Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al al-Sheikh, the highest religious authority in the country, said in remarks published on Wednesday that the leaders of regional rival Iran were not Muslims and saw Sunni Muslims as their enemy.
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“They are the sons of the Magi”, he said, referring to Zoroastrianism, a religion that once dominated Iran.
“The heartless and murderous Saudis locked up the injured with the dead in containers – instead of providing medical treatment and helping them or at least quenching their thirst”, he said, without providing evidence.
Custodian of Islam’s most revered places in Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia stakes its reputation on organising haj, one of the five pillars of Islam which every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to is obliged to undertake at least once. However, counts of fatalities by countries who repatriated bodies showed that more than 2,000 people may have died in the crush, more than 400 of them Iranians, according to news agencies.
On Monday, Ayatollah Khamenei accused Saudis of “murdering” pilgrims caught up in a stampede at last year’s Hajj.
“We have to understand that they are not Muslims …”
“This is a place where other pilgrims need serenity.to feel at peace”, he said, adding that citizens of more than 50 nations participate in the Hajj each year and keep politics out of it.
“While we commend the enlightment unit of NAHCON for its timely information dissemination strategy, we urge them to fuse their machinery with those of states pilgrims’ welfare boards especially on this issue of jamarat timing”, the statement said.
Al Arabiya’s Turki Aldakhil cites a report in Saudi media stating a year ago that “the stampede that killed hundreds was caused by a group of around 300 Iranian pilgrims who did not follow instructions from hajj authorities”.
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“Instead of apology and remorse and judicial prosecution of those who were directly at fault in that horrifying event, Saudi rulers – with utmost shamelessness and insolence – refused to allow the formation of an global Islamic fact-finding committee”, he said. 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.
