A Pilgrim’s Thoughts — 3: Performing All Rituals of Haj With Ease and Dedication
Adil Salahi, Arab News
Those days that followed our arrival in Makkah were extremely pleasant. Like the time of my first pilgrimage 40 years ago, we feel in a totally different world. It is a pleasant world where all people have a definite preoccupation, aiming to make the best use of their time.

Those days that followed our arrival in Makkah were extremely pleasant. Like the time of my first pilgrimage 40 years ago, we feel in a totally different world. It is a pleasant world where all people have a definite preoccupation, aiming to make the best use of their time. We go to the Haram, or the Sacred Mosque, and offer our prayers with the congregation. How big is it? They say that after its new addition, the mosque can accommodate within its buildings at least 700,000. Yet there are those who do not find space inside but offer their prayers in the open space outside. These are in tens of thousands as well. We all stand in rows, next to each other, shoulder to shoulder. You do not know whether the man next to you comes from Indonesia, Central Africa or Latin America. What you know is that he is your brother with whom you share the same purpose and the same faith that gives you both the same vision of life.

On 8th Dhul Hijjah we started our blessed journey, entering again into ihraam, or consecration, and heading for Mina where we stayed for sometime and then moved to the place reserved for our group. The Sunnah, or recommended practice, is to stay in Mina overnight, offering all five prayers there before heading to Arafat the following day.

To Arafat and Back

We started our journey to Arafat early. It is a short distance, less than 30 kilometres from Makkah, but our guide urged us to start early because of the great congestion. Every pilgrim wants to be at Arafat on this day. The time range for being there is from noon, i.e. midday prayer, till dawn the next day, i.e. about 18 hours in total. It is important, however, to spend a part of the day and a part of the night there. This is the reason why the pilgrims stay at Arafat and no one departs until after sunset. If you are not at Arafat on this day, you have missed out on your pilgrimage. The place is open and can easily accommodate all comers. After all, they realize they have to be here less than one day. They need nothing more than a place to sit and be in the shade. They spend their time in glorifying God, repeating the Talbiyah phrases, which confirm that they have undertaken this journey in response to God’s call, hoping for nothing other than to earn His pleasure. They pray to Him requesting all things whether relating to this life or the next. Above all, they pray for acceptance, forgiveness of their sins, and admission into heaven. They are promised the reward of forgiveness. As they begin to leave in the evening, they feel as if they are newborn; they have wiped their slate clean and they are starting afresh. The past is all forgiven.

As I watch buses of all sizes begin to move, I experience a distinct feeling of belonging to a great community that covers the entire globe. It is the community of Muslims, united by their faith and nurturing a bond of brotherhood that transcends all barriers of language, race, geography and history. We take our bus and begin to move slowly in an endless line. There are many roads here, and all head in the same direction. All are full of vehicles carrying pilgrims who are raising their voices with their Talbiyah. The same phrases are repeated again and again, in all accents, glorifying God, praising Him and declaring total surrender to Him. There are roads reserved for those who want to walk on their way back. I am told that it is much more pleasant and spiritually fulfilling to walk. I wish our group could do it, but we have several elderly people.

We arrive at our first stop, Muzdalifah, which is two thirds of the way on our return journey to Mina. Here we are required to spend the rest of the night. We had prayed Dhuhr and Asr together at Arafat. Now the first thing we do here is to pray Maghrib and Isha. All 4-rak’ah prayers are shortened to two only. When we have offered these two prayers, we sit in a very welcoming place. You see pilgrims of all races and nationalities trying to speak to each other. When language is a barrier, gesture is sufficient. You see their faces beaming with pleasure. They offer each other food, fruits, sweets, drinks, etc. A feeling of mutual love descends on them all. After their long day, they need rest. What they have to do here is to sleep. The minimum stay here is until after midnight, but it is better for those who can to stay until shortly before sunrise. A great number begin to move on after midnight, and another great number stay on. Either course is appropriate.

