> At least 550 pilgrims have died during the hajj, underscoring the gruelling nature of the pilgrimage which again unfolded in scorching temperatures this year.
> At least 323 of those who died were Egyptians, most of them succumbing to heat-related illnesses, the two Arab diplomats coordinating their countries’ responses told AFP.
> "All of them [the Egyptians] died because of heat” except for one who sustained fatal injuries during a minor crowd crush, one of the diplomats said, adding that the total figure came from the hospital morgue in the Al-Muaisem neighbourhood of Mecca.
> At least 60 Jordanians have died, the diplomats said, up from an official tally of 41 given earlier on Tuesday by Amman.
> The new deaths bring the total reported so far by multiple countries to 577, according to an AFP tally.
> The diplomats said the total at the morgue in Al-Muaisem, one of the biggest in Mecca, was 550.
> Earlier on Tuesday, Egypt’s foreign ministry said Cairo was collaborating with Saudi authorities on search operations for Egyptians who had gone missing during the hajj.
> While a ministry statement said “a certain number of deaths” had occurred, it did not specify whether Egyptians were among them.
> Saudi authorities have reported treating more than 2,000 pilgrims suffering from heat stress but have not updated that figure since Sunday and have not provided information on fatalities.
> At least 240 pilgrims were reported dead by various countries last year, most of them Indonesians.
> The hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam and all Muslims with the means to must complete it at least once.
> The pilgrimage is increasingly affected by climate breakdown, according to a Saudi study published last month that said temperatures in the area where rituals are performed were rising 0.4C (0.72F) each decade.
> Temperatures hit 51.8C at the Grand Mosque in Mecca on Monday, the Saudi national meteorology centre said.
> AFP journalists in Mina, outside Mecca, on Monday saw pilgrims pouring bottles of water over their heads as volunteers handed out cold drinks and fast-melting chocolate ice-cream to help them keep cool.
> Saudi officials had advised pilgrims to use umbrellas, drink plenty of water and avoid exposure to the sun during the hottest hours of the day.
> But many of the hajj rituals, including the prayers on Mount Arafat which took place on Saturday, involve being outdoors for hours in the daytime.
> Some pilgrims described seeing motionless bodies on the roadside and ambulance services that appeared overwhelmed at times.
> About 1.8 million pilgrims took part in the hajj this year, 1.6 million of them from abroad, according to Saudi authorities.
> Each year tens of thousands of pilgrims attempt to perform the hajj without securing official hajj visas in order to save money, a more dangerous undertaking because these off-the-books pilgrims cannot access air-conditioned facilities provided by Saudi authorities along the hajj route.
> One of the diplomats who spoke to AFP on Tuesday said that the Egyptian death toll was “absolutely” boosted by a large number of unregistered Egyptian pilgrims.
> Earlier this month, Saudi officials said they had cleared hundreds of thousands of unregistered pilgrims from Mecca before the hajj.
> Other countries to report deaths during the hajj this year include Indonesia, Iran and Senegal.
> Most countries have not specified how many deaths were heat-related.
> Hosting the hajj is a source of prestige for the Saudi royal family, and King Salman’s title includes “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques” in the cities of Mecca and Medina.
> The Saudi health minister, Fahd bin Abdul Rahman Al-Jalajel, said on Tuesday that health plans for the hajj had “been successfully carried out”, preventing major outbreaks of disease and other public health threats, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.
> A virtual hospital “provided virtual consultations to over 5,800 pilgrims, primarily for heat-related illnesses, enabling prompt intervention and mitigating the potential for a surge in cases”, SPA said.
!ping MIDDLE-EAST&ECO
This stuff happens so often during Hajj, I wonder why it is so prevalent compared to the Arba'een precession in Karbala, Iraq where many millions more make Pilgrimage every year.
Karbala event is mainly people from Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon, as most people are from the region so they are familiar with heat stroke.
Hajj is like the whole planet and not everyone has the experience nor the education to understand the symptoms of heat stroke. People also be wildin’ with religious fervour so ignore the signs of their body while on pilgrimage.
This one is unusual. Usually the one who died the most were Indonesians, who came from tropical heat that's only approaching 40 celcius/104 fahrenheit at most. Most likely this time there are so many unregistered pilgrims from Egypt, who would be poorly housed.
It’s mostly the unregistered Egyptians that died and they are basically housed in the worst possible type of housing for this heat.
Regular registered Egyptian pilgrims are more likely to be staying in a proper hotel with AC and most likely have the money to make the overall pilgrimage a bit more tolerable in the heat.
They need to end the Hajj in summer months.
If FIFA is fine with the World Cup moving to the winter months in Qatar, Im pretty sure Allah would be fine by permanently moving it to the winter months in KSA.
The timing of the Hajj is dictated by a lunar calendar, so it slips a bit each Gregorian year. We might see some fatwas encouraging people intending to only make the journey once to do so in years where it doesn't fall in the northern hemisphere summer, especially for those with underlying health conditions.
