Some attack me, claiming that I defend the position of Saudi Arabia in the face of the Iranian accusations regarding the precious religious occasion of pilgrimage that Iran exploited in order to achieve political goals.
Not in need of being defended are the efforts that Saudi Arabia is making in order to organize activity in the holy sites every year.
Statistics explain the billions of dollars spent annually for the expansion of the Two Holy Mosques, paving roads, making bridges and modern tunnels and supporting infrastructure, health services and facilities, as well as the establishment of fire-proof camps in Mina that alone cost about five billion dollars.
Accusing Saudi authorities of negligence is to deny the facts. There is no country in the world, not even a group of nations capable of hosting about three million pilgrims or visitors in a few days, organize their movement simultaneously with such precision and comfort. Denying the efforts of Saudi Arabia is ungrateful or spiteful.
The numbers of visitors to the Holy Sites grow every year as the number of Muslims in the world increases.The quota of each country, increasing in accordance with the agreed proportions, prompted the Saudi authorities to expand the Grand Mosque capacity to about a million and a quarter million worshipers, in one of the most costly projects in the world, given the massive demolition of Real Estate and the payment of compensation and other astronomical figures beyond much of the world’s project budgets.
There is an Islamic consensus on the Saudi administration efficiency and that it did not fail to organize the pilgrimage season, yet the accusations by some Muslim capitals such as Tehran and Ankara that demand to assign the management of Muslim holy sites to the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the internationalization of these places have political purposes and are based on clear expansionist historical objectives.
The risky game of putting the holy places in a political struggle is what Iran is trying to achieve. The plot is solely designed to ignite a Sunni Shiite sectarian war, bringing to mind the plots of several attacks on the holy places throughout history, particularly the Qaramita strife and what the Shiite community did in Mecca in the fourth century AH, when the sect attacked Mecca during the pilgrimage season before expropriating the Grand Mosque. They committed blood-shedding crimes no religion would tolerate. They killed about thirty thousand pilgrims and Meccans in 317 AH, taking women as hostages. they took off the door of the Kaaba. The black stone was removed from its place, and taken to their country, remaining there for more than two decades until it was taken back.
The Qaramita or Qarmatians were a religious sect from Ismaili Shiite community, even though the Shiite do not want to be associated with them. Qaramita and other misguided groups in the history of Islam have been pretending the defense of religion and the application of the law of God. He who founded the group, Hamdan bin Ashaath Qarmati, was a Persian who pretended piety, religiosity and asceticism. He, too, claimed to defend the oppressed.
During the fighting, his followers repeated the verse ‘And We wanted to confer favor upon those who were oppressed in the land and make them leaders and make them inheritors.’ (Chapter of the Narratives, Verse 5) Some history books indicate that they were insulting the prophets and did not apply the provisions of Islamic law. They were doing it secretly while pretending piety and faith in public to attract the ignorant commoners.
Horrors were perpetrated by the Qaramita Shiites against convoys of pilgrims. They even entered Mecca through deception, claiming that they came for Hajj and none is entitled to prevent them from performing these rituals. Entering Mecca in a convoy of about six hundred fighters and thousands of followers, the back-stabbers massacred for three days pilgrims and citizens of Mecca, whose bodies were thrown in the well of Zamzam.
Hamdan Qarmati the founder of the group hated the Abbasid state. He sought to eliminate them and build a Persian state, claiming piety and faith to get the confidence of the common folk, especially the youth. He decreed them to unleash their desires, commit adultery, drink alcohol, and even incest as some said. This scene reminds us of the present-day Shiite State sponsor of terrorism.
These dark pages of the history of sedition, we pray God they do not return. The denial of Saudi Arabia’s role in the organization of the pilgrimage season reminds us of historical plots. The hateful rhetoric made by Iranian leaders against Saudi Arabia holds the winds of Persian nationalist hatred that has nothing to do with defending Islam and protecting Muslims. The Qaramita also said they were in the defense of oppressed Muslims in their wars, before committing bloodshed, putting women in captivity, and violating the honor of men and the sanctity of the place.
