Fuad Nahdi

863 words

27 April 1996

The Guardian

TODAY more than 5,000 British Muslims join their brethren from all parts of the world in the most unique religious experience available to mankind. In an arid valley called Arafat, 12 miles from Mecca, three million believers will spend a short time out in the open - normally from noon until after sunset - as part of the obligatory requirements of performing the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage which is the fifth "pillar" of Islam.

Nobody who has performed the wuquf ("standing") at Arafat can forget it: the symbolism of this day is one of solemnity, invocation of God and examination of conscience, and has been interpreted as a forecast of the Day of Judgment.

Pilgrimage is a method of worship common to every religion. Many people believe it has been God's will as He has unfolded history to give preference to certain places and to certain times. Although people and races pass away, God's Earth and its geography remain. Thus, certain places honoured and blessed by the presence of great prophets and saints can be of benefit to us long after those people have gone. For it is a Muslim belief that where the light of God descends upon a certain person, whether in the form of a revelation founding a new religion or as a lesser spiritual opening to one of His saints, a trace of that light remains in that place for those who are able to see it. This force, which Muslims call baraka, historically transforms certain places into busy centres of pilgrimage and devotion for later generations.

In this spirit, Judaism knows the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, city of patriarchs and prophets and blessed site of revelation and worship. According to the Torah, every male, adult, physically fit Jew must complete the pilgrimage to the holy city, bringing with him an offering. The rites of pilgrimage were set for certain specific days in the year.

Pilgrimage in early Christianity followed the same pattern. As the faith expanded, pilgrimages were instituted to the Holy See at Rome and to the tombs of saints such as St Thomas at Canterbury and Santiago de Compostela in Spain. We see much the same picture in the Oriental religions. On the banks of the sacred river Ganges hundreds of thousands of Indians bathe to purify themselves from vice and evil. Buddhists of both major schools emphasise the importance of the pilgrimage to the town of Kia in Bengal, where the Buddha began his life of devotion and sanctity.

For Muslims, the pilgrimage to Mecca - the Hajj - means many things. Above all, however, it is a Return to the Centre. For the Ka'ba of Mecca, which Muslims look upon as the centre of the world, is the projection on to Earth of the absolute Centre which is God. By discharging the duty of making a physical visit to the holy place to which they constantly turn in prayer, Muslims give concrete expression to the aspiration which drives them to draw nearer to God.

The Ka'ba itself is designated the House of God and yet all are aware that it is empty and contains nothing visible. This should serve as a timely reminder to the pilgrim that what matters is the spiritual return, of which the voyage to Mecca is no more than the symbolic expression. It may explain the fact that the Hajj is not obligatory to the same degree as the other "pillars", being compulsory only for those Muslims who possess the material means to perform it.

Every believer who reaches Mecca has a sense of a journey achieved from the periphery to the Centre, the locus of unity. At the same time, he affirms the unity of the Islamic universe. This is because the pilgrims who represent a great diversity of races, have only one nationality - that of the umma - at the moment of their approach to the haram, the sanctuary which surrounds the Ka'ba. Everything which distinguished and divided them is annihilated, since every man wears the ihram, a ritual garment made of two pieces of coarse, white, seamless fabric; women, their faces uncovered, are also garbed in white.

The Hajj is testimony to the extraoardinary vitality with which Islam resists the current decline of religion. History has not recorded the name of the first British Muslim to carry out the rites of Hajj. Rumours abound of converted Crusaders who made the trip in medieval times, and of British Muslims in the Ottoman naval service who visited the hallowest precincts in the 17th and 18th centuries. In Edwardian times, the artist Hedley Churward gave a detailed account of the Hajj and became the first recorded British "Guest of God".

However, Malcom X, the US civil rights campaigner, remains the most famous western Hajji. "On this pilgrimage," he wrote from Mecca, "what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to rearrange much of my thought patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions. All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of all the worlds."