When the call comes: A pilgrim’s progress

By Hasan Zillur Rahim

About 2.5 million Muslims from around the world - 45 percent of them women – will be congregating in Makkah, Saudi Arabia, this month to perform the hajj, the once-in-a-lifetime obligation for believers.

Over 10,000 American Muslims are expected to be among the pilgrims seeking to turn over a new leaf in their lives through the demanding rites of the hajj. Many are driven by a sense of urgency in a world driven by hate, bigotry and war. “This may be our last chance,” goes a morbid sentiment. “Who knows what greater calamity will befall humanity by the time the next hajj comes around?”

I am familiar with the feeling. I performed the hajj in 2002. I had planned to do it earlier but one thing or the other always came up, suggesting that my intention was perhaps flawed. Then came September 11, 2001. Terrorists claiming Islam as guidance struck America, taking 3,000 innocent lives. The attacks brought rage, resolve and a vivid sense of mortality. Life, we learned anew, was fleeting. Be grateful for what you have -- health, family, freedom. Fulfill your obligations before it is too late. I had to travel to the birthplace of Islam to understand what my faith meant to me and how I, as a moderate Muslim, could help reclaim it from my radical co-religionists. Nothing less than the soul of Islam was at stake.

And so it came to be that on a warm night in February 2002, I am among a group of American Muslims at the Jeddah airport on the coast of the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia, patiently waiting for customs clearance. We had flown the previous day from San Francisco and, at Frankfurt, had changed into ihram (purification), consisting of two pieces of unstitched white cloth. The women wore simple white dresses with head coverings. The modest clothing signified our equality before Allah and the leaving behind of all worldly ties.

The formal pilgrimage is several days away but we have come early for familiarity with the ancient rites and extra time for reflection and remembrance of Allah in the hope that we will be at the peak of our spirituality during the hajj.

A new day has literally dawned by the time we clear customs and board the buses to take us to Makkah, 50 miles away. Approaching the holy city, we begin to recite the talbiyah (invocation) of pilgrimage: Here I am at Your command, O Allah, here I am. Here I am at Your command. You are without partner. Yours is all praise and grace and dominion. You are without partner.

We are to chant this refrain throughout the pilgrimage.

After checking into a hotel, I make ablution and, still in ihram, headed for Masjid al-Haraam (the Grand Mosque) nearby. Skirting a teeming sidewalk bazaar, I soon stand at one of its many entrances. A few more steps and suddenly there it is before me, the Ka'ba (cube), a 40-foot high cubical structure of stone covered with black brocade in the center of an open courtyard inside the mosque.

For over 40 years and from thousands of miles away, I had oriented myself toward this symbol of monotheism and bowed in prayers to Allah. Now I was no more than a hundred feet away from it and was overcome with emotion.

Surging forward on a human wave, I join a circle moving counterclockwise around the Ka'ba. This is the tawaf (circumambulation). The reflection of the blazing sun off the marble floor is blinding, but no one falters as we go round and round murmuring supplications; men and women, young and old, firm and infirm, fast and slow, a river of humanity charged by the palpable presence of the Divine.

With every completed circle, as I affirm the centrality of Allah in my life, I feel a longing so deep that I think my heart would burst. It is not until I was in my seventh, and last, circumambulation (seven implies infinity) that I dimly understand the origin of my longing: Without the physical presence of the Ka'ba and the demands and distractions of normal life pulling me this way and that, could I still hope for Allah to dwell in my heart always? Could an inner Ka'ba from this moment on become the focal point of my life?

Only a desperate yearning for Allah's grace could bridge the gap between my hope and assurance of its fulfillment.

The tawaf completed, I walk to a covered arcade at the eastern edge of the mosque and walked briskly between the hills of Safa and Marwah seven times, commemorating the frantic search for water by Prophet Ibrahim's wife Hagar for her newborn son Ismail. The 1,300-foot distance between the hills was dense with pilgrims and I am surprised at many people in their 70s and 80s in wheelchairs performing this ritual called sa'y (effort).

