Spurred by both spiritual and secular curiosity, Andy Scott jumped at the chance to go to Mecca on hajj and exercise his dormant acquired religion. In a special two-part series, he recounts his leap of faith performing one of Islam’s five pillars, and arguably its most unique.

For me, going to Mecca would be a speedy achievement, a consummation of the Muslim experience upon which I’d embarked a decade ago – from secular Christianity in Scotland, to secular Islam in Egypt, to the heart of monotheistic belief in the Holy Land.

When I visited the holy places of Jerusalem, it did not imply any spiritual rebirth or awakening or even realisation. My visit to Mecca did not have to imply that either, but, when one dons the clothes of pilgrimage and goes to Mecca, most Muslims will look differently upon him, at the least he will have earned the title of Hajj. No doubt I feared this, because of the obligations it implied in terms of post-Mecca practice.

Belief was one thing, but in Islam it’s also about practice. And ritual was something I needed to perfect to do this pilgrimage in the first place. I did not even know how to pray. I think there are many “secular” Muslims who would be in a similar position, but even most of the non-pious would know the basic movements and prayers. Here was I moving from a state of almost unbelief to ritual purity, an overnight transformation into a conscient, cognisant Muslim.

The pink link

The main reason for this fear, though, was the colour of my skin. No matter what trickery of language, there is no escaping the pasty pink-blue reality of my inauspicious north European origins. There are others in this living purgatory – Bosnians, for example, many pale-faced Levantines, some Turks.

One also carries the burden of a name. Andrew has its origins in pagan Greece, but it has Christianity stamped all over it. It entered the Hellenised form of the ancient Egyptian language and from there came into Arabic as Andrawis. It is popular among the Copts in Egypt to this day, though some even go for the English Andrew as a further statement of identity. Conversely, I had resisted re-establishing myself as Hassan (my chosen Muslim name), though a few people would occasionally call me by that name.

“Hassan” – good, upright, righteous, excellent in very formal Arabic. “Andrew” – noble, manly in old Greek. Although “Hassan” was a word current in the language today, while Andreas is no more than a name in Greek, both names resonate for their historical predecessors – Hassan was a grandson of the Prophet and the third Shi’ite imam, while Andrew was one of the 12 disciples of Jesus. I have tried to imagine if it was possible to be me without any name.

Now, at the behest of the Saudi government, who had arranged a special pilgrimage expedition for the press, I was standing outside a hotel in Jeddah, readying myself to become Reuters man in Mecca. The crowd of journalists from Uzbekistan, Bosnia, Turkey, Sri Lanka and Lebanon asked me where I was from. I avoided offering a name – can you imagine – and blustered in Arabic that I was from “Egypt and Scotland, but based in Dubai”. How confused. Few were fooled. He was a khawaga (colloquial Egyptian nickname for foreigners, usually European).

Natural born monotheists

The other fear was entirely internal and people could only see it because I could not help radiating it from inside – my own sense that I was not a ‘real’ Muslim, merely a ‘convert’ who natural born Muslims would not view as genuine and who had done next to nothing to change the way he lived his life when he passed through the invisible line of non-membership to membership. And yet I was willing to put myself to this test, I think, because a change had occurred inside me in recent years, a change which saw this Islam come to mean more and more to me.

I had come to identify with it much more closely and willingly offered the designation ‘Muslim’ when asked. I had developed my own view on these issues, one which objected to the term ‘convert’ and did not in fact view Islam as something alien at all. It seemed to me a whole ideological and linguistic assault course of prejudices and images had been thrown up by decades, if not centuries of Western thought on our Islamic “other” that served to make something at the very heart of Semitic monotheism seem errant and wrong. One could say, but why Islam, and one could equally well answer, but why not?

Islam, as it describes itself, encompasses Judaism and Christianity through emphasising certain aspects of both traditions: prophethood and scripture. If Jesus was to the Jews a false prophet claiming to be the Messiah, in Islam he was a true prophet, but the second last of a line of Semitic warners and callers to God and morality which ended with Mohammad. But instead of viewing Mohammad as a saviour figure in his own right, or as possessing divinity in some form, in Islam he is the bearer of God’s word as revealed to him verbally. This revelation became scripture known as the Quran. So Islam accepts the body of law known as the Torah and accepts the virgin birth of Christ. What the religion also presents is a harsh critique of Judaism and Christianity and calls towards a unity of belief in the one God.

Western thinking about Islam has often emphasised its idea of “the true religion” and “the infidels” who Islam appears to set itself strongly against. But what strikes one about the Quran is that, in fact, this terminology is always context bound and that it explicitly says that the good, moral person does not necessarily have to follow the religious tradition which it expounds, the tradition called Islam. It’s not as if Christianity and Judaism do not believe that those without their system have wandered off God’s chosen path.

