After two years of suspension due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Saudi Arabia is reopening its doors to foreign Muslims. The great annual pilgrimage to Mecca is held from July 7 to July 12, but new restrictions are spoiling the festivities for Muslims coming from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe and Australia. The Saudi government has indeed decided to considerably reduce the reception of pilgrims.
Only believers under 65 with a full vaccination schedule can claim the start. To fulfill the fifth pillar of Islam, all worshipers must now book their trip on the digital platform, Motawif, launched by the Saudi government, the only authority to provide visas for the great pilgrimage. It was only in April that Saudi Arabia announced that it could welcome one million Muslims to take part in the hajj, while around 2.5 million worshipers in total came to Mecca in 2019. An announcement made in April the latter which sows disarray on the side of the French agencies which have been managing visa applications for decades.
Among the pilgrims too, the announcement surprised. Mame Fama Kante has been making the great pilgrimage to Mecca for ten years. But this year, out of the thirty pilgrims with whom she was to join Saudi Arabia, only one was drawn. “It’s the most important trip for a Muslim. A trip that has been preparing for years and years and 12 days from departure, we are told that the situation is changing, it’s really sad”, regrets this Parisian who only has to unpack her suitcases. The Koran in her hands, she remains positive despite everything: “It’s fate somewhere.”
Deprived of the accompaniment of their travel agencies, the French pilgrims are quite simply left to themselves in Mecca. “So far it’s been total anarchy! A disaster, explains Soundous El Moaddem, a Frenchwoman drawn by lot to make the great pilgrimage. She has been going through the galleys since her arrival in the holy city: “We had lost our passports, we were on no bus transfer list. We feel that this company that has been hired, they are novices. They hired student jobs to manage the pilgrims when they arrived at the hotels”she slips.
Not to mention the accommodation imposed by the Saudi government through its platform. The agency now requires them to stay in a hotel more than two kilometers from the great mosque, while the one offered by the French operator was only 50 m away.beings.
“They were unable to organize the ‘dispatch’ in the rooms. When we arrived, some had room keys in which there were already people in. There are people who did not have a bedroom”
Soundous El Moaddemat franceinfo
This Frenchwoman has not received her badge allowing her to access the holy places either. “We did not imagine managing administrativeshe breathes, we are disappointed.”
For their part, travel agencies specializing in religious tourism are undergoing these changes. French operators now fear for their survival, because some are specialized in the organization of this pilgrimage. At Orient Service, an agency based in Paris, pilgrimages represent 60% of turnover. Mohamed Atbaa, the head of the agency, had to cancel 70 departures. “We are angry at the way of doing things. We have not been put in competition with the Saudi state which is taking the monopoly”explains Mohamed Atbaa. “It benefits them, it’s shenanigans. It’s what we call the fact of the prince”, he says regretfully. A privatization of the hajj market which should enable Saudi Arabia, according to several experts interviewed, to diversify the country’s economy by seizing the manna of pilgrimage to prepare for the post-oil era.
Pilgrimage to Mecca: the new procedures complicate the daily life of the faithful – the report by Romane Brisard
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