Muslims Saudi Arabia

To someone less versed in extremes, the project specifications might have seemed absurd. Design a sound system that can be heard without distortion by millions of people for several miles around. Back it up so even if dozens of microphones fail, a control room bursts into flames and two nearby power plants are bombed, the program continues. Do it for a venue in the Saudi Arabian desert without ever setting foot there--not to design the system, not to install it, not even to trouble-shoot it.

Thirty-five Muslims were crushed to death during the symbolic stoning-of-the-devil ritual at the annual hajj pilgrimage, the official Saudi Press Agency reported. The agency said 23 women and 12 men were killed and an unknown number of people injured in Mina, where pilgrims cast pebbles at three columns of stone that symbolize the devil. "A stampede resulted when the older people in the crowd couldn't move as fast as others," said Saad bin Abdallah Tuwegry, a Saudi civil defense chief.

It was the 10th day of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan in 1973, but Egyptian President Anwar Sadat already had decreed that his soldiers would be exempt from the fast as they prepared to launch a daring drive across the Suez Canal into the Sinai Desert. The president was more than a little discomfited when he strode into the operations room before the first strike and found his senior commanders fasting. The operation, he sternly warned, needed their full concentration.

Hundreds of thousands of Muslim pilgrims in Saudi Arabia on Friday threw pebbles at three pillars in a ritual symbolizing the stoning of the devil on the eve of the end of a disaster-free hajj season. The pilgrims, many of whom had slept in the open air or in fire-resistant tents, packed the mile-long Jamarat bridge in Mena and pelted the pillars with pebbles to chants of "God Is Greatest!" Today is the fifth and last day of the hajj.

About 1,400 Muslim pilgrims suffocated or were trampled to death Monday in a stampede in a pedestrian tunnel leading to the holy city of Mecca, witnesses and diplomats said. They said the stampede began when some pilgrims stopped in the middle of the air-conditioned tunnel and there was a crush as people outside pushed forward to escape the 112-degree heat. They also said the ventilation in the tunnel then appeared to have stopped.

A frantic stampede that killed more than 1,400 Muslim pilgrims inside a pedestrian tunnel was prompted by the tumbling of seven people from a bridge leading to the tunnel, Saudi Arabia's interior minister said Tuesday. Prince Nayif ibn Abdulaziz put the death toll at 1,426, making it the worst pilgrimage tragedy in recent history. Reporters were barred from the General Hospital at Mina, the tent city connected by the tunnel to Mecca.

Hundreds of thousands of Muslim pilgrims in Saudi Arabia on Friday threw pebbles at three pillars in a ritual symbolizing the stoning of the devil on the eve of the end of a disaster-free hajj season. The pilgrims, many of whom had slept in the open air or in fire-resistant tents, packed the mile-long Jamarat bridge in Mena and pelted the pillars with pebbles to chants of "God Is Greatest!" Today is the fifth and last day of the hajj.

Thousands of Muslims on the annual pilgrimage to Islam's holiest shrines ritually slaughtered sheep on a plain in Saudi Arabia to commemorate Abraham's offer to sacrifice his son to God. The ritual marked the end of the hajj, or pilgrimage, and the start of the four-day Eid al Adha, or Feast of Sacrifice, which is observed by about 850 million Muslims worldwide. More than 1 million Muslims--including about 1,000 from the United States--came to Mecca for the observance.

As the first Iranian bodies from the fighting in Mecca last week arrived in Tehran on Wednesday, regional specialists and Western diplomats in the Persian Gulf area warned that the violence and ensuing rise in tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia appear to have caused a significant deepening of the historic antagonisms between the two major sects of Islam.

Heavily armed Saudi Arabian security agents broke up an Iranian prayer meeting in the holy city of Medina on Thursday night, beating and arresting a number of pilgrims, Tehran radio charged Friday. The broadcast, monitored in Nicosia, gave no other details of the incident but said Iran's chief official at the pilgrimage, Mehdi Karroubi, had been barred from the city.

A plane carrying 117 Iraqi Muslim pilgrims flew through Iraq's Western-imposed "no-fly" zone Wednesday and landed safely in Saudi Arabia, in apparent defiance of a U.N. flight embargo. The sanctions, imposed after Baghdad's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, ban air travel into and out of Iraq. Most of Iraq's airspace is off limits to Iraqi aircraft due to no-fly zones enforced by U.S. and British warplanes to protect Kurds in the north and Shiite Muslim dissidents in the south from the Iraqi regime.

To someone less versed in extremes, the project specifications might have seemed absurd. Design a sound system that can be heard without distortion by millions of people for several miles around. Back it up so even if dozens of microphones fail, a control room bursts into flames and two nearby power plants are bombed, the program continues. Do it for a venue in the Saudi Arabian desert without ever setting foot there--not to design the system, not to install it, not even to trouble-shoot it.

The latest and perhaps most dangerous challenge to the House of Saud is a portable telephone that Mohammed al Massari carries in his pocket around the fashionable hotel lobbies, restaurants and offices of London.

A professor at King Abdulaziz University was giving a lesson last month on politics and activism, terrorism and tolerance. The recent killing of Egyptian secularist author Farag Foda by Islamic extremists came up. "I said, 'It's one thing for Palestinians to kill Jews, or even for Palestinians to kill Arab collaborators, but Egyptians killing Egyptians? How can you justify the killing of Farag Foda?' " he recalled. "One student raised his hand and said, 'He wrote an article criticizing Islam.

It was the 10th day of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan in 1973, but Egyptian President Anwar Sadat already had decreed that his soldiers would be exempt from the fast as they prepared to launch a daring drive across the Suez Canal into the Sinai Desert. The president was more than a little discomfited when he strode into the operations room before the first strike and found his senior commanders fasting. The operation, he sternly warned, needed their full concentration.

President Bush's visit to Saudi Arabia has underscored a deepening social chasm within the desert kingdom that has both religious conservatives and advocates of political reform pointing accusing fingers at the United States.

A prominent Saudi Arabian businessman recently brought some art books home from the United States and was held up at customs. What, the customs officer wanted to know, are these two naked women doing on the pages of one of the books? "It's Rubens," the businessman explained. "It's art." When that failed, he offered to let the customs officer black out the offending paintings. This was considered and dismissed.

A conservative backlash against a group of Saudi women who challenged Muslim tradition by driving their cars in public has swept two women's university campuses, prompting the suspension of at least six participating professors whose students labeled them "infidels." The women were suspended by royal decree from their teaching jobs at the women's section of King Saud University after hundreds of students signed petitions asserting they do not want to be taught by the women.

A prominent Saudi Arabian businessman recently brought some art books home from the United States and was held up at customs. What, the customs officer wanted to know, are these two naked women doing on the pages of one of the books? "It's Rubens," the businessman explained. "It's art." When that failed, he offered to let the customs officer black out the offending paintings. This was considered and dismissed.