Looking at their radiant, tear-stained faces, it is easy to understand the significance of the sa'y: Never despair of Allah's mercy and never stop striving, even when life appears at its bleakest.

Entering a marble chamber near the Ka'ba, I drink from the cool waters of Zamzam, the spring that Allah brought forth for Hagar and her son, and which continues to flow to this day. Then I seek out a secluded corner and make the supplication that was pent-up in me: I pray for the souls of the 3,000 who had perished on Sept. 11, 2001, and for Allah to grant them paradise, and I pray for the well-being of the families they had left behind. Then I pray for my loved ones and for all those who had asked me to remember them during my pilgrimage.

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We stay for four days in Makkah. I am up by two every morning but already a steady stream of pilgrims is bound for the grand mosque. The Ka’ba courtyard is full and bathed in light but softened by the quiet of the night.

Around the time of the morning prayers at six, the minarets glow with a greenish light and pigeons and swifts swirl overhead. The number of pilgrims arriving in Makkah swell by the hour and as the sun rises, so do traffic and congestion. The wail of ambulances is a constant reminder of the fragility of life, underscored by special prayers we offer every evening for pilgrims who have succumbed to sunstrokes, physical exertions and injuries.

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The city of Madinah is about 300 hundred miles north of Makkah and is our destination when we depart Makkah by bus. It is not a requirement of hajj to visit Madinah but most pilgrims do because of its historical association with Islam: It was the city that welcomed Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) when he was being persecuted by the Makkahns for preaching monotheism.

If Makkah is like turbulent water, Madinah is water lapping gently at the shore. The focal point here is Masjid an-Nabawi (mosque of the Prophet). It is an architectural wonder with moveable domes that let sunlight cascade down upon the faithful as they pray or read the Quran or reflect on their lives. A quiet fills the mosque around 8 in the morning that lasts for about two hours. I find this stillness conducive to the post-9/11 soul-searching that I wanted to engage in but couldn’t in the intense environment of Makkah.

Sacred text is immutable but its interpretation in the context of the time can change. This is the essence of ijtihad, the tradition of independent thinking among Muslims that had atrophied over the centuries but is slowly and thankfully making a comeback. This much I understand: that religious narcissism is fatal because it breeds hubris, that self-righteousness leads inevitably to self-betrayal, that spiritual renewal comes from reason and reflection, that divine revelation not only approves of freedom and civility and pluralism but, in fact, demands them, and that we fulfill our destiny by putting our passion, spirituality and intellect not at the service of our grievances but at the service of our fellow beings.

A hadith resonates with me in the prophet’s mosque: If you see something evil, you should change it with your hand. If you cannot, you should speak out against it. If you cannot do even that, you should at least detest it in your heart, this being the weakest of faith.

It occurs to me that moderate Muslims have been practicing the weakest of faith for far too long, that it was time we elevated our effort by at least a notch in confronting the religious radicals bent on hijacking our religion as well as those determined to demonize it.

Masjid an-Nabawi is distinguished by the Rawdah (garden), the area between the house of Rasulullah and his minbar (pulpit). The graves of the prophet and his companions Abu Bakr (RA) and Umar (RA) are also located adjacent to the Rawdah. It is crowded at all times, redolent as it is of history and the struggles and strivings of our forebears. Sisters are allowed to visit the Rawdah only at special hours but many find it restrictive and short. I came across some hajj literature stating that women shouldn’t be allowed to visit the Rawdah and the graves, period. How ironic, considering the great honor and respect the prophet accorded women (unheard of at the time in Arabia, so much so that he was what we would now call a feminist) when he began preaching the egalitarian message of Islam over 14 centuries ago!

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After a week, we leave Madinah for the valley of Mina, a few miles east of Makkah. We arrived the following day -- the first day of hajj -- and spend the night praying and meditating in our tent.

