Shia institutions, two-faced shia Persian governments and the ignorant media claim that the number of visitors to Karbala is about 17 million. Unfortunately many of us happily accept this number without ever thinking of it.
If you look a this claim logically it makes absolutely no sense and is simply a ridiculous claim that cannot be verified in any way. Let's take a look at the facts and then explain each of them.
1. Shia Muslims are only 10% of of the world-wide Muslim population.
The annual hajj gathering is of about 2 million Muslims, including the minority shias and the majority Sunnis. That is out of 1 billion Muslims worldwide. Either the shia Muslims give Karbala more importance than Hajj and hence the so claimed 20 million shias don't show up for Hajj but show up for Karbala or the claimed 20 million Karbala pilgrims is a white lie! If indeed they are 20 million then the shias need to check their aqeedah and get their priorities right. Hajj is pillar of Islam, Karbala or Arbaeen is not even a sunnah! If the 20 million do actually go to Karbala then it's just sad how more people go to commit shirk at Karbala and ignore the fard of Hajj!
2. The Iraqi population
The Iraqi population is about 29 million at the moment (taking into consideration the 1 million that have died in the war since 2003) About 3 million are refugees living outside Iraq and the number decreases to 26 million. Take away the non-muslims yazidis and others you are left with 25 million.
60% of Iraqis are shia so the number of shias in Iraq is 15 million. Now there are 3 categories of shias who cannot visit Karbala, young kids, elderly and sick people. From statistics 38% of Iraqis are under 14 years of age while 3% are above 64 years. So 41% of Iraqis cannot visit Karbala. Split them equally between Shias and Sunnis for arguments sake 20% of the 15 million cannot visit Karbala. That is another 3 million slashed and you are left with 12 million. There are about 1 million others in the army, police, institutions and different security sectors. You are now left with 11 million. Now ignore the number of sick people, the pregnant and menstruating women, the mothers of the young kids who cannot visit because they have to take care of them this number of 11 million is further reduced.
You still cannot account for the extra 6 million. Well before I forget there are about 300,000 foreign Shias who also visit Karbala. This is according to official Iraqi departments.
3. Hotels in the area
Official sources assure that the number of hotels able to receive clients is about 400. If each hotel has an average capacity of 100 guests that's 40,000 visitors accommodated. About 50 schools were opened to receive visitors and if each school takes 500 visitors that's another 25,000 visitors accommodated. Let's assume 1000 families take in 10 visitors each that is 10,000 more people accommodated. So in total that's 75,000 visitors ok let's make it 100,000. So where do the other millions reside?
Taking a few drone photos of a gathering does not make it 20 million. Any one can take photos of a bag of potatoes and claim they are 20 million potatoes.
4. Sanitary, drainage and waste management systems.
we all
know that Karbala was sunk in water the last time it rained, which means
that the sewage infrastructure has not been rehabilitated since the
toppling of the previous regime. Let’s assume that 17 million people
have to urinate three times per day, and that every individual urinates
around one liter of fluids. That would mean that there is fifty million
liters of fluids that pass by Karbala’s sewage every day. This number is
five times more than the amount of water that passed by the sewage
during rainy days. Shall we continue and discuss the eight million
kilograms of other bodily excrements as well?
Below is some photos of the rubbish
& waste “management system” in Karbala. If the city can’t even
provide acceptable standard of service for their own residents which is
less than 2 millions people, then how on earth can they provide better
service to tens of millions more people? This photos are taken from “The Abandoned: The Forgotten Orphans of Karbala” (mins 43:25)
5. Ceremonies of Arbaeen
Speaking
of the ceremonies of the Arbaeen, visitors have to reside in Karbala in a
specific day next to al-Husayn grave may Allah be pleased with him. The
engineer Ibrahim al-Zoubaydi provided us with an illustrated map in
which he explains, in an intellectual manner, the capacity of the area
that surrounds al-Husayn’s grave. We can see, based on this map, that
the total area filled by visitors does not exceed 500 thousand m2;
let’s presume that each person needs a space of 0.5m to stand, let
alone lay down, this mean that this area cannot be filled with more than
one million people if we placed people in rows one after the other.
Anyway, we already know that Karbala is not a plain land, but that it is
settled. This means that this city cannot, in its best conditions, have
capacity for more than 500,000 people from the visitors who came from
outside Karbala to perform the ceremonies of the Arbaeen visit. Since we
haven’t seen any long queues or a large number of crowds in the city’s
entry sides because there is no place to stand on near to the grave, nor
have we seen a state of confusion and disturbance due to the
over-crowdedness, then we can say that the real number of visitors did
not reach more than half a million people.
Let’s be more rational please. The entire area of settled Mecca is 88 km2, while the central area that surrounds the Mosque is of 6km2.
This area is ten times more the area of Karbala. We all know the
crowdedness in Mecca when it welcomes around two million pilgrims in
this area though it is equipped with a huge number of hotels and
apartment buildings. Now the question is: How can we put 17 million
people in an area that constitutes 1/6th the area of Mecca? And here, we
are not trying to compare Mecca, this holy city, with any other place
on the earth. According to retired and sick minds only, you can put 100
million people per 1 m2…
700m x 700m Area of Karbala
6. Further research
The research team has looked into the booking.com
website in order to verify some of the criticisms mentioned by the
author of the article and we suggest that readers do the same. We have
found that Karbala only has twelve listed properties, while Makkah has
127 listed properties. Furthermore, hotels in Makkah like the Pullman
Zamzam have a total of 1315 rooms for guests, while the Hotel Karbala
Rayhaan, while seems to be the most popular hotel in Karbala on the
website only includes 185 rooms.
Somebody either needs to be telling the
hotel tycoons that they are under-investing in Karbala, or someone
should tell the Shia statisticians to stop lying through their teeth.
If it’s still unclear to some of our
more stubborn visitors, let’s show them some visual evidence of the
gigantic difference between the two locations, hopefully their intellect
will be able to process these comparative images.
Two images taken on the same eye-level altitude of 1.5 km.
Makkah hosts a big number of pilgrims
annually, it reaches its maximum capacity estimated at about 2 to 5
million visitors both Sunni & Shia, (remember that Makkah has
several floors/layers that are all filled). On the other hand, Karbala
is supposed to have contained 10 million to 17 million Shia visitors (in
Arbaeen) according to Shiite authorities just in one day! How does that
make sense when it’s a significantly smaller area!? You judge!
Next, we use advanced software to figure
out an accurate number for the areas in question. Below data are taken
from area calculator at http://www.mapdevelopers.com/area_finder.php
- Masjid al-Haram complex (2015) = 456,519 m2 (see original data)
- Karbala 2 shrines complex (2015) = 80,381 m2 (see original data)
Thus we find that al-Haram in Makkah
which is completely full at Hajj, is about five times bigger than both
Shia shrines and whatever is between them. Therefore, if Makkah can
reach its full capacity of 2.5 to 3 million during Hajj, how can we
believe that the Karbala’ shrines held 20-22 million in the Arbaeen of
2014, 15-18 million in 2013 or 10 million in 2015. They even claimed 12
million visitors to Kadhimiyyah (Musa al-Kadhim’s shrine) in 2015 which
is half the area of the 2 shrines in Karbala’!
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