Eid Al-Adha 2015 Live Stream: How To Watch Muslim Celebration Of Holiday Marking End Of Hajj

[Sally]

This might interest Muslims and converts to Islam plus if readers want to watch out of curiosity.

Eid Al-Adha 2015 Live Stream: How To Watch Muslim Celebration Of Holiday Marking End Of Hajj
By Sarah Berger @sarahberger0408 [email protected] on September 23 2015 9:16 PM EDT

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A Pakistani salesman shows the teeth of a cow at a livestock market ahead of the sacrificial Eid al-Adha festival in Quetta, Sept. 22, 2015. Getty Images
Muslims all around the world are preparing to celebrate Eid al-AdhaThursday, which marks the end of hajj. Nearly 2 million Muslims began the annual pilgrimage Tuesday, descending on the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam, and all able-bodied Muslims who can afford to make the trip are expected to embark on the journey to Mecca at least once in their life.

Watch the live stream of this year’s Eid al-Adha here:

http://www.ibtimes.com/eid-al-adha-...-muslim-celebration-holiday-marking-end-hajj-

 

[waltky]

Come to the hajj, get trampled to death...

Saudi Arabia: Stampede at hajj kills 717 pilgrims
Sep 24,`15 -- A horrific stampede killed at least 717 pilgrims and injured hundreds more Thursday on the outskirts of the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, the deadliest tragedy to strike the annual hajj pilgrimage in more than two decades.

At least 863 pilgrims were injured in the crush, said the Saudi civil defense directorate, which provided the death toll. The tragedy struck as Muslims around the world marked the start of the Eid al-Adha holiday. It was the second major disaster during this year's hajj season, raising questions about the adequacy of measures put in place by Saudi authorities to ensure the safety of the roughly 2 million Muslims taking part in the pilgrimage. A crane collapse in Mecca nearly two weeks earlier left 111 people dead.

Muslim pilgrims and rescuers gather around people who died in Mina, Saudi Arabia during the annual hajj pilgrimage on Thursday, Sept. 24, 2015. Hundreds were killed and injured, Saudi authorities said. The crush happened in Mina, a large valley about five kilometers (three miles) from the holy city of Mecca that has been the site of hajj stampedes in years past.

Many of the victims were crushed and trampled to death as they were on their way to perform a symbolic stoning of the devil by throwing pebbles against three stone columns in Mina, a large valley about 5 kilometers (3 miles) from Mecca that has been the site of hajj stampedes in past years. The area houses more than 160,000 tents where pilgrims spend the night during the pilgrimage. Two survivors interviewed by The Associated Press said the disaster began when one wave of pilgrims found themselves heading into a mass of people going in another direction. "I saw someone trip over someone in a wheelchair and several people tripping over him. People were climbing over one another just to breathe," said one of the survivors, Abdullah Lotfy, 44, from Egypt. "It was like a wave. You go forward and suddenly you go back."

Lotfy said that having two flows of pilgrims interacting in this way should never have happened. "There was no preparation. What happened was more than they were ready for," he said of the Saudi authorities. Saudi Arabia takes great pride in its role as the caretaker of Islam's holiest sites and host to millions of pilgrims annually. But the hajj poses an immense logistical and security challenge for the kingdom, given the sheer number of hundreds of thousands of people - from differing linguistic and cultural backgrounds, many of whom have saved for years for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make the hajj - intent on following the same set of rituals at about the same time.

The kingdom's Interior Ministry said later Thursday that the crush appears to have been caused by two waves of pilgrims meeting at an intersection. King Salman ordered the creation of committee to investigate the incident. The ministry's spokesman, Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki, said high temperatures and the fatigue of the pilgrims may also have been factors in the disaster. He said there was no indication that authorities were to blame for the event, adding that "unfortunately, these incidents happen in a moment."

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The Latest: US offers condolences to hajj stampede victims
Sep 24,'15 -- The latest developments from a crush of Muslim pilgrims on the third day of the annual hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia that killed hundreds of people.

7:00 p.m.

