JEDDAH, 20 November 2006 — Pilgrims will now be able to purchase sacrificial animals for the Haj ritual through the Internet and will be issued coupons in a new initiative spearheaded by the Islamic Development (IDB), which supervises the Kingdom’s sacrificial meat utilization project.
The IDB has just signed an agreement with a specialized firm to design a system for the purpose. “People can buy these IDB coupons either using MasterCard or Visa credit cards or through money transfers,” IDB President Dr. Ahmed Muhammad Ali told a meeting of Haj officials from foreign embassies at the bank’s headquarters here on Saturday.
“This service will enable the purchase of coupons through the Internet for pilgrims and others anywhere in the world,” he explained.
The IDB plans to utilize 700,000 heads of sheep during the upcoming Haj season. It will charge SR405 for each animal. Last year it distributed 344,291 sheep carcasses among the needy in Makkah and other parts of the Kingdom and 277,000 carcasses among the poor in 23 Muslim countries.
The IDB chief urged embassy officials to cooperate with the project by encouraging pilgrims from their respective countries to purchase the coupons instead of sacrificial animals in person.
“This way they can enable us to utilize the meat of sacrificial animals in the best manner,” he said.
The project, which has successfully been running for 24 years, has been applauded all over the world as it helped to utilize the meat of hundreds of thousands of sacrificial animals that would have otherwise gone to waste as in previous years.
Speaking about the new service, Muhammad Ali said the bank would send SMS messages to pilgrims who have purchased coupons confirming that the slaughters of their animals have been carried out. A database would be set up for the optimum utilization of the project’s slaughtering houses in Muaisem near Mina, he added.
The Saudi government has spent more than SR1 billion on building automatic slaughterhouses for the project. The bank employs around 18,000 people including butchers, administrators, 700 veterinarians and 600 Shariah consultants to carry out the work in a perfect manner.
The project is significant as the number of pilgrims coming for Haj is increasing year after year. If pilgrims discard sacrificial animals after slaughtering them it would create serious health and environment problems.
Moreover, many pilgrims are not attentive to the requirements that should be met by sacrificial animals. Some pilgrims buy animals that are unfit to be offered as sacrifices, mainly because of their ignorance of Shariah conditions. There are pilgrims who leave the slaughtered animals at their place of slaughter, not making use of their meat.
The IDB has signed a contract with the Al-Rajhi Banking and Investment Corporation to sell the coupons.
Every season, Al-Rajhi opens coupon selling points near the Grand Mosque in Makkah and the holy sites of Mina and Arafat as well as in the main ports that receive pilgrims. The coupons can also be purchased at the bank’s branches all over the Kingdom.