The following morning we set out for the plain of Arafat, six miles east. It is slow going as the roads are choked with traffic and many pilgrims are on foot. The wuquf (standing) in Arafat from noon until sunset represents the emotional and spiritual climax of hajj. Two-and-a-half million Muslims have massed here for a foretaste of the Day of Judgment.

From where I stand, I can see the Jabal Rahmah (Mount of Mercy) in the distance through the shimmering heat. It was from here that Prophet Muhammad delivered his last sermon, a sermon that continues to inspire and challenge humanity to this day for its far-reaching call for peace and justice.

Standing in ihram under a fierce sun, I reflect on my life, thanking Allah for the undeserved blessings, asking for forgiveness for my sins and praying for renewal, particularly renewal in Muslim thinking.

A muffled sound to my right causes me to turn. A woman is crying, her hands toward heaven, her face animated by the transcendent. In our own ways, we are all seeking some kind of permanence in the midst of evanescence. And so I find myself also praying to Allah for deliverance from the tyranny of money and the grace of a simpler life.

The charged hours pass and suddenly the sun is declining and the sky is turning a vivid red. The earth seems to sigh and a small wind stirs. The most searing one-on-one of our lives with Allah is over. I scan the faces of pilgrims and see serenity and ecstasy and hope in them and wonder if they see the same in mine.

Another mass movement begins after sunset, this time for Muzdalifa, midway between Arafat and Mina. We offer our evening prayers there and collect pebbles from the roadside to use on the following days.

Drained physically and emotionally, I fall asleep in the open under a first-quarter moon and wild, curious stars.

The next morning at Mina, we prepare to pelt Satan with pebbles, a repudiation of evil commemorating prophet Ibrahim’s rejection of Satan when Allah asked him to sacrifice his son. We walk to a place called Jamarat (stoning) where the crush of massed pilgrims around the symbolic Satan – a stone pillar - is physically daunting. I barely manage to throw seven pebbles at it before hastily retreating.

(The Jamarat has unfortunately become a dangerous ritual and one hears of pilgrims being trampled to death with depressing regularity. Particularly on the 12th of Dhul Hijjah, most pilgrims rush to throw stones during a narrow window of time in the afternoon before leaving Mina, causing panic and stampedes. They do this on the advice of religious leaders who claim to be (literally) following in the “footsteps of the prophet.” But times have changed. Fourteen hundred years ago, the number of Muslims performing the Hajj was at best in the hundreds or thousands while now it is in the millions. The last thing the prophet would have wanted was for any of his followers to die while pelting symbolic icons of evil. Enlarging the window of time and going out in batches are some of the practical solutions that have been offered. Jamarat cries out for ijtihad: We must try to understand what it means in the light of today’s conditions and act upon it in a way that eliminates the risk of death and injury accompanying this ritual).

This is also the day of Eid al-Adha (feast of sacrifice). Like most pilgrims, I had earlier paid one hundred dollars to a local organization to sacrifice a sheep on my behalf and distribute its meat among the less fortunate.

Jamarat has caused our group to scatter but we know the rituals by heart. I board a public bus to Makkah to perform tawaf and sa’y and have my hair clipped. All restrictions of Ihram are now lifted. The only formal requirement for the next two days is to pelt not one but three symbols of Satan. A member of our group who has fallen sick asks me to perform this ritual for him and I feel strangely elated. He was lucky; he recovered. Not so lucky was the middle-aged man who kept us smiling throughout the trip with his wonderful sense of humor before becoming seriously ill. He was able to complete all the obligations of the hajj but died of a heart attack soon thereafter.

On the flight home, I try to reflect on the most spiritually absorbing two weeks of my life, but my mind is blank and I can only think of my wife and children and returning to them.

But slowly the thoughts drift away, and in my mind's eye I see the Ka'ba and the concentric circles that I trace around it and realize that while my pilgrimage has ended, my journey into renewal has only begun.