THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HAJJ
By:Dr. Sayyed Hossein Nasr
IN THE FOOT-STEPS OF IBRAHIM
The
hajj the journey to Mecca and its environs, is incumbent upon every Muslim once
in his or her lifetime. According to Islamic tradition, Muslims follow in the
footsteps of the Prophet Ibrahim(pbuh), as they were retraced by the Prophet of
Islam, Muhammad,may peace and blessings be upon him. These obligatory rights
were set out by the word of God. The hajj represents the renewal of an Abrahamic
rite, in the bosom of the Islamic tradition. The hajj itself includes many
actions beginning with the changing of one's dress from that worn ordinarily and
associated with this world, to a seamless piece of white cloth for men and a
simple, pure white dress for women. This involves making a total ablution,
signifying purity both inward and outward. It also involves the circumambulation
of the Ka'ba, which for Muslims is not merely symbolic of, but the actual
presence of the primordial temple itself, the actual reflection of the Throne of
God on earth, seen and constructed by Adam upon his descent from Paradise.
Ibrahim(pbuh) did not construct the Ka'ba, he reconstructed it. It was
reconstructed again during the early Islamic period after the great floods of
the first century, at the end of the Umayyad period, and again during the
Abbasid period. The hajj also involves travel outside of Mecca, travel to three
major sites: to Arafat, which is a vast plain, and to Mina and Muzdalifa, inside
of which are pillars symbolizing Shaytan, the devil. Here one casts stones at
these pillars, symbolizing the repulsion of evil, again a revival in Islam of an
ancient Semitic rite. The annual greater hajj takes about four or five days,
depending upon when one begins. The lesser hajj, known as the hajj al-umra,
usually takes just one day and is frequently performed by Muslims whenever they
have the opportunity to visit the holy city. The end of the hajj is celebrated
with a festival called ‘id ul-adha in Arabic, and it is usually translated as
the Celebration of the Sacrifice. This idea of sacrifice is at the heart of the
hajj. The binding of the son of Ibrahim(pbuh) is retold, and sheep or camels are
sacrificed in remembrance; but it is the sacrifice of our selves that should
come to mind. The hajj itself implies sacrifice; that is, it is difficult, and
must remain difficult. Even the modern, so-called conveniences such as
air-conditioned hotels and limousines have resulted in the greater difficulties
of larger numbers of pilgrims than ever before. Again, this implies sacrifice,
difficulty. There must always be the element of sacrifice, and that is why in
the olden days, Muslims would pray to die during the hajj. This is because the
person who dies the during the pilgrimage dies the death of the martyr, and
paradise is guaranteed for him or her. It was a happy occasion, not a sad one,
if a pilgrim died on the way to Mecca. So the first important image of the 'id
ul-adha is the idea of sacrifice. The second most important concept is that of
illumination, or light. The Arabic word adha comes from a root word which also
means clarity or illumination it is through sacrifice that we are, in fact,
illuminated. The experience of the hajj is also an experience of illumination in
which the veil of opacity which separates us from the Divine Reality is removed,
at least for those who understand what the hajj really is. The third term, which
is related to the second, concerns the Day of Judgment, also known as the Yawm
al-Adha. One of the most famous works written by the great Persian philosopher
Ibn Sina, or Avicenna, is Al-Risalatu al-Adhawiyya, a treatise on resurrection.
In classical Islamic thought, the term adha is connected to resurrection,
rebirth and resuscitation. According to the Prophet, peace be upon him, the
person who makes hajj for the first time with clear intentions not wanting to
make money in the bazaar or something, but with the clear intention of wanting
to make the hajj for the sake of God, all of his or her sins are forgiven, and
they return home pure. Therefore, our intention should be to live a life of
virtue and purity, and that really means a death and resurrection. The death and
resurrection implied in the hajj is a premonition and a prelude for the Great
Resurrection on the Day of Judgment. In fact, the assembly of people from all
over the world on the great plain of Arafat is an image of the Day of Judgment.
