I read recently that the number of people making the pilgrimage to Mecca each year has grown exponentially in the last half-century. In the mid-20th century the pilgrims were typically numbered in the tens of thousands; nowadays they’re in the millions. Are the local authorities capable of handling that many people in town at one time? With all their oil money, you’d think the KSA would be able to upgrade the security and infrastructure at Mecca to accommodate that many people and minimize the risks associated with large crowds in close quarters. Or has the event simply become too big to handle without more drastic measures, or even departures from Islamic tradition such as, say, replacing the annual hajj with a bunch of monthly mini-hajjs?

Of course this is also an object lesson for Islamist types in being careful what you wish for. They basically want the entire planet and its population converted to Islam. As it stands now, Muslims make up about one-sixth of the global population, so converting the rest of the planet would increase the number of Muslims by a factor of six. That translates to roughly eighteen million people making the hajj in this year’s numbers. Something’s gotta give.