French Muslim pilgrims waiting at the airport to embark on the spiritual journey.

By Hadi Yahmid, IOL Correspondent

PARIS, December 17, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – The French Foreign Ministry has issued thousands of brochures on hajj in French and Arabic to make the spiritual journey easier for its Muslim citizens.

The five-page guide contains key advice for the pilgrims during their stay in Saudi Arabia, like avoiding deadly stampedes.

It also features basic information on their legal rights if their travel agents did not meet the announced program.

Some three thousand French pilgrims were left stranded at Saudi airports last year due to disorganization and unconfirmed flight reservations by some tour operators.

The faithful can further find in the new guide contacts of the French embassy and consulate in Riyadh and Jeddah respectively for any inconvenience.

France is home to some six million Muslims, mostly from north African and Turkish roots, the largest Muslim minority in Europe.

Hajj consists of several ceremonies, meant to symbolize the essential concepts of the Islamic faith, and to commemorate the trials of Prophet Abraham and his family.

Every able-bodied adult Muslim who can financially afford the trip must perform hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam, once in their lifetime.

Interested Media

The Muslim spiritual journey is attracting an increasingly curious French media.

TV 6 has ran a comprehensive reportage on hajj rituals from day one, highlighting the spiritual aspects of the journey for Muslims worldwide.

The first batch of pilgrims, numbering 215, left the Roissy-Charles De Gaulle airport on Thursday, December 15, and was followed by another batch in the southern city of Toulouse.

"Every batch is accompanied by a hajj guide appointed by the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM)," Naser Bin Emara, the director of a travel agent and a hajj organizer, told IslamOnline.net.

The CFCM has been organizing over the past weeks special lectures about hajj, which also dominated Friday sermons across the European country.

Some 26,000 French, including 6,000 reverts and 17,000 with dual citizenship aged between 18-40, will perform hajj in January.

The cost of the Muslim spiritual journey in France ranges from 1,500 to 2,800 euros, the cheapest in the continent.

Last year, the majority of hajj applicants were sons/daughters of second and third generations of Arab and Muslim migrants.