Hajj: Cleric tasks Muslims on sincerity

Prominent Muslim cleric and a former Vice Chancellor of the Al-Hikmah University Prof. R.D Abubakre has urged Muslims to be sincere in their Hajj exercise, saying Hajj is for Allah only and not for advancing political ideologies.

He gave the advice at this year’s edition of the Annual Grand Conference of the Hajj in Saudi Arabia themed “Past and Present of Hajj: The Impact of Developing Hajj Operations on achieving its Goals” organised by the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah, Makkah, Saudi Arabia.

He delivered a commissioned paper titled “Organisation of passages of pilgrims, their movement in the holy land and their departures between the past and present”.

He said that whoever follows the authentic Islamic history will discover that the Arabian Peninsula had returned to the practices in vogue during the preIslamic Arabia known as Jahiliyah period of Islamic ignorance. “Towards the grand scheme of Allah to have produced the regime of King Abdulaziz and his children who succeeded him in working towards making the Kingdom an egalitarian society. Such kings who are all the direct children of King the purveyor were King Saud, King Faisal, King Khalid, King Fahad, King Abdullah and the present monarch King Salman who happens to be the last in the generation of his siblings,” Abubakre said.

He said the succeeding monarchs worked to make the Hajj exercise less stressful and to improve the facilities of mass mobilization, accommodation, provision of social and environmental conveniences just as they also worked through the scholars to go back to the pristine precision of Islam.