Leader of Islamic Ummah Imam Khamenei: ‘Disgraced’ Saudi Rulers Should Be Stripped of Hajj Duties

The Leader of Islamic Ummah and Oppressed People Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei lashes out Saudi rulers for their negligence in handling the Hajj rituals last year, calling on Muslims to reconsider the management of holy sites in the Gulf Kingdom.

In the 2016 Hajj message, Leader of Islamic Ummah and Oppressed People Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei says the Saudi rulers are to blame in the incidents of Mina and Grand Mosque in which thousands of pilgrims lost their lives in a tragic crush in Mina last year.

His eminence describes the Saudi rulers as ” belittled devils who shudder as soon as the ambitions of America are put in jeopardy.”

” Those who have reduced the Hajj to a mere pilgrimage-tourism trip and have hidden their enmity and grudge against the faithful and the revolutionary nation of Iran under the title of the “politicization of the Hajj” are puny and belittled devils, who shudder as soon as the ambitions of the Great Satan, America, are put in jeopardy.”

Leader of Islamic Ummah and Oppressed People Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei says the Saudi rulers “have obstructed the path to Allah and the Masjid al-Haram this year and blocked the way of the fervent and faithful Iranian pilgrims to the House of the Beloved.

They (Saudi rulers) “are disgraced misguided people, who tie their survival on the throne of [their] oppressive power to defending global arrogant powers and [forming] alliance with Zionism and America and making efforts to meet their demand, and they do not shy away from any act of treason to that end,” the Leader of Islamic Ummah and Oppressed People Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei states.

“About one year has passed since the horrible Mina incidents in which several thousand people, on the day of Eid and attired in the Ihram [garment], lost their lives tragically under the [searing] sun and with thirsty lips. A short while before that at the Grand Mosque, a group [of pilgrims] were killed while they were in worship and circumambulation and [saying] prayers. The Saudi rulers are to blame in both incidents; this is something on which all attendants [in Hajj] and observers and technical analysts agree, and some experts [even] speculated the intentionality of the incident,” Imam Khamenei says in his message.

Meanwhile, the Leader of Islamic Ummah and Oppressed People Imam Sayyed Ali Khameneisays the “criminal” Saudi rulers killed the injured pilgrims at Mina last year because of their negligence in dealing with that incident.

“Dawdling and negligence in saving the half-alive injured people whose enchanted souls and eager hearts were busy with dhikr [mention of God] and whispering the divine verses [of the Quran] on [the day of] Eid al-Adha are also definite and proven facts. The ruthless and criminal Saudi men locked them up along with the dead in tightly closed containers and martyred them instead of providing treatment to them and assisting them or even supplying water to their thirsty lips.”

Instead of offering apology and expressing regret and prosecuting those directly behind this horrible incident, Imam Khamenei continues, the Saudi rulers “even refused to set up an international Islamic fact-finding mission in ultimate shamelessness and impudence.”

On the other hand, theLeader of Islamic Ummah and Oppressed People Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei slams the “seditionist rulers” for claiming that they are not politicizing the Hajj, noting that they accuse others of the big sins they have themselves committed or caused to happen.

The seditionist rulers “have embroiled the Muslim world in civil wars and the carnage of innocents and who have stained Yemen, Iraq, the Levant, Libya and some other countries with blood by forming and equipping Takfiri and evil groups,” Leader of Islamic Ummah and Oppressed People Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei says in his message.

His eminence reminds the Muslim Ummah that the Saudi rulers “have extended the hand of friendship to the occupying Zionist regime and have turned a blind eye to the heart-wrenching suffering and plight of Palestinians and have broadened the extent of their oppression and treason to cities and villages in Bahrain.”

They (Saudi rulers) are “unfaithful and unconscientiously rulers, who created the great tragedy of Mina and under the guise of [being] Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques flouted the sanctity of the safe divine sanctuary and slaughtered the guests of the Compassionate God on the Eid day in Mina and before that at the Grand Mosque,” the message says.

In this context, Leader of Islamic Ummah and Oppressed People Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei calls on the Saudi rulers to reconsider management of the holy sited in Saudi Arabia, urging Muslims to know the Saudi rulers’ “sacrilegious” nature.

“The Muslim world, including Muslim governments and nations, must know the Saudi rulers and truly realize the reality of their sacrilegious, unfaithful, dependent and materialistic nature; they must not let them go with impunity after [all] the crimes they have caused across the Muslim world, [but] in response to their unjust treatment of the guests of the Merciful God, they must think of a fundamental solution for the management of the Two Holy Mosques and the issue of Hajj. Shirking from this duty will expose the Islamic Ummah to bigger problems in the future.”

“Muslim Brethren and Sisters! This year, the eager and devoted Iranian pilgrims are missed in the Hajj ritual, but they are in attendance with their hearts and they are standing along Hajj pilgrims from across the globe and are concerned about them and pray for them to be spared any harm from the accursed tree of tyrants. Remember your Iranian brethren and sisters in your prayers and acts of worship and invocation, and pray for the Muslim communities to get rid of their troubles and to have the hand of arrogant powers and Zionists and their stooges cut off the Islamic Ummah,” the leader says, referring to obstacles created by Riyadh during talks with Tehran over the participation of Iranian pilgrims in Hajj rituals this year.

“I personally honor the memory of last year’s martyrs of Mina and the Grand Mosque and the martyrs of Mecca in [the Hajj pilgrimage in] 1987 and I pray to the Almighty God to bestow His forgiveness and mercy upon them and reserve them high positions [in the Heavens]. I salute Hadhrat Baqiatallah al-A’zam (Shall our souls be sacrificed for him) and request that venerable figure’s accepted prayer for the exaltation of the Islamic Ummah and salvation of Muslims from sedition and malevolence of enemies,” Leader of Islamic Ummah and Oppressed People Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei concludes his message.