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When an American performed the Hajj

By Afis. A. Oladosu In the name of Allah, the Beneficent the Merciful
02 September 2016   |   2:00 am
He is popularly known as Malcom X. He was one of the thousands of Muslims who performed the Hajj in April 1964. The Hajj made sure Malcolm X ceased to be the same man again.
Sadr, Majlis Ansarullah Ahmadiyya Nigeria, Alhaji Mikail Odukoya (left);  Amir, Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at Nigeria, Dr Mashhud Adenrele Fashola; Naib Amir, Northern Region, Dr. Yeqeen Habeeb; Circuit President, Abuja Jama’at, Dr Abdul Latif Busari and General Secretary, Ahmadiyya Nigeria, Alhaji Abbas Iromini, during the 39th Annual National Ijtema (Convention) Lajna Imaillah, The women’s wing Ahmadiyya Muslim Community Nigeria in Abuja.

Sadr, Majlis Ansarullah Ahmadiyya Nigeria, Alhaji Mikail Odukoya (left);  Amir, Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at Nigeria, Dr Mashhud Adenrele Fashola; Naib Amir, Northern Region, Dr. Yeqeen Habeeb; Circuit President, Abuja Jama’at, Dr Abdul Latif Busari and General Secretary, Ahmadiyya Nigeria, Alhaji Abbas Iromini, during the 39th Annual National Ijtema (Convention) Lajna Imaillah, The women’s wing Ahmadiyya Muslim Community Nigeria in Abuja.

He is popularly known as Malcom X. He was one of the thousands of Muslims who performed the Hajj in April 1964. The Hajj made sure Malcolm X ceased to be the same man again. He realized the error in the notion that colour and race are meant to define human status on earth. Hajj thought the eternal lesson to him: that when all is said and done, our return to Him, our Creator, would be like our arrival from Him: in nudity masked by two loose garments, in utter state of helplessness. On this occasion, I thought it is fitting for us to read part of his memoir once again. He wrote as follows:

“There were tens of thousands of pilgrims from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blondes to black-skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and the non-white.

You may be shocked by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to rearrange much of my thought patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions. This was not too difficult for me. Despite my firm convictions, I have always been a man who tries to face facts, and accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfold. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.

During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass and slept on the same bed (or on the same rug)-while praying to the same God with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of the blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions and in the deeds of the ‘white’ Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan and Ghana. We are truly all the same-brothers. All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the worlds.”

But the significance of the Hajj exercise goes beyond the social-spiritual. Rather, the Hajj is sui generis in the way it has been structured by the Almighty and practiced by His apostle such that while the pilgrim is involved with the spiritual, she is celebrating the historical, while the pilgrim is engrossed in the historical he is engaged in the eschatological, while the pilgrims are immersed in the physical they are calling attention to the geographical. Or how else do we explain the rites of the tawaf in the oldest house on earth, the Kaaba.

The Kaaba, you should bear in mind, is located in Makkah. Whereas the Makkah is the epicentre of the world, the Ummul Qurah (the mother of all villages in the Quranic phraseology), the Kaaba, which is located inside the city of Makkah, actually occupies the centre of the epicenter. The black stone inside the Kaaba is located, we are told by exegetes, at that point which corresponds to the spot where al-Arsh- the magnificent seat of Allah’s authority is located in the heavens.

In other words, while the pilgrims are seen on earth circumambulating the black stone inside the Kaaba, while their voices are heard as they say “Labayka Allahuma labayk, – I have answered your call (O! Almighty), their eulogy of the divine, their circuit round the Kaaba in the terrestrial directly corresponds to the circuit of the angels round the inimitable and the indescribable throne of the Almighty in the celestial. But that is not all.

Consider the “Ihram” the white garment, which pilgrims adorn for the Hajj exercise. These are two loose and unsewn garments the pilgrim put on for the hajj exercise. There is nothing like this on earth. The garments are a leveler – with it the mighty among us is reminded of the inconsequential nature of his status with the Almighty; the lowly is reminded that as far as He is concerned, the best of all is the most pious.

What about the Tawaf round the Kaaba? This exemplifies the unity of our humanity as a direct manifestation of the unity of our origin and equally the direct manifestation of the unity of our creator. Circumambulating the Kaaba, therefore, calls attention to the necessity for us as humans to constantly make the Almighty the centre of our activity; that no authority should orbit the space of our existence aside from Him.

Now my reference to the iconic way in which the hajj fuses the historical with the spiritual and the manner in which the physical is seized upon by the divine to become spiritual, I have in mind the experience of the wife of Prophet Ibrahim, Hajar and her son, Ismail. I refer to Hajar’s search for water for her son in the then barren and hungry land of Makkah. While motherly love and care in Hajar was pushing her to run between the hills of Safa and Marwa, little did she know that she was actually being given an opportunity to partake of divine redemption of humanity.

Her search for water for Ismail, the Prophet, became a metaphor for humans’ search for the Almighty; the way Zam-Zam zoomed out from under the feet of her son, Ismail, became a signifier for the inexplicable ways by which despair can be turned to hope. Thus while other religions position the woman as the evil, the source of sin, here, in Islam’s weltanschauung, she is an enigma, an icon, an exemplar: that the Muslim, no matter how hopeless your situation might be today, He, who turned the barren land of Makkah to a land of plenitude; He, who made a fountain of Zam Zam gush out from under the feet of a baby boy, is ever life to perform the same wonders in your circumstance.

While the pilgrims in Makkah celebrate the glory of the Almighty, we join them in praying to Him to turn the barren land of Nigeria to that of plenitude, for this land of ours is indeed in dire need of rejuvenation once again.
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