DUSHANBE, September 2, 2008, Asia-Plus — Not more than 5,000 Tajik Muslims will participate in the hajj this year, Abdusalom Rajabov, head of the main directorate for religious affairs (DRA) within the Ministry of Culture (MoC), said in an interview with Asia-Plus.
“Like last year, the Saudi Arabia government allotted Tajikistan a quota of 5,000 pilgrims,” Rajabov said, noting that this year, the hajj will come to US$2,990 for Tajik Muslims. We will recall that last year, the Hajj came to US$2,580 for each of Tajik hajjis.
Tajikistan has a population of 7 million and some 97 percent of citizens consider themselves Muslims. The MoC DRA controls participation in the Hajj, and the government continues to require air travel for the Hajj. Tajik pilgrims fly to Saudi Arabia from both Dushanbe and Khujand.
The Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, is the largest annual pilgrimage in the world. It is the fifth pillar of Islam, an obligation that must be carried out by every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to do so, at least once in their lifetime. It is the demonstration of the solidarity of the Muslim people, and their submission to God.
The pilgrimage occurs from the 8th to the 12th day of Dhul Hijrah, the12th month of the Islamic calendar. This year, it will start from the first week of December.
The Hajj is associated with the life of Muhammad, but the ritual of the pilgrimage was considered ancient even during his lifetime in the 7th century. Many Muslims believe that it goes back to the time of Ibrahim (Abraham) in 2000 BC. Pilgrims would join processions of tens of thousands of people, who would simultaneously converge on Mecca for the week of the Hajj, and perform a series of rituals.
One of rituals is to sacrifice an animal, which symbolizes God having mercy on Ibrahim, and replacing his son with a ram, which Ibrahim then sacrificed.
Traditionally the pilgrim slaughtered the animal himself or oversaw the slaughtering. Today many pilgrims buy a sacrifice voucher in Mecca before the greater Hajj begins; this allows an animal to be slaughtered in their name on the 10th without the pilgrim being physically present. Centralized butcher houses will sacrifice a single sheep for each pilgrim, or a cow can represent the sacrifice of seven people. The meat is then packaged and given to charity, shipped to poor people around the world. At the same time as the sacrifices occur at Mecca, Muslims worldwide perform similar sacrifices, in a three day global festival called Eid ul-Adha.
Eid ul-Adha is a religious festival celebrated by Muslims worldwide as a commemoration of Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son Ismail for Allah.
Eid ul-Adha is three days long and starts on the 10th day of the month of Dhul Hijrah of the lunar Islamic calendar. It happens to be approximately 70 days after the end of the month of Ramadan.
