“
So, Swami Jesus, will you go on the hajj this year?" Ravi said, bringing the palms of his hands
together in front of his face in a reverent namaskar. "Does Mecca beckon?" He crossed himself. "Or
will it be to Rome for your coronation as the next Pope Pius?" He drew in the air a Greek letter,
making clear the spelling of his Mockery. "Have you found time yet to get the end of your pecker
cut off and become a Jew? At the rate you're going, if you go to temple on Thursday, mosque on
Friday, synagogue on Saturday and church on Sunday, you only need to convert to three more
religions to be on holiday for the rest of your life.
”
”
Yann Martel (Life of Pi)
“
I know that societies often have killed people who have helped to change those societies. And if I can die having brought any light, having exposed any meaningful truth that will help destroy the racist cancer that is malignant in the body of America, then, all credit is due to Allah. Only the mistakes have been mine. - el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz
”
”
Alex Haley
“
Those dogs of the hajj go to Mecca to pray when they don't possess even the decency or generosity of spirit to pardon or forgive.
”
”
Yousef Al-Mohaimeed (Wolves of the Crescent Moon)
“
se conoce el sistema de valores de una sociedad a través de la transgresión y sus consecuencias.
”
”
Francisco Gil-White (Hajj Amin al Husseini: Palestina y los Nazis (El Colapso de Occidente: El Siguiente Holocausto y sus Consecuencias nº 1) (Spanish Edition))
“
Meda Ishq Vi Toon Meda Yaar Vi Toon
Meda Deen Vi Toon Eeman Vi Toon
Meda Jism Vi Toon Meda Rooh Vi Toon
Meda Qalb Vi Toon Jind Jaan Vi Toon
Meda Kaba Qibla Masjid Mimbar
Mushaf Te Quran Vi Toon
Mede Farz Fareezay, Hajj, Zakataan
Soum Salaat Azaan Vi Toon
Meri Zohd Ibadat Ta’at Taqwa
Ilm Vi Toon Irfan Vi Toon
Mera Zikr Vi Toon Meda Fikr Vi Toon
Mera Zouq Vi Toon Wajdan Vi Toon
Meda Sanwal Mithra Shaam Saloona
Mun Mohan Janaan Vi Toon
Meda Murshid Haadi Peer Tareeqat
Shaikh Haqaa’iq Daan Vi Toon
Meda Aas Ummed Te Khattaya Wattaya
Takia Maan Taran Vi Toon
Mera Dharam Vi Toon Meda Bharam Vi Toon
Meda Sharam Vi Toon Meda Shaan Vi Toon
Meda Dukh Sukh Ro’wan Khilan Vi Toon
Meda Dard Vi Toon Darmaan Vi Toon
Meda Khushiyan Da Asbaab Vi Toon
Mede Soolaan Da Samaan Vi Toon
Mera Husn Te Bhaag Suhaag Vi Toon
Meda Bakht Te Naam Nishaan Vi Toon
Meda Ishq Vi Toon Meda Yaar Vi Toon
Meda Deen Vi Toon Eeman Vi Toon
Meda Jism Vi Toon Meda Rooh Vi Toon
Meda Qalb Vi Toon Jind Jaan Vi Toon
Meda Kaba Qibla Masjid Mimbar
Mushaf Te Quran Vi Toon
Meda Ishq Vi Toon Meda Yaar Vi Toon
Meda Deen Vi Toon Eeman Vi Toon
Meda Ishq Vi Toon Meda Yaar Vi Toon
”
”
Khawaja Ghulam Farid
“
During his hajj, Malcolm [Malcolm X] fell into a new Islam with the same blind faith that he had given to Elijah. Since he lived just a year after his hajj, Mecca became the neatly presented and cinema-friendly conclusion to his lifelong thread of transformations: but he finally found the Truth and then Allah took him home. But if he lived longer, I think he would have called out the Arabs.
”
”
Michael Muhammad Knight (Journey to the End of Islam)
“
I had a Muslim neighbour once who did the Hajj. He went to Mecca, did the whole route—Mina, Arafah, seven times around the Kaabah, of course, and prayers at the masjid. You know what he told me was the best part? Coming home. And that’s what pilgrimages are for, really. To think about the places and people you leave behind.
