If you are supporting your parents with their living expenses and looking after their dependents, i. It is something you do out of love and dutifulness to your parents who have educated you and given you the means to have a decent job. Islam makes it the duty of the bridegroom to look after his wife, providing her with a decent home and standard of living, according to his means. Moreover, he pays her dowry, which becomes her own property.
In the Hindu tradition, which is unfortunately followed by some Muslims, it is the reverse: the bride has to pay a large dowry and provide a family home. This means that a family with a couple of daughters is at a great disadvantage. Now if all such expenses are to be paid for by one brother, and if his own means are not that good, then that is totally unfair.
Our reader should realize that what he did with his marriage is the correct Islamic practice. He should not yield to any pressure on this point. Moreover, what his parents want to do with the marriage of his sister is not Islamic, but they may have to follow the local tradition.
Unfortunately people do not realize that when more and more of them rebel against un-Islamic tradition the sooner these ill-conceived and unfair traditions will collapse. Our reader is wondering whether the fact that his parents are now suffering because he has reduced what he sends them will nullify his good deeds. The answer is that dutifulness to parents is one of the most important deeds a person does in life after believing in God and Islam.
But I understand that he was in the habit of sending them every last riyal he earns, retaining only what he needs for himself and his wife. That is extremely dutiful. Nothing nullifies his past, exemplary kindness and dutifulness. He also asks whether he has to pay zakah on his salary. What zakah? According to what he says, he does not own anything.
Therefore he is not liable to any zakah. Zakah is payable only when a person owns the threshold of zakah, which is around riyals. If he saves this amount then when he has saved it, that date becomes his zakah date. He should make a note of it. The following year, and every subsequent year, on the same date he calculates what he has. If it is above that amount, he pays zakah on what he owns at the normal rate of 2.
But according to the information he has written, he is not liable to zakah at the present moment. Private answer to Mr. What you have asked about is permissible between a man and his wife. Needless to say, if it is outside marriage, then both actions are strictly forbidden.
When Islam is not known to people. Pilgrims are also advised to drink lots of water and to be mindful of the perils of the blistering desert heat. The Saudi government also provides complimentary water distributed from refrigerated trucks, air-conditioned tents at Mina, large sun-blocking canopies, and thousands of fine-mist sprinklers, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Medical facilities are also available in and around the main hajj sites.
As Asaad Shujaa and Sameer Alhamid write in the Turkish Journal of Emergency Medicine , in there were 25 hospitals with 4, bed capacity critical care and emergency care and health centers with 20, qualified specialized personnel. They also note that all health care is provided at no cost to all pilgrims.
Saudi Arabia and Iran have for years been in a sort of proxy struggle for dominance of the Middle East and the broader Muslim world. Saudi Arabia's government is officially Sunni, and Iran's is officially Shia. Both countries frequently exploit this by pushing a sectarian worldview of Sunni versus Shia.
And that often comes to a head over the hajj. The political legitimacy of the Saudi royal family rests largely on its religious credentials, which it gets at home from the support of the country's ultra-conservative Wahhabi religious establishment, and internationally from being the "custodian" of the two holiest places in Islam, the Prophet Mohammed's mosque in Medina and Masjid al-Haram in Mecca.
Iran, then, has long sought to portray the Saudis as incompetent custodians in an effort to damage their credibility, and has even called for an international body to take over administration of these places. When a horrific stampede occurred at the hajj, Iran jumped at the chance to blame the Saudis. More than Iranian pilgrims were reportedly killed in the incident. But before most of the victims had even been identified, Iranian leaders issued statements blaming the Saudis for the accident.
The fight bled into the hajj. Khamenei issued a blistering statement on his website calling the Saudis murderers for their handling of the stampede last year and suggesting they may even have caused the stampede on purpose:. Saudi rulers were at fault in both cases. This is what all those present, observers and technical analysts agree upon. Some experts maintain that the events were premeditated. The hesitation and failure to rescue the half-dead and injured people, whose enthusiastic souls and enthralled hearts were accompanying their praying tongues on Eid ul-Adha, is also obvious and incontrovertible.
The heartless and murderous Saudis locked up the injured with the dead in containers- instead of providing medical treatment and helping them or at least quenching their thirst. They murdered them. From Al Jazeera :. In comments to the Makkah newspaper published on Tuesday, Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti Abdulaziz Al Sheikh was quoted as saying that Khamenei's remarks blaming Riyadh for last year's tragedy were "not surprising" because Iranians are descendants of Magi.
Magi refers to Zoroastrians and those who worship fire. Predating Christianity and Islam, Zoroastrianism was the dominant religion in Persia before the Arab conquest. In , however, Iran lifted the ban, and around 80, Iranians performed the hajj that year.
And there are tons of Shia Muslims from other countries, too. For the most part, Sunni and Shia pilgrims on hajj get along just fine — despite the best efforts of the governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia to stir up sectarian tension every year for geopolitical gain.
That Sunni and Shia pilgrims come together as brothers and sisters in Islam during the hajj is a powerful reminder of how religion can unite people as well as divide them. Pilgrims planning to go on hajj are advised to avoid conflict and disagreement with other Muslims, to refrain from judging or being harsh toward others whose customs or interpretations of Islam may seem ignorant or incorrect.
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By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Hajj, the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, explained for non-Muslims. Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. Muslim pilgrims on hajj perform the final walk Tawaf al-Wadaa around the Kaaba at the Grand Mosque in the Saudi holy city of Mecca on November 30, What is the hajj? What is the religious significance of the hajj? Oh, and aliens. Inside the Kaaba. British Hajj Travel on Instagram bhtofficial Just kidding.
What are the main rituals performed during the hajj? Muslim pilgrims perform the ritual stoning of the devil in Mina near the holy city of Mecca on November 27, Can non-Muslims do the hajj? A highway sign on the road to Mecca points out mandatory directions away from the city for all non-Muslims.
What about women and children? How in the world does Saudi Arabia handle such a massive number of people each year? Khamenei issued a blistering statement on his website calling the Saudis murderers for their handling of the stampede last year and suggesting they may even have caused the stampede on purpose: Saudi rulers were at fault in both cases.
Next Up In World. Delivered Fridays. Thanks for signing up! Check your inbox for a welcome email. Mecca and Medina are ruled by Saudi Arabia, but they belong to the Muslim world. They are our collective sacredness. Islam is a very egalitarian religion. Islam has few hierarchies, and those that exist are not widely shared. This is, for the moment, a matter of conjecture. Yet before the refugee crisis, they are hopelessly divided, and their cooperation pushed backwards.
The Muslim world is deeply and badly divided; it is hard to imagine how any kind of cooperative agreement could ever be reached, and also, depressingly, not difficult to conceive of other Muslim-majority governments who would make a different kind of mess out of Mecca and Medina.
As it is, Saudi Arabia has the wealth to pour into subsidizing the pilgrimage, and Muslim piety in the Holy Land, in a way few other countries can. But for how long? Years back, pilgrimage was the preserve of the lucky few. It was too far, too risky, too expensive.
My own great-great-grandfather began a travelogue describing his own journey from northern India to Mecca, but he died on the return trip. Today, we have Snapchat hajj channels. Aircraft make the world much smaller. News travels fast. Muslims live all over the world.
What I mean to say is, in the past, the idea that Mecca and Medina belonged to all of us was deeply felt, but at best an abstraction.
But it will happen. But not as wrong as what is happening to the center of my sacred universe. By providing your email, you agree to the Quartz Privacy Policy. Skip to navigation Skip to content. Discover Membership. Editions Quartz.
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