AN IDOLATROUS IDEA

Considered from the viewpoint of Muslim theology, the whole idea of pilgrimage to Mecca and the Ka�ba is close to being idolatrous.  But it has great social and political importance for Islam.  Even the very first Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca under the leadership of Muhammad was perhaps more of a political demonstration and a military expedition than a religious congregation.

In the sixth year of the Hijra, Muhammad started out for Mecca to perform the �umrah ceremony (the lesser pilgrimage), the very first after coming to Medina.  He headed a pilgrim force of fifteen hundred men, partially armed.  In order to swell the number, he had appealed to the desert Arabs to join him, but their response was lukewarm, for no booty was promised and they thought, as the QurAn puts it, that �the Apostle and the believers would never return to their families� (48:12).

Even so, fifteen hundred was an impressive number, and anyone could see that this was hardly a band of pilgrims.  The Meccans had to enter into a treaty with Muhammad, called the Treaty of Hodeibia.  Muhammad regarded this as a victory for himself, and a victory it turned out to be.  Two years later, by a kind of delayed action, Mecca succumbed.  In this year of victory, pilgrimage, or hajj, was declared one of the five fundamentals of Islam.

Two years later, in March A.D. 632, Muhammad undertook another pilgrimage; it turned out to be his last and is celebrated in the Muslim annals as the �Farewell Pilgrimage of the Apostle.� Great preparations were made for the occasion.  It was meant to be more than an assembly of believers.  It was to be a demonstration of the power of Muhammad.  �Messengers were sent to all parts of Arabia inviting people to join him in this great Pilgrimage.�

After the fall of Mecca, Muhammad�s power was unrivaled, and the Bedouin tribes understood that this summons was more than an invitation to a pilgrimage of the type they had formerly performed on their own, at their own convenience and for their own gods.  It was also, they knew, a call to submission.  Thus, unlike the last time, their response on this occasion was great.  �As the caravan moved on, the number of participants swelled,� until, according to some of the narrators, it reached more than 130,000 (SahIh Muslim, p. 612). Everyone was in a hurry to jump on the bandwagon.

author : ram swarup