Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei came out yesterday calling on the Muslim world to ‘think about a solution to the management of the Two Holy Mosques,’ blaming Saudi Arabia for ‘preventing’ Iranian pilgrims from performing the Hajj this year.
These statements are the laughing stock of the season. They are intended for domestic consumption inside Iran mainly, because the majority of monitors of the developments in the Saudi-Iranian relations are well aware that the Iranian delegation, who visited Riyadh to negotiate a settlement of the Iranian pilgrim’s crisis, completely refused to cooperate in order to reach satisfactory solutions to the crisis. They wanted to impose their point of view, especially with regard to the practice of the ‘ceremony of disassociation from the polytheists’ (baraa min al-mushrikin) and the supplication of Kumayl, which are not Shi’a ceremonies but were invented by the Khomeinist mullahs to politicize the Hajj. Ayatollah Khomeini claimed that ‘the disassociation from the global forces of disbelief is a pillar of the pilgrimage’ and ordered the Iranian Shiite pilgrims to do it.
Khamenei said that the Iranian people were ‘revolutionary’ and practiced their revolution in the Hajj. Even if we assume, for once, the sincerity of his allegations, then he should let the revolutionary people express what they feel about his repressive, authoritarian and brutal regime; a few hours would be enough to uproot the mullahs’ regime by millions of young Iranian revolutionaries who have suffered from the tyrannical security grip maintaining the regime stable.
Khamenei continues his false claims that Saudi Arabia’s rulers prevent the Iranian pilgrims from the Path of Allah and the Holy Mosque. It seems he does not know the news and the arrival of thousands of Iranian pilgrims from different countries to perform the Hajj, and that Saudi Arabia treats them like other pilgrims without the slightest discrimination.
Khamenei was aware that pilgrims inside Iran are angered for not being allowed to perform the Hajj this year as Iran officially boycotted the Hajj season. He blamed Saudi Arabia and tries to agitate the religious feelings against it and claims that it controls the holy sites and imposes its conditions, despite the fact that Saudi management is only a minute regulatory process undertaken by the kingdom. Supposedly, Saudi Arabia should receive the necessary support and assistance from all Islamic states, particularly those with large populations such as Iran.
The mullahs are perhaps mad that the Saudi authorities had agreed to grant visas to all Iranian pilgrims from outside their own country, denying the allegations of Khamenei and his colleagues that the Saudi deprived Iranians from performing the obligatory prayers, and assured everyone that the mullahs are the ones who blocked pilgrims inside Iran for political purposes, in an attempt to discredit the image of Saudi Arabia and damage its reputation.
Eventually, Khamenei revealed his malicious intentions, confirming that the whole speech has nothing to do with Iranian pilgrims but is in fact aimed at harming Saudi Arabia, accusing Riyadh to plunge Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Libya in bloodshed. While he is lying and falsifying the facts, compelling evidence suggests that Saudi Arabia has nothing to do with the situation in Iraq and Yemen. Intervening in Yemen was done to save our Arab country from falling in the hands of the agents of the mullahs. As for Libya, the kingdom has nothing to do at all with the situation there.
For years and decades ago, the political exploitation of the religious rituals of the Hajj caused disasters, violent clashes, bloody incidents resulting from flurries of emotions as Shiite preachers accompanying the Iranian pilgrims provoke these feelings, in a malicious mixture of politics and religion.
Past experience proves that the mullahs provoked violent clashes with the Saudi authorities in order to justify their boycott of the pilgrimage seasons, then incite against the Saudi authorities and call for a joint pan-Islamic management of the Two Holy Mosques, as this is the main objective behind all these plots and tribulations.
The Iranians claim that in the negotiations this year, the Saudi authorities agreed to set up a ceremony of ‘disassociation’ and then returned and rejected it based on recommendations from the Saudi Interior Ministry. Even if we assume that this claim is true, it is the right of the Saudi authorities to take measures they deem appropriate to maintain the security of pilgrims in the presence of more than two million visitors to the holy land, given that the procedure in question does not fall within the rituals of the pilgrimage, but in fact a political exercise unrelated to the religious rites of the Hajj. Saudi Arabia is supposed to refuse such controversial practices to preserve the unity of the Muslims and avoid any violence and bloodshed in the holy season.
Al-Azhar Al-Sharif, and other trusted Sunni Islamic institutions, said that rallying during the pilgrimage is forbidden in Islam and is a ‘misguiding heresy because it causes conflict and controversy.’ Such a knowledgeable opinion regarding these controversial practices should be respected.
The chief of Iran’s Hajj and Pilgrimage Organization, Saeed Owhadi, who headed the Iranian delegation to Saudi Arabia during the month of May to sign the hajj agreement, knows that the conditions aim at the safety of the pilgrims and the performance of worship away from misplaced politicization.
With the sole purpose to promote their regime, the mullahs invented many pilgrimage rituals, especially the so-called visitor’s bulletin (nashrat zair) distributed among the Iranian pilgrims to incite them and undermine security during the pilgrimage season. The Hajj season is not the right place for political posturing and bickering, but for transcendent worship and observance of civilized human values such as equality, tolerance and spiritual purity.
The Iranian theocratic regime is known for the exploitation of religion on every political occasion. The holy sites, however, are not appropriate for shouting ‘death to America’, unlike the streets of Qom. In fact, Iranian city residents have discovered the falsity of this motto which the mullahs hang on the doors of the rooms where they use to receive US and Israeli delegations.
Attempts by the mullahs to tarnish the reputation of Saudi Arabia continue in a pathetic way. The Iranian propaganda claims that to secure the pilgrims and provide maximum security measures, the Saudis hired Israeli companies despite the fact that the world is packed with hundreds of companies specialized in insurance technology. Nevertheless, the Saudi authorities would not take such naïve risks while Iran is treacherously watching.
