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AFP
Preparations have been beneath way at the Grand Mosque in Mecca to welcome this year’s pilgrims
The once-a-year Hajj pilgrimage commonly done by Muslims about the earth commences on Wednesday, significantly scaled again due to the fact of coronavirus.
Saudi Arabia has banned intercontinental website visitors from earning the journey to Mecca, to check out to suppress the pandemic.
Only citizens from other nations around the world who are currently resident in the kingdom will be allowed to go to this 12 months.
About two million folks commonly take part, but this year no extra than 10,000 are predicted to show up at.
Those people permitted to acquire section in this year’s Hajj were subject matter to temperature checks and virus tests as they started arriving in Mecca at the weekend, the AFP information company stories.
Worshippers will also have to quarantine prior to and just after the pilgrimage, AFP studies.
In an job interview with Saudi-funded al-Arabiya Television earlier this week, Minister for Pilgrimage Affairs Mohammed Saleh Binten stated pilgrims were being remaining quarantined in their residences just before a more four days of quarantine in lodges in Mecca.
Of those people taking aspect, 30% are stated to be Saudi citizens when the remainder are non-Saudis resident in the kingdom.
The kingdom has recorded more than 270,000 circumstances with practically 3,000 deaths, 1 of the biggest outbreaks in the Center East.
The country only lifted a nationwide lockdown very last month. Challenging constraints to tackle the distribute of infections came into pressure in March, which include 24-hour curfews in most towns and metropolitan areas.
What is the Hajj?
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Creating the pilgrimage at minimum at the time is a single of the Five Pillars of Islam – the five obligations that each and every Muslim, who is in fantastic health and can find the money for it, will have to fulfill in buy to stay a excellent and dependable life, according to Islam.
Pilgrims get in Mecca to stand in advance of the structure known as the Kaaba, praising Allah (God) together.
They perform other acts of worship much too, renewing their sense of goal in the globe.