Pilgrim spotting

Jeddah is outside the sacred zone that surrounds Mecca, where only Muslims can tread, so in those first days of my journey these issues were fears in my mind which still had to reach their resolution. We did make a trip to the special hajj terminal of Jeddah airport in the search for Iraqi pilgrims who were able to come in droves for the first time in years because of the fall of Saddam’s regime.

It took us about two hours waiting at the security posts before we were allowed in because of the great fear that al-Qa’ida was going to strike at the pilgrimage itself, in the ultimate blow at Saudi legitimacy. The pilgrims were all in the white robes signifying a state of ritual purity that takes away all differences of race, class, colour and language.

We came in our normal gear with our cameras, microphones and notebooks. At this stage 1.2 million pilgrims had already passed through the huge tented air terminal, built in the early 1980s to ensure the speediest processing of air travellers at any airport in the world. Among the Iraqis there was less anger at occupation than joy at the freedom to do the hajj.

“I hope God will give Iraq strength and make it strong and united after all these years of pain, sickness and war,” was the most anyone would say concerning whether the state of Iraq would be in their prayers.

Uncle Sam and the pilgrims

Anti-American sentiment is one of the standards that media look for during a mass gathering of Muslims like the Meccan pilgrimage. Thousands of the Iraqis had in fact been stranded on the Kuwait-Iraq border, some for up to a week as Kuwait refused to let them in until they had assurances that Saudi Arabia was granting them hajj visas. It seemed a brutal moment to follow bureaucratic procedure to the letter.

“We remained nine days at the border, it was a very miserable time for thousands. But I am really happy that we are free and God helped us to visit Mecca,” said Bakkar Rasoul, a Kurdish eye doctor from Sulaimaniya. He went on: “I and many people are thankful towards the United States because they were able to release us and we will definitely never forget. I don’t think any Muslim can forget this.” He may have been Kurdish, but to be honest it seemed to be the sentiment of everyone else.

Would Islamists dare to attack Muslims pilgrims in Mecca? The invasion of Iraq had turned Saudi Arabia’s northern neighbour into a magnet for the same people who were targeting Saudi rule. At the very least they could exploit the pilgrimage to get into Saudi Arabia and cause havoc elsewhere in the country.

On the same day we met the Iraqis, the Defence Minister Prince Sultan talked on al-Arabiya about “those who think of harming Muslims” when pilgrims were the “guests of God”.

Spiritual redress

The next day, I finally travelled to Mecca, and as a pilgrim. All the other journalists being taken for the day by the ministry intended to do ‘umra, the one-day pilgrimage that can be done at any time of year. I would join them, but I had decided to stay on for the real deal. For ‘umra, you need to don the white robes of ihram. I had come downstairs in normal clothes and since there wasn’t time to change we had to stop on the way to buy the two large white towels, belt, pins and sandals that traders were selling in the pilgrim season.

I ran to a bathroom to change, and then into a mosque to pray, after which I uttered the lines signifying that my state of ritual purity had begun, a prayer to God to accept this, my pilgrimage to the holy mosque in Mecca that houses the Kaaba. I sat in the car nervously as we drove up the highway and passed the signs warning that beyond this beyond only Muslims could enter.

We passed through checkpoints where they didn’t bother checking out identities since we were ministry of information guests, but I had my passport with its Saudi visa stating Islam as my religion, as well as a document from a mosque confirming my status in my little black rucksack, just in case. I wore a white shirt, left loose over my trousers, and wore a white skullcap, in an effort to reduce the attention that my pink presence might attract from the multitude in Mecca. I had also grown a short face-hugging beard.

A Mecca for pilgrims

Mecca was a shock. I had expected the pristine, marble modernity you find elsewhere in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. What I got was al-Azhar Street in the older (or Islamic, as it is known by Westerners) quarter of Cairo. Crowded, polluted, with randomly-built housing vying for space around the centre of the town where the Grand Mosque is and which brings to mind Prince Charles famous comment about St Paul’s Cathedral and the financial district that had grown up around it in London, that it resembled the juxtaposition of the Mona Lisa with a team of basketball players.

Hundreds of thousands of people squeezed into the town and into the mosque, but I suspected it was like this for much of the year. The setting in the mountains was quite stunning but the position of the town was a heat and dust trap. For sure, before the modern age this was a place of great tranquility and of rough beauty. Now it was New Delhi meets Cairo in the hills.

Around the holy mosque, the sacred mixes with the profane. Traders cram the streets with shops selling trinkets and American fast food – Burger King and KFC – on streets lined with five-star hotels. Shops also sold Islamic alternatives to this Americana, drinks like Mecca Cola developed after the Intifada and September 11, Afghanistan, and the build up to the invasion of Iraq inspired the desire to boycott all things American.

