What Muslims Do on Hajj, and Why
Belarusians Cast Ballots for Parliament
Anti-Semitism and the British Left
With Pensions Like This ($315 a Month), Chileans Wonder How Theyll Ever Retire
1. JIDDA, Saudi Arabia It is incumbent upon every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to do so to travel to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Islams holiest site, at least once in his or her lifetime. The annual pilgrimage is known as the hajj, and it is one of the five pillars of Islam, prescribed in the Quran
And proclaim to mankind the hajj. They will come to you on foot, on very lean camel, they will come from every deep and distant mountain highway.This year, 1437 according to the Islamic calendar, I am making my first hajj. I will be joining two million Muslims from around the world though the writer Abu Muneer Ismail Davids joked that it may feel more like 10 million people. During the hajj, we must not swear, cut our hair or nails, have sex or crush a plant.
2. But when examining projections for the next 10 to 20 years, the commission found that it only gets worse, said David Bravo, the director of the Catholic University of Chiles Longitudinal Survey and Study Center, who presided over the commission.
3. MINSK, Belarus Belarusians are casting ballots for a new parliament in the authoritarian former Soviet republic that has been taking steps toward rapprochement with the West.
There are 445 candidates for the 110 lower-house seats that are being contested Sunday, but opposition leaders hold little hope of establishing a substantial presence in the legislature. The current House of Representatives has no opposition members.
4. I will be chronicling my journey for The New York Times and on social media. To better follow along, heres a glossary of terms, names and places that help explain the rites and rituals Muslims will participate in during the six days of the hajj, which begins Saturday.
5. LONDON Opponents of Jeremy Corbyn, the left-wing leader of Britains Labour Party, usually claim one of two things about him: that his politics are extreme and will lead the party to electoral oblivion, or that his values are admirable but he is too incompetent to put them into effect.
6. Belarus' Soviet-style command economy has staggered in recent years. Gross domestic product fell 4 percent in 2015 and is down another 3 percent so far this year. President Alexander Lukashenko is eager to shore it up with Western investment and the country is seeking a $3 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.
7. SANTIAGO, Chile Discontent has been brewing for years in Chile over pensions so low that most people must keep working past retirement age. All the while, privately run companies have reaped enormous profits by investing Chileans social security savings.
8. Prophets and Forebears Ibrahim, the prophet who, following Gods commandment, left his wife, Hajar, and their son Ismail in the Arabian desert. (I am using the Islamic spellings for these figures, who also appear in the Judeo-Christian Bible as Abraham, Hagar and Ishmael.) It is with Ibrahim that one of the stories of the origin of Islam begins. For Muslims, like Jews, he is considered a patriarch of our faith.
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9. These two arguments seem contradictory, but in Mr. Corbyns handling of an anti-Semitism scandal that has hung over the Labour Party, they have converged. In April, after months of accusations of anti-Semitism among party members, particularly on social media, Mr. Corbyn ordered an inquiry and asked ShamiChakrabarti, who had just stepped down as the director of Britains leading civil liberties organization, Liberty, to head it. So far, so good.
10. Belarus released all political prisoners last year, spurring the European Union to lift sanctions. The United States also suspended sanctions against some Belarusian enterprises, saying the issue of fully lifting them would be considered after a review of the National Assembly elections.
11. Hajarwas Ibrahims second wife. After she and Ismail were left in the desert, Hajar ran seven times between two hills, Safa and Marwa, searching for water for her thirsty son. Ismail is said to have kicked his leg in the sand, causing water to trickle out. This became the spring of Zamzam, from which well drink during the hajj.
12. The bubbling anger boiled over in July when Chileans learned that the former wife of a Socialist Party leader was receiving a monthly pension of almost $7,800 after retiring from the prison police department. That figure dwarfs the average monthly pension of $315, which is even less than a monthly minimum-wage salary of $384.
In a country already battered by widespread political and corporate corruption, this was the last straw.
13. Critics say tight restrictions on campaigning and state control of the news media inhibit a genuinely free election in Belarus. There are also concerns that the state can manipulate the results through early balloting, since ballot boxes were left unguarded during the five days of early voting.
