Every year, on the last month of the Islamic calendar of Dhu al-Hijjah, millions of Muslims all around the world flock to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia to perform hajj. Their brothers in the neighboring land of Yemen and more – on the other hand, are facing the disastrous impact of past Saudi foreign policy. Because of this, despite being overshadowed by more than a million Muslim pilgrims, the world witnessed the rise of several groups a few years back that called for a boycott of the pilgrimage as a form of protest at the “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques” political record. While it sounds ridiculous at first, let’s take a look at this small but defiant movement.
Historically, the hajj is an important event for Muslims, as it is one of the five pillars of Islam. Every able Muslim is obligated to perform the journey once in their life. However, the act committed by the one who governed hajj-related things – the Saudi royal family, currently led by Mohammed bin Salman and his father – has faced condemnation from fellow Muslims.
There’s no definitive answer regarding who started the boycott. Still, the act gained international traction in 2019 when the Grand Mufti of Libya, Sadiq al-Ghariani, who is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood organization, issued a fatwa broadcasted on the Libyan television Ean Libya – advising all Muslims not to travel to Saudi for the hajj, claiming it would be “a sinful act rather than a good deed,” claiming the hajj revenue is used by the Saudi rulers to carry out crimes against our fellow Muslims. He added that the money will also contribute to the massacre of Muslims in Yemen, Libya, Sudan, Tunisia, and Algeria.
Today, al-Ghariani still hasn’t lifted the fatwa and continues to support the people of Gaza by also issuing a fatwa regarding the optional Umrah journey. In a video that is widely spread online, he urges Muslims to make the humanitarian crisis in Gaza the top priority over other good deeds, such as the Umrah pilgrimage. “If you gave Umrah's money to the people of Gaza, it would be hundreds of times more rewarding than going for Umrah,” he said.
In June 2018, a senior Tunisian ulama in the “Tunisian Union of Imams” also made a remark. He said that the money that goes to the Saudi authorities is not going to help the poor, but instead, it is used to kill and displace the Yemenis. He also suggested that it is better to use the money domestically to improve the conditions of fellow North Africans.
Humanitarian issues played a big role in the boycott. In the past ten years, Saudi Arabia has been laying its hands on every major political turmoil in the Arab world. You can say that the country contributed to the humanitarian disaster in various states in the Middle East.
Since 2015 until today, Saudi Arabia has led an Arab coalition fighting the Houthi insurgents with the aim of reinstalling Yemen's de jure president, Abdarabbuh Mansour Hadi. The “intervention” was supposed to last a few weeks; however, it lasted for years. The United Nations estimated that the Saudi war on Yemen has killed 377,000 lives due to direct and indirect causes. More than a hundred thousand individuals have been killed because of the Saudi and Emirati bombing campaign, and many more have been starved because of the war.
During the 2013 Egyptian coup that ousted the first democratically elected Egyptian president, Mohammed Morsi, Saudi was also involved in it. Saudi backed the coup perpetrator – the Armed Forces of Egypt, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who now served as the president of Egypt for more than ten years. According to Ayman Nour, the leader of the Egyptian Ghad Party, Saudi was the coup's planner. This claim is further proven by Saudi being the first Arab country to congratulate the coup.
In the Syrian Civil War, Saudi Arabia supported the revolution against Bashar al-Assad, but they were not going to replace Assad with a leader with a democratic background. They are most likely to prefer to install a new Syrian strongman who is a Sunni Arab and will steer the country away from Iran. Previously, Prince Bandar and the intelligence are heavily involved in giving weapons and millions of dollars to the Sunni-Salafist rebels such as Jaysh al-Islam and the Noureddine Zenki faction. Today, however, Saudi has undergone a reconciliation with Assad.
Between 2017 and 2021, together with three countries, Bahrain, UAE, and Egypt imposed a land, air, and sea blockade on Qatar. The four countries argued that Qatar had close ties to Iran, intervened in their internal affairs, and supported terrorism. The support for terrorism here most likely refers to the longtime Qatari support of the Muslim Brotherhood, the group that Saudi Arabia dislikes.
The kingdom’s human rights records have also been reason of the boycott. The assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 has led people on the internet bovcotting the pilgrimage. Many people around the globe have expressed their anger over the assassination done by Saudi agents.