Making Things Easy

It is necessary to highlight a very important aspect of pilgrimage which our scholar has not tired of repeating to us. He says that the pilgrimage is an act of Islamic worship that is essentially oriented to making things easy. This may sound strange because people have always spoken about the difficulties they encounter during the pilgrimage. It is true that the journey of pilgrimage and moving to the sites where its rituals take place before coming back to Makkah involves difficulties. All pilgrims may be very exhausted by the end of this great task they undertake. Yet if we imagine that no relaxation of the ways rituals are offered was given, and no concession to remove difficulties was authorized, what would have happened? The least that may be said is that large numbers of pilgrims may not be able to attend to their duties. Had it been obligatory that all pilgrims must stay through the night at Muzdalifah and then move on around sunrise to attend to their duties of the following day, there will be no way they can complete these duties. It is by God’s grace that He has allowed time and different ways of doing these rituals. This is what imparts a clear element of ease to this strenuous act of worship.

Going on to Mina

We decide to move on from Muzdalifah after midnight, yet a few of the younger ones in our group prefer to stay till morning. We push forward toward Mina. All pilgrims have a busy day ahead. It begins with stoning at the Grand Jamrat in Mina. We picked up 49 or 70 pebbles at Muzdalifah to use for stoning. The stoning is done over three or four days, but on the first day it takes place only at one spot, where we have to throw seven of these pebbles. The time is, according to the majority of scholars, from sunrise to sunset. However, the Prophet (peace be upon him) allowed women, including his wife, Umm Salamah, to do the stoning after midnight on her return from Muzdalifah. Scholars agree that this is a concession for women as well as men who are weak or have good reasons to avoid the crowding. I put a question to our scholar when he explained all this to us: Is staying with one’s group a good reason for a person who otherwise has no excuse to do his stoning before sunrise? He says that when we consider the difficulty of finding one’s place in Mina if one is lost, then it is certainly a good reason. A person who is separated from his group and has no guide to take him to his place in Mina may spend many hours looking for his tent without success. We move ahead to Mina and do the stoning at the Grand Jamrat. The change at the place has made it much easier to fulfill this duty. We then move on to our place to have some rest before we attend to our other duties.

A Very Busy Day

In Mina the pilgrims stay either three or four days. The tendency for the great majority of them is to stay only three days. They have certain duties to attend to. Four duties become due when they arrive back from Arafat and Muzdalifah: the stoning at the Grand Jamrat on the first day, shaving their heads or cutting a bit of their hair, the tawaf of ifadah, and slaughtering their sacrificial animals. All four become due on 10 Dhul Hijjah. On the following two or three days, they have one duty, repeated every day, which is stoning at the three Jamrats in the right order. When the Prophet performed the pilgrimage, those who accompanied him were in excess of 100,000. Since the facilities at the time were nothing like what they are today, the crowding and congestion was comparable to what we have these days. The Prophet did those four duties in a particular order, but people who were with him did them in every possible order imaginable. When they realized that they did not follow the same order as the Prophet, they came to check with him whether what they did was acceptable. Whatever permutation was put to him, he readily approved, saying that there was no harm in doing these duties in those ways. This has been the standard for perceptive scholars with regard to pilgrimage and its duties. As long as the basic duty was done, whatever made things easier for pilgrims was acceptable.

Following our scholar’s advice, we did the stoning at the Grand Jamrat shortly after sunrise and went to our place where we cut a portion of our hair short. One or two of us did the better alternative of shaving their heads. Women only need to cut a small portion of hair by a couple of centimeters. We then released ourselves from consecration and went to sleep for a few hours. We certainly needed such rest after the tiring journey of the day before. This release from ihraam is the first and incomplete one. It removes all restrictions except having intercourse with one’s wife.

The sacrifice has become particularly easy these days because you only need to buy a voucher from special kiosks. The voucher entitles you to a sheep, which you can have at the slaughterhouse in Mina. Alternatively, you can complete the form on the voucher, assigning the operating bank to be your deputy in the slaughter and the distribution of the meat of the sacrificed animal. The bank will ensure that any poor people in the neighbourhood of Makkah will receive all the meat they need, as this is specifically required. It then transports the bulk of the meat to poor areas in the Muslim world. Thus, if two million sheep are sacrificed, the bank has the facilities to export the meat to areas where it is badly needed.

A Duty Not to Be Missed

The other duty is that of tawaf of ifadah, which is a main duty of pilgrimage, in the sense that every pilgrim must offer it. If omitted, it cannot be compensated for in any way. The pilgrimage remains short of completion until this duty has been performed. It falls due on 10 Dhul Hijjah, but it can be delayed until arrival back in Makkah after one has completed the stay in Mina. According to some scholars, its time extends until the end of Dhul Hijjah, i.e. for nearly three weeks. A group of us, including myself, decide to go to Makkah to offer it at night and return to Mina.

