After finishing iftar, a man began preparing for the journey to Makkah to perform Umrah (minor pilgrimage) when his wife rushed in to tell him that the security forces had foiled a terrorist attack in the holy city.
The news did not make him change his plans. On the contrary, he felt even more strongly motivated to make the journey to seek God’s forgiveness and mercy. The woman tried in vain to convince her husband to put off the journey to another time when the situation had calmed down but the husband insisted on carrying on with his plans.
At the airport, security was tight and both passengers and luggage were subjected to thorough searches. The man was wearing ihram, the two-piece white garment required of pilgrims, but he still had to pass through the metal detector and subject himself, like the other passengers, to a body search. In the past, security forces treated the ihram with respect and consideration but no longer.
Once the plane had arrived, the man saw the road to Makkah swarming with security forces. Military trucks with machine guns mounted on them were everywhere. At the hotel, no one was allowed inside without being thoroughly searched. Even at the Grand Mosque, the most sacred place on earth and the place where people should always find safety and security, police and security forces were on duty at every gate and entrance. They were in fact everywhere.
Early in the morning inside the Grand Mosque, construction workers resumed expanding the area around the Holy Kaaba reserved for circumambulation in order to accommodate more people. The sounds of drills and hammers working on steel and concrete was heard throughout the building. With each sound from a drill or hammer, frightened worshippers raised their heads to see the source, fearing it might be something terrible violating the sanctity of the place.
A journey that was supposed to be made for the sake of Allah, one devoted to prayer and supplication became instead a nightmare. Fear prevailed over reverence and devoutness, and concern and confusion over peace of mind and tranquillity. Is this the objective sought by those trying to destabilize the most sacred place on earth? Do these individuals think terrorizing pilgrims and worshippers who have come to this sacred place from all over the world will serve their goals? Don’t they know the divine punishment that awaits those whose purpose is desecration and wrongdoing?
— Arab News Local Press 13 November 2003
