Saudi authorities normally seek to avoid public discussion of whether Shias are Muslims, but implicitly recognise them as such by welcoming them to the Hajj.
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Saudi Arabia’s top cleric has said Iranians are “not Muslims”, a day after Iran’s supreme leader denounced its management of the Hajj pilgrimage.
Referring to a stampede past year that killed at least 750 people, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Monday criticized Saudi Arabia’s management of the Islamic world’s holiest site, which lies within Saudi borders.
“The hesitation and failure to rescue the half-dead and injured people is also obvious and incontrovertible”, he added. “They murdered them”, he wrote on his website Monday.
Khamenei described the Saudi royal family as “small and puny Satans who tremble for fear of jeopardizing the interests of the Great Satan”, in reference to the United States.
Wary that some pilgrims may seek to use hajj for ideological purposes, Saudi Arabia said it would not tolerate any attempt to politicize hajj – remarks widely seen as referring to Iran.
“We must understand that they are not Muslims, as they are the descendants of the Magus, and their animosity towards Muslims – especially the Sunnis – is very ancient,”Grand Mufti Abd al-Aziz Al ash-Sheikh said”. Predating Christianity and Islam, Zoroastrianism was the dominant religion in Persia before the Muslim conquest.
Riyadh accuses teheran in turn of destabilising Arab states and spreading sectarianism by backing militias in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen and fomenting unrest in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia claims the death toll was only 769 – despite data from more than 30 countries suggesting it was far higher – and has refused to release the details of its investigation into the disaster.
“The government of Saudi Arabia must be held accountable for this incident”, Rouhani said Wednesday at a weekly Cabinet meeting, according to the AP.
While the attack on the Saudi Embassy in Tehran caused the two countries to officially sever ties, relations had already deteriorated to an irreparable point with the Mina stampede and its aftermath.
The history of animosity between Saudi Arabia and Iran has on several occasions spilled over to the hajj, leading to bloodshed.
Iran said in May its pilgrims would not attend, blaming Riyadh for “sabotage” and failing to guarantee their safety.
Iranian pilgrims are not taking part in this year’s hajj, a ritual required of all able-bodied Muslims at least once in their life. But no Iranians can go this year. Saudi Arabia beheaded 28 hajj organizers in response to the tragedy.
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Saudi emergency personnel stand near bodies of Hajj pilgrims at the site where more than 2,000 people were killed and hundreds wounded in a stampede in Mina, near the city of Mecca, at the annual hajj in Saudi Arabia on September 24, 2015.