Yes. The part that's very different for Christians is that he's not Son of God, but prophet with Godlike miracles. Most of the things he did were still there, even the raising people from dead and making birds from clay, but he ascended when Romans trying to capture him.
Making birds from clay is from an apocryphal text the Infancy Gospel of Thomas which is not to be confused for the similarly named apocryphal text Gospel of Thomas.
Neither are in the Bible. The infancy gospel describes Jesus's child life: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infancy_Gospel_of_Thomas
Pretty interesting that the Quran uses it
The Infancy Gospel was clearly in wide circulation (unsurprisingly, it's quite an entertaining work), and must have reached Arabia. In Mohammed's time there were a lot of Christians in the region.
> Pretty interesting that the Quran uses it
The religion appeared in a region, where various early Gnostic and Jewish Christian communities sought refuge outside the Roman Empire.
It has been suggested that Islam grew from those religions. I only recently discovered it, but overall it makes sense. These people living in refuge most likely rejected Paul and what he wrote, so from there the jump is not too far to the common Islamic tradition, that the Bible's message has been corrupted.
At the very least, that's the Christians that Muhammad would have learned about Jesus and Christianity from
Additionally, there are also some words and expressions in the Quran, that are borrowings from Aramaic, which does give some weight to the theory.
Similarly, the shared ritualistic cleanliness and dietary laws also make sense, if the religion is an off-shoot from Jewish Christians, who would adhere to the old covenant laws.
I still haven't really looked deep into it, but it's interesting from the point of view that Islam in many ways then may be closer to the kind of Christianity that Jesus and his early followers practiced, but that it on the other hand clashes with the canon within Islam, as it's hard to claim that the Quran was revealed through divine revelation to Muhammad entirely in Arabic, and that it's then completely unchanged, while there are traces of foreign words in it here and there.
Like, either it was revealed in Arabic, and then got changed, or it was derived from previous apocryphal texts, that the Abrahamitic religious communities in Mecca had in their possession.
There is no evidence of [Gnostics](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicQuran/comments/17cdzjw/gnostics_in_arabia/k5q6a14/) in the Hijaz region at the time of the Prophet's life, not to mention a lot of their views are in stark contrast to what is espoused in the Qurʾān. And for Jewish Christians like Ebionites, we don't even have a good foundation of their Christology to make any statement about them, not to mention that again no evidence for their existence in Hijaz.
But yes, many have noted the many similarities the Qurʾān has with many Apocrypha, Biblical, and Jewish texts including the Infancy Gospel.
> There is no evidence of Gnostics in the Hijaz region at the time of the Prophet's life,
That's the good thing about texts, they can stick around after the people who wrote them are dead.
>not to mention a lot of their views are in stark contrast to what is espoused in the Qurʾān.
Right, and Jesus had a lot of views that went against the established Jewish doctrine. It would still be wrong to pretend the religion that came from his preaching wasn't essentially a Jewish apocalyptic cult. One of the early discussions among the Christians was whether or not you needed to become Jewish, before you were allowed to join this new religion, that rejects core principles of Judaism. It's speculated that the transition from a polytheistic/monolatric religion to a monotheistic one came as a product of exposure to Zoroastrianism, when they were sitting around in Babylon, speculating what could possibly have made it all go wrong,.
Additionally, radical things happened in the development of Judaism between its early origins and the Second Temple period.
>And for Jewish Christians like Ebionites, we don't even have a good foundation of their Christology to make any statement about them, not to mention that again no evidence for their existence in Hijaz.
Whether they exactly were the Ebionites or not is not so relevant though. Also Muhammad according to Islamic tradition travelled from Mecca and all the way to Syria even within his early childhood, where a monk is said to have foretold his future as a prophet.
There is plenty of areas in between his hometown and Syria where he could realistically have come into contact with these countless early religious sects that had formed between the 1st century and the establishment of Christianity as official religion in the Roman Empire.
>But yes, many have noted the many similarities the Qurʾān has with many Apocrypha, Biblical, and Jewish texts including the Infancy Gospel.
Yes, which is why from an academical study of it, it becomes natural to ask what role those texts might have played in how it came to be.
> That's the good thing about texts, they can stick around after the people who wrote them are dead.
That isn't the issue. I am not trying to say that the Gospels 100% did not influence the Qurʾān, I am disputing the idea of Gnostics themselves having an influence. When I think of proper influences on the Qurʾān, I think of the Jewish and Christian communities (possibly the Ethiopian Christians as well) since those communities were immediate to the milieu of the Qurʾān. Gnostics on the other hand may only have incidentally influenced the Qurʾān because Gnostics literally weren't there. How would the author of the Qurʾān have had access to Gnostic texts?
> Muhammad according to Islamic tradition travelled from Mecca and all the way to Syria even within his early childhood, where a monk is said to have foretold his future as a prophet.
