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New Hajj Rules Leave British Muslims in Limbo

“Labaik Allahuma Labaik” is the prayer Muslims usually recite during the Hajj pilgrimage, declaring “I respond to Your call O God! I respond to Your call.”

For some British Muslims stranded at the Manchester airport, their dreams to say this talbiya are now threatened after they could not fly on Saturday as e-tickets for Hajj were not issued in time, the Council of British Hajjis said.

One of those pilgrims, Ali Haider, had to return to his Sheffield home with his wife after being unable to fly, despite paying £18,500 for their total package.

“We assumed everything was sorted, but we were never emailed the e-ticket,” he told The BBC.

📚 Read Also: Cannot Do Hajj This Year? Let’s Reflect on Surat Al-Hajj

The chaos followed a change of hajj system after the Saudi government announced this month that pilgrims from Europe, the US, and Australia could no longer book through travel agencies and would instead have to apply through a lottery system.

Motawif, the online platform for Hajj pilgrims from United States of America (USA), Australia and Europe, received online application from June 05-13, announcing the lottery results on June 18.

Packages come in silver, gold and platinum, starting from approximately £5,000 and going up to £9,000 per person.

Chaos

Though Suhail Sherwani, a GP from south London, had already booked hajj in spring this year with a travel agent, he had to request a refund after Saudi announced the new system.

Dr. Sherwani applied through Motawif’s portal and received a message that his application was successful. After making the full payment, he received a message to say his booking had failed despite the money leaving his account.

“I’m travelling with 11 people in my group. That’s around £90,000 floating around, and it’s not ATOL protected because Motawif has not signed up for it,” Dr. Sherwani told The Independent.

“There’s always a remark on Motawif pages saying ‘Thank you for choosing Motawif’. But I didn’t choose them. I didn’t choose this.”

Last week, Motawif tweeted that it was aware of problems in a number of cases related to booking confirmations and was attempting to contact those affected within 72 hours.

Ongoing Problems

Several pilgrims who faced the same issue have taken their case to Twitter using the hashtag “paid but failed”. 

On the other hand, more than 250 pilgrims, including England cricketer Adil Rashid, boarded a flight from the airport on Saturday afternoon and arrived at Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz International Airport on Sunday morning.

Thousands of miles away from the UK, some of the pilgrims who had been lucky to travel to Makkah also faced troubles, with some of them speaking of being placed in rooms with ‘random strangers’.

Sugra from Yorkshire posted: “Arrived in Chaos continues. Arrived at Pullman Zamzam Madinah. Men being given triple rooms with two random women. Relying on pilgrims to call out names, rather than placing cards A-Z on table for easy self-selection,” Asian Image reported.

“I am down as a Mister and sharing a room with a Miss Mohammed someone. Not the bloke I married! After more than 24 hours travel, no breakfast. This is awful.

“It is ridiculous. I have gone to the room and locked the door. Need to administer meds but worried about allocated random man walking in. Many many examples of this. @Motawif_SA apparently just sent a list of names without connections so hotel having to unpick this mess.”

Allah Says in the Qur’an, [And proclaim to mankind the Hajj. They will come to you on foot and on every lean camel, they will come from every deep and distant mountain highway.] (Surah Al-Hajj 22: 27).

The Hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam, is performed by every Muslim with the financial and physical ability. 

Hajj consists of several ceremonies which symbolizes the essential concepts of the Islamic faith. They also commemorate the trials of Prophet Abraham and his family.

The post New Hajj Rules Leave British Muslims in Limbo appeared first on About Islam.



source https://aboutislam.net/muslim-issues/europe/new-hajj-rules-leave-british-muslims-in-limbo/
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