Hajj Pilgrimage Safety Challenges Crowd Simulator Technology 184
agent elevator writes: In 2010, Saudi Arabia hosted an international design competition aimed at safely accommodating more pilgrims at Mecca's Grand Mosque. One of the participants told IEEE Spectrum that the crowd densities there (6 people per square meter) bogged down off-the-shelf software so badly that simulation run times were about 10 to 20 times slower than real time crowd movement. Nevertheless, he found some workarounds that gave designers a plan to double the Grand Mosque's peak visitor rate from 40,000 to 102,000 people per hour. Last week's stampede took place well away from the mosque, but signals sent to pilgrims telling them when to speed up or slow down could help prevent such a tragedy, the crowd simulation expert said.
Other engineers are turning to fuzzy logic as way to predict how crowds will react in a panic.
How about the rest of the world? (Score:1, Insightful)
Can we simulate safely co-existing with a violent, barbaric religion that glamorizes death?
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Can we simulate safely co-existing with a violent, barbaric religion that glamorizes death?
In principle, I agree w/ your characterization about Islam/Muslims, but since this story is about Mecca - a city where ONLY Muzzies are allowed to go, the simulation wouldn't be one of co-existence, but rather, crowd flows.
In truth, the Saudi authorities are morons. Hajj is something Muslims can do any time of the year, not just during the eids, and they have a high traffic throughout. Yet, there have been thousands of deaths due to stampedes, despite the Muzzies having a practice at this for some 130
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I don't live in history, I live in now. And right now, Saudi Arabia is the central point from where the mother lode of bad ideas emanates.
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Yeah, that's pretty clear.
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Maybe, but it was a very short time ago when we still had Christian terrorism ("oh, but those weren't real Christians, they don't count!"). And it's not a big stretch of the imagination to see it again in the future. Anywhere there is an insurgency or civil war, you're often going to see one side claim that it's because of their religion, mostly because people can't separate ethnicity/culture from their religion.
Re:How about the rest of the world? (Score:5, Insightful)
If people didn't have religion, they'd find some other excuse to bash each other's heads in. Do you really think any of those "leader" gives half a shit about Allah, God or some other sky daddy?
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Do you really think any of those "leader" gives half a shit about Allah, God or some other sky daddy?
Yes, some of them clearly do. That's why theocracy is so dangerous. Politicians who believe their own bullshit? That's terrifying. And so it goes.
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So, the religion behind the NATO is...?
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Name one secular state that is involved in a war. Maybe France, they get involved in Syria a little bit.
On the other hand, religious states are at war all the time, and use religion to justify bigotry and internal conflicts.
I'm not saying all war would end if the world became secular, but it would certainly be less violent. And yes, those leaders do care about their deities, they are what give them moral permission to do terrible things that their humanity tells them are wrong.
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Nominally, the US is secular. Doesn't really look that way with politicians invoking God in every speech, but on paper it is.
Re:How about the rest of the world? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's impossible to be elected to high office if you are not a Christian. There is also scary stuff like the Pledge of Allegiance which includes the phrase "one nation under God" and is forced on children. It's a religious country, even if there is officially separation between church and state.
Re:How about the rest of the world? (Score:4, Interesting)
On the other hand, I don't think that religious insanity is ever very far away from any group. We see it leak-out from time to time in the United States and in Europe even most people in these places feel they're beyond it. The Balkan Wars are proof enough of that, people that had been peaceful neighbors for years killed each other even though no one benefited from it. I have no doubt that there are otherwise-functional people that in the right circumstances would attempt to kill me over my religious views even though they stand nothing to lose through my views.
That's my biggest problem with how the Wor on Terrah has been handled, instead of showing how base and petty and low these people are by simply trying them, convicting them, and throwing them in jail like any other murderers and thugs we elevate them by making their actions somehow different. Just throw 'em to the system like any other criminal and move on.
Re:How about the rest of the world? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with the war on terror, is that it made no attempt to resolve underlying issues.
