The Hajj journey

MINA. The festival we are now experiencing is, before being the Feast of Sacrifice, a festival of the hajj. The sacrifice, which is only one of the rites of the hajj, is a very important act of worship that must be performed on these appointed days, but its true spirit is an act of worship that can be grasped within the wholeness of the hajj, which is loaded with symbolic representations to the utmost degree. Abraham had an arduous journey, in which he was prepared to sacrifice his "only son," as the Holy Bible also puts it, the son he had after the age of eighty, and this "journey," one may say, represents another, far more important dimension of the hajj. However much one reflects on this journey, it is not enough.

In fact, Abraham's life was an uninterrupted journey from the very beginning. Perhaps this uninterrupted journey is the model of a life to be truly lived. Life constantly puts before us roads to be walked, stances to be taken between good and evil, prices to be paid, sacrifices to be made. Whoever holds back from walking these roads, from taking sides between good and evil, from paying a price for faith, remains stuck in his own comfort. Abraham, however, who was an ummah in himself, never neglected any road, any sign, any message that came before him.

His confrontation with the idols in the idol workshop of which his father Azar was the maker, his coming face to face even with his father over it, then his defiance of Nimrod and his willingness to be thrown into the fire, then his journey to Egypt and from there to the valley of Mecca, where he had to leave his son Ishmael when he was still small, a journey that ended in an "abandonment" that left a great feeling of exile in him: these are a tangle of deep experiences from which a thousand and one doors of wisdom open the more one reflects on them. Almighty God, who intended to pass these experiences on to later generations, ordained Abraham for all people as a model in himself, an ummah.

The hajj is in fact a place where we can grasp all of Abraham's journey, but this journey does not revolve around Abraham alone. There is also in this journey a representation in which the first meeting of Adam and Eve in this world, after the human being was expelled from Paradise through Satan's seduction, is reenacted. The journey of Adam and Eve is also a journey, a journey that took place as a fall to the world, but one without which being human would remain incomplete. Perhaps as long as life remained in the comfort lived as a paradise, the adventure of humanity would not have begun. The adventure into which Adam and Eve were thrown, having fallen to the seduction of Satan, who tempted them with the idea of being eternal in an environment of endless blessings where they could do whatever they wished without bearing any responsibility, subjected them to a journey of exile. The hajj is, in part, a journey in which this state of exile is remembered and in which humanity is informed of who its friend and who its enemy is in this adventure.

In the hajj journey, which takes place collectively but which everyone also lives within his own self, real experiences of all these events are lived individually. Satan appears before you at every stage and tries to dissuade you, and when he cannot dissuade you, he tries to step in with all sorts of whisperings about the road and about your travel companions. In this journey there are certainly sacrifices that are taken on. Every sacrifice taken on certainly raises a person's ranks, increases the quality of the person, and changes, to a greater or lesser degree, the way he looks at the world. If you like, take a look at the whisperings that emerge every year about the sacrifice.

Much more besides confronts a person on the hajj journey. To the person who sets out to comprehend the ummah, to merge and become equal with the ummah, Satan comes with talk about the filth, the sloppiness and the bad character of other peoples. If nationalist lessons can be drawn even from this journey, whose most important message is the radical rejection of racism, then you have probably met Satan but not become acquainted with him. Or rather, he has known you, but you have not known him. An arrogance that "the pilgrims of our country" are the best among all pilgrims can easily seize everyone. Still, whatever happens happens, and in the end, every year, the hajj journey takes place with a series of interlocking symbolic representations, and the blessing of this journey spreads in waves across the whole Islamic world.

Yes, the hajj is a journey. From the moment it was made obligatory as an act of worship, it has become the cause of one of the most important geographical movements that people in the world undertake for their beliefs. Throughout history, people have taken on this journey to fulfill the requirements of the hajj, and in this way they have both disrupted the comfort of their own lives in some manner and kept their ways of life open to the effects and consequences of this travel.

These days, when transport and accommodation have become extremely safe and easy, perhaps it is not so easy to imagine this, but throughout history, in environments where travel carried extreme risks, it was not so easy for settled people to undertake a journey for reasons other than economic or security ones, and the journeys that contained a virtue were, without doubt, journeys of this kind. Even journeys made for other purposes have not been entirely free of the blessing that travel contains in itself.

In travel there is blessing, and in a change of place there is relief. Living in the same settled environment for a long time limits people's horizons, and while it increases their comfort, after a while it also begins, without their noticing, to restrict their will. It produces the illusion that this comfort makes them freer, but in fact those habits have increased their burdens and limited them. That the hajj is made obligatory for every Muslim who is able is a veritable elixir of life for people in this state. It is a priceless opportunity for them to open themselves to a world wider than the limits of which they are unaware.

The dependence that Abraham found in his own son, which could become increasingly dangerous, is a sign of the need to set out on the hajj journey. A person's dependencies, habits and addictions are also the limits of his freedom. The friend of God, who by God's grace and aid passed all the tests successfully, passed this test too in a manner that would set an example for all people.

By God's aid our hajj journey continues, but our word on this journey is not finished. God willing, we will continue.