it's easy (and logical) to understand ancient people considering meteorites "holy objects from the heavens"
and making a shrine of them - more sense than the invisible/portable spirit-god the Hebrews invented during
the Babylonian Captivity (altho that makes some sense,too - a very revolutionary idea - prior to that, a people's
god resided in a specific place, a holy mountain or in specific objects - conquering imperial armies relocated the
defeated to a new region, severing their relationship with their tribal god and thus weakening their will to resist
or rebel. the relocated became citizens of their new homeland, adopted local gods and lost their previous
identity - them Jews weren't havin' none of that shit.)
as to the deaths-by-crowds during hajj, this is due to the Arab (and asian sub-continent) refusal to understand
and implement the idea of "lines" ("ques" if you will ("tails" if you're Canadian)) .... when boarding a flight out of
the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the procedure was like this -
1) KLM staff call for boarding
2) little brown people rush to the door, forming a shoving funnel
3) Saudi National Guardsmen armed with cute little submachineguns push the Paks & Indians back,
open a corridor and allow Saudi nationals to enter the gangway
4) little brown people shove their way thru the door
5) North American & European ex-pats wait another ten minutes, to allow the little brown people to
ooze their way into their seats in the back of the plane, then line up and board the plane in a calm,
orderly manner.
6) Filipino skilled laborers and the Filipino nurses board, already paired up for the mile high club ...
7) one hour later, the member of the Saudi Royal Family arrives and boards, and the plane pulls away from the terminal
8 ) as soon as the wheels are off the tarmac, big-breasted blond KLM stewardesses start pushing drink carts up the aisles
("up the aisles" literally, as the plane would still be climbing) and
everybody starts getting extremely drunk - except the
Paks, who take that Islam stuff serious ...
{edit}
is there some way to stop
eight/closed parens from appearing as
?