14. Ismail is considered the ancestor of the Arabs. He was reunited with his father after many years when Ibrahim returned to the desert. Ismail is said to have helped his father build a temple, called the Kaaba, or cube, to honor his one God.
15. After casting his ballot in the capital, Minsk, Lukashenko said the West should be satisfied with how the elections were conducted. Lukashenko, a former collective farm manager, has led Belarus since 1994, consistently cracking down on opposition.
"Yes, we did everything so that there would not be any complaints put before us from the Western side," he said.
16. To test Ibrahims faith, God commanded him to sacrifice Ismail. Three times the devil tried to tempt Ibrahim to abandon his mission, and each time Ibrahim hurled seven stones at the devil to ward him off. Well re-enact the stone throwing during the hajj.As the Quranic story goes, God replaced Ismail with a ram, which was slaughtered instead.
17. The aftermath of her report, however, has aggravated the very wounds it was supposed to heal. It was inauspicious that, at the news conference in June for its publication, Mr. Corbyn looked on in silence as one of his supporters accused Ruth Smeeth, a Jewish member of Parliament, of conspiring against the party leader. Ms. Smeeth left the room in tears.
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18. Hundreds of thousands of people marched through Santiago, the capital, and other cities to protest the privatized pension system. More than 1.3 million people, according to organizers, turned up in August, the largest demonstration since Chiles return to civilian rule in 1990.
One protester was Luis Montero, 69, whose monthly pension is about $150. Like many Chileans, Mr. Montero has mainly worked informal jobs without a contract at wages too meager for him to save enough for retirement. He still does maintenance work at a school to make ends meet.
19. Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, made the hajj with his followers and wives in 632 A.D. Muslim pilgrims imitate what the Prophet Muhammad did on his journey, which is also called the farewell pilgrimage.
20. Worse followed when, a few weeks later, Mr. Corbyn broke his vow not to create any new members of the House of Lords by nominating Ms. Chakrabarti for a peerage. Whatever justification there might be for this award, it gave the impression of a quid pro quo: that Mr. Corbyn was willing to compromise his lifelong hostility to Britains system of unelected privilege in return for an inquiry that pulled its punches.
21. Holy Sites TheKaaba, which is also known as Bait Allah, or the House of Allah, is in the Grand Mosque of Mecca. It houses el-hajar al-aswad, or black stone, which is believed to have descended from paradise whiter than the color of milk, but was later stained by the sins of humans. At the start of the hajj, pilgrims dressed in white circle the Kaaba seven times, trying to kiss the black stone. This is one of the most iconic images of the hajj and is known as the tawaf.
22. Ms. Chakrabartis report was not without merit. Many Jews welcomed its calls on the party to outlaw Zio as a term of abuse and for members to avoid making comparisons between Nazi Germany and Israel. What was missing, though, was any broader analysis of why such language has become so prevalent on the British left. Many British Jews believe it is connected to strident anti-Israel politics with which Mr. Corbyn sympathizes.
23. Ive worked my entire life and Id like to stop and rest, but I cant, Mr. Montero said. I have no idea what I will do when I get older.
In 1981, the military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet privatized the old pay-as-you-go pension system, in which workers, employers and the government all contributed.
24. A year into Mr. Corbyns tenure, there is no trust and precious little dialogue between the Labour leader and Britains Jews. The countrys chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, has spoken of Labours severe problem of anti-Semitism a problem that Jonathan Arkush, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the communitys leading representative body, says Mr. Corbyn is loath to tackle.
25. Under the privatized system, which President George W. Bush hailed as an example to follow, workers must pay 10 percent of their earnings into accounts operated by private companies known as pension fund administrators, or A.F.P.s, the initials of the term in Spanish. The administrators invest the money and charge workers a commission for transactions and other fees. Employers and the government do not make any contributions to the workers accounts.
Chileans were given the option of keeping their old plan or switching to the new system. Most switched. But those entering the work force after 1981 had to invest in the privatized system. (The armed forces and the police were exempted from the change and today enjoy pensions several times higher than those available in the privatized system.)