The United States has expressed its "deepest condolences" over the hundreds of Muslim pilgrims who died in a "heartbreaking stampede" outside Mecca during the annual hajj. National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said "our thoughts are with them and the more than two million people undertaking the Hajj this year. As Muslims around the world continue to celebrate Eid al-Adha, we join you in mourning the tragic loss of these faithful pilgrims." Iran's official IRNA news agency meanwhile said 89 Iranians were among those killed and 150 were wounded, updating an earlier toll. Saudi authorities say at least 717 people were killed and 863 wounded when two waves of pilgrims met while moving in opposite directions.

In this image posted on the official Twitter account of the directorate of the Saudi Civil Defense agency, rescuers respond to a stampede that killed and injured pilgrims in the holy city of Mina during the annual hajj pilgrimage

6:30 p.m.

Saudi Arabia's Interior Ministry says the crush of Muslim pilgrims that killed more than 700 people outside Mecca appears to have been caused by two waves of pilgrims meeting at an intersection. Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki said high temperatures and the fatigue of the pilgrims might also have been factors in Thursday's disaster, the deadliest event to afflict the hajj pilgrimage in more than two decades. He says there is no indication that authorities are to blame for the event, saying "unfortunately, these incidents happen in a moment." Al-Turki says King Salman has ordered the creation of committee to investigate the incident. Some 2 million people take part in the annual hajj pilgrimage, which all able-bodied Muslims are required to undertake at least once in their lives.

6:00 p.m.

Two survivors interviewed by The Associated Press say the crush of Muslim pilgrims that killed more than 700 people outside Mecca began when two waves of pilgrims going in opposite directions collided. Egyptian pilgrim Abdullah Lotfy, 44, said "I saw someone trip over someone in a wheelchair and several people tripping over him. People were climbing over one another just to breathe." Lotfy says the collision should never have happened, saying "there was no preparation" on the part of Saudi authorities. Ismail Hamba, 58, from Nigeria, recalled falling down and then being trampled, saying "it was really, really terrible." Saudi authorities say the incident killed 717 pilgrims and injured another 805, making it the deadliest disaster to afflict the annual hajj pilgrimage since 1990.

4:00 p.m.

 

[waltky]

Iran gettin' ready to let loose their Republic Guard proxy terrorist hounds on Saudi Arabia?

'Death to House of Saud' rings out as Iran demands haj apology
Sep 27, 2015: Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei demanded Saudi Arabia apologize Sunday for a stampede that killed 769 pilgrims at the haj, as a war of words escalated between the regional rivals.

Khamenei accused Riyadh of "a blame game", after the Saudi foreign minister said Iran was playing politics with tragedy. "Instead of passing the buck and playing a blame game, the Saudis should accept their responsibility and apologize to the world's Muslims and the bereaved families," Khamenei said in comments reported by Iran's official IRNA news agency. About 400 protesters later chanted "Death to the treacherous House of Saud" outside the Saudi embassy in Tehran.

Iranian leaders have been fiercely critical of Saudi authorities' handling of safety at the haj, following Thursday's stampede during a ritual stoning of the devil in Mina, near the holy city of Mecca. Within hours, Khamenei blamed "improper measures" and "mismanagement" for the disaster. At least 144 Iranians died in the crush - the highest confirmed toll among foreign nationalities. Tehran says 323 Iranians are missing.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, addressing a UN development summit in New York on Saturday, said he wanted to "emphasize the need for swift attention to the injured as well as investigating the causes of this incident and other similar incidents in this year's haj." Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir, also in New York for the UN general assembly, said the Iranians "should know better than to play politics with a tragedy that has befallen people who were performing their most sacred religious duty."

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Granny says, "Dat's right - dem Muslims didn't know it, but dey was havin' a gay ol' time...

A gay Muslim filmmaker goes inside the haj
Sep 28, 2015 - Arranging to meet the filmmaker Parvez Sharma is a little like setting up an appointment with an extremely polite spy. He asks to rendezvous in a public place — a Starbucks in SoHo where the noise level is high, the tables distant and the volume of customers great. His boundaries are clearly drawn: no discussion of his husband, his friends, his Manhattan neighborhood or his family. He arrives a half-hour early.

Sharma's discretion is no doubt borne of his experience growing up gay in a conservative city in India, but it has deepened since the release of his 2007 documentary, "A Jihad for Love", which depicted the struggle of gay Muslims around the world to reconcile their faith with their sexual orientation. (Homosexuality is generally condemned in modern Islamic societies, said Everett Rowson, an associate professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University.) After "Jihad," Sharma was labeled an infidel, and in the intervening years, he has gotten more death threats than he cares to recall.

