Today is Thursday, June 7, 2012, the 18th day of the lunar month of peace, Radjab. Amina Wadud arrived in Paris this morning from San Francisco. She will spend the night with us, so that we can all set off together from Paris to Medina, Saudi Arabia. After a short nap to recuperate from the time difference between North America and Europe, Amina and the rest of our group gather with a few of our friends and relatives for dinner together, to celebrate our imminent departure for the Holy Land. Farida prepares a few North African dishes for us. The atmosphere is lively, and we spend the evening chatting about many things. After the evening prayer, which we perform together, our loved ones finally return home. We fall asleep with the thought that only one night now separates us from our encounter with the Ka'aba: this historic relic, this black artifact, with its symbolic geometric shape, which reminds us of all that most sacred in the hopes and ideals of our humanity.

        The next morning, after dawn prayers and a light breakfast, our group gathers around Amina Wadud to pray together on the doorstep. Then it's off to nearby Charles-De-Gaulle airport. A few hours later, we catch the mid-day flight with the Jordanian woman to Amman. The flight goes off without a hitch; we fly over Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean, before coming within sight of Palestine and the Jordanian desert. We fly over the Dead Sea, before landing at Amman airport. After the usual identity checks for all transit passengers - travellers of North African nationality pay no visa fees - we are allowed to leave to visit the capital. We pray at the airport mosque before sunset, then catch the 8pm bus to the city center.

        Here, some of us, already familiar with the area, recommend one of the best restaurants in the whole city: Al-Quds ("Jerusalem"). We dine on succulent traditional dishes, such as mansaf: a dish made of yellow rice coated with butter, beef and curd... A must for all connoisseurs. We sample a few oriental pastries, before settling down on the terrace of a café overlooking the city center, to smoke a shisha while listening to an Arab music band. After a few hours' well-deserved relaxation, in view of the months of stress involved in preparing this inclusive pilgrimage, we head back to the airport, where our plane takes off at 2am.

All the photos from before Departure, click here

        After a two-hour flight, we arrived directly at Medina airport, exhausted yet tremendously excited by the discoveries awaiting us. What's more, although some of us have already made one or more pilgrimages - some are on their fifth - this is the first time we've taken part in such an adventure as part of such a diverse and motivated group. After getting off the plane and performing the dawn prayer, a mini-bus booked by our Paris agency takes us to our hotel in the city center. The Ishraq Al Madinah is located just a few hundred metres from one of the main gates of the Haram al-Madani - a term that refers to both the forbidden and the sanctuary. The Haram, in Medina, is the holy mosque encompassing the tomb of our beloved Prophet Mohammed , built on the site of his former home and one of Islam's first mosques. At the hotel, we discover spacious rooms with all the comforts needed to spend four days dedicated to worship and meditation.

         After a siesta that lasts until just before midday prayer, we take a break, shower, put on our white pilgrim's clothes and we all decide to take the road to the Haram. We pass through the majestic gates of the Great Mosque, in the scorching heat, and discover a sparsely decorated interior worthy of the world's most beautiful monuments: pillars adorned with gold, ceilings adorned with stucco, walls covered with the most delicate marble... A debauchery of luxury that is criticized by many a Muslim who visits these holy places out of self-sacrifice, to meditate at the sources of Islamic liturgical tradition. That said, air-conditioning throughout the holy sites is a luxury that would be hard to do without in the middle of the Saudi desert.

        After the dohr prayer, we head across the street from the mosque to the nearest shopping center for a bite to eat. Here again, we enjoy the local cuisine, usually meat and a variety of salads. Then some decide to return to the mosque to pray, others to the hotel to freshen up, while others decide to start shopping now: For centuries, Medina has been known for its flourishing trade, importing the most precious fabrics and expensive jewels from the four corners of the Islamic world.

All pictures from outside the Haram of Medina, Click here

            In the late afternoon, since the visit to the Prophet's tomb  is governed by rules of strict gender segregation, the men in our group decided to take advantage of the afternoon to pay homage to our Prophet Muhammad and to his most faithful companions, Abu Bakr and 'Umar, Allah be pleased with them, buried beside him:

اللهم صل على محمد وعلى آل محمد كما صليت على ابراهيم وعلى آل ابراهيم 

وبارك على محمد وآل محمد كما باركت على ابراهيم وعلى آل ابراهيم في العالمين انك حميد مجيد

"O Allah, send prayers upon Muhammad and upon the family of Muhammad, as You sent prayers upon Ibrahim and upon the family of Ibrahim; You are indeed Worthy of Praise, Full of Glory. O Allah, send blessings upon Muhammad and upon the family of Muhammad as You sent blessings upon Ibrahim and upon the family of Ibrahim; You are indeed Worthy of Praise, Full of Glory"

