More than 8,000 people in China's largest Muslim region pay pilgrimage to Mecca

YINCHUAN, July 7 (Xinhua) -- A total of 8,288 Muslims in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, the largest Muslim region in the country, have made the pilgrimage to Mecca, Islam's holiest site in Saudi Arabia, a religious official said. A pilgrimage to Mecca, also call the hajj, is the fifth pillar of Islam, an obligation that must be carried out at least once in their lifetime by every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to do so. Before 1978, only seven Muslims from Ningxia traveled to Mecca for the hajj. At that time, the cost of the trip was just 8,000 yuan, said Ma Zhanquan, an imam. Since China resumed organizing the hajj trip in 1985, the number of pilgrims from Ningxia grew from 15 in 1988 to 1,655 in 2007, which reflects a loosened religious policy and a sharp increase in per capita income of local farmers,... [read full story]