MAKKAH: Visitors who come to Makkah to perform Umrah travel thousands of kilometers to reach the Kingdom, but regrettably some of them, despite the agony of crossing this long distance, will do things which are totally undesirable and which may make their Umrah invalid.
The wrong practices by some of the visitors appear clearly in the holy sites and other historic places in Makkah where you will find people kissing walls or writing their names on rocks seeking the blessing of Allah, which is against the true spirit of Islam.
A team from Arab News visited Jabal Al-Rahma (The Mount of Mercy) in Arafat after Dhuhr prayer yesterday and witnessed some of these wrong and often irreligious practices.
Despite the hot sun and the temperature soaring above 38 degrees Celsius, there were a large number of visitors hailing from various Arab and Islamic countries near the mount. Some of the visitors, though old and sick, insisted on climbing to the top of the mount to obtain more blessing.
Mustapha Hassan, an Arab, said he came to Makkah to perform Umrah but insisted on visiting Arafat, the holy site located about 12 km away, to see the Jabal Al-Rahma.
On the Day of Standing in Arafat during the annual Haj, the pilgrims, men clad in a two-piece seamless white cloth and women covered except for their hands and face, spend the day near the mount praying for forgiveness and beseeching God for success in a symbolic enactment of the Day of Judgment.
“My ailing mother who suffers from a chronic disease asked me to climb on Jabal Al-Rahma and write her name on the column there in order for her to heal,” he said.
Mustapha Hassan seemed to believe very strongly in what his mother told him because he insisted on reaching the column and writing her name on it.
Abu Al-Maati has another reason that drives him to come to Arafat every time he comes to Makkah to perform Umrah. Though he has never performed Haj, fellow villagers call him “Haji” because he has performed several Umrahs. He said people in the village give him money to bring them soil or rocks from Arafat.
“This is a good business and I make a lot of money out of it,” he said.
Shalabiyah Al-Sayyid, an elderly heart patient, insisted on climbing up the hill against the advice of her doctor back home. As she reached the column on the top the woman fainted, though she regained consciousness after a short while. When she fully recovered, the sick lady began to kiss the column and rub her body against it looking for baraka (blessing) and cure for her diseases.
We saw a visitor writing his name on the pillar using a big red pen. When we asked him about that, he said it was his first time in Saudi Arabia and that his mother told him he would go to the Kingdom so often if he had his name clearly written on the rocky pillar on top of the Jabal Al-Rahma.
We saw some of the visitors rubbing their faces with dust collected from the mount while others were hitting their heads against it.
All this goes on despite the best efforts of authorities to prevent such objectionable customs taking place within the holy precincts.
Sheikh Ahmed bin Qasim Al-Ghamdi, director of the Commission for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice in Makkah, said the government has established awareness centers in these places to discourage people from engaging in such irreligious practices, yet many people still resort to them.
“This shows the weakness of their faith,” he said.
He said visiting these areas for historic and touristic value is permissible but to attribute sanctity to everything in there is against Islam.