”
”
Janice Pariat (Boats on Land)
“
Why did God want us to remember these painful stories? I could only think of one reason. Having faith is more than just believing; it's about living with fear and self-doubt and working through those feelings until they bring some sort of answer.
-page 101, Chapter "Hajj
”
”
Zarqa Nawaz (Laughing All the Way to the Mosque)
“
Instead, Malcolm had begun to talk about capitalism as the enemy. “The last bulwark of capitalism today is America,” he told a New York audience in May, when he was just back from his hajj. “It’s impossible for a white person to believe in capitalism and not believe in racism. You can’t have capitalism without racism.” If you meet a non-racist white, he added, “usually they’re socialists.” 39
”
”
Les Payne (The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X)
“
The world passed through Mecca, but did not stay long enough to interfere. Arabs were able to develop their own ideology and could interpret the knowledge and expertise of their more sophisticated neighbors as they chose. They were not pressured to convert to an alien religion or conform to official orthodoxy. The closed circle of both the trade cycle and the hajj rituals symbolized their proud self-sufficiency, which, as the years passed, would become a mark of their urban culture.
”
”
Karen Armstrong (Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time (Eminent Lives))
“
Here at Hajj, I was experiencing a taste of the same poison. While the women in my tent weren't nearly as wealthy or polished as the bewitching woman at al-Multaqa, they subscribed to the same view, deciding (based on skin color and ethnicity) that I surely must be a handmaid or at best nanny to a poor Saudi family who couldn't afford the much better Filipina maids, having instead to resort to Pakistani or worse, Bengali help. In fact I did remember one Saudi woman in the tent asking me if I was Bengali.
”
”
Qanta A. Ahmed (In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom)
“
Far down the corridor, an image-voice screamed: "They denied us the Hajj!"
Jessica saw the slave cribs on Bela Tegeuse down that inner corridor, saw the weeding out and the selecting that spread men to Rossak and Harmonthep. Scenes of brutal ferocity opened to her like the petals of a terrible flower. And she saw the thread of the past carried by Sayyadina after Sayyadina—first by word of mouth, hidden in the sand chanteys, then refined through their own Reverend Mothers with the discovery of the poison drug on Rossak...and now developed to subtle strength on Arrakis in the discovery of the Water of Life.
Far down the inner corridor, another voice screamed: "Never to forgive! Never to forget!
”
”
Frank Herbert (Dune (Dune, #1))
“
Many forces sought control of the Atreides twins and, when the death of Leto was announced, this movement of plot and counterplot was amplified. Note the relative motivations: the Sisterhood feared Alia, an adult Abomination, but still wanted those genetic characteristics carried by the Atreides. The Church hierarchy of Auquaf and Hajj saw only the power implicit in control of Muad'Dib's heir. CHOAM wanted a doorway to the wealth of Dune. Farad'n and his Sardaukar sought a return to glory for House Corrino. The Spacing Guild feared the equation Arrakis=melange; without the spice they could not navigate. Jessica wished to repair what her disobedience to the Bene Gesserit had created. Few thought to ask the twins what their plans might be, until it was too late.
-The Book of Kreos
”
”
Frank Herbert (Children of Dune (Dune, #3))
“
People do not feel anxious or weary when they follow
the Qur’an’s morality. However, the enjoyment derived
from doing something with worldly aims in mind is very limited
and of short duration. When the benefits gained run
out, their eagerness to continue subsides and the aim
becomes regarded as a bother. But those who seek Allah’s
favor are rewarded with pleasure, for they know that they
will be rewarded for their intention and not for the nature of
the act. Therefore, they will never get bored with doing it:
Their [the sacrificial animals’] flesh and blood does not
reach Allah, but your heedfulness does. In this way He
has subjected them to you so that you might proclaim
Allah’s greatness for the way that He has guided you.
Give good news to those who do good. (Surat al-Hajj:
37)
Adnan Oktar
Harun Yahya
33
And so, no matter what they do, if they perform it in the
hope of winning Allah’s pleasure, and if they keep on doing
so until the end of their lives, they will never get bored or
lose their enjoyment in doing it again and again.
No matter how long they do that deed, their love and
desire for earning Allah’s favor will cause them to constantly
create new and beautiful things on their horizon. Having
rooted their morality in fear of Him, they form close relationships
and friendships with those around them; have no
desire for rank, position, or money; and are never jealous
or anxious.
