The Hajj as a Muslim Pilgrimage of Inclusion

 The Islamic pilgrimage festival known as The Haj, or Hajj, is underway in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. After several years of first symbolic, then reduced numbers of pilgrims because of the COVID pandemic this year's Haj will likely be the largest ever with 2.5 million participants. This religious event is also a remarkable logistical challenge. 

Hearing about the revitalized Haj got me thinking about reading a biography of Malcolm Little who became known as Malcolm X. When Malcolm was a young man he turned to a life of crime which resulted in a prison sentence. While in prison he converted to a militant offshoot of the Muslim religion known as the Nation of Islam. After his release he became increasingly involved in this movement which described white people as the Devil and certainly did not espouse the non-violent approach of Martin Luther King. Some journalists set out to portray Malcolm X and MLK as adversaries, an exaggeration of their perspectives. 

                                                                                        Malcolm X

In the 1960's Malcolm became disillusioned with the Nation of Islam and began to study with Sunni Muslims, searching out a more traditional understanding of the Islamic religion. In 1964 he travelled to Saudi Arabia for the Haj, the pilgrimage which is one of the five pillars of Islam and this experience was transformative:

During the past seven days of this holy pilgrimage, while undergoing the rituals of the hajj [pilgrimage], I have eaten from the same plate, drank from the same glass, slept on the same bed or rug, while praying to the same God—not only with some of this earth's most powerful kings, cabinet members, potentates and other forms of political and religious rulers —but also with fellow‐Muslims whose skin was the whitest of white, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, and whose hair was the blondest of blond...

His departure from the Nation of Islam and his choice to embrace a more inclusive form of the Muslim religion were significant factors in his assassination in 1965 at the age of 39. 

As some of you know, I am fascinated by the peregrinations or pilgrimages of different religions and those by other creatures which we term as migrations. In his late teens our son, Isaac, undertook the 800+ kilometre Camino Christian pilgrimage through France and Spain, as have others we know. 

 Non-Muslims are not welcome in Mecca during the Hajj. Still I feel we should respect different forms of spiritual quest which challenge and awaken the participants.