Stoning a symbolic Satan

Stoning a symbolic Satan

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:

Despite the relative luxury of the Saudi-built facilities, which includes electricity and running water, many people still pitch their own tents while in Mina. As Reuters' FaithWorld blog points out, this is often because they cannot afford to pay the rates of the Hajj trip groups that are allocated the space.

At Mina, the task at hand is pretty simple - stone the devil.

Three big columns - more like walls, really - represent the three spots where the devil appeared to Abraham to try to dissuade him from heeding God's command.

So, for those three days, pilgrims throw stones at the pillars, in a symbolic rejection of temptation.

But with millions of people converging on the site of the pillars, called jamarat, it has become the most dangerous spot during Hajj. There is a very real risk of getting crushed by the crowd.

After the tragedy of 2006, in which hundreds of people died during a stampede, the Saudis have poured millions of dollars into expanding the Jamarat Bridge.

As it stands now, the bridge spans 5 floors, and is set to expand further.

This year there were no major incidents reported.

At the Hajj command and control center, Major General Khalid Fahad al-Shunaber, of Saudi Public Security, said that of the 1,800 security cameras installed across the pilgrimage sites to monitor the Hajj, more than 200 are located on the bridge.

Data from Public Security's studies and statistics division showed 2.5 million people had entered the bridge on the first day of stoning.

I and several colleagues went out onto the bridge yesterday in the early afternoon, which would normally be peak stoning time, but we found the crowd to be quite manageable.

So perhaps they've got the crowding issue under control at the Jamarat Bridge. But there's still much work to be done. I'm sure thousands of people, having completed their final stoning, are at this moment, stuck in gridlocked traffic on the road out of Mina.

We chose to head back to Mecca yesterday. Getting on the road at about 3pm, we lurched through traffic for about four-and-a-half hours before trekking the last half-hour by foot. It was only an eight kilometre trip.

Back at Mecca, the only thing left for pilgrims to do is perform a tawaf - walking around the Kaaba seven times. Then Hajj is complete.