When we arrive at the Kaaba, we see an amazing sight. The volume of pilgrims doing the tawaf is beyond imagination. We thought that by nighttime, numbers will be smaller, but it does not seem so. We join the tawaf, but it is moving very slowly. We try to go on the outside, but the circle becomes much longer and the movement is still slow as there are so many people doing the same. We thought of going inside, closer to the Kaaba, and succeeded in easing our way in, but the pressure is much greater. You feel yourself in a sea of people and we are hardly doing any movement. So, like the first time, we decide to go to the first floor. Yet again the crowd is huge and the movement is slow. Considering that the distance is much longer, it looks that we will take much longer to complete the tawaf. So we go to the roof, and we are again surprised by the numbers. However, it is much easier here and the air is much fresher. We look at the people doing the tawaf at the ground level. It is a sight no one has ever seen anywhere else. It is a sea of people, moving calmly and slowly to perform this act of worship. It takes us nearly three hours to complete the tawaf. We still have to do the sa’ie between the two hills of Al-Safa and Al-Marwah. None of us appears to have the energy to do this. So, we decide to go back to Mina and delay the sa’ie until we come back to Makkah from Mina. All this is permissible as our scholar explains. After all, God wants things to be easier for us, not more difficult.

When Mina is Too Crowded

What is new, and has apparently been happening for some years, is that some people are staying these three days at Al-Aziziyyah, the area of Makkah adjacent to Mina. In fact we are among these. This has caused considerable unease to some of our group. The requirement is to stay at Mina and to do the stoning at its appropriate time. To remain outside Mina and come only for the stoning appeared to be in violation of the rules. We did not feel at ease until our scholar read us a piece of research by Shaikh Sulayman Al-Audah, a prominent Saudi scholar, that made clear that when Mina is so full, it is perfectly appropriate to be in a place close to it, wherever one may find room suitable for human living. The research is published in a book for which the author chose the two words the Prophet used to answer all those who asked him about doing their duties in a different way from his. He said there was no harm in that. The book is called If’al wa la Haraj, which means, ‘Do it; there is no harm.’

Shaikh Al-Audah speaks about different rituals and how they may be done properly, without causing or suffering much congestion. About staying in Mina, he points out that in their eagerness to be inside Mina, people used to act as if Mina was a place of confinement. Therefore, they slept by the roadside, exposing themselves to the risk of being run over by vehicles and causing much inconvenience to other pilgrims. He argues that this is unsuitable for human living and God does not wish to expose His servants to such hardship. Therefore, the only way is to let the area spill over to adjacent places. The Prophet allowed those who were physically weak and those who had things to attend to in Makkah to leave Mina in these three days. This means that when there is a good reason the same concession can be applied. What better reason than making things easier for the whole population doing the pilgrimage? Besides, stoning at the Jamrats is the duty to be fulfilled in Mina. Staying inside Mina is only recommended, or a Sunnah, according to two schools of thought.

In the same research, Shaikh Al-Audah argues that the time of stoning on each of the three days, 11-13 Dhul Hijjah, can be stretched so as to start after sunrise, instead of noon, to midnight. This is particularly important, especially on 12 Dhul Hijjah when most pilgrims depart from Mina. The congestion then is at its worst. People are keen to leave Mina before sunset, because if they are still in Mina after sunset, they have to stay till the following day and do the stoning again. By extending the time, they have a better chance to fulfill their duty in comfort.

The extension of the area of stoning itself has been a marvellous idea. At each Jamrat we now have a long and high wall, instead of a post surrounded by a circular short wall. This makes the area where this ritual is done several times bigger. Moreover, all buildings in the area have been pulled down so as to organize the movement making it all one way. The pilgrims move easily from one Jamrat to the next. There is nothing to hinder their movement as used to be in the past. When they have finished stoning, they continue moving in the same direction. No one is allowed to turn back and move the other way. When they have cleared the area of the Jamrats, they turn to go back in a wide, parallel road. All are moving in the same direction. This increases the distance they walk, but it is an easy walk that avoids congestion and overcrowding. Thus the problem that caused many deaths in the past, when people fell and were trampled upon, has been solved.

We go back to Makkah after we have finished. What remains for us is the sa’ie which we have not done. This we can do anytime now. Then we have to do the tawaf of farewell, shortly before departure from Makkah in a few days time. By that time, the tawaf will be much quieter as most pilgrims will have left.