Hajj - seeking life balance in the age of noise

By Abdussalam Nakua 

The journey to the holy places in Arabia has been a calling for a special spiritual encounter for millennia. Hajj is unique even within Islamic ritualistic practice. It weaves the inwardly spiritual encounters into the outward expression of collective affirmation of faith. 

This year, the number of pilgrims will reach or exceed 2.5 million people. It is amazing how this number increased over the past century by around 100-fold. The estimated number of pilgrims did not exceed 30,000 in the 1930s. 

Hajj is a densely packed spiritual journey that is highly steeped in symbolism. At its core, it is a journey to reaffirm monotheism as pilgrims enact the significant events in the life of Prophet Ibrahim and his family. 

For example, pilgrims will circumambulate the Kaaba in celebration of its establishment. They will also trace the path of Ibrahim's wife, Hagar, who Muslims believe ran between the two hills, Safa and Marwa, seven times searching for water for her dying infant. 

The donning of seamless clothing called “ihram” symbolizes the shunning of all worldly differences and celebrating the equality of all human beings before their Creator. This is further manifested in the standing at the Mount of Arafat as equals. Rich and poor, young and old, men and women come together, bonded by their humanity and faith and transcending the differentiations imposed on them by history and geography.

Through enacting those rituals, Hajj invites us to focus on finding an equilibrium within our lives that balances the sacred and the secular, the spiritual and the material. This balance has been increasingly difficult to attain. 

Since the dawn of the twentieth century, the increasing wave of consumerism has produced an alternative path for a different type of spiritual gratification.

Charles Cooley, pioneer founder of modern sociology (1864-1929), observed as early as 1912 the implications of this transformation. Values in the past, he noted, had taken their character from the church, i.e., within America and, by extension, in other Western societies, but now are shaped by the forces of “business and consumption.” 

In this new value system, status and worth are mediated via products. More broadly, pecuniary values became the measure of the worth of almost everything, even our spiritual satisfaction. 

William R. Leach, a professor of history at Columbia University, chronicled this transformation in his book, Land of Desire, which was published in 1993. He traced how these new rituals and value systems were carefully constructed. 

This transformation produced what Aldous Husley called the “Age of Noise” ranging from the physical and mental noises to the noise of desire. With the prevalence of social media platforms and digital gadgets, the level of noise is increasing at an alarming rate. For instance, the average person sees between 4,000 and 10,000 ads in a single day.

It is almost ironic that the allure of insatiable desires for consumption is almost inescapable even during Hajj and at the heart of the holy sites. Pilgrims will be shocked by the dizzying pace of the invasive consumerism that is taking hold in the holy sites. The massive building projects had transformed the face of Mecca in fundamental ways. These changes brought to the forefront the clash between the essence of the spiritual journey of Hajj and the consumerism that is colouring this experience. 

Back in 1980, the former rock star Yusuf Islam, or Cat Stevens, found the Hajj encounter a soul freeing experience. It was the freedom created by the balance between the soul and the lust of desire that he most appreciated. 

“At last I found that dimension where human existence ceases to be held by the gravitation of sensual and worldly desires” and “where the soul is freed in an atmosphere of obedience and peaceful submission to the Divine Presence,” he noted. 

This dimension is continuously being narrowed as the noise of the consumerist creed continues to shrink the spiritual essence of our living. Hajj is inviting us to start our own journeys in searching for that balance in our lives. 

[Abdussalam Nakua is an executive with the Muslim Association of Canada. He serves on the board of directors for the Ontario Nonprofit Network and performed Hajj in 2006].