The Problems of a Contemporary Hajj Part 1

By: Dr. Moosa Ali

The following is an anecdotal monograph, based upon Hajj 2009, recounting predominantly the problematic aspects of a contemporary pilgrimage to the two Holy Sanctuaries in Makkah and Madīnah.  This reflective account of Hajj 2009 was written to identify and promulgate some problems of a contemporary pilgrimage. Having spoken to a few pilgrims who experienced the Hajj of 2010, I have heard both positive and negative comments about their experiences there.

The most significant innovation this year has been the monorail in Makkah, and since the procedural running of Hajj is continuously evolving, any account of this sort runs the risk of becoming outdated. Nonetheless, I feel the account presented here and the criticisms I am making cannot be sidelined as merely anecdotal and incidental recollections. The most significant criticisms I make – namely those pertaining to numbers, the response of Saudi authorities to Western modernity, and the future vision for a Sacred Land  – are all too relevant to all Muslims in the world, both Arab and non-Arab.

Finally, perhaps the reader will agree that occasionally knee-jerk reactions are characteristic amongst Muslims when any aspect of their Faith or Islamicate culture is criticised. And this is perhaps particularly justifiable given the contemporary onslaught of denigration towards Muslims and their Religion from even those who call themselves Muslims. What this risks, however, is overlooking legitimate criticism of certain occurrences within the world of Islam. If I may then, I ask you to read carefully the provisos and reasons I cite, and let me also reassure you that my intentions here are firmly in the spirit of loyalty to both Islam and its Muslim adherents. Whilst Islam, as I see it, is beyond reproach – Muslims most certainly are not. I do genuinely feel that the problems mentioned herein are indicative of a malaise in the global ummah (ranging from a subjugated mindset towards a hegemonic West to the straying from Prophetic norms in worship, and beyond) that can, and by all means must, be cured first and foremost by acknowledging it.

With this mind, I hope you find this piece informative.

Introduction

It was said to Ibrāhīm:

“And proclaim to mankind the Hajj. They will come to you on foot and on every lean camel, they will come from every deep and distant mountain highway (to perform Hajj)” [Q 22 Hajj: 27]

This verse above is brought to life by a plethora of accounts (1) spanning one and a half millennia. It seems particularly salient given that right up until the first third of the twentieth century, people of all colors, languages and lands were traveling (at least in the last leg of their journeys) on ‘camel’ and on ‘foot’ to the holy sanctuary.

Around 4,000 years ago Ibrāhīm ibn Aazar, thought to be from the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur (in modern day southern Iraq), embarked on a magnificent journey and struggle as a Messenger of Allah ṣallallāhu ‘alayhi wa sallam . Towards the end of his life, his journey took him to Bakkah (2), where the first mosque on earth was built and a series of pilgrimage (Hajj) rites were revealed by Allah. Today this ancient city is Makkah, lying in a harsh, rocky, and mountainous desert landscape where, in antiquity, no crops seem to have grown and a climate of ‘suffocating heat, deadly winds, and clouds of flies’(4) prevailed. For reasons known only to Allah, this land is the most beloved on earth to Him. It is far removed from the lush comforts and adornments of this world in greener, leafier and more fertile parts; it is a place that none would think to visit but those devoted to worshiping Allah, compelled by His instruction:

“Pilgrimage to the House (Ka’bah) is a duty mankind owes to Allah, those who are able to undertake it.” [Q3:97]