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i would wager they killed more i nthe past week in the name of religion than "christians" did in the past decade in the name of religion
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Need I remind you that Adolf Hitler was a self professed "God Fearing Christian". I feel sorry for you if your mind edits these things for you.
(apologies to Goodwins law)
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Need I remind you that Adolf Hitler was a self professed "God Fearing Christian". I feel sorry for you if your mind edits these things for you.
You're the one re-imaging history to suit your agenda. Hitler didn't march across Europe in the name of Christianity. And his party singled out the Jews as a convenient ethic group on which to blame Germany's inability to recover gracefully from the previous time they'd gone to war with their neighbors.
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More edits.
Have you read Mein Kampf? I have (unfortunately, it was for a paper). Here is a copy in English http://www.greatwar.nl/books/m... [greatwar.nl], do a search for God.
Find out what actually went on, not the edited history by the victors.
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Hitler was baptised and confirmed a Catholic. Some consider that Christian, and some don't. However, he was not religiously driven. In adulthood he was disainful of Christianity. Only a mental defective would see any compatibility between Hitler's philosophy with the teachings of Jesus. The most you can say is that Hitler never publicly and formally repudiated the Church, nor was he excommunicated (which latter is itself damning, but off point).
Goebbels wrote that Hitler "hates Christianity, because it has
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Um, perhaps you need to reread some history? The Crusades were in response to Muslim violence.
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The "Crusades" were several historical events (note the plural) over quite a long time, and happened for various causes, including naked aggression.
Re:How about the rest of the world? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can think of two major acts of genocide ordered by self professed "God Fearing Christians" in the past 100 years. At least one bombing comes to mind as well as a few mass shootings.
Only one? Take a look at "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland and surroundings from about 1968 to 1998. (And related events in the centuries leading up to that.) Sure, there was a large political component too ... as there is in the Middle East. I'd wager that anyone old enough to remember those times was a lot more worried about IRA bombs then than Islamic ones today (and with good reason).
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It is amazon how soon we forget.
But we have you to re-kindle our memories.
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McVeigh's motivation was political, not religious. And somehow it's easy to look at his cause and say: well, he did have a point!
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McVeigh's motivation was political, not religious. And somehow it's easy to look at his cause and say: well, he did have a point!
He said it was revenge for Waco and Ruby Ridge. Stop editing things.
Re:How about the rest of the world? (Score:4, Informative)
He said it was revenge for Waco and Ruby Ridge. Stop editing things.
Right. He didn't like the political leanings and policies of the people who were involved in the deaths in those places. His revenge was against what he perceived as oppressors, not religious antagonists.
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He said it was revenge for Waco and Ruby Ridge. Stop editing things.
Right. He didn't like the political leanings and policies of the people who were involved in the deaths in those places. His revenge was against what he perceived as oppressors, not religious antagonists.
edit edit edit edit.
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edit edit edit edit
Interesting how you cannot actually address the substance of the matter, but only stamp your feet and say that word. Typical cowardly ad hominem argument, trying to impune the motive of the person to whom you're responding, instead of addressing the matter directly.
We have plenty of evidence that his attacks were essentially political. Among other things, because he SAID SO. You are trying to imply that it was a "Christian" attack, but of course you cannot actually back that up, and so you're attacking
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Lots of Muslim terrorism is political, not religious. If you're going to discount McVeigh because his bombing was political, you're going to have to go through an awful lot of Muslim actions to separate out the political from the religious (and they're not always easy to tell apart).
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Atheists murdered about 100 million people in the 20th century, give a take 10 million of so.
Lenin, Stalin, Mao, the usual crowd.
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Did they do it in the name of atheism, or in the name of their totalitarian cults of personality and communism?
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I mean, hell, it was the very first link that came up in my google search. You do know how to use google, right? Right?
The much more terrifying thought is that these other posters did search Google and posted accordingly. Don't ignore the power of search bubbles and individualized results.