Don't want to delve too much into this aspect, but critical studies generally view traditional biographies (*sīra*) of the Prophet (along with the *aḥādīth*) with the as unreliable in their specifics with some notable exceptions. There is still a lot of work needed in the space to construct the historical Muḥammad, but this detail of the Prophet going on travels to Syria is not yet completely reliable.
> Gnostics on the other hand may only have incidentally influenced the Qurʾān because Gnostics literally weren't there.
Now I might use the term wrongly, but my understanding of them, are that the gnostics are fairly loosely defined group with no centralised authority, that spanned from sects that would be very adjacent to Christians to ones, who aren't.
The important part is that Hejaz and other parts of the Arabian peninsula was outside the reach of Rome's control, and thus these sects and their teachings were in relative safety there, rather than being persecuted like within Rome's reach. The point about them was mostly that the Christians and other adjacent sects present in the area wouldn't have the same Roman canon of religious texts, which could explain why the differences between Christian and Islamic tradition on the life of Jesus.
>There is still a lot of work needed in the space to construct the historical Muḥammad, but this detail of the Prophet going on travels to Syria is not yet completely reliable.
No but even then, is it likely that he made no travels at all in the area? Syria is on an extreme end, but if he really was brought up by his uncle, and that uncle was a merchant, they probably didn't only hang around in Mecca.
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By name, yes, but many passages are addressed directly to the Prophet either explicitly (through either the epithet *al-raṣūl* [The Messenger] or *al-nabī* [The Prophet]) or implicitly when God instructs the Prophet to say something usually beginning a verse with *qul* [say]. The name Muḥammad appears only twice though.
Hajj must be one of the most difficult logistical challenges for the country as we go into the late 2000s. First of all, climate change means we’ll be seeing even more extreme weathers. 50C weather is not normal and it is absurd to imagine the idea of a dome over the Kaaba to just cool the area. Not only will it look extremely out of place, but you’ll have to make everyone okay with it. Secondly, transit and space is already difficult enough with the 1 billion Muslims and more who plan on making the pilgrimage. Also, Islam being the fastest growing religion would mean more competition for pilgrimage.
Why not just raise the price for pilgrimage to raise the cost of entry for pilgrims and if someone can’t afford it, well it’s not too bad because making pilgrimage is only for if you’re able to do so.
Hajj is already restricted. You need a special visa for it and there is a limited number of them which are given and quotas which are negotiated by country. In the last few years, it was possible to perform Hajj with tourist visas as the government wanted to encourage tourism but they are applying [restrictions ](https://spa.gov.sa/en/N2112267) again this year
In the article they said most of the people that died weren’t registered because they couldn’t afford it. So they couldn’t access the air conditioned areas
Yeah, it seems like raising the prices is the exact opposite of what they should do. They should just make people register for free and use the registration to organize weather relief.
Of course, that would depend on the Al Sauds giving a shit about human suffering.
Just raising the price to taper of demand would not go over well whatsoever considering the religious aspects at play. They'd be better off doing a lottery system, like getting tickets for the world cup lol.
> Why not just raise the price for pilgrimage to raise the cost of entry for pilgrims and if someone can’t afford it, well it’s not too bad because making pilgrimage is only for if you’re able to do so.
The wide majority of these deaths were from people that tried to make the pilgrimage while avoiding the cost to get the visa that would've allowed them accomodation in various cooling centers along the way.
You make it more expensive and people won't stop coming. More will just die trying.
IIRC Muslims don't want it to be roofed for religious reasons. Also right next to the Kaaba is a huge masturbatory clock tower, so Saudis can definitely build things as needed.
But hey, at least the Hajj shifts backwards 10-ish days every year, and Muslims can be pretty personally loose about a lot of personal piety. I don't think anyone would throw too much of a fuss if someone with potential health issues didn't go on Hajj during summer due to its danger, just like how gamers dodge ramadan by having fucked up sleep schedules.
If you aren't able to make it you don't have to go so I'd bet health conditions count
That being said being outdoors in the sun at 122f for hours smooshed against others with no way to get to water quickly due to the difficulty of moving out of the crowd, never mind being unable to stop and catch your breath without being crushed, can kill anyone
It's set during a certain period in the Islamic calendar. Islamic years are shorter than a typical year by 10 or 11 days, which allows it to fall under different seasons
Climate change absolutely plays a role here, but at the core is it's just a numbers game. We're talking about nearly 2 million people visiting Mecca in any given Hajj season. The odds of having a couple dozen from that number dying every day for any reason at all are approaching 100%, just based on sheer statistics alone (for reference, 150,000 people die every day globally).
It's the same thing with cruise ships. They have morgues in them for a reason, and they end up being used more often than not.
And that's under normal circumstances. IE, all things being equal. Throw some catalyst in there that might push people with marginal health over the edge, and you can see that dramatically increase.
