Between Religious Obligation and Health Security: Saudi Hajj Governance Under COVID-19

Abstract Hajj is one of the ‘Five Pillars’ in Islam. However, the large-scale cross-border movement of pilgrims around the world poses huge challenges over health security. Saudi Hajj governance is not only a need to maintain health security, but also to a large extent the sharia considerations related to the prerequisites for Hajj. In recent years, Saudi Arabia has gained rich experience in dealing with the challenges of SARS, MERS and other infectious diseases on Hajj. With the spread of the COVID-19 to Mecca in February 2020, Saudi Arabia has been facing serious challenges. Based on domestic and global epidemic prevention considerations, the Saudi government finally introduced the new policy on 2020 Hajj, which for the first time halted the Hajj of overseas Muslims, and only selected a very limited number of pilgrims within Saudi territory to perform Hajj. Saudi actually balances three major structural contradictions between maintaining health security and fighting the epidemic, and to a certain extent ensuring the rights of Muslims around the world. With the easing of the epidemic in Saudi Arabia in 2021, how to ensure that the Hajj can be performed in 2021 under the COVID-19 has aroused great attention from the international community. For the current review, Saudi new Hajj policy in 2020 has achieved due results. Saudi Arabia continued the scaled-down Hajj policy in 2021 due to the constant mutations of the coronavirus. The formation of Saudi Hajj policy under COVID-19 directly comes from the rich experience of Saudi Arabia in effectively maintaining the Hajj health security during the spread of different global epidemics, and fundamentally rooted in the hygiene and cleanliness within the Islamic civilisation.