Noor Mohammad Thaqib, the Taliban’s Minister of Guidance, Hajj, and Endowments, met with Tawfiq bin Fawzan Al-Rabiah, Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Hajj and Umrah, in Mecca to request an increase in Afghanistan’s Hajj quota. Thaqib emphasized that given the large number of applicants, the current quota does not meet the needs of the country’s population.<\/p>\n
According to Thaqib, over 100,000 people register annually in Afghanistan to perform Hajj, while this year only 30,000 pilgrims were sent from Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia. This gap between demand and allocated quota has resulted in many citizens waiting for years to get their turn.<\/p>\n
Currently, pilgrims in Afghanistan are selected through a lottery system, which has become the only option for managing applicants due to limited quotas. However, some residents have consistently called for greater transparency and accountability in this process.<\/p>\n
Saudi authorities determine each country’s Hajj quota based on specific criteria. A possible increase in Afghanistan’s quota would help alleviate some of the growing demand pressure, a matter the Taliban administration has raised in discussions with Saudi officials.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Taliban request an increase in Afghanistan’s Hajj quota from Saudi Arabia due to high demand and long waiting times for pilgrims.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15335,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-religion-thought"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}