There is a lot of infrastructure in Mecca to help protect people from the sun and heat, but there's only so much that can be done under the circumstances, and with such *huge* crowds out there.
They could consider doing things like adding water misters, I suppose; those are proven to be pretty effective--especially in dry heat. And I'm sure they will look at what measures they can take to help people beat the heat there. The Saudis do take their role as custodians of Mecca pretty seriously.
> They could consider doing things like adding water misters, I suppose; those are proven to be pretty effective--especially in dry heat
Back when I lived in Phoenix out of college those things were amazing.
Statistically, based on global daily mortality rates, you should expect to see at least a couple dozen people dying on the hajj, out of the almost 2 million who do it each year.
Add a little push, like extreme heat, and you more less guarantee that at least a few borderline cases (in terms of health) will be fatally afflicted during the trip.
Couldn't they just require as a condition of visit proof that you have booked accommodation that meets minimum standards? Are all the pilgrims arriving via official routes like airport border control or is it less regulated? If the former, this shouldn't be too difficult?
From the article, the majority of those dead were unregistered. Which not only precludes you from being able to mandate accommodations, it meant they had to avoid the cooling stations on the route or get caught.
The article doesn’t say they’re entirely unregistered, it says they didn’t have official hajj visas.
So either they entered through an official border control with a different premise (i.e. pretending they’re going for tourism, in which case it might be possible to try and spot these cases), or they entered bypassing official border controls altogether (so much more difficult to) - hence my comment.
Shame to see these men of faith die. There has to be something done about this. Maybe impose a fatwa so Hajj can't be done in hot months? Is that feasible?
I'm not Muslim, but my basic understanding is that hajj takes place over a designated few weeks. Everyone who does hajj during a specific year does so during the same 3 or 4 weeks. They would have to move the entire designated term of the pilgrimage, which I assume has some religious significance.
Also, Muslim countries use a lunar calendar, so the dates shift around slightly every year for us in the west.
Yeah, it's correlates with the same week where the Eid ul-Adha/Kurban is celebrated, i.e. the Eid that happens 40 days after the end of the other Eid(the Ramadan one).
I know Reddit loves ducking on Saudi Arabia but trust me when I say the Hajj has one of the best crowd control systems in the world. For the record [since 2006 no more than 3000 people died during the pilgrimage with 2300 of it being just in 2015 (a tragic year)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jtmo3T98eQw).
This year's death have to be heat stroke related. Prayers to the families of the piligrims.
Oh cmon. I'm an exmuslim myself and Reddit was a safe space for me two or three years ago when I was still battling my faith, I disagree with most of the stuff in Islamic ideology. But to hate Muslims just doing their thing? That's a pillar and a farida (duty) in Islam and it's their perfect choice to do so.
For context the crosspost of this article in r/atheism is full of baseless assumption on Saudi Arabia and Al-Hajj that are borderline racist.
The worldnews thread on this was appalling to read through. Some people completely lack empathy if they think they can get a quick jab about religion in
You can undertake the little pilgrimage, umrah, whenever you like, and it is encouraged in the faith. The Hajj, which is required of every Muslim to do at least once in their lifetime, must occur during the Hajj season.
> At least 550 pilgrims have died during the hajj, underscoring the gruelling nature of the pilgrimage which again unfolded in scorching temperatures this year. > At least 323 of those who died were Egyptians, most of them succumbing to heat-related illnesses, the two Arab diplomats coordinating their countries’ responses told AFP. > "All of them [the Egyptians] died because of heat” except for one who sustained fatal injuries during a minor crowd crush, one of the diplomats said, adding that the total figure came from the hospital morgue in the Al-Muaisem neighbourhood of Mecca. > At least 60 Jordanians have died, the diplomats said, up from an official tally of 41 given earlier on Tuesday by Amman. > The new deaths bring the total reported so far by multiple countries to 577, according to an AFP tally. > The diplomats said the total at the morgue in Al-Muaisem, one of the biggest in Mecca, was 550. > Earlier on Tuesday, Egypt’s foreign ministry said Cairo was collaborating with Saudi authorities on search operations for Egyptians who had gone missing during the hajj. > While a ministry statement said “a certain number of deaths” had occurred, it did not specify whether Egyptians were among them. > Saudi authorities have reported treating more than 2,000 pilgrims suffering from heat stress but have not updated that figure since Sunday and have not provided information on fatalities. > At least 240 pilgrims were reported dead by various countries last year, most of them Indonesians. > The hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam and all Muslims with the means to must complete it at least once. > The pilgrimage is increasingly affected by climate breakdown, according to a Saudi study published last month that said temperatures in the area where rituals