Not everyone is interested in being part of the "reality-based community". :P
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Christianity didn't expand by fighting wars? It certainly did. For example, the Americas are generally Christian, and that came about through the conquest of the natives rather than peaceful conversion.
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Like Christianity's praise for martyrdom & viewing it as compelling evidence of sainthood?
Uh, if I'm not mistaken, Christianity's reverence for saints has to do with dying because you refuse to compromise your faith, not killing yourself and taking as many "infidels" as possible along for the ride. That, to my mind, is a huge difference.
If you have a choice between being killed and compromising your faith, by refusing to compromise your faith you are effectively committing suicide.
The difference is that you're not taking anyone with you, but it's not that dissimilar otherwise. You choose death because you believe in some sort of glorious Afterlife.
Assumptions (Score:5, Interesting)
The premise behind these simulations is that giving directions to crowds will improve flow of people.
It's a mighty big assumption that the folks in the crowds would follow a signal to "slow down". Between the culture in general (ever see a tidy British style queue in the middle east?), and the general human dynamics of large crowds of people, I don't have much hope of this being a success.
Perhaps a better solution would be to increase the time window for this event- spread the crowd over a few months instead of a few days.
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Re:Assumptions (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps a better solution would be to increase the time window for this event- spread the crowd over a few months instead of a few days.
You're trying to find a logical solution to a religious problem. That works so rarely that people are almost aghast when a Sikh removes his turban and uses it to stop the bleeding from a bullet wound on a child.
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The better solution is to give people enough space to move freely. It's those damn barriers that cause the problems. Restrict the flow and there's gonna be trouble. This latest event only confirms the obvious. It's just another rerun.
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They should have hired professional pedestrian traffic modelers. The industry is fairly mature now. More people should take advantage of this.
Re:Assumptions (Score:5, Insightful)
The better solution is to give people enough space to move freely.
Of course if you can solve the space problem it no longer exists, but unless you can pull a tardis out of your arse there are many situations where "more space" is simply not an option. The religious festival in Mecca is a prime example, in particular, the part where the pilgrim is required to walk around (what looks like) a huge stone box three times and throw pebbles at the devil (the stone box). The 'box' is already in the middle of large open area, but there are only so many people who can stand within pebble throwing distance at one time.
When too many people in one place have too much freedom of movement, there is nothing to dampen that movement should everyone move in the same direction for some reason (eg: band appears on stage, some idiot drops some firecrackers, rubbish bin catches fire, etc) Correctly placed barriers can significantly REDUCE the chance of "crowd crush" and stampedes, it's a common and well-understood technique that is often used to control "mosh pits" at large concerts and similar events.
The basic principle is no different to putting baffles in a petrol tanker truck to stop it sloshing about uncontrollably and derailing the truck, a crowd has a "pressure" that is related to it's density, volume, and overall direction of motion. A larger space can build up much higher "spot" pressures than a small space with the same density and motion. As I understand the problem in TFA, the sheer number of people makes it impossible/expensive to simulate the effect of crowd control measures in real time. However the basic principles of "crowd baffles" are well understood and have significantly reduced the likelihood of tragedy over the last few decades that they have been in use. If you find that hard to believe, try obtaining public liability insurance for a large event without having a credible crowd control plan.
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Correctly placed barriers can significantly REDUCE the chance of "crowd crush" and stampedes, it's a common and well-understood technique that is often used to control "mosh pits" at large concerts and similar events. The basic principle is no different to putting baffles in a petrol tanker truck to stop it sloshing about uncontrollably and derailing the truck, a crowd has a "pressure" that is related to it's density, volume, and overall direction of motion. A larger space can build up much higher "spot" pressures than a small space with the same density and motion. As I understand the problem in TFA, the sheer number of people makes it impossible/expensive to simulate the effect of crowd control measures in real time. However the basic principles of "crowd baffles" are well understood and have significantly reduced the likelihood of tragedy over the last few decades that they have been in use. If you find that hard to believe, try obtaining public liability insurance for a large event without having a credible crowd control plan.