Hundreds of Arab, Persian, and other poets have written about this image where
as far as the eye can see there is nothing but human beings dressed in white,
standing and praying before God. The hajj is also a journey. Its deepest symbol
is the journey of life itself. At the end of that journey is death, and
encounter with God. Whatever we may do in between, we know where the end of the
road is. We cannot evade that final encounter with God, a happy end for those
who are believers. The journey for the hajj is very similar, that is the end of
the journey is the encounter with the house of God, the Ka'ba. For Muslims this
represents a standing before the hub of the universe, or the axis mundi, the
world axis. This is the place in which the presence of God is to be experienced
immediately and directly.It is a journey toward our center,and to what orients
us. The Ka'ba is the point of orientation, orienting space for believers
throughout their lives. For example, upon entering a new room, you check to
align yourself with the Qiblah. In this way, space becomes oriented, in a way
polarized. This has the deepest of psychological impacts upon those who live the
Islamic life, who live in a space that is always polarized towards Mecca. The
Ka'ba is also the center; it is the center of the Islamic world; it is the
center of the terrestrial plane; it is the center of the cosmos. It is also the
center, symbolically in the microcosm, of our selves. That is why the Prophet,
peace be upon him, said in a famous hadith, that "The heart of the believer is
the Throne of Divine Mercy, the Throne of God." Therefore, the heart is the
Ka'ba, and that is one of the grand themes of spiritual thought in Islam over
the centuries. There is a correspondence between the journey of life itself, and
the hajj, for those who are really present and fully understand it, because the
end of both is an encounter with God. After this comes a resurrection, a rebirth
of the human being. Now let us turn to some of the more detailed features of the
hajj, as they relate to the spiritual life. All of the attitudes which the hajj
tries to inculcate in us, refer to our daily lives here and now. We perform the
hajj because we intend to obey God's commands. We spend thousands of dollars, we
take ourselves away from our families, our belongings; the worries of the world
are always there whether you leave your small shop in Isfahan in the middle of
the 13th Century, or your computer in Chicago in the late twentieth century.
Going on hajj always means being cut off from all of the
entanglements of the world around us. This is very, very difficult because it
creates in a sense an island in our life, a temporal island to be able to go to
the hajj. Why are you doing it? Because you want to obey God's will. So the very
act of hajj is the intention to follow God's command.Here again, the attitude of
the Prophet Ibrahim, peace be upon him, is significant. Ibrahim(pbuh) became the
great friend of God, Khalilullah, because of two things. First of all, perfect
faith, and secondly, because of perfect surrender to the will of God. The Qur'an
says, "Kaana Ibrahim musliman hanifan, "Ibrahim (pbuh)was a member of the
primordial tradition." Here the word Muslim surely does not mean what we use the
word Muslim for in English, that is a person who belongs to the revelation that
was given to the Prophet of Islam, peace be upon him, in the seventh century of
the Christian era. What is meant here is primordial Islam, or surrender to the
will of God. In this verse, the Qur'an defines Ibrahim(pbuh) by his surrender to
the Divine will. The whole process of the hajj is an emulation of this great
virtue of the Prophet Ibrahim, peace be upon him. This virtue is in turn
characteristic of Islam itself, essentially surrender to the will of God. The
very name, Islam, meaning both peace and surrender, weds these two ideas and
creates the religion. Through surrendering to the will of God you gain peace.
