The sociological effects of the Hajj

Ihram, Mina, Arafat, Muzdalifah, stoning the devil, sacrifice, tawaf, sa'y... the full set of rites of a pilgrimage journey. All of these rites, each of which is laden with intense symbolic meanings, are performed by millions of people with incredible seriousness and discipline. This is a magnificent event in itself. We need to dwell on this utterly serious and disciplined bearing of the children of this ummah, who present a scattered picture all over the world and whose political and economic conditions are pitiful, a bearing that is not at all commensurate with their real condition.

We ended our last piece with the question that comes to mind in the face of this performance by an ummah that does a great, heroic enough deed merely by staging every year this magnificent representation laden with all these symbols and meanings: why is this ummah, which in fact goes through a powerful training by giving this performance, not affected by this training in normal life?

Yet it was necessary to correct it, seeing that asking the question negatively has a side that supports certain vulgar prejudices about the hajj and demands a negative answer. That is: "Or is it in fact affected?"

Is it possible for it not to be affected? Indeed, one must have no doubt that the worship of Hajj has an effect that maintains this ummah's quality at a certain level and raises its level. Of course, as we said before, there are examples that produce ill-fated results, such as increasing one's own pride out of a hajj experience that is expected to increase a person's humility, or turning that journey into a source of status. But it is in any case possible to see that this worship, carried out with this discipline and with many social dimensions, has multidimensional consequences over the whole Islamic geography. Every year roughly at least two per thousand of all the Muslims in the world come to the hajj. The first thing those who come experience is probably realizing their own immense diversity. Every Muslim individual who steps out of his own center and opens onto the whole world of humanity here, even if he resists taking the lesson he should take, has the fact that he is superior to no one and no one is superior to him thrust in his face here.

There is no need even to say that the annual regular gathering that takes place here serves as an occasion in which many commercial exchanges and cooperations already taking place in the Islamic world are begun and sustained. Likewise it is a known fact that this is an opportunity space in which different cultural exchanges actually take place.

The cultural counterpart in the Muslim societies of the world of the title of hajji, and of the rituals and ceremonies that take place around hajj journeys, is also worth separate attention.

More than these effects we have mentioned, there is the spontaneous educational dimension that the dimension of hardship, which is loaded into the hajj journey and cannot be entirely removed at any level, adds to it. In our age, in which there is special interest in educational processes outside institutions, this educational dimension of the hajj certainly deserves special attention. I can say that millions of people receive, most effectively, in these few weeks of the hajj journey, a knowledge that cannot be acquired in high schools, universities, or at the doctoral level. Moreover, the pilgrims here receive their share of that unchanging knowledge of truth that the ancient tradition keeps alive by repeating it unchanged from one year to the next.

Those who cannot come to the hajj take part in this process in some way by celebrating the Feast of Sacrifice.

We return to our question. Why does the hajj, a worship that has or is expected to have so much social effect, not become a means for Muslim societies' deliverance from their present state? Why does it not bring about a change commensurate with its seriousness and meaning?

My opinion and personal observation is that the hajj has an effect of educating Muslim societies and preparing them for their historical mission. The world is full of devils and tyrants, and apart from Muslims there is no one who takes them to heart this much as a concern and a problem, no one who stones them. There is great income injustice in the world, and today there is no one who feels the pain and grief of it more than Muslims.

The gap between Muslim peoples and their own rulers is widening with each passing day. These rulers are not rulers whom they themselves chose and whom they themselves brought to power. By what means they came to power on their own is well known. Today the difference between Muslim peoples and the rulers imposed on them under post-colonial conditions is best seen at the Hajj.

The scene we see in Muslim societies, which does not agree with the discipline of the hajj, stems largely from this gap. Hajj, Umrah, Ramadan, sacrifice, and especially prayer are the "shi'ar" (symbols) of the revival of peoples, provided by God Himself.

It falls to the believer to exalt the symbols of God, and when he does so, God promises the expected change, the human being's deliverance from the slavery of servitude to a creature, the liberation that is achieved only by being devoted to God alone, by being a servant to Him alone.

Hajj will certainly change the societies that hold fast to the symbols God has placed with deep wisdom.