The stoning columns probably served this purpose until they were replaced with walls to prevent pilgrims from stoning other pilgrims. Essentially they replaced the pillar "baffles" [nih.gov] with a solid barrier. The solution to the stray stone problem may have led to the stampede deaths.
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Do the rules state that the pebbles have to be thrown by hand? I see a business opportunity involving catapults here.
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The premise behind these simulations is that giving directions to crowds will improve flow of people.
It's a mighty big assumption that the folks in the crowds would follow a signal to "slow down". Between the culture in general (ever see a tidy British style queue in the middle east?), and the general human dynamics of large crowds of people, I don't have much hope of this being a success.
Perhaps a better solution would be to increase the time window for this event- spread the crowd over a few months instead of a few days.
I actually think that's a fairly good assumption. It might not stop a stampede in progress but the vast majority of the crowd is just going with the flow and doesn't really know what's going on. The activity of the crowd is determined by a very weak signal, if you can give them a strong signal instead they'll probably follow it.
Imagine you have a bunch of giant LED billboards overhead showing everyone in the crowd "SLOW DOWN" or "STOP" or "TURN RIGHT AT 42nd STREET". My guess is people are going to assume t
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putting up red lights could CAUSE a stampede. it would make the people at the back think that they might not make if they don't push more.
people are idiots, basically.
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The premise behind these simulations is that giving directions to crowds will improve flow of people.
It's a mighty big assumption that the folks in the crowds would follow a signal to "slow down". Between the culture in general (ever see a tidy British style queue in the middle east?), and the general human dynamics of large crowds of people, I don't have much hope of this being a success...
...The activity of the crowd is determined by a very weak signal, if you can give them a strong signal instead they'll probably follow it.
Imagine you have a bunch of giant LED billboards overhead showing everyone in the crowd "SLOW DOWN" or "STOP" or "TURN RIGHT AT 42nd STREET".
A baffle sends a strong signal that is impossible to ignore. Cylindrical pillars [nationalgeographic.com] seem to be among the most efficient at transmitting this signal in the right directions through the crowd so that it slows them in time to prevent crush injuries without panicking anyone into a stampede. Forget cultural stereotypes and objective cultural differences, at this scale all Muslims, Christians, Soccer fans, British Royals, bipeds, quadrapeds... behave as particles in a non-Newtonian fluid. [springer.com] If these particles encounte
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Perhaps a better solution would be to increase the time window for this event- spread the crowd over a few months instead of a few days.
Perhaps a better solution would be to try to cure large populations of magical thinking so that they no longer feel the need to conduct silly medieval rituals in order to please an imaginary deity.
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Darwin Award front-runner (Score:4, Funny)
Why bother? (Score:2, Insightful)
Didn't Allah will those people to get trampled? Why would they contradict Allah's will?
Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Informative)
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this time they said that it was fate.
well, it was fate that the people were unable to follow instructions I suppose.
Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Insightful)
In many ways it is an abrogation of personal responsibility, and a key problem with many religions, but a part of human nature it would seem.
Full automation not always the answer (Score:2)
Notice how many events have security guys to discourage people from
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Note that here the concept is that controlling the flow of the crowd is the automation piece. Whether you enact it through 'traffic signals', alerts to mobile devices, or send the data to uniformed officers to tell them how to direct traffic, the core is the automation piece here. An individual human at a given point does not have the awareness of the bigger picture to make the correct decision on how to flow traffic. So the discussion of having a human versus a signal light or other mechanism is not per
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The point is that full automation has a drawback over more than just signals in situations like this. Maybe I should have put it in bold, all caps, red, with an old BLINK tag?
It has been reported that they were not followed in this case. Perhaps the report is not correct and it is blame shifting, but assuming it is correct the signals were not enough.
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Umm... Assuming a proper emergency plan is in place (a big assumption) and that it is followed you certainly can have someone directing without knowing the larger events - so long as they all follow a set of rules for a given situation. Whilst my career was largely based on vehicular traffic we did expand into pedestrian traffic modeling as well - compute resources advanced and made this realistic. So, while it's an appeal to authority I do submit that I am an authority. Albeit a tired one.