His new documentary, "A Sinner in Mecca", about his 2011 haj, or journey to Islam's most sacred sites in Saudi Arabia, put him at even greater risk. Saudi religious police allow selfies or short videos, Sharma said, but they forbid pilgrims from taking extensive footage of the haj, which attracts up to three million faithful a year. While Sharma said there were government-sanctioned videos of the ritual, his documentary shows images of the annual pilgrimage that Saudi officials do not want others to see. At one moment, "A Sinner in Mecca" seems to eerily anticipate the events of Thursday, when, government officials said, more than 700 people were killed and almost 900 were injured as pilgrims surged through a tunnel en route to one of the rituals. "This is the place of stampedes," the film's voice-over says.

Despite Sharma's notoriety as a gay filmmaker — the new film includes footage of his 2011 New York wedding to an atheist musician identified only as Dan — he traveled to Saudi Arabia, where homosexuality is punishable by beatings, jail time and death. The documentary was shown at Cinema Village on East 12th Street this month; it is available on iTunes and can be streamed on Netflix starting next Sunday. Omair Paul, a first-generation Pakistani-American who grew up in Queens and is now a graduate student at Columbia University's Institute for the Study of Human Rights as well as the United Nations representative of Muslims for Progressive Values, moderated a brief Q and A after a screening at Cinema Village.

MORE A gay Muslim filmmaker goes inside the haj - The Times of India

 

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AP totals up the hajj death toll...

AP count from Saudi hajj disaster shows over 1,310 killed
Oct 8,`15 -- A crush and stampede last month outside of Saudi Arabia's holy city of Mecca killed at least 1,313 people during the annual hajj pilgrimage to the kingdom, an Associated Press count showed Thursday, over 500 deaths more than the official toll.

The AP count of dead from the disaster - the worst tragedy to strike the hajj in a quarter-century - is based on tolls offered by 17 countries through their officials or state media broadcasts, saying specifically the deceased were killed in Mina, near Mecca. That puts the Sept. 24 tragedy, as hundreds still reported missing, even closer to the deadliest disaster to ever strike the hajj: a stampede in 1990 that killed 1,426 people at an overcrowded pedestrian tunnel leading to holy sites in Mecca. Saudi officials have said their official figure of 769 killed and 934 injured in the Mina disaster remains accurate, though an investigation into its causes is ongoing. Health authorities in the kingdom previously said civil defense officials would be offering any new casualty figures, though no new toll has been released by authorities since Sept. 26.

Pakistan's former Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, center in black, prays for his nephew who died last month in a stampede during the hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, during a funeral prayer in Multan, Pakistan, Monday, Oct. 5, 2015. Saudi authorities have said the disaster in Mina happened as two waves of pilgrims converged on a narrow road, causing hundreds of people to suffocate or be trampled to death.​

Authorities have said the Mina crush and stampede happened as two waves of pilgrims converged on a narrow road, causing hundreds of people to suffocate or be trampled to death. Shiite power Iran, the Mideast rival of Sunni Saudi Arabia, has blamed the disaster on the kingdom's "mismanagement." It also accused Riyadh of a cover-up, saying the real death toll exceeds 4,700, without providing evidence to support its claim. Diplomats in Indonesia, Pakistan and India have said Saudi officials gave them some 1,100 photographs of dead from the Mina disaster. Saudi officials say those photographs include pilgrims who died of natural causes at the hajj as well.

Recent Indian paperwork from the disaster also refers to at least 2,046 photographs of the dead in Saudi Arabia, though its consular officials say some bodies were photographed multiple times. The AP count of the dead includes totals from 17 of the over 180 countries that sent pilgrims to this year's hajj. Iran said it had 465 pilgrims killed, while Egypt had 148 and Indonesia 120. Others include Pakistan with 89; India 81; Mali 70; Nigeria 64; Bangladesh 63; Senegal 54; Cameroon 42; Ethiopia 31; Morocco 27; Algeria 25; Ghana 12; Chad 11; Kenya eight and Turkey with three. Hundreds of pilgrims still remain missing, according to these countries.

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