I think an important part of Disney’s strategy, that of charging large fees to limit the crowd size, would be unacceptable for Hajji.
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If you’ve been to Disneyland or Disneyworld, they don’t limit the crowd size. They could charge twice as much and the same unbelievable number of people would still be there.
They do, there’s a max capacity. (Couldn’t find what it is with my cursory googling.)
But you probably wouldn’t like it.
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I read a couple of good articles yesterday talking about how the hajj is particularly susceptible to this kind of thing for a bunch of reasons, including the extreme diversity of the crowd (almost every country in the world is represented, with no common language), the religious nature of the event (everyone has to perform certain rituals at certain times in specific places in a particular order), and the fact that the vast majority of attendees are doing it for the first and only time in their lives (and therefore are disoriented, as any first-time visitor to a foreign land is likely to be).
At Disney and other amusement parks, the vast majority of people speak a common language, many of them have been there before, and there’s no requirement that you ride Space Mountain and It’s a Small World in a particular order. At mass events like New Year’s Even in Times Square, the police strictly limit the number of people who can attend, and once capacity is reached they turn away many times the number of people who actually make it into the square. Those aren’t things they can really do at the hajj.
That said, I’m pretty sure the Saudis can do better than they’ve done.
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They seem to manage those challenges reasonably well at Olympic venues though, even if the crowds still don’t reach “hajj” levels. (And don’t tell me that sports fandom doesn’t count as a religious event. It’s the only damn explanation for a lot of fans’ behavior.)
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Not to mention the Saudis have made several big changes to the areas and how people move between the rituals. So they can change shit without offending Allah, one would think.
(Example: The Stoning of the Devil pillars are now huge walls.)
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Well yes, there’s that. Of course there’s a max occupancy for fire safety. I am talking about Disney purposely keeping the place sparse, which they don’t do.
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Yeah, Olympic venues are a good place to start to look for guidance. Although I suspect the number of people entering/exiting an Olympic venue at any one time is a tiny fraction of the number of people who have to hit a single pillar with seven stones on Eid al-Adha.
They can’t really change the time/manner/location in which rituals are supposed to be done, but they can change the physical structure of the location at will. In fact, some of the more right wing interpretations of Islam frown on preserving historical structures or artifacts, lest people worship them like idols. This has made the Saudis quite willing to raze historical sites (Destruction of early Islamic heritage sites in Saudi Arabia - Wikipedia). It would just be nice if they’d prioritize crowd safety in their rebuilding rather than focusing on luxury hotels and shopping malls.
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Every venue (in western countries) has a maximum capacity. I recently worked on access control systems for large scale events and enforcing capacity limits was an important function of the system.
Like it or not, the people who run the Hajj are going to have to limit the number of people who visit their finite space in a finite time.
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Is Arabic not a common language among Muslims? I know it wouldn’t be a first language for everyone, but isn’t learning Arabic important to religious study? I thought it was, but I am not Muslim, so I’m speculating.
It does seem like it would be in Saudi interests to get this all running as smoothly as they can, because once their oil runs out, isn’t Hajj their remaining income source?
I doubt it. There are a lot of Muslims who are in South and East Asia that I am fairly confident don’t read Arabic.
Just like most Christians can’t read Hebrew or even Latin or Greek.
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While most practicing Muslims have at least some knowledge of Classical Arabic, the vast majority of the world’s Muslims have little or no literacy or conversational ability in modern Arabic. So they might be able to recognize or recite a prayer or Quranic verse, but won’t be able to read practical signage or communicate verbally with an Arab. Less than 20% of the world’s Muslims live in Arabic-speaking countries, and there are differences in dialect that can make it hard even for them to understand each other.
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Sounds like my family reunions.
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The costumes would probably disqualify them too.
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Crowd Dynamics, Dirk Helbing and other western consultants have done work on crowd control for Mecca and as not muslim had to work via security cameras or from video footage of previous Hajj.
Actually, that’s not a bad idea… offer a limited number of entrance visas per hajj season, perhaps, prioritize first timers, and maybe people who’ve applied more than once?
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If that happens, we’ll have a real holy war on our hands…
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That’s true too. But the fact is that they have a huge responsibility by having political control of two of the most important landmarks in the Islamic world. Doing so would be tricky, because they can’t cut off access to people they deem undesirable (non-Wahhab conforming Sunnis, Shia’s, and Sufis), which as far as I know, they haven’t done and wouldn’t do (or maybe they have used it as a political wedge, I don’t know). But they can create a system that controls the number of people taking the hajj at any one time, especially if it saves 700 lives. If you do it in a way that isn’t cutting off access to anyone and that really does protect pilgrims during the Hajj, wouldn’t that be a win-win, all around? Especially if they worked something out with, say Iran?
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This idea is problematic.
Islamic doctrine requires that adherents do the Hajj at least once in their lives, and for many, that one chance has to be now (when they have enough money, or are at a certain stage in life, or, or, or…).
It’s not so flexible a thing as to say, “Well, it isn’t Allah’s will that I go this year, so I’ll just move it back a year or two.”
Having been an adherent of Mormonism, and with the Mormons’ drive (and mandate!) to attend the temple before there were LDS temples nearly everywhere, this was a very big thing to arrange. A lifetime thing for many.
It really just isn’t as simple as denying visas to some poor souls who aren’t worthy enough by some standard or another.
If Islam could muster a central authority (as much as our leaders fear a true “Caliphate”), perhaps it could create/authorize holy places worthy of Hajj on other continents.
Wishful thinking, yes. They won’t do that any time soon.
I think the real answer, as long as Mecca must be the only Mecca, is to redesign the place to modern standards using modern crowd engineers (like Disney’s Imangineers) so that great masses of people can do what they need to do without killing one another.
The core idea is a good one.
It sounds like you’re recommending that the 4-5 valid days of Hajj be extended so that more can attend at different times. I’m pretty sure nobody in the Islamic world would go for that. (But the same can be said of multiple Meccas, so here we are.)
