Mecca

By Zein Basravi in Middle East on November 6th, 2011
AFP photo

Nothing can prepare you for the number of people at Hajj.

The entire city of Mecca is packed tight. The first day our news crew got to Mecca, we got caught outside the grand mosque just before afternoon prayers.

We were trying to get to our hotel and it took hours to move a few metres.

People were literally crawling all over each other. I was stepping over someone who must have been offended that I was wearing shoes near the grand mosque because he tried to tear them off my feet.

The number of people is truly overwhelming, and the crowds get bigger and bigger as the Hajj week goes on.

The Kabah, Islam's holiest site, is surrounded by malls and hotels.

They are big and take up all the space pilgrims could have used to gather and worship.

The malls aren't really a part of getting back to God.

Tags: Mecca
By Imran Garda in Middle East on November 19th, 2010
Photo by Fadi El Binni

The Pakistani and the Saudi

It's 1am and we’re on our bus drive from the tent city of Mina to Arafat , where pilgrims spend the daylight hours at the plains surrounding Mount Arafat, before moving on.

It was a sight that had a post-apocalyptic aura about it and made me swallow the moisture in my mouth.

For 4km, lining the street like jagged stitches on an otherwise neat garment, were tens of thousands of pilgrims, clad in ihram, most of them deep in sleep ahead of the momentous day ahead.

A day so significant the Prophet Muhammad stated, "Hajj IS Arafat". Muslims believe that any prayer a pilgrim makes with utmost sincerity at Arafat will be accepted.

By Imran Garda in Middle East on November 17th, 2010
Photo from EPA

 Part 1 of 2 - The South Africans and Nigerians

Financial analyst and stock-broker Dawood Mndebele was born in Soweto. His family converted to Islam when he was just a boy in 1978. 

Articulate and jovial as I joined him just before lunch at his Hajj accommodation in Aziziyah, a few kilometres from Mecca, his simple pilgrim's dress betrayed his rags-to-riches story.

By Sohail Rahman in Middle East on November 14th, 2010
So Rahman with his mother, Zubeeda Naheed Rahman, and father Habib Ul Rahman in 1973 Photo copyright: Rahman Family Archive

Arriving in the late evening into Mecca was not plain sailing. Though I am part of a large media outfit, even being with Al Jazeera holds little sway with the police when they see you wearing the two-piece white sheets – ihram.

It’s a complicated catch-22 situation. To arrive in Mecca, in fact in Saudi during the Hajj month you have to state your intention religiously, so you wear your ihram as you fly into Jeddah.

However, we were not performing the Hajj as we’re guests of the Ministry of Information covering Hajj for the channel, so theoretically one might say you shouldn’t wear the ihram.

The problem arises when the police who patrol the toll plaza as you enter the city see who you are and what you’re wearing.

Tags: Aziz, God, Jeddah, Mecca
By Imran Garda in Middle East on November 13th, 2010
Photo by GALLO/GETTY

More than two million people kick off the Hajj pilgrimage today by heading out east from Mecca to Mina, a tent city on a majestic scale that’s only in use once a year. 

Once there, a series of rituals take place, involving visits to the valley of Muzdalifa, Mount Arafat to sincerely ask for forgiveness and erase one’s previous sins, and the Jamarat where pilgrims will stone the devil - satan or al-shaytaan in Arabic.


“Symbolic” stoning is the intention theologically, to provide a physical outlet for each pilgrim’s personal battle with the temptations of worldly possessions, the ego and other such evils that hinder submission to God and purity of heart.



By Imran Garda in Middle East on November 6th, 2010
Thumbs up to freedom! (L to R) Cameraman Ahmed El-Daly; producer Abdullah Mussa; correspondent Imran Garda

Our hope today was to film the contrasts between spirituality and consumerism apparent here in Mecca.

On one side, you have the holiest site in Islam, the Grand Mosque which houses the Kaaba, swarming with Hajj pilgrims at this time of year.

By Imran Garda in Middle East on November 5th, 2010
Image from GALLO/GETTY

I had fifteen minutes unfettered viewing of the US Capitol building as my taxi tried negotiating rush hour gridlock towards Washington DC's Dulles Airport. The Greco-Roman architecture, pillars on a carousel holding a majestic dome, this imposing building, which had just had a seat-shuffle after the recent midterms, is a symbol of US power.

Its pearly whiteness was a stark contrast to that other symbol I was about to visit - the Kaaba in Mecca, draped in black.

My transit stop was in Frankfurt, Germany. Pilgrims waited at the boarding gate, men dressed in white unstitched sheets, some wearing the upper piece like a poncho, others imperious, exposing a shoulder, like Greco-Roman warriors who might look quite interesting if they stood outside the aforementioned Capitol in those threads; women were clad mostly in black hijab (veils).

By Fatma Naib in Africa on April 11th, 2010
AFP photo

On the first day of the Sudanese elections, the streets of the capital Khartoum were calm and people were carrying on with business as usual.

Most Sudanese businesses were open and people were allowed to take some time off from work to vote.

The process was supposed to start from 0800am Mecca time. I arrived at a polling station in central Khartoum, where voting began more than an hour late.

But the delay did little to dim the fervour of several 60-year-old women, who were waiting eagerly for the voting process to start.

I asked some of them of how they felt. Khadija, 63, said that she was excited and this is her "right" as a Sudanese. I noticed that there were a lot of older women and soldiers who came early to cast their vote.

No young people

By Omar Chatriwala in Middle East on November 28th, 2009

Today is the last day of Hajj. Today, the mentally, spiritually, and physically trying journey comes to an end for about 2.5 million Muslims.

After Eid day, the pilgrims spend the final two or three days of Hajj at Mina - eating, sleeping and praying at its sprawling encampment site.

The camp comprises hundreds of thousands of semi-permanent fireproof tents built by Saudi authorities. You get a real sense of the scale of the camp when looking at it from above:

By Mohammed Adow in Middle East on November 27th, 2009

A well in the desert 4,000 years old and still providing water for millions all year round: that is the story of the Zamzam well in Masjid al-Haram, Islam’s holiest site.

Forty centuries after coming into being, the revered well – located within the mosque in Mecca - continues to provide thousands of gallons of water daily to pilgrims who descend on the city from across the world.

In the middle of the Arabian Desert and far away from any other source or body of water, the well’s self-replenishing ability has baffled many. Its water is served to the public through coolers positioned throughout the mosque.

Muslim scholars say there is nothing ordinary about this water – from how the well came into being in the middle of the desert, to its consistent supply over thousands of years.

Some swear that the water has medicinal values.

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