The journey of a lifetime

On the Muslim date of 8 Zulhijjah 1433H, which will coincide with Wednesday 24 October 2012, Muslim pilgrims from all over the world will be in Makkah, Saudi Arabia, to begin the Hajj, a religious duty required of those who are able once in their lifetime. Hubby and I had been privileged to be amongst the guests of Allah in 2010, during which my good friend Yasmin Gan Abdullah and her husband also performed their pilgrimage. After returning home, Yasmin and I collaborated to produce a book of our experiences. By Allah's grace, another good friend, Noorshin Ng Abdullah, and her son Kamil are in the Holy Land at this moment. Alhamdulillah.

I have always been fascinated by personal Hajj stories, particularly of people who converted to Islam, and have a number of books on my shelves.

Michael Wolfe's book, The Hadj published in 1993, begins with how he came to Islam. He was born into an American Jewish-Christian family and, as a young man, had traveled a few times to Morocco. He was drawn to Islam and when he embarked on his Hajj, he began in that country. He stayed there for a month to prepare himself, a story that takes up the first ten chapters of the book. The following eleven chapters are of his Hajj,which to him "felt more like a starting point... I had been traveling through a religion as much as through a landscape. Now I was leaving my physical goal behind. The hadj at its best is a vivifying factor. Later I hoped to internalise its meanings."

Having written about his journey of a lifetime, Wolfe then edited a collection of "significant works by observant travel writers from the East and West over the last ten centuries." One Thousand Roads to Mecca, which came out in 1997, presents "distinct sides of a spirited conversation in which Mecca is the common destination and Islam the common subject of inquiry." This conversation goes as far back as the medieval period and into the twentieth century. I found the Hajj accounts of Australian Winifred Stegar (1927) and Lady Evelyn Cobbold from England (1933) particularly interesting.

The Road to Mecca by Muhammad Asad was first published in 1954 and is considered amongst the top 50 spiritual classics. He writes that his book is not "the story of a deliberate search for faith - for that faith came upon me, over the years, without any endeavour on my part to find it. My story is simply the story of a European's discovery of Islam and of his integration within the Muslim community." He had converted in 1926 after extensive travels throughout the Middle East. The book is a physical as well as spiritual travelogue. He describes his tawaf around the Kaaba: "And I, too, moved slowly forward and became part of the circular flow around the Kaaba... I walked on and on, the minutes passed, all that had been small and bitter in my heart began to leave my heart, I became part of a circular stream - oh, was this the meaning of what we were doing: to become aware that one is a part of a movement in an orbit? Was this, perhaps, all confusion's end? And the minutes dissolved, and time itself stood still, and this was the centre of the universe..." 

Two less formidable books, in terms of length, are Ali Shariati's Hajj (the Malaysian edition was published in 1987) and The Road to Peace by Liza Angela Milo Abdullah, published in 2000. An Iranian, Ali Shariati was a well known Islamic scholar who had suffered in the prisons of the Shah of Iran; he died in 1977 shortly after his release. His book guides the reader through the Hajj rites, interpreting them in the light of Islamic history and highlighting their social significance. 

Liza Angela Milo Abdullah is an Italian who became a Muslim in 1976 and performed her pilgrimage in 1996. In her book, she "narrates each day's events,... explains the significance of the rituals she performs. Interspersed within are other information such as the history behind them." She describes her elation as she sets out on her journey, "My heart is happy and I thank God, I am now ready to perform the journey with my body and with my soul. I tell my family to smile and be happy for me as I am fulfilling my vows as a Muslim." Three weeks later, as she waits in Jeddah to return home, she writes, "The journey is over - the most beautiful experience of my lifetime is over and yet it is not - for I carry it in my heart."

Getting the Best Out of Al-Hajj by Abu Muneer Ismail Davids is not a personal account, like the other books in this post, but I found it extremely useful and informative in my own preparation for the Hajj. With knowledge acquired after spending 15 years in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, about all aspects of Hajj from the Quran and Sunnah point of view, he published this book in 2000 (the second edition was published in 2006). The book provides "a good and plentiful source of information that helps the pilgrim to do the Hajj rites and rituals, from all sides and aspects that is solid and established in the Quran and Sunnah."

Mountains of Mecca - nasheed by Zain Bhikha