The Hajj

In my very first entry, I quoted the following hadith:

"The example of the world and I is that of a traveller. Travelling in the afternoon heat, he stopped to rest under the shade of a tree for some moments. Then, he rose and left it."

Alhamdulillah! I have rested myself under that blessed tree for a while, and now I rise and left it. I am very much humbled with the lesson on Patience and the eventual reward from the Creator to those who faced challenges with such patience - and it has led me to think of the concept of pilgrimage - the movement to a better place, be it physical, emotional or spiritual.

I vaguely remembered speaking of this in last week's class and wish to share what Martin Lings wrote in his book "Mecca: From Before Genesis Until Now." It is a collection of letters he wrote of his personal experiences during Hajj. May it inspire those who have yet to perform the Hajj, insya-Allah:

"By the time I had drunk from the water of Zamzam, I was beginning to be more and more conscious of something which every pilgrim to Mecca is bound to feel in some degree or other. All Muslims are of course told of the Pilgrimage from their earliest years, and they see members of their family or of their neighbouring families set off for Mecca and hear them recount their experiences when they return.

But this voluntary rite, which the majority of Muslims are never able to perform, remains none the less a secret dimension in Islam, hidden from all those who have not actually explored it for themselves; and this dimension is the link between the present moment and the past. It is by no means only in virtue of the Pilgrimage that Islam is named the 'primordial religion', but the Pilgrimage is an eloquent demonstration of what these names imply, for it is not only a journey in space to the centre towards which one has always turned one's face in prayers, but also a journey in time far back beyond the missions of Muhammad, Jesus and Moses.

Consciousness of this 'regress' in time was heightened for most of us by the feeling of a return to childhood: all except those few who have made a special study of the rites suddenly find themselves snatched from a relative mastery of their religion and placed again in a state of utter dependence on others, quite helpless in themselves and having to be told what to do and say at almost every turn.

'This is not the Islam that I know' is a thought that must occur to many. But that is only incidental whereas the return to the far past imposes itself upon everyone even, and perhaps above all, on those who are familiar with the rites.

Strangely archaic, in pre-Islamic Arabic, is the pilgrim's acknowledgement of their overwhelming sense of the Presence of God, which impels them to greet Him, "Labbaik Allahumma Labbaik" (Here I am, O God, at Thy Service, Here I am at Thy Service) a greeting which is used at no other time and which can even replace that so characteristic feature of Islam: the greeting of Peace, and one is keenly aware that Mecca is the city of Abraham. Moreover, as we have already seen, unlike the other pillar of the religion, the Pilgrimage rites were not newly instituted at the outset of Islam. The Qur'an confirms them, but they were instituted by Abraham; and for him they were a return to the past. The return to him is thus only the starting point of the Pilgrimage, a point from which, as we shall see, it sets out into a still remoter past..."