Why are Mecca, Medina forbidden areas for non-Muslims?

A Saudi citizen was arrested for facilitating the movement of a US-Israeli reporter who entered Mecca where non-Muslims are not allowed to set foot, announced the Saudi Police in Mecca on Friday.

The Saudi citizen was referred to the Public Prosecution Office for interrogation, the authorities added in a statement, after a wide controversy over the issue was sparked on social media platforms after the Israeli reporter published a story about his visit on June 18 to the holy city, where he drove past the Grand Mosque that houses the Kaaba.

Gil Tamary, an Israeli reporter for Israeli Channel 13, was one of the Israeli journalists who were allowed to enter Saudi Arabia to cover US President Joe Biden’s visit to Jeddah last week. During his visit to Jeddah, a coastal city located on the Red Sea and considered an entrance gate for pilgrims to Mecca, Tamary was accompanied by a Saudi man and decided to go through the Muslim-only route leading to Mecca, as was shown on the video made by Tamary to document his journey and was published on the channel’s website. The journalist also took a selfie at Mount Arafat, a hill where Muslims worldwide flock once a year during the Hajj pilgrimage and stand to pray to Allah.

Tamary’s visit caused online controversy among Muslims, as many totally rejected the entry of non-Muslims to the sacred places, while others saw that there is no problem for non-Muslims to be in Mecca.

However, this was not the first incident of a non-Muslim entering Mecca. Sir Richard Francis Burton, who translated “The Kama Sutra” and “Arabian Nights” in England in 1880s, disguised himself as a Muslim pilgrim during Hajj and visited Mecca and Medina in 1853. He then wrote about his adventure in “Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah” (1855–56).

In Islam, all jurists agree that it is impermissible for non-Muslims to reside in Mecca, citing the Quranic verse “O ye who believe! Surely, the idolaters are unclean. So they shall not approach the Sacred Mosque after this year of theirs” [Surat al-Tawba: 28].

However, there are three different opinions among the four major Sunni Jurists (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali) when it comes to visiting or temporary entering the sacred places, as was clarified by Egypt’s Al-Azhar, which stated that the Shafi'i and Hanbali schools are of the belief that it is totally forbidden for non-Muslims to enter the holy sites even if there is an interest by their entering.

Meanwhile, the second opinion of the Maliki school sees that entering the holy city is conditioned by having permission or security guarantee, while entering Mecca’s Grand Mosque itself is forbidden.

As for the Hanafi’s school, it views it as permissible for non-Muslims to enter all mosques, even the Grand Mosque, without permission. The Hanafi opinion relies on interpreting the phrase “after this year of theirs” in the aforementioned Quranic verse as meaning after the ninth year of Islamic calendar.

Al-Azhar said that making the sacred places forbidden areas is a matter that should be organized by applicable laws and regulations in Saudi Arabia. The Islamic institution also justified why the cities of Mecca and Medina are sacred and for Muslims only, saying that the cities possess special holiness for the Muslims, who themselves made entering them conditioned by special and sacred arrangements.

Al-Azhar also said any sovereign state is free to have “protected” places where the law prohibits entry to for some citizens or foreigners without objection from anyone. 

The Israeli channel apologized, but it said on Twitter, “The reporter's visit did not come to harm the feelings of the Islamic nation and Saudi Arabia […] We express our apologies and regret if anyone was angry at the visit.”

The cannel also stood by the reporter, saying, “The journalist’s curiosity is the essence of the journalistic work to reach all places and cover from the origin source. These principles were at the top of the priorities in Gil Tamary's visit to Saudi Arabia. We, at Channel 13 news, consider that knowledge and learning about important places from a first source are extremely important. We in Channel 13 news call for tolerance between religions, to know the other and to respect all religions.”

زيارة محرر الشؤون الخارجية لمكة المكرمة لن تأتي للمساس بمشاعر الامة الإسلامية والمملكة العربية السعودية.
نحن في اخبار القناة 13 نعبر عن اعتذارنا واسفنا ان شعر احد بالغضب بسبب هذه الزيارة
ان الفضول الصحفي هو جوهر العمل الصحفي من اجل الوصول الى كل الأماكن والتغطية من مصدر اول>>

— חדשות 13 (@newsisrael13) July 19, 2022

There has been no normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, as the first calls for a two-state solution for the Palestinian people based on the 1967 borders. However, Biden’s visit to the Kingdom has been seen as a first step towards normalization after he travelled from Israel to the Kingdom on the first direct flight from Israel to Jeddah on July 15.