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Indonesia rejects offer to send 10,000 more for haj this year
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Muslim pilgrims circle the Kaaba and pray at the Grand Mosque as Saudi Arabia welcomes back pilgrims for the 2022 haj season, after the kingdom barred foreign travelers over the last two years because of the COVID-19 pandemic, in the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on July 1. (Reuters/Mohammed Salem)
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he government has declined an offer from the Saudi Arabian authorities to send an additional 10,000 Indonesians on the holy pilgrimage this year, citing time constraints.
Following eased COVID-19 restrictions, the government announced earlier this year that Indonesia would be sending some 100,000 pilgrims to go on haj, after two years of health and mobility restrictions that barred potential pilgrims from doing so.
Read also: Govt to send 100,051 pilgrims on haj this year
The first batch of Indonesians, consisting of a few thousand pilgrims from Central Java, East Java, Jakarta and West Java, arrived in Saudi Arabia last month, with thousands more to follow until July 3.
Read also: Thousands of Indonesians arrive in Saudi Arabia for haj
But this year’s quota has been less than half of what Indonesia – the world’s largest Muslim majority country – received usually, as around 220,000 Indonesians were set to go on haj in 2020, before the government’s annual program was canceled amid Saudi Arabia's previous suspension of the haj for international pilgrims due to the pandemic.
The Religious Affairs Ministry’s haj and umrah (minor haj) director general, Hilman Latief, said in a press statement on Wednesday that while the government had received an invitation to send 10,000 more pilgrims, it had elected to decline.
