How do the deaths of hundreds of pilgrims on their Haj to Mecca square with the reputation of Allah as just and merciful?

Wow. I just read the article. That’s terrible. They need to change the time of year maybe. If there is a God I don’t believe He would want people risking their lives like that. I assume Islam has exceptions for health similar to Judaism for “breaking some rules” so to speak. A person with diabetes isn’t expected to fast for instance. I always say God will understand protecting your own life and the lives of others, God wants us to live. That’s my opinion anyway, but I’m an atheist.

Like I said, I assume, but maybe in the Muslim religion they are fine with dying on the way to Mecca. I seriously doubt it though.

The pilgrimage is not mandatory.

@canidmajor So, can they change the time of year?

I have no idea. My point was that millions of Muslims worldwide never make the Hajj, and are not penalized for it, so no one is being forced or even censured for not going. Some may find that braving the heat to be an appropriate test of devotion, others may not care to do it at all.

1) By not taking such religions literally, because they’re not really meant to be taken literally?

2) By not taking the morality in such religions as a promise of divine protection from bad fates in this lifetime, because that’s also a mistake?

3) By noticing the part in those religions where they talk about just rewards after death?

4) By thinking of death as an express ticket to your reward?

5) By being obedient to your religion by meekly accepting your (and everyone’s) fate, rather that questioning “the almighty”?

6) By muttering “God is good” or “God works in mysterious ways”?

Like all faith-based activities: It’s all part of “God’s plan.”

I agree, God’s plan, or they are in a better place, or people have free will to make bad choices.

@canidmajor Thanks. I understand your point. I guess they feel compelled to go either from their own desire to experience it, which is understandable, or some might think it is some sort of obligation even if it isn’t.

I wonder if the Muslim religion has a person at the top, like the Catholics have the Pope, who could decide to change the time of year. I’ll have to ask one of my Muslim friends what they think.

It doesn’t “square” with that view of Allah, or God, or Yaweh, or Akahl, or Ahura Mazda – or any of the other misuderstandings people constantly throw into their “holy” books.

Bad things happen to innocent people, evil goes unpunished, and some prayers are never answered. Muslim faith is no more, or less foolish than most other belief systems.

Wait, religion needs to be squared now?

Practice may change over time, and rhetoric will follow behind, sweeping up the inconsistencies, like all successful mythologies.

@JLeslie after a slightly deeper dive I found this: ” Hajj begins on the 8th day of Dhul Hijjah (the twelfth and final month of the Islamic calendar) and ends by the 13th day. The date of Hajj occurs 11 days earlier each year because the Islamic calendar is 11 days shorter than the calendar used in the western world” from this: https://www.fitfortravel.nhs.uk/advice/general-travel-health-advice/hajj-and-umrah-pilgrimage#:~:text=Hajj%20begins%20on%20the%208th,used%20in%20the%20western%20world.

So the timing does change every year, but at that latitude the general temperature won’t change much.

^^Thanks! Mecca is cooler in the winter. Speaking as someone who spends hours walking around Disney, there’s a big difference between 75° and 100°, I can’t imagine 110° or more.

People wind up in the hospital and/or die in our country every year from heat, so I guess wherever the media focuses on it will seem more pronounced. Needless illness and death though. Sad.

Allah is just and merciful. And hundreds died marching through 125 F heat as part of some ritual that isn’t required. Sounds just and merciful to me. He took the lives of many that didn’t have sense enough to get out of the heat and he saved many that stayed home. The ones that died could have lived but with all sorts of miserable health issues from the heat stroke. Death may have been better for them and the families that would have had to take care of them.

Being Just and Merciful doesn’t mean you get to live forever nor that you won’t die from your own misadventures.

I try not to criticize other’s religious beliefs if they don’t impinge on my own or other non-practitioners’ rights.

@JLeslie, I doubt the pilgrims are experiencing “a day at Disney” conditions. The temperature at Mecca does vary by season, but the climate and latitude (around 7° lower than Orlando) create a different environment. Because of the 11 day calendar year difference, The Hajj does happen in cooler weather, but it’s never cool.
(See Climate of Mecca Wikipedia page)

Some will justify it by saying: “They died doing what they believed. They are martyrs for the faithful.”

@canidmajor I had checked the temperature averages of Mecca before I wrote my answer. That’s where I got 75° and 100°. Disney is different, more humid, which carries more risk, but many places to go inside and get air conditioning. Looks like Saudi Arabia tries to make it safer with water spraying and more measures.

God, or of you prefer Allah, gave us a planet which is by and large habitable. It is mankind who is making it increasingly uninhabitable by burning immense quantities of fossil fuels and causing global warming. Whether you believe in Allah or in God or in no god you can agree that we are making a ghastly mess of this precious and irreplaceable world.

@flutherother – of course, by definition, a god would know this would happen, and set it in motion regardless. If there is a god, it is not one of the just ones.

Life is horrible sometimes. If you think a god controls our lives, you believe in a malevolent, hateful, sadistic and cruel god.

Enjoy it if you’re into that. Keep it yourself. If you force it on other people, you are also malevolent, hateful, sadistic and cruel.

If they die en route to Mecca, Jerusalem or any other pilgrimage at least it’s in service to their God. An honorable death by my standards and perhaps merciful. Who knows how those lives would have ended if not this way.

Maybe some had scoffed a sneaky bacon butty when they thought nobody was looking. God sees all.