MINA (Saudi Arabia), Jan 10: More than two million pilgrims after spending Monday in the plains of Arafat and the night at Muzda’alifa returned to their tents here on Tuesday morning.
The more than 150,000 Pakistani pilgrims were reported to be doing well. A Pakistani Haj official told this correspondent that all of them have returned to Mina without any problem.
After performing animal sacrifice and getting their hair shaved or trimmed, the pilgrims took off ihram.
Many pilgrims, especially those from the Arab world where Eidul Azha was celebrated on Tuesday, were seen offering Eid greetings to their near and dear ones back home through mobile phones and fixed lines.
On Tuesday the stoning of the devils at the Jama’arat went off peacefully and continued until the sunset. The Jama’arat has been widened to avoid stampede which marred a number of past events.
Instead of the pillar, the Jama’arat area has been widened into a wall and thus it is much more convenient for the pilgrims to undertake the stoning.
Immediately after the Haj this year, a project is being undertaken to turn the stoning bridge into a multi-level site, to allow people to perform the stoning ritual simultaneously at different levels to avoid congestion and hence stampede.
Sheikh Abdulrahman al-Sudeis, the imam of Masjidul Haram in Makkah, urged the Muslims in his Eid sermon to remember their co-religionists in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and in Iraq.
“We should not forget our brothers in Iraq in the continuing spiral of injustice and murder, and (we should) act seriously to bring security, stability and unity to them,” he said.
He said the West was using the phenomenon of terrorism to scare people away from Islam.
“Muslims are being described in insulting terms to distort the image of Islam,” he deplored.