Basically, you ha
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Yeah, because there's absolutely no way at all an agent on the ground could be receiving information & instructions from a place - let's hypothetically call it an "in the middle bossing booth". Now if someone invented a kind of portable wireless
Re:Full automation not always the answer (Score:4, Funny)
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These days you could drive to see them in a Tesla. If, you know, they existed.
Just a bit of FYI: I'm alive and doing fine. Thanks.
I haven't heard fuzz logic mentioned... (Score:1)
in nearly two decades! Talk about dusting off an old scam. Next we're going to hear about an "expert system."
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We're talking about a country with a legal and social model more fitting to medieval times and you complain about them being two decades behind? By their standards that's bleeding edge, bordering on heresy.
An old scam? (Score:2)
People movers (Score:3)
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Add panic to that, even if only a few people do, and you've got a recipe for disaster.
Re:TECHNOLOGY SOLVES EVERYTHING (Score:5, Informative)
If they have no problem trampling on people, why would they have a problem with ignoring a computer telling them to speed up or slow down?
The first part of that statement shows ignorance of big crowds. If you have ever been in a large crowd you know that when the crowd starts moving, you have no choice, you go with it. If there is something, or someone, on the ground you walk over it because you have absolutely no choice in the matter. I've been in dangerous crowd situations twice in my life, once at a rock concert and once at a post soccer game party. It's very scary and I have no problem at all understanding how people get trampled or crushed. It has nothing to with people not caring about their fellow man. I have to agree with the second part, I doubt any instructions would help once it gets past the tipping point.
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"Oh look, a stampede, I think I'll join in and who knows, maybe I'll get to trample someone to death!"
That is so not what happened, whatever you may think. You have a severe case of bigotry.
Why hasn't this been moderated "troll" into oblivion?
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I don't think rock-star crowdsurfing would work very well. And even if it did, now you're got two layers of congestion.
Re:TECHNOLOGY SOLVES EVERYTHING (Score:4, Insightful)
Clearly you've never been in a crowd stampede. I have, at a festival about 15 years ago,. Nobody *wants* to trample or be trampled, its the panic that sets into the crowd that starts turning thousands of individually rational responses ("flee the danger") into a very irrational crowd ("lets all run into each other"). Nobody is individually making a decision against their own interest or against others interest, its just whats happens when a lot of those decisions collide with each other.
Being in crowds (Score:5, Interesting)
Everyone was calm and patient, as I imagine they are 99.999% of the time at the Hajj. But from the BBC article:
(This is nowhere near the Kaaba, where pilgrims circle around the stone, and where a lot of crowd-control research has been done.) At light densities, columns of people can cross easily and elegantly, such as at a pedestrian crossing. At high densities, it would become physically impossible to make (push) one’s way through a column moving at right angles, with this happening just as people lose their autonomy. With pressure coming in from behind it would become deadly.
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The stampede problem typically occurs at the stoning of the Devil [wikipedia.org] event on the 10th day of the month. The ritual must be completed before the pilgrim can return to Mecca for the final rituals. In theory, the entire day is available to accomplish this task, but it's said that Muhammad himself did this part of the Haj after the midday prayers so many modern pilgrims wait until after noon to start and since the ritual must be completed by sundown, there's always a crush of people all trying to get it done at t
And this has what to do with the crucification (Score:2)
of that kid?
Answers (Score:2)
Well I don't know what the real answer is but I'm pretty sure it will involve drones equipped with silly string.
Old school solution: Swash bulkheads (Score:5, Interesting)
A way to stop giant bags of mostly water from gaining destructive momentum is to add structures which limit how much energy is allowed to accumulate before such energy is harmlessly limited by an obstruction. The way to fix this isn't removing barriers it is adding them... lots and lots and lots and lots of them. With many thousands of stampede deaths the only acceptable solution should be an inherently safe one rather than depending on everyone following instructions.
