Saudi Reduction in Haj Visas Hitting Some Parts of Russia Far Harder than Others

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 21 – Angry that many Muslims have made the haj without the official permission of the Saudi government, that country’s haj commission has reduced the haj quotas of many countries, including the Russian Federation, which has seen its quota fall by 2750 from what had been the norm of 25,000, an 11 percent decline.

            That has hit some regions in the Russian Federation far harder than that because some republics, including in the Middle Volga, had dispatched their hajis before the new reductions went into force, while other, such as the North Caucasus had not (milliard.tatar/news/xadz-2025-pod-ugrozoi-saudiya-otozvala-2750-kvot-dlya-palomnikov-iz-rossii-tatarstan-poxoze-oboselsya-bez-poter-7512).

            Given that the North Caucasus and especially Dagestan and Chechnya regularly send the largest number of pilgrims from the Russian Federation, they will lose the largest number of slots. Worried about the anger that will spread, Muslim leaders in the region and in Russia as a whole have appealed to Vladimir Putin to intervene with the Saudis.

            For most years since 1991, the Saudis allocated 20,500 haj slots to the Russian Federation, based on the principle of one slot per year per 1,000 Muslims. Moscow argued that there was a backlog of demand because few Muslims had been able to make the haj in Soviet times and eventually succeeded in boosting the quota to 25,000.

            Because of the covid pandemic, the Saudis introduced restrictions then and have only gradually released them since. But now, Riyadh appears to have decided that it needs to reduce the number of Muslims making the haj still further and has done so by invoking the fact that so many of the faithful have been illegally participating by not getting special haj visas.