Hajj is a unique act of worship such that it is tied not only to a specific time, set, and sequence of rituals but also a specific physical geography – the sacred valley of Ibrāhīm. When the Prophet performed hajj there were approximately 40,000(5) – 90,000 (6) people present, a figure utterly dwarfed by the current numbers that annually inundate the ancient valley on top of its resident population of 1.2 million. To witness a contemporary Hajj is, in many respects, to witness a microcosm of the global Muslim Ummah.  For this reason, a contemporary pilgrim (hajji) will witness and experience not only the very heights of spirituality but also the depths of profanity. I say this because there is no better place to witness the oft-mentioned distinction between the lofty Islamic faith on the one hand, and its very human Muslim practitioners on the other, than the two holy sanctuaries of Makkah and Madīnah during the month of Dhu’l-Ḥijjah. This account is a critical reflection on the contemporary realities of pilgrimage, as gleaned from my experience in 2009, and supplemented by Hajj reports from well known historical accounts. The aim here is to highlight those social and organizational aspects of the ‘experience’ so they can be improved.  This is not a critique of the institution of hajj and its rites which, as far as I am concerned, are sacred and therefore beyond reproach.

I dwell also on the mismatch in sentiments and priorities between the authorities that run the pilgrimage and the pilgrims themselves, many cognisiant of the fact that it will be their one and only visit to this Sacred Land, and who therefore come to engage specifically in the rites of worship. In the minds of non-Khaliji (non-residents of the Arabian peninsula and the Gulf region at large) Muslims at least, the Arabian Peninsula is an enchanting place, home to the story of the Messenger of Allah . Here he was born, experienced revelation and persecution, migrated to Madīnah, and established the Islamic faith. These Muslims, therefore, place the Peninsula – because of the Prophet – on a pedestal and harbor certain expectations from the Sacred Mosques, the ancient relics, monuments, and sites of Islamic history therein. Unfortunately these expectations are not always met.

Moreover, while the importance of the internal, or esoteric, component of worship is commonly stressed – there is an external aesthetic component to worship which, though often overlooked, is clearly present in the Islamic texts. To demonstrate briefly, consider the ritual prayer in which clean white clothing, kohl, use of miswak, perfume, and beautiful recitation is recommended. It follows then that the external components of sight, sound, smell, and so on and so forth are also very much a part of the experience of worship.  The Hajj ritual as a whole is of course no less an act of worship than prayer or dhikr. In describing the experience of Hajj, therefore, I pay particular attention to these neglected elements.

I will proceed to describe briefly, since there are many accounts of this nature, the highs of a contemporary Hajj before steering the theme of the account towards what could be improved, and the importance of speaking about it. Finally, I will conclude with recommendations to improve the pilgrim’s experience.

The Highs

The first vision of the Ka’bah and the Sacred Mosque is an unforgettable moment. The Ka’bah is a magnificent structure; it stands serene and immovable as thousands circumambulate it on three levels and playful birds chirp as they maneuver with wondrous swiftness above, occasionally mirroring the clockwise motion of the pilgrims below them. Its sight is compelling, gripping the eyes of hundreds who stand on the roof of the mosque staring at its mysterious beauty for hours at a time, impervious to fatigue. As Haddad observed:

“Everybody performs the ṭawāf , moving in one circular motion around one pivotal point, synonymous with the regulation and orderliness of the universe. The celestial zones rotate, as does the electron in an atom. We are a part of this creation, we travel with it and it travels with us; our Lord and object of worship is One.”

This is the center of the world of worship, the most important physical space on earth for Muslims, the oldest place of prayer to the God of Mankind. Prophetic narrations affirm that directly above the Ka’bah is al-Bayt al-Ma’mur, its celestial equivalent – an unfathomably more ancient place of worship – where the Angels have circumambulated beneath the Majestic Throne from time immemorial, praising and glorifying His Majesty in such throngs that, it is narrated, the heavens creak with their sheer numbers. Standing now as a pristine cube, many have conjectured over the significance of the Ka’bah’s shape. But it was not always a cube, for once it stood in the shape of an arched doorway, and Allah alone knows the significance of these shapes and any symbology therein.