”
”
Harun Yahya (Those Who Exhaust All Their Pleasures In This Life)
“
Thomas Kuhn explicó que la transmisión del paradigma es dogmática: el aprendiz de una disciplina científica adquiere un conjunto de supuestos y reglas para su trabajo intelectual y procede inmediatamente a aplicarlos a problemas nuevos, identificados por el paradigma como propiamente ‘gramáticos.’ Si cierto tipo de preguntas son legisladas como ‘no gramáticas’ por constituir retos a los supuestos o por quedar presuntamente fuera del campo de investigación disciplinario, el aprendiz lo absorbe de forma pasiva, confiando en sus tutores, y sin dar mayor problema. Además, hay toda una estructura de incentivos institucionales que fortalecen la docilidad, pues el aprendiz desea prestigiarse y avanzar, y eso requiere dar gusto a quienes lo entrenan.
”
”
Francisco Gil-White (Hajj Amin al Husseini: Palestina y los Nazis (El Colapso de Occidente: El Siguiente Holocausto y sus Consecuencias nº 1) (Spanish Edition))
“
Note, however, that a community’s supply of social rewards is limited, so we’re often competing to show more loyalty than others—to engage in a “holier than thou” arms race. And this leads, predictably, to the kind of extreme displays and exaggerated features we find across the biological world. If the Hajj seems extravagant, remember the peacock’s tail or the towering redwoods. But note, crucially, that sacrifice isn’t a zero-sum game; there are big benefits that accrue to the entire community. All these sacrifices work to maintain high levels of commitment and trust among community members, which ultimately reduces the need to monitor everyone’s behavior.38 The net result is the ability to sustain cooperative groups at larger scales and over longer periods of time.39 Today, we facilitate trust between strangers using contracts, credit scores, and letters of reference. But before these institutions had been invented, weekly worship and other costly sacrifices were a vital social technology. In 1000 a.d., church attendance was a pretty good (though imperfect) way to gauge whether someone was trustworthy. You’d be understandably wary of your neighbors who didn’t come to church, for example, because they’re not “paying their dues” to the community. Society can’t trust you unless you put some skin in the game.
”
”
Kevin Simler (The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life)
“
If you’re not protecting me, I will not protect you,’ Hajj himself had warned the EU, back in April. ‘I am the guard protecting your outer gate. If you neglect me, then anyone can get in.
”
”
Patrick Kingsley (The New Odyssey: The Story of the Twenty-First Century Refugee Crisis)
“
The portion of Islam has been given to us through the Sunnah:
Worship Rituals
i. The Prayer
ii. Zakāh and Sadaqah of ‘Īd al-Fitr
iii. Fasting and I‘tikāf
iv. Hajj and ‘Umrah
v. Animal Sacrifice and the Takbīrs during the days of Tashrīq
Social Sphere
i. Marriage and Divorce and their relevant details
ii. Abstention from coitus during the menstrual and the puerperal period
Dietary Sphere
i. Prohibition of pork, blood, meat of dead animals and animals slaughtered in the name of someone other than Allah
ii. Slaughtering in the prescribed manner of tadhkiyah by pronouncing Allah’s
name
Customs and Etiquette
i. Remembering Allah’s name before eating or drinking and using the right
hand for eating and drinking
ii. Greeting one another with al-Sālamu ‘Alaykum (peace be to you) and
responding with Wa ‘Alaykum al-Salām (and peace be to you)
iii. Saying al-Hamdulillāh (praise be to Allah) after sneezing and responding to
it by saying Yarhamukallāh (may Allah have mercy on you)
iv. Keeping moustaches trimmed
v. Shaving pubic hair
vi. Removing the hairs under the armpits
vii. Paring fingernails (cleaning it)
viii. Circumcising the male offspring
ix. Cleaning the nose, the mouth and the teeth
x. Cleaning the body after excretion and urination
xi. Bathing after the menstrual and the puerperal periods
xii. Ghusl-i Janābah
xiii. Bathing the dead before burial
xiv. Enshrouding a dead body and preparing it for burial
xv. Burying the dead
xvi. ‘Īd al-Fitr
xvii. ‘Īd al-Adhā
”
”
Javed Ahmad Ghamidi (Meezan)
“
By the time Mansa Musa left the Middle East, he had put so much gold into circulation, its value fell sharply. A reporter in the service of the Egyptian sultan reported that the Cairo gold market had been so saturated that it still had not fully recovered twelve years after Mansa Musa’s fabulous hajj.