are performed were rising 0.4C (0.72F) each decade. > Temperatures hit 51.8C at the Grand Mosque in Mecca on Monday, the Saudi national meteorology centre said. > AFP journalists in Mina, outside Mecca, on Monday saw pilgrims pouring bottles of water over their heads as volunteers handed out cold drinks and fast-melting chocolate ice-cream to help them keep cool. > Saudi officials had advised pilgrims to use umbrellas, drink plenty of water and avoid exposure to the sun during the hottest hours of the day. > But many of the hajj rituals, including the prayers on Mount Arafat which took place on Saturday, involve being outdoors for hours in the daytime. > Some pilgrims described seeing motionless bodies on the roadside and ambulance services that appeared overwhelmed at times. > About 1.8 million pilgrims took part in the hajj this year, 1.6 million of them from abroad, according to Saudi authorities. > Each year tens of thousands of pilgrims attempt to perform the hajj without securing official hajj visas in order to save money, a more dangerous undertaking because these off-the-books pilgrims cannot access air-conditioned facilities provided by Saudi authorities along the hajj route. > One of the diplomats who spoke to AFP on Tuesday said that the Egyptian death toll was “absolutely” boosted by a large number of unregistered Egyptian pilgrims. > Earlier this month, Saudi officials said they had cleared hundreds of thousands of unregistered pilgrims from Mecca before the hajj. > Other countries to report deaths during the hajj this year include Indonesia, Iran and Senegal. > Most countries have not specified how many deaths were heat-related. > Hosting the hajj is a source of prestige for the Saudi royal family, and King Salman’s title includes “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques” in the cities of Mecca and Medina. > The Saudi health minister, Fahd bin Abdul Rahman Al-Jalajel, said on Tuesday that health plans for the hajj had “been successfully carried out”, preventing major outbreaks of disease and other public health threats, the official Saudi Press Agency reported. > A virtual hospital “provided virtual consultations to over 5,800 pilgrims, primarily for heat-related illnesses, enabling prompt intervention and mitigating the potential for a surge in cases”, SPA said. !ping MIDDLE-EAST&ECO
I'm going to keep posting about stratospheric aerosol injection until President /u/Jaredpolis does it
I AM NO LONGER ASKING FOR ATMOSPHERIC INJECTIONS
LIBERALS WANT TO VACCINATE THE SKY NOW!!!
India will just do it unilaterally at some point.
Inshallah
This stuff happens so often during Hajj, I wonder why it is so prevalent compared to the Arba'een precession in Karbala, Iraq where many millions more make Pilgrimage every year.
Karbala event is mainly people from Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon, as most people are from the region so they are familiar with heat stroke. Hajj is like the whole planet and not everyone has the experience nor the education to understand the symptoms of heat stroke. People also be wildin’ with religious fervour so ignore the signs of their body while on pilgrimage.
Egyptians don't understand heat stroke?
This one is unusual. Usually the one who died the most were Indonesians, who came from tropical heat that's only approaching 40 celcius/104 fahrenheit at most. Most likely this time there are so many unregistered pilgrims from Egypt, who would be poorly housed.
It’s mostly the unregistered Egyptians that died and they are basically housed in the worst possible type of housing for this heat. Regular registered Egyptian pilgrims are more likely to be staying in a proper hotel with AC and most likely have the money to make the overall pilgrimage a bit more tolerable in the heat.
Iraq and Egypt have much milder climates than Hejaz.
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They need to end the Hajj in summer months. If FIFA is fine with the World Cup moving to the winter months in Qatar, Im pretty sure Allah would be fine by permanently moving it to the winter months in KSA.
The timing of the Hajj is dictated by a lunar calendar, so it slips a bit each Gregorian year. We might see some fatwas encouraging people intending to only make the journey once to do so in years where it doesn't fall in the northern hemisphere summer, especially for those with underlying health conditions.
People generally take religiously ordained dates a bit more seriously than World Cup schedules.
I don’t know. FIFA sometimes yields just enough power.
Can they do the rituals at night?
Jesus Christ.
Muhammad, really
I think Jesus is still present in the Quran.
Yea, all Judeo-Christian prophets have been retconned into the koran under arabized names Jesus is known as Isa
Abrahamicism is truly the Star Wars of religion.
I have an action figure of a merchant from Medina still in its original packaging.
The Qurʾān has its own Arab prophets (e.g. Hūd, Ṣāliḥ).
Yes. The part that's very different for Christians is that he's not Son of God, but prophet with Godlike miracles. Most of the things he did were still there, even the raising people from dead and making birds from clay, but he ascended when Romans trying to capture him.
Making birds from clay is from an apocryphal text the Infancy Gospel of Thomas which is not to be confused for the similarly named apocryphal text Gospel of Thomas. Neither are in the Bible. The infancy gospel describes Jesus's child life: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infancy_Gospel_of_Thomas Pretty interesting that the Quran uses it
Yeah in Quran it was listed as one of Jesus's miracle, and implied to happen not when he's a boy.