It is said that Angels laid the foundations for the Ka’bah which were eventually obscured under a mound of red rubble by the time Hagar of Egypt was left there by her husband, Ibrāhīm, with their son Ismail. As is well known, the Well of Zam Zam gushed forth, the tribe of Jurhum arrived, and a community began to thrive there. Some 3,000 years later ‘Abdul-Muṭṭālib would sleep by the Ka’bah with his grandson Muhammad. Here the Messenger of Allah ṣallallāhu ‘alayhi wa sallam had animal entrails thrown on his head, the companions were persecuted, Abu Bakr beaten almost to death. In the grounds of the sacred mosque would have been the homes of numerous Prophetic companions, as well as ardent adversaries of Islam and its Muslim adherents. This ancient land is rich with sacred history and it is knowledge of this history which brings to the fore of one’s mind the grave significance of the ground on which pilgrims sit reading Qurʾān and making ritual prayer. The Mosque in Makkah is breathtakingly beautiful and conducive to deep introspection and worship, but it is the knowledge of over 4,000 years of history which really renders a pilgrim to tears. It is that history which one must study in depth before embarking on the Hajj journey.

While Makkah is cardinally about the Ka’bah, its pre-Islamic story, and early Islamic history; the Prophet’s ṣallallāhu ‘alayhi wa sallam Madīnah is where the religion took its final shape, where the Islamic state was formed, where Islamic law took a more dominant role, and where numerous battles were planned and fought. Madīnah is replete with history of the nascent Islamic polity; it is an altogether different experience from Makkah – tranquil, and cooler in climate. Surely the Prophet’s mosque is the most beautiful and most aesthetically complete in the world: hundreds of magnificent Cordoban arches of subtly different designs and colors provide decorum to the hugely extended mosque; lush carpets rich with color, beautiful scents, and spectacular marble flooring make up the recesses of the mosque, while open courtyards scatter the intramural, providing natural ventilation. This mosque is huge, over a thousand grand marble pillars support it, all arches extend in geometrically, perfect straight lines around a quarter of a mile long. Grand chandeliers provide constant lighting, while intricate calligraphy provides ample distraction to those wishing to decode it. The elaborate details one notices are countless and I can describe the mosque only as architecturally magnificent. Aside from the physical splendor, there is nothing more special in Madīnah than sending & salah upon the Messenger of Allah in the knowledge that he rests in his grave just feet away. That perpetually busy one-way passage, leading past his grave and Riyadh-ul-Jannah, is where his chambers were during his life; in that vicinity the Companions prayed in the mosque; revelation descended; battles were planned; and on a more somber note, in that vicinity was where ‘Umar and ‘Uthmān were both assassinated, the former by a Persian non-Muslim, and the latter by proto-khariji insurgents. Awareness of all that and the impeccable condition of the mosque itself makes it unforgettable.

In both Makkah and Madīnah, the beauty of the adhān and Qurʾānic recitation – in the presence of the Ka’bah or the Prophet’s mimbar,Raudat-ul-Jannah and his grave – utterly dominate and diminish the paler experiences one is used to in their homelands.

Tremendous money and thought has gone into the design and construction of these two sacred mosques, and since the sight, sound, smell and touch are looked after, the spiritual and aesthetic experiences are profound. There is no feeling comparable to worship in these two sanctuaries, intensified all the more in the knowledge that one’s worship is amplified in reward by a ratio of 1:100,000 and by 1:1,000 in Makkah and Madīnah respectively.

This is the spiritual high of Hajj; many will feel it and write about it. Few, however, will make mention or write about the negative aspects of the Hajj experience, perhaps in the belief that this is poor etiquette, or reflects some degree of ingratitude to Allah, or will detract from their reward. The negative aspects, however, tend to center around human activities and procedures, and so what follows below is strictly in the spirit of improving the spirituality of Hajj and the pilgrim’s overall experience

Where in the past it may have been fabrications of Europeans that derided the Hajj – such as that by the Dominican friar Fabri who wrote in 1484 that Muslims in Makkah worship Venus, pelt stones ‘backwards between their legs at the devil’, come to see Muhammad’s coffin hung in the air without rope or chain, and that the black stone is a statue of Saturn – I fear that today if the problems mentioned below are simply ignored or ‘swept under the carpet’ there is little hope for improvement. The risk of offering yet more ammunition to Islam’s enemies and malefactors(10) is simply not acceptable.