Thinking people will respond to whatever signals you are piping out in the exceptional but predictable instances when fear takes over a crowd is idiotic in and of itself. The only worse thing I can imagine would be to leverage such delusions as an excuse to enable you to "safely" cram in even more.
Hard to control (Score:2)
It's awfully hard to control the reactions of a crowd in a panic situation. With such a density, I doubt anything really effective can be done ... least signals to "slow down or speed up" ... in such situations, low-level impulses of the brain take over ... see results of research concerning e.g. exiting a building ... most humans will tend to follow the stream, leading to overcrowding of exits (while others that would give easier egress are sparsely used).
So unless they seriously limit access (which, in tu
Use an escalator or have people sit in chairs (Score:2)
Use a wheelchair to wizz them around on a conveyance system. Then hand them a science book and tell them to GTFO. Don't forget, charge them money too. That's always a good way to thin the the crowd. Start charging a fee .. when the Saudis run out of oil it will happen. Then you could have some rock star throw concert on top of the rock. But anyway not to distract from my idea of having the crowd sit in open air train carriages or wheelchairs as they are automatically taken on their pilgrimage. Yes it means
fraction Muslims who go on Hajj (Score:2)
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Here in the US, we have the good sense to trample other countries to death in order to pay homage to our magical sky-god.
http://www.independent.co.uk/n... [independent.co.uk]
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They trampled people trying to pay homage to a prophet who said things like, "don't treat women like cattle" and "look after the poor; even non Muslim poor"
Here we trample people so we can buy 29 dollar movie players.
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Depends on which source (if any) you believe. [wikipedia.org]
Speaking of child brides, you may want to check out the age Mary, mother of Jesus, was supposed to be married at.
Also, you may want to check the history of the age of consent laws [wikipedia.org].
Ok, so Mohammed married Aisha when she was 6, and thighed her when she was 9
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it's a joke.
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They trampled people trying to pay homage to a prophet who said things like, "don't treat women like cattle" and "look after the poor; even non Muslim poor"
Here we trample people so we can buy 29 dollar movie players.
Huh? He never said any of those things. In fact, in the Qur'an, 2:223 - it says 'Your women are a tilth for you (to cultivate) so go to your tilth as ye will, and send (good deeds) before you for your souls, and fear Allah, and know that ye will (one day) meet Him. Give glad tidings to believers, (O Muhammad)'
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Idiocy and religion correlate.
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More will be trampled to death in future stampedes (Score:2)
As the world's human population will increase from the current 7 Billion to over 12 Billion within 50 years, large scale gathering, whether it be religious ceremonies, sporting events, musical festivals political carnivals, protests and/or riots will take place, and more people will be trampled to death in stampede
As long as the humans still behave like pack animals, and as long as the designated gathering venues such as Mecca fail to expand to accommodate the vastly increase number of participants, you can
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So what's the downside?
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Seriously, Mecha would be a great place...
I agree, a pilgrimage site devoted to giant robots is a really great idea. Where should we build it though?
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As long as the humans still behave like pack animals, and as long as the designated gathering venues such as Mecca fail to expand to accommodate the vastly increase number of participants, you can count on even worse disasters to happen
That's why you shouldn't fence them in. The problem starts when you block the path. Just put the whole damn thing out in the open where people can move.
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They did in the simulator I used to play around with.
English ain't their language (Score:3)
How about in English? For the few remaining here.
Well, this story is about people who understand mainly Bahasa Indonesian, Urdu, Arabic, Turkic languages, Farsi and so on. So it's okay for English to be a low priority here /troll
Re: Fuck Islam. Muslims are SATANIC (Score:2)
...one of 7 levels/arrows for successfully embedding into geometry of space (7 axes of symmetry through tetra-cube which is the physics of the origins of @lph@b3ts)
I could almost follow some of that. Part of me wants to ask WTF you been smokin but another part of me wants more info. I just hope this doesnt have anything to do with scientology.