c. 2006 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) When more than 360 people were trampled to death Thursday (Jan. 12) during the hajj’s symbolic stoning of the devil near Mecca, Saudi Arabia, it was not the first time a large number of Muslims have died as they performed a religious ritual.
Experts say mass religious gatherings always carry the danger of stampedes _ and that such danger is sometimes seen as a sacrificial aspect of the pilgrimage. Nonetheless, they say practical steps, such as posting clear signage, can and should be taken to control crowds and save lives.
“Crowd `mis’ behaviour is not always the primary cause of accidents and incidents. One of the common factors is the inappropriate utilisation of space,” wrote G. Keith Still, founder of Crowd Dynamics, on the British company’s Web site.
An Aug. 31 stampede during a Shiite religious pilgrimage in Baghdad, Iraq, left nearly 1,000 dead. In 2004, nearly 250 pilgrims died in a stampede near Mecca during an annual Muslim pilgrimage. An earlier stampede during the hajj, in 1990, left more than 1,450 dead in a pedestrian tunnel.
The Jamarat Bridge, where the pilgrims perished Thursday, has been a trouble spot over the years. On a single day during the annual three-day hajj ritual, 2.5 million pilgrims attempt to gather around one of three stone pillars representing the devil and cast small stones at it in an act of purification. In 12 years, five stampedes have left more than 1,000 dead and many more injured.
The multiday pilgrimage is a once-in-a-lifetime obligation for every able-bodied Muslim and is considered a peak religious experience.
Michael Wolfe, an American Muslim who has written two books about the hajj, said one problem has been the crowd flow around the three pillars.
In previous tragedies, when people finished throwing their stones and turned to leave, others pressed forward to cast their stones, he said.
“There is also an enthusiasm factor. Stoning the pillars is the last rite of hajj, and throwing the stones can be a physical release. People really want to get into it,” said Wolfe, explaining why pilgrims surge forward even before others clear the way.
In response to recurrent tragedies on the bridge, Saudi officials have begun a multiyear expansion and renovation project that will eventually allow 4 million pilgrims to pass over the bridge in one day. Part of the project _ including a wider pillar design accommodating many more pilgrims _ was already completed by the 2005 hajj season and was credited with the lack of fatalities last year.
Despite the renovations, media reports suggested that Thursday’s loss of life was a deadly replay of earlier stampedes. Pilgrims leaving the eastern end of the bridge apparently collided with other pilgrims on their way up, and a scramble for lost baggage exacerbated the crush.
The entire bridge structure will be demolished in the next phase of renovations, said Still, whose Crowd Dynamics consultancy was hired by Saudi authorities to help redesign the bridge complex.
What replaces the current bridge, which now has four on-and-off ramps, “will be a much safer environment, with 12 different entrances and four different levels” from which pilgrims can cast their stones, Still wrote in a Friday e-mail.
Safe mass pilgrimage is possible, as demonstrated by improvements made by the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadaloupe in Mexico, the largest pilgrimage site in the Western Hemisphere.
More than 1 million worshippers, most of them Roman Catholic, gather there for a special feast day each year. But no major stampedes have occurred, said Timothy Matovina, a theology professor at the University of Notre Dame who has attended the event.
Matovina described how site planners have constructed a conveyor belt system, with several moving walkways that pass in front of the image of Our Lady of Guadaloupe, which is the main sacred attraction.
“You can ride the walkway back and forth as many times as you want, but it prevents you from parking yourself in front of the image and having too many bodies up there at once,” he said.
As desirable as it may seem to make all pilgrimages safe and comfortable, a certain degree of hardship has always been part of the pilgrimage experience, according to Kerry Walters, a philosophy professor at Gettysburg College who has studied the phenomenon.
“Medieval accounts of Westerners going to Jerusalem are filled with stories of harrowing dangers,” Walters said. “The quality of the pilgrimage was proportionate to the amount of danger faced. It became a virtue in and of itself.”
This twinning of pilgrimage and peril was present at the August tragedy in Iraq.
Shiite tradition recommends that pilgrims walk to Imam Musa’s mosque in Kadhimiya, rather than take more convenient transportation like camels or their modern-day motorized equivalent, according to Shiekh Fadhel al-Sahlani, an Iraqi-born imam of the Imam Khoie Islamic Center in Jamaica, N.Y.
The point of this hardship, he said, is for pilgrims to “show love and their ability to sacrifice.”
The same spirit explained why so many pilgrims, including women, children and the elderly, turned out for the pilgrimage, in spite of the danger of insurgent violence, Sheikh al-Sahlani said.
“Some of them were ready to sacrifice no matter what.”
Those who die in a stampede are not technically considered martyrs in Shiite jurisprudence, said Sheikh al-Sahlani, as that term usually refers to one who was killed on a battlefield. In a larger sense, though, their deaths would not be in vain, he said.
“If their intention (in going on the pilgrimage) was pure and clear for the sake of God, then definitely (the victims) will gain a great reward in the next life.”
MO/PH END RNS
Editors: Search the RNS photo Web site at https://religionnews.com for a file photo of a large crowd of Muslims at a festival in Tajikistan. Photo is slugged RNS MUSLIMS TAJIK (no hyphens) and the story is slugged RNS-MUSLIMS-TAJIK. Also search the Web site for a photo of a massive crowd at the annual three-day hajj ritual in Saudi Arabia.
Editors: This is an updated version of a story transmitted Sept. 6 after a stampede in Baghdad.