”
”
Patricia C. McKissack (The Royal Kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhay: Life in Medieval Africa)
“
The Meccan Hajj, where tens of thousands of picked zealots gather every year from every quarter of the Moslem world, is really an annual Pan-Islamic congress,
”
”
T. Lothrop Stoddard (The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy)
“
Because if indestructible is every atom of a speck of dust, so must be immortal the spirit of a man. And if every wave of the wind creates eternity, so must the consequences of our acts. So every one of us would leave on a big Hajj to our Creator.
”
”
Osyp Nazaruk (Roxelana)
“
So it turns out I wasn't the only Jew at the rally. There were two and a half more. Not protesting against the UPF, but supporting them? That clinches it. Skinheads side by side with Jews; immigrants against immigrants; Shermon's promise of a far-right hajj – this is a case for John Safran, Jew Detective.
”
”
John Safran (Depends What You Mean by Extremist)
“
How difficult it can be for a widow-mother of ten siblings to travel from rich to poor in just a few years after my father's death, only a heart can feel it.
A mother who could not read on her own but enlightened her children with higher education and dignity, my mother was also among such mothers.
I didn't know why I used to tell my mother in my childhood that whenever I would grow up, I would perform Hajj for her. My mother always replied with a smile, study first; if you earn money by doing a job, then we perform Hajj.
I grew up before I grew up. I joined the army and came back. From Larkana to Karachi and then to the Netherlands, where the oppression of the oppressors was waiting for me, and oppression ruined my life.
I miraculously fulfilled my promise to perform Hajj with my mother in 1985. Two years later, my mother could not survive a heart attack and left everyone alone. May Allah raises her rank in heaven.
”
”
Ehsan Sehgal
“
What you’re calling upon me to believe in, I believe in already,” Hajj Mahmud began. “As a Muslim, I believe in more prophets than you do as a Christian. As you may have noticed, we swear by the life of our Lady Mary and our Masters Jesus and Moses, just as we swear by the life of our Master Muhammad.
”
”
Ibrahim Nasrallah (Time of White Horses)
“
On these scorched lands, they’ll never reap anything but a black harvest,” predicted Hajj Khaled.
”
”
Ibrahim Nasrallah (Time of White Horses)
“
That same day, High Commissioner Sir Arthur Wauchope opened the station, and speeches were broadcast in English, Arabic, and Hebrew. This celebration I considered to be a funeral. It was the most powerful warning sign that a Jewish national homeland would be established in Palestine. One day Hebrew starts to compete with Arabic, and the next day it casts it out of Palestine! This wasn’t mere pessimism, either. As evidence of the gloomy future that awaited the Palestinians, one need only recall that His Eminence the Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husayni, head of the Islamic Council at that time, actually attended this celebration. How could he and others have forgotten the decision to boycott such events?
”
”
Ibrahim Nasrallah (Time of White Horses)
“
An article in this month’s National Geographic magazine quotes a scientist referring to the “undistractibility” of these animals on their journeys. “An arctic tern on its way from Tierra del Fuego to Alaska, for instance, will ignore a nice smelly herring offered from a bird-watcher’s boat in Monterey Bay. Local gulls will dive voraciously for such handouts, while the tern flies on. Why?” The article’s author, David Quammen, attempts an answer, saying “the arctic tern resists distraction because it is driven at that moment by an instinctive sense of something we humans find admirable: larger purpose.”
In the same article, biologist Hugh Dingle notes that these migratory patterns reveal five shared characteristics: the journeys take the animals outside their natural habitat; they follow a straight path and do not zigzag; they involve advance preparation, such as overfeeding; they require careful allocations of energy; and finally, “migrating animals maintain a fervid attentiveness to the greater mission, which keeps them undistracted by temptations and undeterred by challenges that would turn other animals aside.” In other words, they are pilgrims with a purpose.
