The Quranic verses on hajj (the pilgrimage to the Islamic holy site of Mecca) contain a deep romanticism for the geography of Mecca, its surroundings, the pilgrims and their travels. One of my favorites, because of the predominance of this tone of romanticism in it, is verse 22:27: "And proclaim the Pilgrimage among the people so that they shall come to you on foot or on every lean camel through deep and distant mountain highways."
The verse itself is time-trespassing, it carries the romantic mind to the Middle Ages, when pilgrims used to walk thousands of kilometers on foot or on camels that would turn lean on account of the journey. Our camel, a 400-capacity airplane belonging to Saudi Arabian Airlines, was by no means a lean camel, and I am not going to dive into the depths of hermeneutics to prove that it was indeed substituting a lean camel. The power of the aforementioned verse is not that it conforms to our modern realities, but that it manages to cut us off from our current situation and carry us into the romantic authenticity of the past.
I realized this at the moment the Turkish-speaking hostess of our İstanbul-Jeddah flight notified us that we were passing through the mikat (prohibition line). As Mecca and its surroundings are regarded as sacred and closed (haram), certain clothes, behavior and prayers are imposed upon the pilgrim and certain others are prohibited. These conditions are collectively known as ihram, and the moment we passed through the mikat, by a declaration of intention and the donning of two seamless white cloths to cover our bodies, we became pilgrims entering into the ihram.
Up until we reached the mikat everything was going on in the present time, in our present reality. But at that point, declaring that I will observe the prohibitions of ihram, I suddenly realized that I was becoming part of a social contract. Only a few days earlier, speaking about Turkey's new constitution, I had suggested that Islamic culture had no such institution as a social contract. I was wrong. There on the airplane some 300 people were promising the same thing; that they would be patient towards each other; that they would do no harm to people, to animals or to the environment; and that they would abstain from excessive eating, speaking and sleeping as long as they are under the obligations of ihram.
I had no idea what kind of an inclusive social contract this was until the moment we set foot on the Jeddah airfield. I was a member of a four-person group: a Bosnian TV journalist, an Azerbaijani TV program producer, a Turkmen senior journalist and myself. A few minutes ago we each made the same promise to God: that we shall keep by the rules that bring 3 million people to a small city within one week without the gathering ending in a catastrophe.
The social contract was not just about the people in my immediate surroundings. Thinking this, my imaginative power reached to all the other planes that were directed towards Jeddah at that moment and all the passengers who were promising the same thing. Enlarging its limits, my imagination added to this all the planes that flew and would fly to Mecca this year. Then it added all the busses, private cars, ships and so on. Then, realizing that a social contract is also made between past, present and future generations, my imagination reached to the earliest visitors of this holy site, Adam and Eve amongst them -- and the lean camels.
The moment the pilgrim declares his intention to enter the obligations of ihram, he starts to recite the telbiye (a reply to the Divine call to pilgrimage) again and again:
"lebbeyk Allahumme lebbeyk / lebbeyk la sherike leke lebbeyk / innel hamde wenni'amete / lekel mulk / la sherike lek"
O my Lord, here I am at Your service, here I am! / There is no partner with You, here I am! / Truly the praise and the provisions are Yours, / and so is the dominion and sovereignty / There is no partner with You.
The pilgrim brings together all those past and future partners in this social contract, and lends an ear to all those declaring their willing partnership in it by saying "Here I am." Listen to the sounds of those traveling on lean camels, and those who ride airplanes, you will hear the same voice: Here I am!
All of these declarations of "Here I am!" actually amount to "Here we are!" This is what hajj is all about. --(Today's Zaman, 12 Dec 07)
The verse itself is time-trespassing, it carries the romantic mind to the Middle Ages, when pilgrims used to walk thousands of kilometers on foot or on camels that would turn lean on account of the journey. Our camel, a 400-capacity airplane belonging to Saudi Arabian Airlines, was by no means a lean camel, and I am not going to dive into the depths of hermeneutics to prove that it was indeed substituting a lean camel. The power of the aforementioned verse is not that it conforms to our modern realities, but that it manages to cut us off from our current situation and carry us into the romantic authenticity of the past.
I realized this at the moment the Turkish-speaking hostess of our İstanbul-Jeddah flight notified us that we were passing through the mikat (prohibition line). As Mecca and its surroundings are regarded as sacred and closed (haram), certain clothes, behavior and prayers are imposed upon the pilgrim and certain others are prohibited. These conditions are collectively known as ihram, and the moment we passed through the mikat, by a declaration of intention and the donning of two seamless white cloths to cover our bodies, we became pilgrims entering into the ihram.
Up until we reached the mikat everything was going on in the present time, in our present reality. But at that point, declaring that I will observe the prohibitions of ihram, I suddenly realized that I was becoming part of a social contract. Only a few days earlier, speaking about Turkey's new constitution, I had suggested that Islamic culture had no such institution as a social contract. I was wrong. There on the airplane some 300 people were promising the same thing; that they would be patient towards each other; that they would do no harm to people, to animals or to the environment; and that they would abstain from excessive eating, speaking and sleeping as long as they are under the obligations of ihram.
I had no idea what kind of an inclusive social contract this was until the moment we set foot on the Jeddah airfield. I was a member of a four-person group: a Bosnian TV journalist, an Azerbaijani TV program producer, a Turkmen senior journalist and myself. A few minutes ago we each made the same promise to God: that we shall keep by the rules that bring 3 million people to a small city within one week without the gathering ending in a catastrophe.
The social contract was not just about the people in my immediate surroundings. Thinking this, my imaginative power reached to all the other planes that were directed towards Jeddah at that moment and all the passengers who were promising the same thing. Enlarging its limits, my imagination added to this all the planes that flew and would fly to Mecca this year. Then it added all the busses, private cars, ships and so on. Then, realizing that a social contract is also made between past, present and future generations, my imagination reached to the earliest visitors of this holy site, Adam and Eve amongst them -- and the lean camels.
The moment the pilgrim declares his intention to enter the obligations of ihram, he starts to recite the telbiye (a reply to the Divine call to pilgrimage) again and again:
"lebbeyk Allahumme lebbeyk / lebbeyk la sherike leke lebbeyk / innel hamde wenni'amete / lekel mulk / la sherike lek"
O my Lord, here I am at Your service, here I am! / There is no partner with You, here I am! / Truly the praise and the provisions are Yours, / and so is the dominion and sovereignty / There is no partner with You.
The pilgrim brings together all those past and future partners in this social contract, and lends an ear to all those declaring their willing partnership in it by saying "Here I am." Listen to the sounds of those traveling on lean camels, and those who ride airplanes, you will hear the same voice: Here I am!
All of these declarations of "Here I am!" actually amount to "Here we are!" This is what hajj is all about. --(Today's Zaman, 12 Dec 07)
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