The Lows

The profound experiences of worship described above are certainly not exaggerated. The supplications there are so much more thought out and sincere, the ritual prayers are done with so much more concentration, and the recitation of Qurʾān and dhikr are one’s main preoccupation.

It is, however, with tremendous sadness that one encounters some shameful acts around the Ka’bah, and the reality of what lies outside the perimeters of the two holy mosques. It is only by speaking against it, this proverbial elephant in the room, that the less appealing aspect of this reality may be substituted for that which is better.

Masjid Haram

The serenity of ṭawāf from a distance is deceiving and none should be duped since the reality inside ṭawāf is considerably more violent. Large trains of people linking themselves together slice through crowds elbowing unsuspecting pilgrims in the ribs. Tempers flare, the young threaten to punch the old, and the old strike the young. Thieves (11) operate with knives slicing into bags; on one occasion while attempting to cut a bracelet off a lady’s wrist, a thief sliced her radial artery – she bled out on the mosque’s floor. Other women have had various body parts groped in crowds so thick that catching a breath devoid of someone else’s perspiration or exhalation is just not possible. Those unfortunate enough to fall are every so often crushed by stampedes, especially near the black stone which is the most violent area in the mosque. Although to kiss it is merely desirable, the look in some eyes is unmistakably one of madness, as if one’s soul will suffer eternal damnation without touching or kissing it. Women who do dare to venture near it risk having their scarves and over- clothes torn from their bodies and hair ripped by random hands appearing from between sweaty necks, yanking at anything within their grasp to hurl it out of the way. The heat and pressure is intense enough to cause some to pass out. I saw many men, fearing their ribs about to be crushed imminently, desperately pulling out and gasping for breath. All the while, astonishingly, Saudi police stand above the stone laughing and scoffing at the scenes of madness beneath them apparently enjoying the spectacle.

Quite frankly, there are too many people making ṭawāf. As a result, it is less an act of worship than it is an act of survival; an act just to be completed incident free. In 1964, Jalal Ahmad amusingly observed:

“Every time the good people return from circumambulation and sa’y (sic), it is as if they have just returned from the battle of Khaybar – some part of them is injured”(12)

Muslims are capable of bloodier feats still: in the time of the salaf in 683CE when the Prophetic Companion, ‘Abdullāh b. al-Zubayr’s plans to challenge the corrupt regime of Yazid b. Mu‘āwiyah became known, an army from Damascus arrived. It lay siege to the Holy Mosque killing inhabitants and burning the Ka’bah (13), crumbling its walls, leaving it not fit for purpose, and smashing the black stone in to three pieces (14).

The number of people making ṭawāf nowadays is so vast, their patience so thin, and their manners so terrible that ṭawāf , especially in the inner circles, is a violent affair of pushes, prods, shoves, falls, and occasionally, trampling. Ironically it is the elderly that need to do the shorter circumambulations but it is they who are more susceptible to suffering in the inner circles. The closer one heads towards the Ka’bah the less safe it is especially for women and the elderly.

Swelling, uncontrollable Numbers

The number of pilgrims was a key preoccupation in my thoughts during Hajj since it was the most striking problem of the entire hajj experience, and the root cause of many of the problems mentioned in this account.

Makkah and its valley is a three dimensional space capable of holding only a finite number of pilgrims comfortably. Of course, one can make concessions and bear the burden of some hardships to enable more Muslims to perform pilgrimages, but there must exist a limit where no more pilgrims are allowed in for reasons of safety, basic standards of hygiene, health, and comfort, not to mention the strain on the Sacred Land (rubbish/waste, sewage, fuel emissions, air quality and other sorts of pollution etc). A survey of the numbers is shocking.

