Haj issue should have been mutually resolved
The barring of Iranians from attending the annual Haj pilgrimage at the holiest sites of Mecca has escalated the tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia once again. As the exclusion of the Iranians from Haj came first time in decades, this may fast snowball into a bitter war in the restive Middle East region and will of course add into the already tattered relationship between the two major powers of the Shia and Sunni Muslims. It is expected that the traditional and an age-old rivalry for supremacy between the two sects of Islam, should have never overshadowed the celebration of the holiest festival of the community.
Drawing the strong narratives on the Shia-Sunni schism in the past, the current spat may affect and intensify the sectarian clashes in respective Muslim countries in the post-Haj period. Meanwhile the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani highlighting the Saudi support for terrorism with its active involvement in the current civil wars in Syria, Yemen and Iraq may even further push the bilateral relations to rock bottom. Keeping in mind the deteriorating political atmosphere in the Middle East, two regional giants should have ironed out their differences well in advance before the beginning of the Haj on September 11. This seasonal verbal war will surely affect the hundreds of Shia devotees who were eagerly waiting for their turn to pay homage at Mecca. Bringing politics in religious affairs may cost both the countries dearly and it will even incite their respective jihadi groups to take on innocent civilians in the region and beyond in the days to come.
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused the Saudi royals for their incompetence to handle the last year's Haj which witnessed one of the deadliest stampedes in the annual holy fest, including the death of hundreds of Iranians. He criticised the Saudi rulers as godless and irreligious who were alleged to have killed the pilgrims. In turn, Saudi Arabia's most senior cleric Grand Mufti Abdulaziz al-Sheikh calling Iranians as non-Muslims have simply complicated the whole episode of the clash.
This shows how deep is the rift between the two sects and how jealously they are prepared to guard their prophet. This underlines the strategic rivalries between the two countries which are on the extreme opposite camps in the ongoing wars in Syria and Yemen particularly. Khamenei's call for the world of Islam to fundamentally reconsider the management of the two holy places and the issue of Haj pilgrimage must be viewed from a real perspective. Above all, both Iran and Saudi Arabia consider themselves as two sacrosanct guardians of the Shia's and the Sunni's in the region and hence, they continuously vie for power and influence at the cost of each other. Regardless of the Haj clash, the fight between Iran and Saudi Arabia is as old as the birth of Prophet Muhammad. So, the war continues.