All pictures of the mosque in Medina, Click here

            Between the evening prayer, al-maghrib, and the night prayer, al-'isha, most of us spend our free time at the Haram, usually reading verses from the Koran; some of us help those in our group who find Arabic more difficult to decipher. These are exceptional, unforgettable moments of unparalleled fraternity and contemplation. After a frugal meal, we head back to the hotel to get some much-needed sleep, drunk as we are on sleep after so much effort. At around 4am the next morning, we set off again for the mosque. It's impressive to see so many thousands of us converging on the Haram at such an early hour of the morning, prostrating ourselves at the same time before the Lord our God, to the rhythm of the allahou akbar chanted by the crowd of believers in communion.

            We spend three days and four nights in Medina, where our daily routine is punctuated by prayers, meals together, meditation and, for some, shopping. Before leaving the holy city of the Prophet , we also visited the date market, then the "mosque of the two qiblahs" - the place to which one prays -: Masjid al-Qiblataïn. Indeed, the first qiblah was not Mecca, but al-Quds - Jerusalem - the direction towards which Bilal the Black African - may Allah be pleased with him - companion and history's first muezzin, called Muslims to prayer. Then, after more than ten years of prostration towards al-Quds, Allah - Exalted be He - ordered, in the second year of the Hegira, that the direction be changed to the one we know today, Mecca:

قَدْ نَرَى تَقَلُّبَ وَجْهِكَ فِي السَّمَاء فَلَنُوَلِّيَنَّكَ قِبْلَةً تَرْضَاهَا فَوَلِّ وَجْهَكَ شَطْرَ الْمَسْجِدِ الْحَرَامِ

وَحَيْثُ مَا كُنتُمْ فَوَلُّواْ وُجُوِهَكُمْ شَطْرَهُ وَإِنَّ الَّذِينَ أُوْتُواْ الْكِتَابَ لَيَعْلَمُونَ أَنَّهُ الْحَقُّ مِن رَّبِّهِمْ وَمَا اللّهُ بِغَافِلٍ عَمَّا يَعْمَلُونَ

“Indeed, We see you ˹O Prophet˺ turning your face towards heaven. Now We will make you turn towards a direction ˹of prayer˺ that will please you. So turn your face towards the Sacred Mosque ˹in Mecca˺- wherever you are, turn your faces towards it. Those who were given the Scripture certainly know this to be the truth from their Lord. And Allah is never unaware of what they do.” (Quran: 2.144).

            On Monday June 11, 2012, we pray one last time at the Haram in Medina, before returning to the hotel to dress in our pilgrim's clothes specific to the performance, in Mecca, of the rites that are the heart of the 'Omra pilgrimage. The men in our group put on the two traditional white veils: al-rida and al-izar, wearing nothing but a belt and sandals, to symbolize the destitution of the human being during this existence in the face of Allah's majesty; the women in our group, on the other hand, dressed all in white. In the early afternoon, we set off in the heat of almost fifty degrees Celsius in the shade, amidst a lunar landscape of dust and rock. Our minibus takes us first, on the way to Islam's holiest city, to the Abyar 'Ali mosque - "the wells of Ali" - in Dhul Hulayfa; this is the miqat - the starting point of the pilgrimage to Mecca proper - for those coming from Medina; on the way, we start praying as recommended:

لبيك اللهم لبيك لبيك لا شريك لك لبيك ان الحمد والنعمه لك والملك لاشريك لك

"I Obey, O Lord, I obey You, You Don't have a partner, I obey You,
Praise and good come from You, and sovereignty is Yours, You haven't got any associate. ”

Abyar 'Ali mosque
(miqat Dhul Hulayfa - click here for a 3D visit)

            After a short prayer of two rak'at - prostrations - in this superb mosque, we set off again for Mecca, arriving shortly after sunset. In this city, overcrowded with pilgrims, especially at the time of the great Hajj pilgrimage, which we won't be making this year, the Al-Mohadjireen hotel is located further away from the Haram al-Mecci: the holiest mosque of Islam. We also discover that the rooms are more cramped and less clean. But we don't linger: after a quick shower, our group heads for the Haram to answer the Call to Prayer. O Lord, we will soon answer your universal call:

وَأَذِّن فِي النَّاسِ بِالْحَجِّ يَأْتُوكَ رِجَالاً وَعَلَى كُلِّ ضَامِرٍ يَأْتِينَ مِن كُلِّ فَجٍّ عَمِيقٍ

"Call ˹all˺ people to the pilgrimage - Hajj. 
They will come to you on foot and on every lean camel from every distant path” (Quran: 22.27).

