Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made the remark on Wednesday among the families of the martyrs of Mina stampede and Masjid ul-Haram crane crash as well as families of Hajj pilgrims martyred in 1987 on the eve of the first martyrdom anniversary of almost 500 Iranian Hajj pilgrims in the Mina tragedy.
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Relations between Shia Iran and ultraconservative Sunni Saudi Arabia were already tense before the regional rivals started trading caustic remarks ahead of the annual pilgrimage.
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. In the deadliest incident of its kind on record, some 2,426 people were killed in a stampede in Mina, Mecca, as they were making their hajj in September of previous year, but its cause still remains unclear.
Last year’s stampede was one of the worst in recorded history, claimed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a message published on Monday.
Khamenei continued, “The incompetence of the Saudis and their failure to provide security for the pilgrims in the house of God in reality showed that this government is not capable of managing the two holy mosques”. Predating Christianity and Islam, Zoroastrianism was the dominant religion in Persia before the Muslim conquest.
Tensions between them have been rising since Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran in January following the storming of its embassy in Tehran, itself a response to the Saudi execution of a dissident Shi’ite cleric.
Rouhani further slammed Saudi rulers for creating obstacles to prevent the dispatch of Iranian pilgrims to this year’s Hajj rituals. Iran boycotted the hajj for three years between 1988 and 1990 after clashes between Iranian pilgrims and Saudi police in 1987 left around 400 people dead.
“We have to understand that they [Iran’s leaders] are not Muslims”, he told the Makkah daily. The Pakistani government, a recipient of Saudi aid, ordered the Pakistani media not to criticize the Saudis’ handling of the Mina stampede, which killed 83 Pakistanis.
Saudi Arabia’s most senior cleric, Grand Mufti Abdulaziz al-Sheikh, countered that that Iranians were “not Muslims”, prompting Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to accuse Saudi leaders of “bigoted extremism”.
“Islamic Ummah [Arabic word for nation] was bereaved in Mina stampede and about 7,000 people were killed, but no country other than Iran reacted and they remained silent”, he noted.
And he accused the nation of trying to politicize Hajj, using it as an opportunity to “violate the teachings of Islam, through shouting slogans and disturbing the security of pilgrims”.
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As the two leading powers in the region, Iran and Saudi Arabia are at odds over a raft of regional issues.
