Al-Manasik Travel and Tours organizers of travel arrangements for people who go for Hajj and Umrah says there has been an increase in the number of people who are going for Hajj and Umrah in Saudi Arabia since the organization was founded in 2005.
Sheikh Aman Matiya Chairman for Al-Manasik Travel and Tours attributes the increase due to intense awareness the organization has been doing to the people of Malawi on the importance of Hajj and Umrah.
“We have seen a tremendous increase in (the number of) Moslems who are going for Hajj and Umrah, this is so because the Sheikhs who work for this organization (constantly) give lectures in the mosques.
“We started with eleven people in 2005, slowly the number has been increasing every year such that last year, we went with ninety people,” he said. “As we are talking now, we have already started making arrangements for this year’s (2012) Hajj, and people have already started paying for it…,” he added.
Matiya explained that his organization does everything like the processing of Visas, air tickets as well as booking accommodation for hujjaj adding that they also allow people to pay in instalments. The organisation is currently registering people who intend to go for this year’s Hajj. The organisation’s personnel go together with the people in order to guide them on how to perform the Hajj prayers.
He further added that they anticipate over a hundred pilgrims that this year.
“The idea to form this organization came when we were students at the University of Medina in the 1980s when we discovered that people from other countries who were coming for Hajj were coming through organizations (from their respective countries) which were making travel arrangements for them.
“We borrowed that idea and when the government of Saudi Arabia through their Embassy in Lusaka made a policy that those who want to go for Hajj should go under the leadership of an agent in their country, we took advantage of that and formed our organization, “says Matiya.
Hajj is one of the fundamental pillars of Islam and is mandated that in his or her life time every Moslem should go for Hajj, funds permitting. It is the site of al-Kaaba, a house that Prophet Abraham built for the worship of Allah. Allah rewarded him by calling it his own House and by making it the centre which all Muslims face when saying prayers.
