Pilgrims begin the final rites of Hajj as Muslims celebrate Eid al-Adha
Muslims across Minnesota are getting ready to celebrate Eid-al-Adha
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Masses of pilgrims on Sunday embarked on a symbolic stoning of the devil in Saudi Arabia under the soaring summer heat. The ritual marks the final days of the Hajj, or Islamic pilgrimage, and the start of the Eid al-Adha celebrations for Muslims around the world.
The stoning is among the final rites of the Hajj, which is one of the Five Pillars of Islam. It came a day after more than 1.8 million pilgrims congregated at a sacred hill, known as Mount Ararat, outside the holy city of Mecca, which Muslim pilgrims visit to perform the annual five-day rituals of Hajj.
Fourteen Jordanian pilgrims have died from sunstroke during the Hajj pilgrimage, according to Jordan’s state-run Petra news agency. The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it has coordinated with Saudi authorities to bury the dead in Saudi Arabia, or transfer them to Jordan.
Israel-Hamas war, which has pushed the Middle East to the brink of a regional conflict.
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip weren’t able to travel to Mecca for Hajj this year because of the closure of the Rafah crossing in May when Israel extended its ground offensive to the city on the border with Egypt. And they will not be able to celebrate the Eid al-Adha as they used to do in previous years.
Dozens of Palestinians gathered Sunday morning near a destroyed mosque in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis to perform the Eid prayers. They were surrounded by debris and rubble of collapsed houses. In the nearby town of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, Muslims held their prayers in a school-turned shelter. Some, including women and children, went to cemeteries to visit the graves of loved ones.
“Today, after the ninth month, more than 37,000 martyrs, more than 87,000 wounded, and hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed,” Abdulhalim Abu Samra, a displaced Palestinian, told the AP after wrapping up the prayers in Khan Younis. “Our people live in difficult circumstances.”
Mohammed Salem / REUTERS
Also in the occupied West Bank, Palestinians convened for the Eid prayers in Ramallah, the seat of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority. “We suffer greatly and live through difficult moments with (what’s happening to) our brothers in Gaza,” said Mahmoud Mohana, a mosque imam.
In Yemen’s Houthi-held capital of Sanaa and in Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, Muslims celebrated and prayed for the war-weary Palestinians in Gaza.
“We are happy because of Eid but our hearts are filled with anguish when we see our brothers in Palestine,” said Bashar al-Mashhadani, imam of al-Gilani Mosque in Baghdad. “(We) urge the Arabic and Islamic countries to support and stand beside them in this ordeal.”
In Lebanon where the militant Hezbollah group traded nearly daily attacks with Israel, a steady stream of visitors made their way into the Palestine Martyrs Cemetery near the Shatila Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut early Sunday morning, bearing flowers and jugs of water for the graves of their loved ones, an annual tradition on the first day of Eid.
The cemetery is the burial site of many Palestinian Liberation Organization leaders and militants who died fighting Israeli forces in Lebanon in the 1970s and ’80s. More recently, top Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri and two other Hamas members, killed with him in an apparent Israeli airstrike in Beirut’s southern suburbs in January, were buried there.
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Source: cbsnews.com