Dubai: Gulf Arab states accused Iran on Wednesday of trying to politicise the Haj after its supreme leader lashed out at Saudi authorities over their management of the annual pilgrimage.
The head of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council said that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s remarks accusing Riyadh of “murder” over the deaths of nearly 2,400 pilgrims at last year’s Haj were “inappropriate and offensive”.
Abdul Latif Al Zayani said the comments were “a clear incitement and a desperate attempt to politicise” the Haj.
This year for the first time in almost three decades, Iranians will not join the annual pilgrimage to the Muslim holy places in Saudi Arabia after talks on logistics and security fell apart in May.
The verbal sparring between the two regional rivals — who have no diplomatic relations — has intensified ahead of the start of the pilgrimage on Saturday.
In his barb against Saudi Arabia, Khamenei also called on the Muslim world to take management of the pilgrimage away from Saudi Arabia.
Responding to that, the Organisation of Islamic conference, the largest grouping of Muslim states, extended support to Saudi Arabia and suggested that Iran should keep politics out of the Haj.
Maha Akeel, the head of the media department at the 56-member grouping based in Jeddah, told Gulf News that the organisation “highly values Saudi efforts in serving the pilgrims and offering them all the services they need”.
“Haj is a sacred religious duty to all Islamic peoples, and any talk about putting the ritual under a separate Islamic administration is illogical and was never put on the table of discussion,” Akeel said in a written statement.
The latest undiplomatic flare-up came just before the anniversary of a human crush during last year’s pilgrimage that left more than 2,400 people dead, including hundreds of Iranians, according to a count by The Associated Press. Saudi Arabia’s official death toll remains at 769, which it has not updated since just after the event.
The two countries broke off diplomatic relations in January after Iranian rioters stormed Saudi diplomatic missions to protest Saudi Arabia’s execution of a Saudi Shiite cleric, Shaikh Nimr Al Nimr.
Khamenei was due to meet later on Wednesday with the families of some of the more than 400 Iranian victims of the stampede.
In a scathing open letter published on Monday, Khamenei accused the Saudis of failing to protect pilgrims and called on Muslim countries to strip Saudi Arabia of the right to manage the Haj.
Saudi Arabia’s most senior cleric, Grand Mufti Abdulaziz Al Sheikh, countered that saying Iranians were “not Muslims”, prompting Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to launch a verbal attack on Saudi Arabia and its religious figures.
Zayani said the Gulf Arab states “reject the unjust media campaign and the successive declarations of senior Iranian leaders against the Saudi kingdom”.
Such allegations are “totally incompatible with the values and precepts of Islam which extol compassion, love and brotherhood,” he added.
— With inputs from agencies
