Mecca Stampedes: Pilgrims Continue Rituals Unfazed by Dead Bodies

Latest Death Toll: 345

On September 1, I wrote:

stampedes are common during the most overcrowded Stoning of the Devil ritual (Death tolls - 1990: 1426, 1994: 270, 1998: 118, 2004: 251.)

This year's "Stoning of the Devil ritual" incident of the Haj was no exception: Over 100 Muslim Pilgrims Dead in Haj Crush: Medics

During past incidents, knowledge of the trampling deaths did not cause pilgrims to stop surging into the area into the site of the tragedy:

The pilgrims continued their rituals, largely unfazed by the disaster. Many Muslims believe death on the haj, one of the most striking manifestations of faith and unity in the world, to be a gift from God that cleanses them of sin.

"Praise be to God, if you die on the haj you are considered a martyr,'' said Egyptian Elhamy Osman.

Here is another source:

"What happened this morning did not stop the accomplishing of the hajj rituals. The pilgrims continued to rush in, and I have also stoned Satan," Waleed Faydullah, a 32-year-old Egyptian pilgrim.

Professor of Islamic Studies Eric Ormsby says that this is a reasonable outcome, despite the fact that presumably no similar death has occurred in thousands of years of Jewish worship (and probably Christianity as well):

the closing moments of the hajj can be filled with fervor....It is hardly surprising that under such charged circumstances tragedies occur.

Here's how American Muslim describes the experience:

In Mecca, I found the same mixture of confusion, oppression and apathy I thought I had left behind in Egypt. But as in Egypt, nothing worked, even at the blessed hajj, for we were visitors not to an Islamic state but to yet another cynical Arab kleptocracy which only pretended to adhere to the true ideals of Islam.

The Saudis couldn?t even organize the hajj safely. Each day, as I performed the rituals of the hajj, I was part of massed crowds of Muslims from all over the world: Turks and Pakistanis, Nigerians, Malaysians, Arabs. We would shamble forward without order or seeming direction, endangering lives as we knocked over women, the lame and the elderly in our hurry to get from one ritual to the next. Once, in a street so filled with pilgrims that I could not take one step forward, I was forced to jump into the back of a truck to avoid being killed in a stampede.

At night, I would wander through the pilgrim camps, disgusted by the sight of the mud-faced pilgrims who were only too happy to sleep on the filthy streets. In the morning, the streets would be clogged again, and veiled women who had trouble walking because they?d so rarely been let out of their homes would waddle slowly before me. At the stoning ritual, I watched little girls fall under the crowds of pilgrims: Turks shoving Arabs, Africans shoving Indians until each day a few more pilgrims were trampled to death. The next day I would read of the incident in the Saudi Times (FOURTEEN PILGRIMS KILLED IN STAMPEDE) which would quote a hajj official who never took any responsibility for the deaths. He would only say that since the pilgrims had died on hajj they would "surely enter Paradise." There was never any promise to cut the number of hajjis or control the outsized crowds to prevent these needless deaths.