MARCH 22 The Message of Pilgrimage

MARCH 22 The Message of Pilgrimage Prior to 1982, my knowledge of hajj (pilgrimage to Makkah) had been limited to what I could gain from books, and so, when at last in that year I had the privilege of performing this religious duty I felt myself singularly blessed. Although the rites of hajj are spread over only a few days, as symbolic guidelines they stand a man in good stead for the rest of his life. The message of hajj, as I now comprehend it from the study and performance of it, is that man should make the Almighty the very pivot of his existence, hastening at His call to do His every bidding. When a man leaves his home and country to go on such a pilgrimage, he brims over with all the emotions aroused by the thought that he is embarking on a course which will lead him directly to God. He is, in effect, sloughing off his own world, leaving it behind him, and reaching out for the world of the Almighty. He is on his way to the House of God, a place where the great deeds of God’s messengers and his followers have been preserved for all eternity; where we find the hallowed impressions of the lives of those who lived and died for the cause of God. The haji is then filled with the realization that he is bound for that very destination which God has specially chosen for His Last Revelation. Once launched on this course, the pilgrim is imbued with the awareness of God and His truths, as well as the feeling that it is imperative that he become Godoriented. If, up till then, he had been self-centred in his thinking, he now turns his thoughts to God, and his entire behaviour is moulded and transformed by these new thought processes. Once the pilgrim’s train of thought has become God-oriented, he begins to ponder over major issues: God’s act of creation, particularly His creation of himself. His affording him diverse opportunities of bettering himself in this world, His very benevolence which makes it possible for him to set forth on this journey to the House of God. The pilgrim also gives his mind to the day when he will meet his death and be summoned to the court of God. This trend of thought turns the ostensible physical journey of the pilgrim into an intense, spiritual venture. When the time nears for his entrance into the haram (sacred territory), every pilgrim divests of his clothing in order to don a new kind of ‘uniform’—an