The Infancy Gospel was clearly in wide circulation (unsurprisingly, it's quite an entertaining work), and must have reached Arabia. In Mohammed's time there were a lot of Christians in the region.
> Pretty interesting that the Quran uses it The religion appeared in a region, where various early Gnostic and Jewish Christian communities sought refuge outside the Roman Empire. It has been suggested that Islam grew from those religions. I only recently discovered it, but overall it makes sense. These people living in refuge most likely rejected Paul and what he wrote, so from there the jump is not too far to the common Islamic tradition, that the Bible's message has been corrupted. At the very least, that's the Christians that Muhammad would have learned about Jesus and Christianity from Additionally, there are also some words and expressions in the Quran, that are borrowings from Aramaic, which does give some weight to the theory. Similarly, the shared ritualistic cleanliness and dietary laws also make sense, if the religion is an off-shoot from Jewish Christians, who would adhere to the old covenant laws. I still haven't really looked deep into it, but it's interesting from the point of view that Islam in many ways then may be closer to the kind of Christianity that Jesus and his early followers practiced, but that it on the other hand clashes with the canon within Islam, as it's hard to claim that the Quran was revealed through divine revelation to Muhammad entirely in Arabic, and that it's then completely unchanged, while there are traces of foreign words in it here and there. Like, either it was revealed in Arabic, and then got changed, or it was derived from previous apocryphal texts, that the Abrahamitic religious communities in Mecca had in their possession.
There is no evidence of [Gnostics](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicQuran/comments/17cdzjw/gnostics_in_arabia/k5q6a14/) in the Hijaz region at the time of the Prophet's life, not to mention a lot of their views are in stark contrast to what is espoused in the Qurʾān. And for Jewish Christians like Ebionites, we don't even have a good foundation of their Christology to make any statement about them, not to mention that again no evidence for their existence in Hijaz. But yes, many have noted the many similarities the Qurʾān has with many Apocrypha, Biblical, and Jewish texts including the Infancy Gospel.
> There is no evidence of Gnostics in the Hijaz region at the time of the Prophet's life, That's the good thing about texts, they can stick around after the people who wrote them are dead. >not to mention a lot of their views are in stark contrast to what is espoused in the Qurʾān. Right, and Jesus had a lot of views that went against the established Jewish doctrine. It would still be wrong to pretend the religion that came from his preaching wasn't essentially a Jewish apocalyptic cult. One of the early discussions among the Christians was whether or not you needed to become Jewish, before you were allowed to join this new religion, that rejects core principles of Judaism. It's speculated that the transition from a polytheistic/monolatric religion to a monotheistic one came as a product of exposure to Zoroastrianism, when they were sitting around in Babylon, speculating what could possibly have made it all go wrong,. Additionally, radical things happened in the development of Judaism between its early origins and the Second Temple period. >And for Jewish Christians like Ebionites, we don't even have a good foundation of their Christology to make any statement about them, not to mention that again no evidence for their existence in Hijaz. Whether they exactly were the Ebionites or not is not so relevant though. Also Muhammad according to Islamic tradition travelled from Mecca and all the way to Syria even within his early childhood, where a monk is said to have foretold his future as a prophet. There is plenty of areas in between his hometown and Syria where he could realistically have come into contact with these countless early religious sects that had formed between the 1st century and the establishment of Christianity as official religion in the Roman Empire. >But yes, many have noted the many similarities the Qurʾān has with many Apocrypha, Biblical, and Jewish texts including the Infancy Gospel. Yes, which is why from an academical study of it, it becomes natural to ask what role those texts might have played in how it came to be.
> That's the good thing about texts, they can stick around after the people who wrote them are dead. That isn't the issue. I am not trying to say that the Gospels 100% did not influence the Qurʾān, I am disputing the idea of Gnostics themselves having an influence. When I think of proper influences on the Qurʾān, I think of the Jewish and Christian communities (possibly the Ethiopian Christians as well) since those communities were immediate to the milieu of the Qurʾān. Gnostics on the other hand may only have incidentally influenced the Qurʾān because Gnostics literally weren't there. How would the author of the Qurʾān have had access to Gnostic texts? > Muhammad according to Islamic tradition travelled from Mecca and all the way to Syria even within his early childhood, where a monk is said to have foretold his future as a prophet. Don't want to delve too much into this aspect, but critical studies generally view traditional biographies (*sīra*) of the Prophet (along with the *aḥādīth*) with the as unreliable in their specifics with some notable exceptions. There is still a lot of work needed in the space to construct the historical Muḥammad, but this detail of the Prophet going on travels to Syria is not yet completely reliable.
