Iran’s Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei accused the Saudis rulers on Monday of “murdering” pilgrims caught up in the stampede during last year’s Hajj.
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Abdul Aziz Al Sheikh, the grand mufti, said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s accusations were “not surprising”. “Their enmity with Muslims is old, especially with Sunnis”, he told the Mecca daily newspaper.
Saudi Arabia has blocked Iranians from travelling for the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Islam’s holiest places in Saudi Arabia. The Associated Press said the death toll was at least 2,426, after examining state media reports and officials’ comments from countries whose citizens participated in the pilgrimage.
“Unfortunately, this government by committing crimes in the region and supporting terrorism in fact shed the blood of Muslims in Iraq, Syria and Yemen”, Rouhani said.
Deep suspicions exist between predominantly Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and its mainly Shia Muslim neighbour.
The bitter war of words between Iran and Saudi Arabia intensified on Wednesday ahead of the annual haj pilgrimage+ from which Iranians have been excluded for the first time in decades. The crush was the deadliest incident in the history of the pilgrimage.
“The Iranian authorities are the ones who don’t want the Iranian pilgrims to come here for reasons concerning the Iranians themselves and in light of them seeking to politicise haj and turn it into rituals against Islam’s teachings and that compromise the safety of haj”, the state news agency SPA quoted Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Nayef as saying. “Muslim nations are suffering and it is a disaster for the world of Islam”, Ayatollah Khamenei said.
Ayatollah Khamenei said the Saudis did not prosecute those at fault for the stampede, accused them of showing no remorse and said Riyadh had “refused to allow an worldwide Islamic fact-finding committee”.
Al al-Sheikh’s remarks drew an acerbic retort from Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, who said they were evidence of bigotry among Saudi leaders.
Meanwhile, the Saudi government says 769 people were killed.
The two countries severed diplomatic relations in January after Saudi Arabia executed a prominent Saudi Shiite cleric and angry Iranian crowds overran Saudi diplomatic missions.
“(The) Saudis were insisting that the Iranians be kept in a closed camp, effectively barred from co-mingling and socialising with participants from other countries, often considered an essential element of the hajj experience”, Hannah wrote.
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Custodian of Islam’s most revered places in Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia stakes its reputation on organizing haj, one of the five pillars of Islam which every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to is obliged to undertake at least once.
