Muslims cry foul over lottery for ‘golden tickets’ to Hajj

MILLIONS of Muslims have been denied access to the Hajj pilgrimage this year as Saudi Arabia hosts a significantly smaller festival for fear of triggering another severe outbreak of coronavirus.

Only a few thousand residents, chosen through a lottery, will be allowed to attend, but securing a proverbial golden ticket for Mecca is a fraught affair.

Residents in the Kingdom need to apply for a permission slip to attend the holy festival – and the vast number of rejections has already caused consternation among some Muslims.

While one Jordanian couple in Saudi Arabia burst into tears of joy after they were chosen to attend, others have criticised the opaque nature of the selection process.

Some of the failed applicants reportedly believe they were rejected because they did not provide proof that they would be accompanied by a male guardian. Others used Twitter to vent their frustration at Saudi authorities.

“I am a health practitioner and I had contracted coronavirus … I don’t understand why I was not chosen,” said one Saudi resident who survived the illness.

“Why reject me without giving a reason?” a woman asked the ministry, posting a screenshot of her rejected online application. “Everyone around me has been declined.”

Saudi Arabia’s health ministry says that 70 per cent of those allowed to attend are foreign Muslim residents, while others have been chosen from a pool of medical and military staff who have recovered from coronavirus.

But there has been speculation that diplomats, top business figures and other affluent members of society were given preferential treatment.

“Saudi authorities kept the selection process highly opaque since it is a sensitive matter,” Umar Karim, a visiting fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, told the AFP news agency.

“Keeping it hidden from public scrutiny is meant to generate less noise about who got selected and who didn’t.”

For those who did win a place at Hajj, the feelings of joy were quite overwhelming.

“We were shocked and overjoyed,” said a Riyadh-based Jordanian engineer, 29, selected along with his 26-year-old wife, a health worker.