hajj | First One Through

We often hear that the al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem is the third holiest site for Muslims, behind Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. What remains unspoken is that the gap between numbers one and two to the distant number three is the size of the Grand Canyon.

Mecca is THE holy city of Muslims. It is there where Muslims perform the hajj, their pilgrimage to the Kaaba stone. During the week of the hajj, over 2 million people come to the city, of which roughly two-thirds are from outside Saudi Arabia.

During the hajj, many Muslims also visit Medina, where Muhammed is buried, about 280 miles away. Visitors come from Iraq, Pakistan, Indonesia and Egypt, among other Muslim-majority countries.

Mecca and Median draw in the Islamic faithful from around the world. The religious sites make the desert country the most popular destination in the Arab world.

The same cannot be said for Muslim visitors to Jerusalem, which only draws local Arabs.

In 2019, before the pandemic dramatically impacted travel, Israel had over 4.5 million tourists visit the country. The two neighboring Arab countries with peace treaties with Israel barely came: Jordan had a mere 19,200 people visit Israel and Egypt had 8,000. Combined, the two countries accounted for 0.6% of tourists to the holy land. Amman, the capital of Jordan is less than a two hour drive from Jerusalem, an easy day trip.

Yet no one comes.

Turkey, which has long had relations with Israel, barely sends any tourists or pilgrims to Israel. The four Muslim majority countries, which recently struck normalization agreements with the Jewish State similarly have almost no visitors.

If al Aqsa is so holy, why don’t any Muslims from around the world come visit?

*Some holy sites in the Jerusalem skyline, open to all under Israel*

Christians make the pilgrimage to Israel all of the time. Italy alone had nearly 191,000 people come to see the various holy sites. Greece, with a population 1/10th the size of Egypt, had nearly 42,000 visitors to the Jewish State, or more than five times as many as Egypt. While Greece, Turkey and Israel were all once part of the Ottoman Empire, the Muslim interest in Jerusalem is vastly different. While roughly 417 Greeks per 100,000 go to Israel each year, only 37 per 100,000 Turks visit.

Israel allows access for Muslims to ascend the Temple Mount to visit al Aqsa every day, and even bars non-Muslims during Islamic holy days to facilitate Muslim prayers. Over one million Muslims went to Jerusalem during Ramadan in 2023, almost every one a local Arab, many who came repeatedly.

The al Aqsa Mosque is a holy shrine for local religious Muslims, while the entire Temple Mount is the holiest location for world Jewry and central focus of Judaism.