{"id":367,"date":"2007-12-17T16:03:04","date_gmt":"2007-12-17T16:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2007\/12\/hajj-gets-under-way-in-saudi-a.php"},"modified":"2007-12-17T16:03:04","modified_gmt":"2007-12-17T16:03:04","slug":"hajj-gets-under-way-in-saudi-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/hajj-gets-under-way-in-saudi-a","title":{"rendered":"Hajj Gets Under Way in Saudi Arabia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Associated Press<\/strong><br \/>\nMECCA, Saudi Arabia &#8211; Millions of Muslims from around the world gathered in Mecca Sunday for the start of the annual Islamic hajj pilgrimage, as the Saudi Interior Ministry announced tough security precautions.<br \/>\nMen and women draped in white robes circled the Kaaba, Islam&#8217;s holiest site, seven times in a ceremony anticipating the official start of the pilgrimage on Monday.<br \/>\nKing Abdullah has invited 1,000 guests to this year&#8217;s hajj, including Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.<br \/>\nOver the next two days, an estimated 2.5 million pilgrims will move out of Mecca to Mount Arafat for Tuesday&#8217;s climax of symbolically stoning the devil.<br \/>\nBy Friday, more than 1.6 million pilgrims had arrived in Mecca, according to the Central Hajj Committee. The Health Ministry said about 254 pilgrims, many who were elderly, have died of natural causes since arriving.<br \/>\nThe pilgrims are massed in tent cities on the outskirts of Mecca. For many believers, the hajj is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to cleanse their sins in what is one of the most important rites for Muslims.<br \/>\nThis year&#8217;s hajj takes place amid increasing worries across the Islamic world over the bloodshed in Iraq and Afghanistan and recent terror attacks by al-Qaida-linked groups, including last week&#8217;s twin suicide bombings in Algeria that killed at least 37 people.<br \/>\nTensions also have increased between the two main sects of Islam, Sunnis and Shiites, who come together in the five days of hajj rituals centered around Mecca, the traditional birthplace of Islam&#8217;s Prophet Muhammad.<br \/>\nSaudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab countries &#8211; who are all U.S. allies &#8211; have been worried over Iran&#8217;s increasing regional influence. But the king&#8217;s invitation to Ahmadinejad appeared to reflect a readiness from Saudi Arabia, a majority Sunni country, to reach out to its Shiite-dominated neighbor. It comes about a week after the a U.S. intelligence report said Iran had ended a nuclear weapons program four years ago.<br \/>\nSaudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz said the kingdom is capable of maintaining security and preventing any attempt to threaten the safety of the pilgrims.<br \/>\n&#8220;We will not allow for the problems in other countries to be reflected here during this hajj season,&#8221; he said in a news conference late Saturday.<br \/>\nMaj. Gen. Saleh Mohammed al-Shihri, commander of the Central Control of the Hajj Security, said 1,150 cameras have been placed in several areas to monitor the area. Several helicopters, fitted with these cameras, will also hover over the pilgrims.<br \/>\nNayef said no extra security precautions will be put in place for Ahmadinejad. The Iranian leader was scheduled to arrive in Mecca on Monday, Iranian state media has reported.<br \/>\n<em>Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Associated Press MECCA, Saudi Arabia &#8211; Millions of Muslims from around the world gathered in Mecca Sunday for the start of the annual Islamic hajj pilgrimage, as the Saudi Interior Ministry announced tough security precautions. Men and women draped in white robes circled the Kaaba, Islam&#8217;s holiest site, seven times in a ceremony anticipating the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Hajj Gets Under Way in Saudi Arabia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/hajj-gets-under-way-in-saudi-a\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hajj Gets Under Way in Saudi Arabia\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Associated Press MECCA, Saudi Arabia &#8211; Millions of Muslims from around the world gathered in Mecca Sunday for the start of the annual Islamic hajj pilgrimage, as the Saudi Interior Ministry announced tough security precautions. Men and women draped in white robes circled the Kaaba, Islam&#8217;s holiest site, seven times in a ceremony anticipating the&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/hajj-gets-under-way-in-saudi-a\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-12-17T16:03:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"nsymmonds\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Hajj Gets Under Way in Saudi Arabia","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/hajj-gets-under-way-in-saudi-a","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Hajj Gets Under Way in Saudi Arabia","og_description":"Associated Press MECCA, Saudi Arabia &#8211; Millions of Muslims from around the world gathered in Mecca Sunday for the start of the annual Islamic hajj pilgrimage, as the Saudi Interior Ministry announced tough security precautions. Men and women draped in white robes circled the Kaaba, Islam&#8217;s holiest site, seven times in a ceremony anticipating the&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/hajj-gets-under-way-in-saudi-a","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2007-12-17T16:03:04+00:00","author":"nsymmonds","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/hajj-gets-under-way-in-saudi-a","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/hajj-gets-under-way-in-saudi-a","name":"Hajj Gets Under Way in Saudi Arabia","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-12-17T16:03:04+00:00","dateModified":"2007-12-17T16:03:04+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/hajj-gets-under-way-in-saudi-a#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/hajj-gets-under-way-in-saudi-a"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/hajj-gets-under-way-in-saudi-a#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hajj Gets Under Way in Saudi Arabia"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2","name":"nsymmonds","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","caption":"nsymmonds"},"description":"Nicole Symmonds is Beliefnet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prayer editor and also covers Christianity. A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. From fashion to faith and the journey isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t over yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/nsymmonds"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}