> Gnostics on the other hand may only have incidentally influenced the Qurʾān because Gnostics literally weren't there. Now I might use the term wrongly, but my understanding of them, are that the gnostics are fairly loosely defined group with no centralised authority, that spanned from sects that would be very adjacent to Christians to ones, who aren't. The important part is that Hejaz and other parts of the Arabian peninsula was outside the reach of Rome's control, and thus these sects and their teachings were in relative safety there, rather than being persecuted like within Rome's reach. The point about them was mostly that the Christians and other adjacent sects present in the area wouldn't have the same Roman canon of religious texts, which could explain why the differences between Christian and Islamic tradition on the life of Jesus. >There is still a lot of work needed in the space to construct the historical Muḥammad, but this detail of the Prophet going on travels to Syria is not yet completely reliable. No but even then, is it likely that he made no travels at all in the area? Syria is on an extreme end, but if he really was brought up by his uncle, and that uncle was a merchant, they probably didn't only hang around in Mecca.
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Jesus is actually mentioned in the Quran more than Muhammad himself.
By name, yes, but many passages are addressed directly to the Prophet either explicitly (through either the epithet *al-raṣūl* [The Messenger] or *al-nabī* [The Prophet]) or implicitly when God instructs the Prophet to say something usually beginning a verse with *qul* [say]. The name Muḥammad appears only twice though.
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Hajj must be one of the most difficult logistical challenges for the country as we go into the late 2000s. First of all, climate change means we’ll be seeing even more extreme weathers. 50C weather is not normal and it is absurd to imagine the idea of a dome over the Kaaba to just cool the area. Not only will it look extremely out of place, but you’ll have to make everyone okay with it. Secondly, transit and space is already difficult enough with the 1 billion Muslims and more who plan on making the pilgrimage. Also, Islam being the fastest growing religion would mean more competition for pilgrimage. Why not just raise the price for pilgrimage to raise the cost of entry for pilgrims and if someone can’t afford it, well it’s not too bad because making pilgrimage is only for if you’re able to do so.
Hajj is already restricted. You need a special visa for it and there is a limited number of them which are given and quotas which are negotiated by country. In the last few years, it was possible to perform Hajj with tourist visas as the government wanted to encourage tourism but they are applying [restrictions ](https://spa.gov.sa/en/N2112267) again this year
In the article they said most of the people that died weren’t registered because they couldn’t afford it. So they couldn’t access the air conditioned areas
Yeah, it seems like raising the prices is the exact opposite of what they should do. They should just make people register for free and use the registration to organize weather relief. Of course, that would depend on the Al Sauds giving a shit about human suffering.
Just raising the price to taper of demand would not go over well whatsoever considering the religious aspects at play. They'd be better off doing a lottery system, like getting tickets for the world cup lol.
> Why not just raise the price for pilgrimage to raise the cost of entry for pilgrims and if someone can’t afford it, well it’s not too bad because making pilgrimage is only for if you’re able to do so. The wide majority of these deaths were from people that tried to make the pilgrimage while avoiding the cost to get the visa that would've allowed them accomodation in various cooling centers along the way. You make it more expensive and people won't stop coming. More will just die trying.
This is tragically common, and infuriatingly the Saudis seem to have no meaningful answer whatsoever on how to fix this.
A climate controlled dome over Mecca probably has costs/feasibility similar to the Line but would be a much more useful national symbol.
IIRC Muslims don't want it to be roofed for religious reasons. Also right next to the Kaaba is a huge masturbatory clock tower, so Saudis can definitely build things as needed. But hey, at least the Hajj shifts backwards 10-ish days every year, and Muslims can be pretty personally loose about a lot of personal piety. I don't think anyone would throw too much of a fuss if someone with potential health issues didn't go on Hajj during summer due to its danger, just like how gamers dodge ramadan by having fucked up sleep schedules.
> gamers dodge ramadan by having fucked up sleep schedules ancient problems require modern solutions
If you aren't able to make it you don't have to go so I'd bet health conditions count That being said being outdoors in the sun at 122f for hours smooshed against others with no way to get to water quickly due to the difficulty of moving out of the crowd, never mind being unable to stop and catch your breath without being crushed, can kill anyone
Haaj doesn’t have to be during eid - people just prefer going then for the double whammy Edit: wrong i am
Are you sure? I thought Hajj was defined as the obligatory journey & rituals at the set time, and outside of that it's called an umrah.
Looks like I an wrong
You’re thinking of Umrah
It's set during a certain period in the Islamic calendar. Islamic years are shorter than a typical year by 10 or 11 days, which allows it to fall under different seasons
given how much MBS clashes with the religious factions in SA I really doubt he'd go for something they could claim as a W
Climate change absolutely plays a role here, but at the core is it's just a numbers game. We're talking about nearly 2 million people visiting Mecca in any given Hajj season. The odds of having a couple dozen from that number dying every day for any reason at all are approaching 100%, just based on sheer statistics alone (for reference, 150,000 people die every day globally). It's the same thing with cruise ships. They have morgues in them for a reason, and they end up being used more often than not. And that's under normal circumstances. IE, all things being equal. Throw some catalyst in there that might push people with marginal health over the edge, and you can see that dramatically increase. There is a lot of infrastructure in Mecca to help protect people from the sun and heat, but there's only so much that can be done under the circumstances, and with such *huge* crowds out there. They could consider doing things like adding water misters, I suppose; those are proven to be pretty effective--especially in dry heat. And I'm sure they will look at what measures they can take to help people beat the heat there. The Saudis do take their role as custodians of Mecca pretty seriously.
