The annual pilgrimage to Mecca recently took place. Muslims are required - as part of the Five Pillars - to do the Hajj, as it is known, once in their life if health and money are permitting.
This year, the fear of Swine flu dominated news about the Hajj. Some Arab governments - such as Tunisia - banned their citizens from coming for fear that they would contact the diseases from one or more of the two million pilgrims. Egyptian authorities monitored returning pilgrims for any sign of sickness (Personally, I would have mandated Swine flu shots for any travelers).
Clearly, in such an environment an air born virus can cause a lot of infections: [LA Times.]
But this photo says more than just that precaution needed to be taken by Hajj pilgrims. It says something about the mixing of men and women in Islam. The original thought isn’t mind, so I’ll quote:
A religion that has men and women perform pilgrimage together did not intend to impose gender segregation in society. In other words, the Hajj, strictly speaking, is against the teachings of Wahhabi Islam. If you read the books of the literary heritage of the Arabs, you know that men and women used to fall in love and have sex during the Hajj.
The new found sexual segregation - which only exists in Saudi Arabia - is an extreme interpretation of Islam. Islam does not create lines of segregation between sexes of any groups of people no matter how defined.
Saudi Arabia claims it is upholding Islamic law throughout the nation, part of that the Saudis claim is sexual segregation. How unfounded and ironic this all seems when the one place Saudi Arabia allows for sex intermixing is in the holiest Mosque of Islam in the holiest city of Islam. Do they not see the irony and the fallacy of their ways?
