The Selfishness Of The Masses

It's amazing how selfish and disorganised some of the people in Makkah are. I'm not talking about the mosque authorities here, but more us, the guests.

An example was when we sat for Iftar today. Now we didn't know this at the time but we unintentionally sat in the "free food for the poor" section (which was pretty nice actually). Now the men's section was fine, but over on the women's side they were grabbing and fighting over a crate of food parcels like a bunch of jackals - really, that's the only way I know how to describe it.

Later on during the Tarawih (which we read behind Shaikh Sudais - always great) prayer the men showed us how they could be just as bad. These people guard their territory like it's their home (even lying while doing so), even if there's plenty of space for one or even two more people.

Something I realised during Tawaf was this habit of people pushing you "preemptively" just in case they have to. That sounds weird, I know, but if you imagine a busy train or platform and how you can navigate one without having to touch anyone else you may know what I'm talking about. Maybe it's a language/culture thing where a shove takes the place of an "excuse me".

I suppose it just shows the state Muslims as a people are in. In theory it shouldn't be like this at all, but then human nature does come into play in a crowd this big. God willing they'll be a time when none of this happens at all.