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Hajj Stampede: ‘Pilgrims With African Nationalities’ Say Nothing Will Stop Them

Hajj Stampede: ‘Pilgrims With African Nationalities’ Say Nothing Will Stop Them

At the Entebbe Airport in Uganda a woman in a red dress and a black hijab runs to meet her husband who’s arriving clutching two duty free bags. In tears they embrace and are quickly joined by other relatives, who jostle each other to hug the man before breaking into song.

Another middle-aged man breaks into tears when he sees her aging mother walking down the airport aisle, manned by police officer in black uniforms and AK-47 guns.

The policemen look uninterested in all the celebrations going on around them.

These are the scenes repeated across several airports on the continent as African pilgrims arrive home from the hajj festivals in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, where a stampede killed hundreds of Muslim worshipers who were making a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the holy land to retrace the footsteps of prophet Mohammad in 630 CE.

About 2 million people travel to the Middle Eastern nation to take part in the religious ritual of hajj that sees them walk from Medina to Mecca.

But for the sixth time in the last 25 years the celebration was marred by a catastrophic stampede that left nearly 770 people dead and thousands injured.

About 242 Africans died in the second-worst stampede in 25 years. Most of the dead were pilgrims from Morocco, Egypt, Mali, Cameroon and Nigeria.

Hajj
Ugandan Mutuma Muhammed arriving from Saudi Arabia (Image: Kevin Mwanza)

African leaders were outraged by comment by Prince Khaled al-Faisal, head of the central Hajj Committee in Saudi Arabia, that the latest disastrous stampede in Mecca was caused by “some pilgrims with African nationalities.”

Former Nigerian Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, took a swipe at the Saudi government for blaming the Mecca tragedy that killed over 717 people on Africans making the religious visit.

“717 souls perish in a stampede during hajj and instead of expressing regret a Saudi Arabian prince blames ‘African nationalities’ for the tragedy? How callous can these Arabs be?” Fani-Kayode said in a Facebook post.

But the belief that anyone who dies during the hajj pilgrimage goes straight to heaven has strengthened the resolve of most Islamic faithful who witnessed the stampede to keep visiting Mecca each year.

“I was affected because these are some of my brothers. When you lose a brother you can’t say you’re not affected,” Mutuma Muhammed told AFKInsider.  From Kiswa district in Uganda, Muhammed was returning from his first hajj pilgrimage.

“I will be going back because this can’t affect me forever. Inshallah, probably next year I will be going back.”