Jakarta:
Indonesia has cancelled the haj pilgrimage for people today in the world’s biggest Muslim-majority nation for a second year in a row due to issues more than the COVID-19 pandemic, the religious affairs minister mentioned on Thursday.
For several Indonesians, the religious pilgrimage is a after-in-a-lifetime occasion, with an typical wait time 20 years due to a quota program, according to the country’s cabinet secretariat.
“Due to the pandemic and for the safety of the pilgrims, the government has decided that this year it won’t allow Indonesian pilgrims to go again,” Minister Yaqut Cholil Qoumas mentioned in a statement.
Yaqut mentioned Saudi Arabia had not opened access to the haj.
“It’s not just Indonesia…no countries have received quotas, because the memorandum of understanding has not been signed,” he mentioned, adding that pilgrims who had paid haj costs will be pilgrims next year.
Saudi Arabia has lifted a ban on travelers arriving from 11 nations that it imposed to curb the spread of coronavirus, the Saudi state news agency mentioned on Saturday, but will nevertheless call for quarantine procedures.
Before the pandemic enforced social distancing globally, some 2.5 million pilgrims used to pay a visit to the holiest web sites of Islam in Mecca and Medina for the week-extended haj, and the lesser, year-round umrah pilgrimage, which altogether earned the kingdom about $12 billion a year, according to official information.
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