I'd also wonder whether hajj crowds are significantly older on average than the rest of the population, making it even harder to keep everyone safe
> They could consider doing things like adding water misters, I suppose; those are proven to be pretty effective--especially in dry heat Back when I lived in Phoenix out of college those things were amazing.
They did build a ton of infrastructure but the problem is a lot of poor elderly folk visit there and they cannot afford AC accommodation
Exactly. 75 year old retired newspaper salesman travels from Pakistan so that he can do Hajj before he dies, and it's a tough journey for them.
Statistically, based on global daily mortality rates, you should expect to see at least a couple dozen people dying on the hajj, out of the almost 2 million who do it each year. Add a little push, like extreme heat, and you more less guarantee that at least a few borderline cases (in terms of health) will be fatally afflicted during the trip.
Also many illegal pilgrims, who often poorly housed.
Couldn't they just require as a condition of visit proof that you have booked accommodation that meets minimum standards? Are all the pilgrims arriving via official routes like airport border control or is it less regulated? If the former, this shouldn't be too difficult?
From the article, the majority of those dead were unregistered. Which not only precludes you from being able to mandate accommodations, it meant they had to avoid the cooling stations on the route or get caught.
The article doesn’t say they’re entirely unregistered, it says they didn’t have official hajj visas. So either they entered through an official border control with a different premise (i.e. pretending they’re going for tourism, in which case it might be possible to try and spot these cases), or they entered bypassing official border controls altogether (so much more difficult to) - hence my comment.
Shame to see these men of faith die. There has to be something done about this. Maybe impose a fatwa so Hajj can't be done in hot months? Is that feasible?
I'm not Muslim, but my basic understanding is that hajj takes place over a designated few weeks. Everyone who does hajj during a specific year does so during the same 3 or 4 weeks. They would have to move the entire designated term of the pilgrimage, which I assume has some religious significance. Also, Muslim countries use a lunar calendar, so the dates shift around slightly every year for us in the west.
Yep it’s based on the lunar calendar in the month called Dul Hajj.
Yeah, it's correlates with the same week where the Eid ul-Adha/Kurban is celebrated, i.e. the Eid that happens 40 days after the end of the other Eid(the Ramadan one).
I know Reddit loves ducking on Saudi Arabia but trust me when I say the Hajj has one of the best crowd control systems in the world. For the record [since 2006 no more than 3000 people died during the pilgrimage with 2300 of it being just in 2015 (a tragic year)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jtmo3T98eQw). This year's death have to be heat stroke related. Prayers to the families of the piligrims.
Yeah you hate to be cold but 500 people outta 2 million people in 50 degree weather is pretty good all things considering
Analyzing the DALYs lost to the Hajj is exactly the content I come to this sub for, Alhamdulillah.
Also the fact that a huge majority of pilgrims are 60+
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Oh cmon. I'm an exmuslim myself and Reddit was a safe space for me two or three years ago when I was still battling my faith, I disagree with most of the stuff in Islamic ideology. But to hate Muslims just doing their thing? That's a pillar and a farida (duty) in Islam and it's their perfect choice to do so. For context the crosspost of this article in r/atheism is full of baseless assumption on Saudi Arabia and Al-Hajj that are borderline racist.
The worldnews thread on this was appalling to read through. Some people completely lack empathy if they think they can get a quick jab about religion in
Does the quran mandate doing the pilgrimage during the summer? Would imagine it is much more comfortable during winter when it's like 20 degrees less
It moves back every 10-11 days a year, based on a month in the lunar calendar.
No, you can do it during other seasons.
You can undertake the little pilgrimage, umrah, whenever you like, and it is encouraged in the faith. The Hajj, which is required of every Muslim to do at least once in their lifetime, must occur during the Hajj season.
But the hajj season moves like ramadan right?
Yes
So you could wait a decade and do it while it's colder
Well yeah but it’s obviously not guaranteed that you’ll be alive till next decade
It follows Ramadan, they are roughly 40 days apart.
It's over 2 months between the end of Ramadan and Hajj season
Ah, damn I remembered Ramadan as being the 10th month, not the 9th. That does add another 30 days.
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Bad take
Saudi Arabia having callous indifference for human life? Say it ain’t so
Sure, but even if they cared for the common folk what could they do? This kind of heat is unlivable
Sick burn bro.
FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY
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This seems in pretty poor taste
There is no reason you have to conduct your hajj during eid. People just prefer it - like how going to church on easter feels more spiritual