One Dangerous and Thus Stupid Religious Ritual

1) The Hajj is the stone-throwing ritual in Mecca in which Muslim pilgrims stone a symbolic devil.

2) Every able-bodied Muslim who can afford the trip is obliged to perform the Hajj to Mecca once in a lifetime.

3) The Hajj has been connected with deadly incidents in the past, most of them stampedes that take place during the ceremonies.

4) The worst stampede happened in 1990, when 1,426 pilgrims were trampled to death.

5) 251 pilgrims died in 2004 in a stampede during the stone-throwing ritual.

6) A stampede in 2003 killed 36 pilgrims, most of them en route to the devil-stoning ritual, conducted outside Mecca.

7) In 2001, a stampede at the same ritual killed 35.

8) Today, at least 345 are reported dead in a devil-stoning stampede.

9) Seems to me that the ritual itself is the devil, not the symbol they stampede to assualt.

10) Of course, the religiously zealot will blame 'the real devil' for this evil, not their insistence on reckless ceremonies.

11)  If in the future they decide to keep this up, the tourist industry in Mecca should play it up to foreign audiences like Spain does the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona.  Then, at least, they would profit somewhat more from this fairly predictable tragedy.

12)  Or perhaps they could just put some devil heads on bulls and let them run through the devil-stoning crowds.  The bulls, before being stoned to death, would probably wreak less havoc than the stampeding humans do now upon themselves.

13) On second thought, dash that last suggestion: the bulls aren't really devils and they aren't Muslims either.  Hence, no reason for them to spin death's wheel at Stampede Central.

14) I believe this ritual and its almost predictable tragic outcome is symbolic of what's at core wrong with Islam: it fails to constrain it own tendencies to slip into extremes, whether those extremes consist of stupid human stampedes or anti-crusading Islamic terror.

15) I wonder if Osama bin Laden has done his Hajj yet?  If not, maybe it's our best chance to take him out... I can see the Muslim Headlines now: "Osama dies in a devil-stoning stampede believed to have been instigated by the CIA."

16) Well, they'll stone ya when you're trying to be so good,
They'll stone ya just a-like they said they would.
They'll stone ya when you're tryin' to go home.
Then they'll stone ya when you're there all alone.
But I would not feel so all alone,
Everybody must get stoned.