Islam’s innermost sanctuary

Our driver let us out in an underground underpass with stairs that led up into the mosque complex. The mosque was huge and because of the stop-start nature of mosque expansions, it lacked a specific form or shape. We walked around it through the crowds, interminably it seemed, until we found a fence where we could leave our sandals. When we walked in, we still had someway to go before we reached the central space where the famed black stone, or Kaaba – to which Muslims throughout the world turn to in prayer, five times a day if you go by the book – lay.

We passed through was one mega-mosque or a series of mosques around the saha, or square. We passed the special section known as Safa wa Marwa, a 3-km long walkway along which pilgrims walk seven times after having circled the Kaaba seven times. This sounds straightforward, but as I was to find out it was gruelling.

Eventually, we came to the saha. Crowds of people sat on the ground on the outside, making it difficult to get into the mass of people walking round the large cube-shaped edifice. The closer you get to the Kaaba itself, the less distance you will be walking in all. However, many people, including the disabled, choose to walk around the roof of the mosque. But, despite the comfort of no crowds and plenty of space, this means walking some seven kilometres in all.

Struggling for faith

Down in the square, it was a mix of violence and faith, as the pilgrims jostle for space amid their prayers, a process that works because the rule is simply to keep walking. Entering and leaving the ring of circumambulators is the only action that can threaten the safety of the occasion.

“Oh Lord, bring us the good in this life and good in the hereafter and save us from hell,” was the refrain of the pilgrims as we circled the Kaaba. The river of people includes Turks, Afghans and Indonesians, and many of them are going round in groups, tightly holding onto each other, so they don’t get lost. Their leader will chant verses from the Quran while they repeat after him. Others go around individually reciting private prayers.

For some, this seemed to be the chance to pray for all the things they wanted in life, from the grand and political to the mundane, as if God was some big Santa Claus in the sky. Friends will ask people to say a prayer for them at the Kaaba and some people were walking round sending and receiving messages on their mobile phones, which according to the rules of ihram – a state of ritual purity during the hajj – they should not have with them inside the mosque.

Rock the faithful

The ring of worshippers squeezes ever harder against one another as we try to near the Kaaba and the frenzy reaches its peak at the inner circle closest to the black stone. Some kiss it, but for most the crush is too much to get near it, so they simply hold out their right hand and call out “in the name of God, God is greater” each time they pass.

It’s at this point, on one corner of the Kaaba, that the crush is the worst on each circumambulation. It was the strangest experience. Some of the groups of pilgrims were rough, rude and violent, crushing through the crowd to get to the centre. It seemed the ultimate act of selfishness, the idea that their salvation was so important and so much more likely if they could get closer to the stone. It seemed singularly un-Muslim. In this, some nationalities stood out more than others.

The movement of people pulled you round in nervous small steps amid the crush, with one hand on my upper towel which would slip off my shoulders, or the lower one which was loose because I had lost weight. Apart from that, one uttered over and over again whatever prayers in Arabic one could think of. The prayers, the walking round and round, the crowds, the people all around – I think all this together induced a state of delirium of some level or another for all of the pilgrims there.

Salvation of the sole

Counting the seven rotations is not so easy, but once it was done we headed to Safa wa Marwa. By this stage, I had lost my colleagues. I wasn’t clear on the next stage of the ritual, but it was fear of being lost that gripped me now. It was mid-afternoon prayer time. Once that was over, I walked around the outside of the mosque looking for them. The marble was cold on my bare feet and the distance was huge, the crowds endless.

I couldn’t find the area where we left our shoes, the only point where I could be sure of eventually finding them. After about an hour, in late afternoon, I found the fence and my colleagues. Now we needed to find the hotel where the other journalists were congregating and our driver. When we did, there was a congratulatory feeling in the air, that everyone had managed to do ‘umra.

At this point, we were able to end our ihram, meaning we could don our normal clothes. Sitting having a coffee with one of my colleagues, he asked me if I’d done Safa wa Marwa.

“What?!” I asked in rising panic. “No, I didn’t know I had to. When I was lost, I just wanted to find you guys. Will it still count?”

He laughed. “Don’t worry about it. It counts. Yataqabbal. God will accept your ‘umra. It bothered me intensely that it might not count, though. I called my wife. ‘No,’ she said, ‘you have to do all of it. Try to do all of it in the coming days.’”

Well, the hajj itself was due to begin four days later on Friday. Hajj, of course, supersedes ‘umra, although the details of your hajj rituals differ according to whether you have done ‘umra some days before or not. If you have done it, then your pilgrimage can end on the third or fourth day. But these were details, as long as I did hajj, right?

With the ‘mini Hajj’ behind him, find out, in the next instalment, how Andrew got on with the full-length version.

ãAndy Scott is a writer and journalist in the Middle East. He is due to release a book on popular Arab culture in November.

ã2004 K. Diab. Unless otherwise stated, all the content on this website is the copyright of Khaled Diab.