PERSONAL EXPERIENCES

When the time nears for his entrance into the haram (sacred territory), every pilgrim divests himself of his clothing in order to don a new kind of ‘uniform’—an unstitched, plain, white garment which serves to heighten his consciousness of entering a new world. The very act of shedding his normal clothes (and with them all signs of status and ethnicity) signifies that he is separating himself from the way of life peculiar to his environment, and is now ready to become suffused with such emotions as are desired by God. In this way, thousands of men, in casting off their hues, take on the hue of the Almighty. After clothing himself in ihram (a specific raiment), the pilgrim finds his tongue of itself beginning to utter these words: Labbayk! Labbayk! And he continues as if hastening to answer God’s call, to repeat the words Allahumma Labbayk, ‘’O God, I am here, I have come!” Labbayk (I am here) does not just narrowly mean that the pilgrim has come to stay in Makkah. It means that in leaving his normal abode, he has cast aside his whole way of life. It means, ‘I am here, at Your command, and, with all my heart and soul, I am ready to obey You.’ While on their pilgrimage, pilgrims simply give utterance to the word Labbayk, but when they return to their own countries, they must put it into practice in their everyday lives. On reaching Makkah, the pilgrim must perform tawaf (circumambulation of Ka’ba). To do this, he enters the House of God (Baitullah), the great mosque in whose spacious central courtyard stands the Ka’ba, which was erected by the Prophet Abraham in ancient times. Then, he goes round the Ka’ba seven times to demonstrate his willingness to make God the pivot of his whole existence. After the tawaf, there comes the ritual of sa‘i, which entails brisk walking from the hill of Safa to the hill of Marwa and back again. This procedure is repeated seven times in symbolic enactment of a promise, or covenant, to expend all of one’s energies in the path of God. The form which this ritual takes can be traced back to the Prophet Abraham’s wife, Hagar, running from one hill to another in a frantic search for water for her young baby when they first arrived there. The most important period of worship during hajj is the day-long sojourn on the plain of Arafat. It is, indeed, an awesome spectacle, The pilgrim also gives his mind to the day when he will meet his death and be summoned to the court of God. This thought turns the physical journey of the pilgrim into an intense, spiritual venture.