All of this is contained in the etymology of the word Islam itself. This is at
the heart of the attitude that must be inculcated. All of the movements that
Muslims perform during the hajj today are the sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad,
who was in turn reviving the acts of Ibrahim, peace be upon them both. The
movements between Safa and Marwa, two little hills outside of the Ka'ba, emulate
the movement of Hagar, Ibrahim's(pbuh) wife, as she sought water for her child,
Isma'il(pbuh). One is conscious of the Prophet, peace be upon him, himself
having brought an older tradition into Islam and reviving it as part of Islamic
practice. What does this mean, practically? It means that Islam is the
reassertion of the primordial monotheism. Islam is either that, or it is
nothing. That is, to fully comprehend the significance of Islam is to understand
that there is nothing new in Islam except its finality. The heart of this
message is the renewal of what always was. Ibrahim(pbuh) himself, known as the
father of monotheism, was in fact the renewer of a monotheism that went back to
Adam(pbuh). In the Qur'an when God addresses Adam and his progeny with the
famous verse, 'Alastu bi Rabbikum"' (Am I not your Lord?) all of humanity
answered "yes," a very difficult "yes"- as a result of which we accepted the
great responsibility and burden of being human. Therefore, the Adamic state
implies the acceptance of the Lordship and Unity of God. Ibrahim(pbuh) did not
begin monotheism. Monotheism begins with Abu ‘l Bashar, the father of humanity,
the very first human being. Originally, of course, Adam(pbuh) was not even just
male, he was male and female together. Adam and Eve(as) together, one being. The
Hebrew word Adam, originally contains that meaning. The act of hajj is a
reconfirmation of the primordial nature of tawhid, Divine Oneness, and the idea,
much emphasized in Islam, that to be human is fundamentally to accept always the
Unity of God. This is ingrained in the substance of human nature. No matter how
much it has been covered by dust and the rust of forgetfulness and evil, this
assertion and reconfirmation of tawhid is in our souls. All we have to do is
remove the rust. To perform the hajj, one must put on ihram, that is to take off
one's ordinary clothing a few miles from Mecca and put on two pieces of cloth
which must be folded, no knots, buttons, sewing or zippers. One must remove all
jewelry remove all things that signify attachment to the world.The hajj really
begins with death, that is death in the sense of detachment. For many, the first
ihram is saved to later serve as their shroud. It is significant that one
attends hajj already wearing a shroud. The color white symbolizes detachment
from all of the trimmings of the world. White also symbolizes unity, a kind of
return to simplicity with detachment. One of the most remarkable things about
hajj is the inability to differentiate between a king and a beggar. Everyone
looks alike, all social distinctions are removed. It is remarkable how, once
those distinctions are removed one is reminded of the famous Qur'anic verse,
"The most worthy among you before God is the most God-fearing." Taqwa cannot be
translated exactly into English; it means both fear of God and virtue at the
same time. What really distinguishes human beings is no longer their social
status, the attachment to the world and its attractions, but what they are
inwardly, how they stand before God. That is one of hajj's very great lessons,
and one which is very difficult to bring back. Once the hajj is finished and
you've taken your shower and put your ordinary clothing on again, one person
gets into a Mercedes Benz and the other rides a donkey. You are back into the
divisions of ordinary life. The ideal is to try to keep something of that unity
deep within you for the rest of your life. It is impossible, in a society, not
to have differences. It is in our nature as humans. However, the hajj tries to
create at least an inner realization of how transient these differences are. How
transient is the wealth of the world? It can be lost in a moment. The hajj is a
very good lesson to prepare a person for what may happen in their lives. Turning
to the central rite of the hajj, the tawaf; or circumambulation of the Ka'ba,
you have a sea of humanity circling around a stationary, set center. What does
that signify? It is such a profound rite, for those who understand its inner
meaning. First, one must understand the Ka'ba itself. It is a very simple
structure; the simplest that you can get. It is not an exact cube, but rather
slightly rectangular with the height slightly longer than the other dimensions.
It is covered in black cloth, a dress known as the kiswa. The kiswa is
pitch-black with verses of the Qur'an beautifully woven in gold bands. The color
symbolizes the fact that God is beyond our conception. It is another expression
of the phrase, Allahu akbar, or la ilaha illa Allah. Allahu akbar does not
simply mean that God is great; it means that God is greater than anything you
say about Him. That is, whatever you say Allah is, hu Akbar (He is greater).
That is the real meaning, but most people don't think about it that way. It is
another formula for the expression of la ilaha illa Allah. The color of the
Ka'ba is another expression of the truth of la ilaha illa Allah. It is beyond
all colors, all forms. Because we live in a world of colors, colors symbolize
forms. The color black transcends all colors. From one point of view, black is
conceived to be nothing. From another, black is the intensity of light. Black is
above all colors, not because of its poverty, but because of its transcendence.
