professor of the anthropology of Islam who studies the hajj industry at the University of Leeds in the UK.
“There’s actually quite a great impact — psychologically and spiritually,” McLoughlin said. “In terms of an industry, it’s something that’s highly commercialized and deeply political in lots of ways, but on a scale of the everyday pilgrim this really, really matters to people.”
A Ghost Town
The usually bustling city of Mecca is feeling the pilgrimage restrictions in more ways than just one. As the sprawling, tent-covered valley of Mina and ritzy hotels towering over Mecca’s Great Mosque lay lifeless, locals dependent on the $12 billion pilgrimage sector are also suffering the loss of their 2.5 million guests.
“Of course, we are disappointed,” said Hashim Tayeb, who has been forced to close his perfume shop in the luxury complex in front of the mosque for the time being. Many restaurants, barbershops and other businesses have “definitely been affected, especially travel agents,” Tayeb said.
However, Tayeb agrees that the effective cancellation of the pilgrimage was the safest course of action for the country. An outbreak, amplified by the magnitude and proximity characteristic of the hajj could be disastrous for the nation which has already recorded almost 300,000 cases of COVID-19.
Gas to the Fire
For an industry which also includes the smaller, year-round umrah rite and accounts for 20% of the country’s non-oil GDP, the effects of banning international travelers from religious pilgrimage have resulted in widespread losses nationally.
One driver from the city of Medina who hosts umrah pilgrims explained he and his colleagues had been unemployed for four months. “We used to work every day, it was our livelihood,” the man, who did not wish to be named, said.
The International Monetary Fund projects a 6.8% contraction in the Saudi economy this year following a historic drop in oil prices and other COVID related losses.
Severity measures such as the tripling of a value added tax on July 1 and cuts to government allowances will also be closely felt by Saudis, whose consumer spending had already fallen by just over 34% in April compared to the same time last year.
Desire over Danger
With an effective vaccine for the new coronavirus still in the works and likely a ways off, even by optimistic accounts, the timeline for reopening the country to pilgrims remains tentative despite the economic pressure to do so.
McLoughlin noted that pilgrims, tour operators and hotels in Mecca are behaving as though the industry will reopen at some point later this year. “What’s really going to be a question is the sorts of levels at which that happens,” he said.
“The Saudi’s reputation is already questioned by many critics,” McLoughlin said. “But for the ordinary pilgrim this does not trump their love, their desire, their emotion, their attachment, their longing to be in the holy places, to visit God’s house and to walk in the footsteps of the Prophet Mohammed. And this is very, very significant in terms of the long-term prospects of religious tourism.”