Religion: The Propaganda Pilgrims

Hamid Raschid, 42, and Rusi Nasar, 37, are Moslems. They knew each other in their native Russia, both contrived to escape from the Russian army in World War II, both eventually found their way to the U.S. This year they decided to go on a hadj—the pilgrimage to Mecca enjoined by the Koran upon every able-bodied Moslem.

But this was to be a hadj with a double mission. Hamid and Rusi had read with anger about the propaganda pilgrimages staged by the Russians during the hadj season. Three times since World War II, Moscow had sent Communists from among Russia’s large Moslem population to Mecca. Their mission: to spread the word that the U.S.S.R. is really the nearest thing to Mohammedan paradise and that the imperialist U.S. is out to exploit all Moslems.

Dogged & Dedicated. Hamid and Rusi went to the American Committee for Liberation from Bolshevism, Inc. (a private organization founded in 1951 to organize Soviet refugees for anti-Soviet propaganda) and argued that the U.S. should be represented in Mecca. The committee agreed to help finance the trip.

Early last month Hamid and Rusi arrived at Jidda, 40 miles west of Mecca, and promptly went to work. Wangling seats aboard the same Mecca-bound bus as a planeload of 21 Russian “pilgrims” (TIME, Aug. 16). Hamid and Rusi claimed to be Turks, and engaged the Russians in some probing conversation. In Mecca they began distributing thousands of leaflets they had prepared, followed through with dogged and dedicated heckling.

Everywhere the Russians went, Hamid and Rusi went too, yelling such things as: “You’re no pilgrims; you’re Communist propagandists! You serve the Moscow atheists!” In Mecca (pop. 90,000) there are some 13,000 Moslem refugees from Russia, so Hamid and Rusi soon had plenty of help. Ripe tomatoes and Mohammedan Bronx cheers greeted the harassed Reds in Mecca’s streets, and celebrities whom the Communists wanted to meet, among them Saudi Arabia’s King Saud, refused to receive them. Hamid and Rusi were happy hadjis.

A Drop of Shame. But their biggest moment came at a meeting for all pilgrims in Mecca’s Great Mosque, where delegation leaders reported on the state of the faith in their home countries. Back in Manhattan last week, Hamid and Rusi told about it.

In the middle of the Soviet leader’s speech about religious freedom in Soviet Russia, Hamid jumped up and cried: “How can you as a religious leader condone the crimes against religion committed by the Communist rulers?” The Russian replied that Russian Moslems such as the Crimean Tartars and the North Caucasians (who were deported and exterminated) had been punished by God, not by the Communist government. Replied Raschid: “I am a Tartar. I saw with my own eyes how the mosques were destroyed and the clergy sent to slave-labor camps in Siberia.” He produced photographs to prove it.

Then he turned again to the Russian leader. “Haven’t you a drop of shame left that you can say such things in front of the holy Kaaba* itself, old as you are, with one foot in the grave, soon to stand in the presence of God?”

The Russians were silent.

*The small stone building that contains the Black Stone, said to have been given by the Angel Gabriel to Abraham.