       On the way, we had to bypass numerous alleyways that had been condemned for construction work; due to the enormous influx of pilgrims in recent decades, Mecca is in fact a permanent construction site: entire historic quarters have unfortunately been razed to the ground to build new hotels, each more gigantic than the last. Once we finally arrived at the large square facing the Haram, we entered the Holy of Holies through the monumental gate closest to our hotel, in an incredibly contemplative atmosphere, despite the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims.

All the pictures of the Haram in Mecca, Click here

        We walk along the central aisle of the mosque, until at the end we can make out the central courtyard where the Kaa'ba stands, though we can't yet see it clearly. Our hearts are racing; the emotion in our group is palpable. Finally, we catch a glimpse of the House of God! We make our way into the central square, holding on to each other in single file, taking care not to get lost in the midst of the human tide that is making its seven ritual circumnavigations - tawaf - around the Ka'aba at the same time as we do. Each time we pass, we wave to the Black Stone: a meteorite that probably fell from the sky ancient times, and for millennia is said to have been the symbol of Allah's gift to the Arab peoples. During the tawaf around the Ka'aba, we feel the strong magnetism of this historic relic, now completely emptied of its ancestral superstitions. In the past, the Ka'aba was used to display the more than three hundred statues of the gods of the Arab pantheon. Today, Muslims' intentions, in principle, are purified; as in the testimony pronounced by every Muslim, la ilaha illa Allah - "there is no God... Except the Divine"! It is this physical emptiness that makes possible a sacrifice that is nonetheless full of spirituality: the sacrifice of renouncing a part of our human superstitions, for the love of God, mirroring the love we have for our own humanity.

         Having completed our circumnavigation, we pray briefly behind the monument dedicated to the fathers of all Semitic prophets and prophetesses: Ibrahim (the "father of a multitude of Nations"), who is said to have left his footprints in the clay when he built the Ka'aba with his son Ishmael. Then we run between the two hills, now part of the holy sites: the Safa and Marwa hills, or what's left of them. We run just as Ishmael's mother Hadjar ("the expatriate") did, in the hope of finding help from a caravanserai that had passed by. She was a slave who wanted to save her son from the torments of the desert, after her lover and master Abraham had placed them in the heart of this valley, in obedience to the will of God expressed by Sarah, his wife, not to leave a half-brother to her legitimate son, Isaac. The Lord's ways are mysterious and always beneficial to our humanity: thus, a slave woman, black, migrant, was at the origin one of the most important spiritual traditions of our known human history.

          Meditating on these aphorisms, and on the ethical consequences of such actions by these blessed individuals many millennia ago, we drink from the well of Zamzam: the miraculous spring, the Lourdes of Muslims, which according to tradition appeared after the Archangel Gabriel struck the sand with his heel, in order to offer the enlightened slave and her holy son something to quench their thirst. A water said to cure all ills. Our pilgrimage is now complete, in accordance with the tradition of the Prophet . Exhausted, we return to the hotel to freshen up. Before enjoying a few hours' sleep in the morning, we return to the Haram, in time for the dawn prayer as advised by the Koran:

        

All pictures of the Ka'aba, click here
Ka'aba & Haram de la mosquée de la Mecque (click here for a 3D visit)

            Generally speaking, our days in Mecca are punctuated, as in Medina, by prayer, meals and shopping. Some of us are like ancient peripatetic philosophers, walking through the crowded alleys of the holy city - um al- qura, "the mother of cities" - between the Haram and our hotel, discussing metaphysics and Islamic exegesis. Some spoke of the verse in the Koran dealing with the status of women in Islam, which they heard several times during their stay during the prayer led by the imam, or as they passed a store selling audio CDs of the Koran:

It's no coincidence that we hear this verse repeatedly during our 'Omra of Tawhid, since it's a verse that is all too often used to belittle women's inferiority, and which sometimes leads dogmatic Muslims to justify physical violence against women, when other interpretations are possible (see the work of  Amina Wadud or Asma Lamrabet about this topic).

We also discuss this term, often used in the Koran, which Amina came across several times during our 'Umrah readings. It's the term fahisha, which is said to be cited six times in the Koran; this term may be translated as "abomination" or "serious transgression of social rules", but is invariably translated, by dogmatic Muslims, as "homosexuality" or "sodomy" or "fornication", when it comes to describing the full extent of the rape, theft and piracy committed by Lot's people. Here again, we all agree that the prejudices of certain exegetes have too strong an influence on the representation, which should be peaceful and universally inclusive, that we freely elaborate of our Islamic cultural and spiritual heritage. 

