Hajj Luxury for Ukrainian Muslims
KIEV — Ukrainian Igor Korpishen has been saving up for the past eight years to make his hajj dream come true as the holy journey looked something of a luxury in the central European country where Muslims stand as the poorest minority with towering unemployment rates and deplorable economic conditions.
"I'm so happy," Korpishen, who reverted to Islam in 1998, told IslamOnline.net Sunday, December 3.
Overwhelmed by joy, the 31-year-old Muslim youth has taken pains and worked late into nights to save every hryvnia needed for the relatively expensive journey.
"I pray that every Muslim would perform hajj in his/her lifetime," Korpishen said in an emotional voice.
Almost at every Muslim home in Ukraine, there is a Korpishen.
Many Muslims are yearning to perform hajj, but they are in such dire financial straits to make the dream come true. Some of them pass away and the dream is still unfulfilled.
The hajj journey in Ukraine costs an average of $2,500, a mind-boggling sum for many Ukrainian Muslims living below the poverty line.
One of the five pillars of Islam, hajj consists of several ceremonies, which are meant to symbolize the essential concepts of the Islamic faith, and to commemorate the trials of Prophet Abraham and his family.
Every able-bodied adult Muslim — who can financially afford the trip — must perform hajj once in their lifetime.
Individual Effort
Neither the government nor NGOs provide charge-free hajj packages to Muslims, according Wael Al-Alami, the spokesman for the umbrella Federation of the Islamic Organizations in Ukraine (ARRAID).
"The pilgrims here perform hajj at their own expenses," Al-Alami told IOL.
"We have tried in vain to get charge-free hajj packages for poor Muslims and new reverts."
The organization of hajj trips is an individual effort undertaken by some Muslim organizations like ARRAID in coordination with a travel agency in the capital Kiev and the Saudi embassy in Moscow, because there is no a Saudi diplomatic mission in Ukraine.
Some 250 Ukrainian Muslims would perform hajj this year on three batches, according to Al-Alami.
The first batch is scheduled to fly for Saudi Arabia on December 8.
Ukraine is home to some two million Muslims making up 5% of the overall 46-million population.
And yeah.... the costs of performing hajj is so high.... and so many people wanna go to hajj but cant go as there is a quota enforcement by the Saudi govt.
In Malaysia, if you register for hajj in 2007, you could only go in 2015.
The Saudi govt imposes 25,000 Malaysian pilgrims quota annually... but there are hundreds of thousands Malaysians registered for hajj....
I see, well i guess that makes sense so everyone can get a chance to go do hajj from all over the world. Maybe a smart idea would be to go to a less muslim populated country and go to hajj from there
China is a communist country, they are not letting people know that they coat their Aqua Dots and Aqua Beads with gamma hydroxybutyrate, and they are not letting people know that they have given them lead and paper instead of Epotein Alfa for a ca. med.-- they shoot at whim anyone that protests their govt. I doubt very much they will give you proper stats as to how many Muslims are living there considering the circumstance, I am rather sure they'd rather sweep them under the rug..thus you can stop using it as an example now, I have been meaning to write this on a previous thread where you'd asked but it got closed before I had a chance...
cheers!
Text without context is pretext If your opponent is of choleric temperament, seek to irritate him
thus you can stop using it as an example now, I have been meaning to write this on a previous thread where you'd asked but it got closed before I had a chance...
I thought of using it everytime someone makes an exaggerating claim about the number of muslims living in a certain country, but after reading your post I decided not to.:sunny:
Would be great if they could give up at quotas. This year we will have too muslims going in hajj. In fact our tv announced they already went in Saudi - and they paid for that 2500 euro.
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- and they paid for that 2500 euro.
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