Ahmad Adib Ahmad told Mohammad Mazhari of Mehr News that establishment of an Islamic Council which could handle the Hajj pilgrimage and affairs was necessary. On Mina incident and the major players in the disaster, he said that Saudi regime was the major cast; “the claim by Saudi officials that Hajj pilgrims’ heedlessness of the guidelines as the major contributor to the disaster is refuted by the fact that every year Hajj pilgrims do not heed the rules and guidelines. But never in Hajj history had such a number of pilgrims been killed; the security holes and mismanagement remains with the Saudi authorities who only cared for killing especially in Syria and now in Yemen."
On the causes of the incident and the unofficial version that attributed the stampede to blockading the crossing for a Saudi prince who also was observing the ritual, he believed that reliable stories however would not confirm the version by Saudi authorities which attributed the event to Hajj pilgrims’ own heedless actions; “the missing of some of Iranian diplomatic and media figures indicates that the incident had been preplanned; thus, Saudi government should take serious measures to prevent similar actions in the future,” he told Mehr News.
“It is too obvious that Saudi Arabia abuses the huge income every year it makes from Hajj pilgrimage. Not a penny of these huge income is spent in reconstruction and improvement of the holy places and shrines, since the Wahhabist radical ideology is essentially hostile to the idea of construction. In the past, Saudis had plans to destroy the Shrine of the Prophet (as), for example,” said Adib, believing that the great part of the income was needed buying arms for terrorist extremists fighting in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
Syrian analyst also believed that the Islamic Council for Hajj Affairs should be established by Islamic countries; “first and foremost, the authorities of the Council should be from moderate Muslims such as Iranian and Syrian, and some of moderate Al-Azhar clerics; no role whatsoever should be given to Wahhabists and Takfirists of Saudi Arabia and other countries with a claim to authentic Islam,” he concluded.
Read the interview in Arabic.
Interview by Mohammad Mazhari
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