I think you are going a bit too complementary by saying they 'welcomed these populations'. It was and still purely a commercial venture to welcome these Hajjis. They come, spend money and boost the economy. For several 100 years it was the Ottoman's welcoming Hajjis.
This ritual of welcoming pilgrims pre-dates Islam: Mecca's nobility considered it essential to their survival because of the money it produces. In pre-Islam king Abraha attacked Mecca with elephants to divert pilgrims to his own new place of pagan worship realizing they weren't going to show up voluntarily
This seems like he has (yet again) listened to one of his western consultant advisers as a way to boost Saudi Arabia's standing. Much like the NOEM project that at $500BN could not be a more useless use of funds . You can be a prosperous and rich economy without growing in size. Look at Switzerland, and Finland.
Arabia has been a refuge/safe haven for immigrants and migrants for millennia, whether religious, economic or political ones. As well as for population movements out of Arabia. In fact since the earliest recordings available. Whether it be Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Egyptian, the few remaining IVC etc. sources. If you go further back, the first humans outside of Africa populated the remaining world after having inhabited Arabia prior hence why so many genetic haplogroups have their origin in Arabia/South West Asia.
One just needs to look at the massive modern-day migration into Arabia or even more commonly the substantial migration and permanent settlement of ethnic groups from within our own region. Balochi and Sindhis come to mind. The latter have always had age old ties to Arabia even prior to the IVC.
As for religious sites being prominent in Arabia and pilgrimages to those religious sites, this is nothing new. Many Abrahamic prophets lived or ventured into Arabia hence the frequent mentions of Arabia by name in the Torah, Bible etc. Don't forget the first monotheistic community in the world (Hanifs) either. As for pagan (ancient pre-Abrahamic Semitic religions - Abrahamic religions are themselves Semitic in origin mind you) pilgrimage sites, it was actually the other way around, the pilgrimage sites (since they gathered people from across of Western Asia and beyond), helped catapult trade.
To this day the Hajj is an important economic element in the lives of locals in Makkah and Madinah and all the business associated with it. This is a fairly normal thing and does not contradict anything or is something unique. This goes for all holy sites in the world regardless of religion.
As for Ottomans, have in mind that Ottoman control in Arabia was mostly limited to a few military garrisons/outposts and local representatives. Hijaz itself was largely autonomous and ruled by the Sharifs of Makkah. So the responsibility and honor of hosting Hajis continued to be in the hands of locals as it always had been and continue to be.
I agree with the need of KSA to increase their population. Given the huge geography of KSA (by far the largest country in Western Asia, the Middle East and the Muslim world - only Algeria is larger and Kazakhstan if you consider that country Muslim as most of its northern geography is inhabited by Christian ethnic Russians and not the Muslim Kazakhs) and potential for turning much (if not most of the land) into fertile lands again (as it once was in history) with new, future and improving technology as well as climatic models showing an increase of rainfall (thus a return to previous climatic eras), KSA should arguably have/ideally a population way above 100 million.
I know that I voiced concern for the high populations in the Arab world and rapid population growth on certain fronts (more in relation to how certain Arab governments will deal with the challenges this creates rather than a criticism of population increase as such) but at the same time a healthy and large population is absolutely crucial for a strong economic output, prosperity, social cohesion and happiness/mental well-being.
As for NEOM, I am a bit skeptical myself too and I am not sure how much of it is PR stunt, Western propaganda (exaggerations like that fake moon stuff that I have never seen confirmed anywhere outside of those said Western sources) but the idea behind it makes sense.
KSA already has a bigger (substantially) economy than Switzerland and Finland. The problem with those small but rich/wealthy European states is that they too will face the catastrophic effects of population decrease on all fronts whether it be in regards to economic prosperity, jobs or social cohesion. We already see signs of that.
It’s oil boom money that if carefully funneled to the right industries could diversify the economy to weather the downturns and grow beyond petroleum.
Either, it’s great Saudi wants more people, for their own development and more possible opportunities for Pakistanis and possibly more remittance and skills development.
The non-oil economy of KSA is growing very quickly. It grew 3.4% this year.
Oil activity in the kingdom rose 20.3% amid higher prices, government data showed
www.thenationalnews.com
Diversification is already happening on every front and quite aggressively. I will give it no more than 10 years for KSA to look at oil as merely an important export rather than a key one. One just needs to look at neighboring UAE. KSA has lightyears more potential than UAE (for obvious reasons) to put it into perspective yet 10 million big UAE is doing remarkably well economically given its 500 billion USD GDP. Let us not forget the many subsidiary products that an oil industry is related too, in this regard KSA is already doing very well. See ARAMCO and SABIC.
However more needs to be done hence the aggressive Saudization policy, focus on education and hard science and political reforms all around.
Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 includes the creation of a value-added tax (VAT), the enactment of domestic energy price reforms, and the deployment of ren…
www.sciencedirect.com
Doing Business 2020: Saudi Arabia Accelerated Business Climate Reforms, Joins Ranks of 10 Most Improved
Saudi Arabia implemented reforms in eight Doing Business areas, its busiest activity since the launch of the study. The country placed 62nd globally in ease of doing business rankings with an overall score of 71.6 out of 100.
www.worldbank.org
That was back in 2019, tons of reforms (positive ones) have occurred since then.
Top 18 economy in the world already and reaching the 1 trillion USD GDP barrier earlier this year with strong growth (5%) predicted in the next few years.
