Image by neweurasia's Schwartz (CC-usage). Click on it to read the story by the Chronicles of Turkmenistan.

This year, more than two million people across the world are heading, as if pulled by a magnet, to one single spot on earth: Mecca.  But no Turkmen will be joining this great human current.  Although approximately 90% of Turkmenistan’s population is Muslim, the Turkmen government is not issuing exit visas to would-be pilgrims.

Believe it or not, the official reason is to prevent the spread of swine flu into Turkmenistan.  This seems pretty odd considering the recent hysteria about the disease already being in the country.

Of course, given the huge crowds that go with the Hajj, there is an understandable greater risk for infection.  However, Saudi Arabian health authorities have already issued a list of health requirements to counter the threat.  Prospective pilgrims must have certain vaccinations and must be between 12 and 65 years of age.  Those who are at all symptomatic are told to stay and pray at home.

Indeed, it is an Islamic teaching that in event wide spread infections, people living in infected areas should be careful not to move around in order to avoid spreading infections.  For example, in Lebanon, the widely respected Shiite Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah has decreed that Muslims who have serious concerns about contracting swine flu while performing pilgrimage may stay away this year.

The Turkmen government’s answer has been characteristically blunt, namely, altogether cancelling the Hajj.  Would-be pilgrims have instead been offered a trip around the country to local holy sites.  But don’t be fooled — the Turkmen government doesn’t just mean deceased Sufis, it means that of respected historical figures, including the deceased president, Saparmurat Niyazov.

NB Central Asia remarks,

Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have found very different solutions for reducing the swine flu risk. While Tashkent has embarked on a mass vaccination campaign, the Turkmen leadership has slapped a blanket ban on pilgrims leaving the country. [From Uzbekistan about 5,000 Muslims are taking part in the pilgrimage.]

In a laughable attempt at policy consistency, the Turkmen government, while cancelling the Hajj out of fear of the virulence of swine flu, is also deeming vaccination against the swine flu unneccessary.  The Turkmen State News Agency has declared:

Since there has been detected no cases of A/H1N1 influenza in the country, there is no need to conduct mass vaccination of the population.

The government’s antics notwithstanding, from the point of view of Islamic law, it’s not sure whether the Hajj can be substituted.  Abdullah Ataee, a lecturer on Islamic Law at Al-Azhar university in Cairo, explains to me,

According to the hadith of Prophet Mohammed , even if a Muslim does not go to the plain f Arafat mountain during the Hajj, the Hajj is not fulfiiled. [...] The governments cannot change the religious or Sharia laws.

To some, the Turkmen government’s decision could even amount an anti-Islamic act.  A divinely-ordained religious ritual such as the Hajj and a culturally-sanctioned visit to a tomb are completely different.  Indeed, the Hajj is a religious duty; a tomb visitation is, at most, a good deed.

Yet, this is old hat in Turkmenistan, where state ideology has extended to every aspect of life, even religion.  The mosque of Niyazov’s home village Gypjak has verses of the Ruhnama, the deceased president’s spiritual-ideological manual, alongside verses from the Qur’an.  Meanwhile, a copy of the Ruhnama is required by law to feature prominently at the entrance of every mosque in Turkmenistan.  When enterring the buildings, one must pause to touch it with the same kind o reverence due to a sacred object.

Meanwhile, alternative expressions of religiosity are systematically repressed persecuted — and keep in mind that what’s “alternative” in Turkmenistan is normal everywhere else, like praying five times a day, fasting, and most of all, avoiding the sin of shirk (association) by doing nothing to elevate anything else to the same level as the word of God in the Qur’an.

In conclusion, the cancellation of the Hajj is a sin in both secular and religious ways.  To quote Human Rights Watch:

[The] state control of religious expression has reached a new height. The state no longer simply controls religion; it is actively trying to eliminate even state-controlled religions in order to establish a new religion based on the personality of the president.