            In any case, in our spare time in Mecca, we've made a habit of visiting the huge shopping mall with its 600-metre luxury condominium, which just been built directly opposite Mecca; one of the tallest buildings in the world, topped by a gaudily coloured clock in a taste that few of us appreciate. But this is undoubtedly the sign of a necessary modernization, against which we can do nothing. Some of us avoid these crowded spaces as much as possible, in order to meditate in front of the Ka'aba. We make a of praying together, usually at the back of the main mosque and upstairs; elsewhere, the mutawwa - religious police - formally and sometimes violently prohibit men and women from praying together.

            This is a bid'a - an innovation in Islam - which our group has repeatedly tried to oppose: we tried to pray the sunset prayer in the central courtyard facing the Ka'aba, men and women of our group all mixed together. Unfortunately, we were chased away, and some of us were even energetically pushed by these conservatives who have no respect for human dignity. Indeed, the religious police are deploying incredible energies to impose their sectarian and patriarchal dogma at the very heart Islam's holy of holies. They seem to consider that a certain form of violence would be authorized in order to maintain strict gender segregation, which until just a few years ago - as those who have been on pilgrimage to Mecca can testify - had never been applied in Mecca in living Muslim memory.

          This conservative violence doesn't prevent us from staying there, sometimes for hours on end, lulled by the tremendous positive magnetism emanating from the Ka'aba, thanks to millennia of worship and prayers invoked by generations of men and women and adelphs of good will; we'll be spending six extraordinary days in Mecca. Not far from the city center, we'll also visit the Hira cave on the djabal Noor - "mount of light" - where the Prophet Mohammed used to seclude himself to meditate away from the hustle and bustle of the city. It was here, on the 17th of Ramadan 611 AD, that our beloved Prophet is said to have received the first of the Qur'anic revelations, prompting him to enjoin his brothers and sisters and other human beings, from that moment onwards and for several decades to come, to knowledge, through full awareness of that particle of the Divine coiled within each of us:

اقْرَأْ بِاسْمِ رَبِّكَ الَّذِي خَلَقَ

خَلَقَ الْإِنسَانَ مِنْ عَلَق

اقْرَأْ وَرَبُّكَ الْأَكْرَمُ

الَّذِي عَلَّمَ بِالْقَلَمِ

عَلَّمَ الْإِنسَانَ مَا لَمْ يَعْلَمْ

“Read in the name of your Lord, who has created all,
Who created human beings.
Read, for the goodness of your Lord is infinite.
It was He who made the Pen a mean of knowledge
and who has taught human beings what they Ignored" (Quran: 96.1-5).

 Cave of Hira on the mount Noor
(click here for a 3D visit)

            In Mecca too, Amina Wadud was invited before we left by family and friends of the famous Saudi feminist: Dr. Hatoon Ajwad al-Fassi. Dr. Hatoon's father, Sheikh al-Fassi, is one of the most eminent masters of Saudi Sufism; his family was persecuted for years by the totalitarian Wahhabi regime. On her return, Amina will give us a very warm account of the two days she spent in the company of those Saudi intellectuals who still believe that a better, enlightened future, far from macho and patriarchal myths and superstitions, will one day be possible for Saudi Arabia and for all Muslims.

            One of our group members, Mustapha, decided shortly before our departure to dedicate a second 'Umrah pilgrimage to his late mother; may God accept her soul in His infinite mercy. We accompany him to the miqat of the people of Mecca, the beautiful mosque of 'Aïcha, the favorite of the Prophet Mohammed's wives , with its interior corbels superbly decorated with finely carved precious woods.

Aïcha mosque
(click here for a 3D visit of the mosque)

            After our ablutions, we pray there and then return to Mecca, arriving once again just in time for the sunset prayer. Mustapha once again performs the customary 'Umrah rites his mother: the seven circumnavigations around the Ka'ba, the salute at the black stone, the prayer behind Abraham's mausoleum, the run between Safa and Marwa, the visit to the waters of Zamzam. Then the next day, June 18, 2012 - Rajab 28, 1433 A.H. - after completing our tawaf al-wada' - the circonvolutions of farewell to the Ka'aba - we leave Mecca via Jeddah international airport, less than fifty kilometers , on the 7 a.m. flight to Paris.

            Once we reached Charles-De-Gaulle airport, most of us parted ways, feeling that we'd had a mystical, human experience beyond our most positive expectations. Amina Wadud will be leaving us the next day to return to her home in California, San Francisco. Some us will later share the fact , as they pray, they now have in their hearts, turned towards the Ka'ba, the warm vision of fraternal and sororal love, lavished on one another by all the members of the first Tawhid Umrah.

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