What remains of the Hajj feast?

MINA. We have left behind the great festival that we generally observe as the Feast of Sacrifice, but in which the hajj is in fact the more defining element. Let me complete my unfinished reflections on the hajj, which in my last column I tried to address in terms of its dimension as a journey.

The head of the Presidency of Religious Affairs, Prof. Dr. Mehmet Görmez, also dwelt this year on the hajj as a journey. In his address to the Turkish pilgrims at Arafat, he explained that the hajj is not merely a tourist trip, but a journey that must first of all take place within a person. It is a dreadful state of affairs when nothing remains of an experience as intense as the hajj except the memories of a tourist trip.

Worse still is to return from the hajj journey with assessments that confirm more ignorant feelings and thoughts. Comparing oneself, one's race, nation and sect with those of others and drawing stories about one's own superiority from this is, for example, a feeling frequently encountered on the hajj journey. For this is the path that Satan knows best, applies, and succeeds in most: making a person compare himself with others. In fact, one of the wisdoms observed in the hajj journey is precisely the overcoming of this ignorant feeling and thought. It is truly a pity to return from this journey with this feeling reinforced.

Yet the hajj is a journey that must follow, first of all within oneself, the will to change, the will to change place or condition, and traces of that will can be found even in the worst hajj experience. On the other hand, judged by its total effect, the hajj experience continues, even in that case, to shoulder its inevitable function, if relatively less so. It continues to educate Muslims. In this way it continues to change Muslims, and therefore the whole world.

One must not forget that this is a journey in which the struggle with Satan is one of the most important stations. A journey in which Satan is stoned for four days is also a journey in which Satan approaches a person playing all his cards. One needs to know, to be aware of, or at least to be closer to knowing Satan, who tried to approach even Abraham several times, and to know that he is not merely an abstract evil but a reality with various ways and tactics for approaching us.

It is no coincidence that the different experiences within Islam itself, such as sharia, madhhab, tariqa and suluk, are all expressed through the metaphor of a path. The experience of the path requires a dynamic understanding of fiqh that also takes the path itself into account. In fact the very concept of fiqh already implies that dynamism. The concept, which expresses a state of comprehension, denotes the effort to reconcile appropriately, according to changing times, principles and text with the circumstances in favor of and against the individual, the community and the ummah. For a flat/positivist reading and practice that proceeds on the assumption that a given text is valid in the same way once and for all, there is no need even for fiqh (comprehension, wisdom).

To make a comparison, Islam does not have an approach, like the Judeo-Christian tradition, that presupposes a pre-designed Zion and focuses the whole effort on returning to that Zion. On the contrary, Islam has been shaped around the experience of the hijra.

The hijra requires preparing not for a life that looks backward but for a life that looks forward. It requires receiving what life puts before us as a message or a trial from God, and being able to make it a part of our life. The earth has been made a place of prostration, and God's earth is vast. This vastness is, above all, a truth waiting to be discovered in a person's own inner world. And it is a possible state of consciousness that leaves no room anywhere on earth for the excuse of helplessness, of having been left weak. The hajj journey is one of the most effective ways of opening oneself to this state of consciousness. Good things issue from this journey not only for Muslims but for all people. These journeys teach that it is not possible to repeat exactly, with all its components, an experience that took place at a certain time in history, and that in today's conditions different Islamic life experiences are possible, while remaining consistent with the principles.

The hajj journey is also a very important encounter in which one can see how much the conditions of Muslims can differ from one another. When people from different stations, who have come by different roads and routes, meet here with their different problems, many things happen: 1. Muslims learn from one another's experiences. 2. Stepping out of a world that revolves around themselves or their own problems, they see how insignificant they actually are. Thus, when they see that they may have exaggerated their problems, their capacity to overcome those problems increases psychologically with ease. 3. Looking at the world from a much broader perspective, they come closer to an understanding of Islam in which what is common among all these different experiences, Tawhid and the Qur'an, is at the center.

Malcolm X, for example, set out on the hajj journey at a time when he was one of the most favored names of the Elijah Muhammad movement, which had quickly found sympathy among blacks as a counter-racism, a movement he had exhibited in the name of Islam against the racism, cruelty, oppression and humiliations of whites. In the 12 days he spent in Mecca and Medina he became a completely different person. Here, in the miraculous brotherhood of people of every kind, he saw with his own eyes that the solution to racism could not be a counter-racism pursuing the revenge of the oppressed people. On returning from the hajj journey he would say the following:

"I had never before seen people in the world truly and sincerely live a brotherhood without looking at anyone's color. What I experienced in these 12 days broadened my horizons far more than what I experienced in 39 years."

This is the normal effect of the hajj journey. Many inner discoveries that opened the door to revolutions of historic character have been made here. One of these discoveries, perhaps the most important, must be the result of a hajj journey made by a group of people from Yathrib 1435 years ago. At Jamrat al-Aqaba, is it possible not to remember the pledges of Aqaba? The place where people who had come from Medina on a hajj journey according to the old pagan religion found the Prophet?

The talks the Prophet held with them would be the beginning of the great Islamic civilization to be founded from Medina; the agreement, the pledge, in which the Hijra was planned for the first time, would be concluded here. Can you imagine how much the people of Yathrib gained from this journey? A great gain, enough to shed light not only on themselves but on all people from that time to this and in the future.

What remains for us from our hajj journey, from our festival? It is a matter for which everyone must take stock.