DHAKA - Two million Muslims congregated on Friday near the Bangladesh capital Dhaka for a three-day gathering billed as the second largest annual Islamic event after the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.From dawn, huge columns of devotees began streaming towards the gathering site on the banks of the river Turag in Tongi for the World Muslim Congregation. Many of the pilgrims travelled by dangerously overcrowded buses and ferries and endured long delays and dense fog to reach the site from far-flung rural villages.
Dressed in traditional Islamic robes and prayer caps, they set up prayer mats beneath a canopy stretching more than a kilometre (more than half a mile) as preachersÂ’ voices resonated around the massive site via loudspeaker.
The gathering -- at which Muslims pray and listen to religious scholars -- was first held in the 1960s and was launched by Tablig Jamaat, a non-political group that urges people to follow Islam in their daily lives.
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Bangladesh, with a population of 144 million, is the worldÂ’s third-largest Muslim-majority nation.
| And in the top twenty as a failed state. |