It is the black color that bears the fruit of the Golden Verses from the Qur'an.
The gold symbolizes the sun, and light, the Light through which the verses of
Qur'an are written. The kiswa is changed every year; cut up into small pieces
and given as tabarruk (that is, something containing Divine blessings) to
dignitaries and other pilgrims. The Ka'ba sits at the center, as a presence of
God, as a symbol of the primordial temple built by Adam, and later Ibrahim as
well as the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon them all. By the Prophet
Muhammad's(pbuh) order the Ka'ba was cleansed of the three hundred and sixty
idols that were kept inside, thus reasserting the primordial nature of
monotheism. When one circumambulates the Ka'ba, one is in the presence of the
Immutable. It has not evolved, the style has not changed. It is beyond
temporality. It is we who are in temporality at the circumambulation. The
circumambulation is against the movement of the earth, which means that it is
against the flow of time. The reversal of time in the tawaf is an undoing of the
fall of man, a restructuring of the human state in our Adamic perfection. Adam
before the fall saw the signs of God everywhere. He was God's perfect servant,
the perfect Muslim. As a result of disobedience he was removed from that
perfection. All of the attempts of human beings are to return to that state of
perfection. Finally, from the beginning of the hajj one repeats the Arabic
phrase, "labbayk, Allahumma, labbayk," that is, "at Thy service, O Lord, at Thy
service." We assert, during the hajj that we are God's servants. This, of
course, is an attitude that must bc inculcated throughout life. We must always
be saying labbayk. We must be saying labbayk because of the fact that we exist,
that we have life. God also says labbayk to us. God, in a sense, is at our
service. He gives us life, bestows gifts upon us. We go to bed at night with the
expectation that the sun will come up in the morning, that it will not burn us,
that water win not be so cold as to freeze our hands. We expect that we will
have enough food to eat and that when we put bread in our mouth it will not turn
to fire in our stomachs. We just assume all of these things by what we call the
regularity of life, the so-called laws of nature. So, there is also a Divine "labbayk,"
and in the deepest sense, the labbayk of the hajj is our response to God's
labbayk. There is a very beautiful story about a very pious Muslim, a Sufi. He
was invoking the Name of God in a cave in some mountain, saying "Allah, Allah"
all the time. The devil was very disturbed by this (as he always is by the
mention of God's Names.) So, the devil comes to this man and tries to dissuade
him from invoking the Name of God. The devil says to him, "Why is it that you
keep invoking'? All the time you have said, "Allah, Allah," has God ever said
yes? Has He ever answered you?" The man becomes very dejected, and he falls
silent. Immediately, God calls the Archangel Gabriel, saying, "What has
happened? Our choice servant is not invoking Our Name anymore. Go and find out
what has happened." Gabriel asks the man, who tells him the story, and Gabriel
reports back to God. God tells Gabriel, "Go back and tell him, every time we
give him the permission, and the force, and the intelligence, and the
consciousness to say, 'Allah,' we have already given the answer ‘yes' to his
invocation ." God Himself is saying, "labbayk," all of our lives. He has given
us existence, life, all of these gifts, all of the elements that make us who we
are. Therefore, this “labbayk, Allahumma Labbayk," is a much more profound
assertion than people think. It is not just, "I'm doing my hajj right now and
I'm obeying God, and later I'll forget it." It is, in a sense, the realization
of the reciprocity between the Divine gifts and the attitudes we should have
towards them. I began with the symbol of the Ka'ba as the heart. The journey to
the Ka'ba is the external symbol of a powerful ritual act which should serve as
a support for the even more profound journey to the center of our being. The
real hajji is the person who makes use of this external opportunity to be able
to interiorize. The most difficult hajj, much more difficult than walking
through deserts as in the old days, is to go from the external circles of our
existence to the center where God resides within us at all times. Jesus, peace
be upon him, said, "The Kingdom of God is within you." The Prophet of Islam,
peace be upon him, said, "The heart of a believer is the Throne of Divine
Compassion," that is, the Throne of God. Therefore, we must reach that Throne.