The Messenger of Allah performed Hajj with around 40,000 Muslims according to two major ḥadīth scholars, Ibn Kathīr and Ibn al-Salah (15). Muhammad Asad, who performed and documented one of his five pilgrimages in 1927, described innumerable pilgrims rammed together in ships and a sea of white in Makkah; but he was seeing no more than around 150,000 pilgrims. The famous British convert and confidant to Ibn Sa’ud, Harry St. John Philby, who incidentally was also responsible for mapping most of the Arabian Peninsula, kept detailed records for ten years and described that in 1931 only 40,000 people performed Hajj, a drop (due to war) from the high of 130,000(16). Data shows that throughout the 1970’s the number of pilgrims fluctuated between 700,000 – 900,000, reaching the landmark of 1 million in 1983 (17). From 1996 – 2006 there are officially published Ministry of Hajj figures available(18):

In 2007 the official figures were quoted as follows:

“the Saudi Central Department of Statistics had announced Wednesday that the total number of pilgrims from this year’s Hajj reached 2,454,325, (1,707,814 from outside of Saudi Arabia and 746,511 from within the kingdom)”19

But as with every year’s official figures, there were additional pilgrims attending illegally: ‘over- stayers’ along with clandestine pilgrims who did not register. In 2009 these figures are said to be nearer 2.5-3.0 million pilgrims.

This rise in numbers is clearly exponential and writers such as Wolfe and others have put it down to the age of the jet engine. A family can be away from home for a matter of weeks and then return.  There are less concerns with having to worry about the family’s subsistence and safety in one’s absence and the ill too are able to endure a flight as opposed to weeks/months worth of journeying in times gone by.

1 See Bibliography

2 Q 3 : 96 Sūrah Āle-‘Imrān

3 According to Mubarakpuri, it was first built by the Angels, and its foundations or building structure subsequently renovated by Adam, then by the Quraysh just before Muhammad became the Messenger of Allah, & finally by Ibn Az-Zubayr [see Mubarakpuri, History of Makkah, p.30].

4 Maqdisi’s description (ca.966CE) as cited by Wolfe p. XV; Michael Wolfe is a Muslim convert who collected a literary anthology on the Hajj inspired by his own pilgrimage.

5 Two major hadīth scholars, Ibn Kathīr & Ibn al-Salah, concur that 40,000 people were present at the Farewell Hajj with the Prophet; see Ibn Kathir, ‘The Life of the Prophet Muhammad’; Garnet 2000, volume 4, pages 193 & 20. & Ibn al-Salah al-Shahrazuri, ‘An Introduction to the Science of Hadith’, Garnet (2006), Category 39, page. 214

6 Wolfe p.xvii

7 Wolfe p.xviii; bear in mind this figure is from around 1997

8 By this I mean those not resident in the Arabian peninsula or those Muslims who are not Gulf Arabs

9 Article: Hajj the fifth pillar of Islam, Haitham Haddad, 6/12/08, www.islam21c.com.

10 Some apostates have recently written savagely of Muslims in Hajj and recounted their negative experiences many of which can hardly be denied. Apostasy notwithstanding, it is necessary regardless to improve on areas where improvement is possible

11 Theft has been a problem for many years. Hamza Bogary wrote of the 1947 hajj that the tents were susceptible to thieves and when the hajj rites emptied the main town in Makkah ‘khullaif’ thieves would take advantage of the situation [Wolfe p.449]

12 Wolfe p.475

13 Peters p.60-61

14 Peters p.63

15 See footnote 5

16 Wolfe p.386; numbers dropped as a result of war.

17 Wolfe p.435-436 18 http://www.hajinformation.com/main/l.htm

19 Crossroads Arabia; http://xrdarabia.org/2007/12/23/how-many-attended-the-hajj/, accessed 1/2/10