In the case of the arctic tern, whose journey is 28,000 miles, “it senses it can eat later.” It can rest later. It can mate later. Its implacable focus is the journey; its singular intent is arrival. Elephants, snakes, sea snakes, sea turtles, myriad species of birds, butterflies, whales, dolphins, bison, bees, insects, antelopes, wildebeests, eels, great white sharks, tree frogs, dragon flies, crabs, Pacific blue tuna, bats, and even microorganisms – all of them have distinct migratory patterns, and all of them congregate in a special place, even if, as individuals, they have never been there before.
-Hamza Yusuf on the Hajj of Community
”
”
Hamza Yusuf
“
Though demonized by his Jewish and British enemies, Hajj Amin al-Husayni in fact cooperated well enough with the mandate administration. Only gradually did he use his religious authority to achieve a position of significant political influence contrary to British interests. It was a potent mix. The key event in this transformation was the so-called ‘Western Wall riots’ in 1929. The Western Wall was the only revealed section of what remained from the massive retaining wall built by Herod. This wall allowed Herod to enlarge the platform on which the Second Temple stood before being destroyed in 70 CE. Given this association, the wall became Judaism’s most important place of pilgrimage and prayer. The wall also was part of a Muslim religious trust (waqf): Muslim attachment to the wall and to the al-Haram al-Sharif (or ‘Noble Sanctuary’, as the Temple Mount is known in Arabic) is due to their association with the story of Muhammad’s night journey to heaven. The wall is known to Muslims as al-Buraq, because Muhammad tethered his horse there, and the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque, built in the 7th century, are two of Islam’s most revered buildings.
”
”
Martin Bunton (The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction)
“
In 1928, attempts by some Jews to extend their access to the wall by bringing screens and benches were fiercely challenged by Hajj Amin, no doubt as part of a larger political campaign to enhance his national status. Claims and counterclaims became increasingly heated over the following year and, when a Revisionist Party youth movement organized a demonstration demanding Jewish control over the whole complex, tensions spiralled out of control. Rioting broke out in Jerusalem in August 1929, the British struggled to restore order, and the violence spread to Hebron, Jaffa, and Safad, cities with significant Jewish populations. The massacre of Jews in Hebron was especially horrifying, and those who survived fled Hebron in the wake of the riots. Overall, 133 Jews and 116 Arabs lost their lives. Palestinians worried that the Jews were violating the sanctity of Islam and dispossessing them of their patrimony. Jews compared Hebron to the pogroms of Eastern Europe.
”
”
Martin Bunton (The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction)
“
The tensions over access to the Western Wall galvanized the communal hostilities generated during the first decade of the mandate. In effect, they ended any real chance of Arab–Jewish peace in Palestine. Britain struggled to deal with the fallout. The Shaw commission, sent out to report on the 1929 disturbances, criticized Hajj Amin al-Husayni’s lack of restraint but acquitted him of incitement. More significantly, the commission warned against continued Jewish immigration and land purchase, arguing that the further dispossession of Arab farmers could only lead to more disturbances. In October 1930 the British issued the Passfield White Paper, stressing the need to deal more forthrightly with Arab concerns. It called for restrictions on Jewish immigration and land purchase and drew attention to the conspicuous absence of a representative legislative council. Zionist leaders were furious. In London, they voiced strong criticism of the White Paper and succeeded the following year in persuading the prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald, to write a personal letter to Weizmann in which key elements of the 1930 White Paper were revoked.
”
”
Martin Bunton (The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Very Short Introduction)
“
After making the hajj – the pilgrimage to Mecca – Abd al-Malik recast the caliphate in terms of faith and family: Islam would be central. He was the first to be widely called caliph instead of the more military commander, and his later coins eschewed the human imagery previously employed, a prohibition that came to be part of Islamic tradition. Arabic became the language of government, a decision that changed the world, imposing the language from Morocco to Iraq, and he relaunched Muawiya’s jihad against Constantinople.
”
”
Simon Sebag Montefiore (The World: A Family History of Humanity)
“
Israel’s bombing of Gaza altered the clock. As if time had been wounded, it now moved in a crawl, its daily passage impeded by the rubble that carpeted the terrain, its presence so thick that Hajje Nazmiyeh felt the sun dragging along the heavy weight of each hour. So much needed to be done, yet there was nothing to do. People gathered with nothing to say. Even when they spoke, their words were coated in a silence that stared into a chasm as they picked out and buried their dead. Even rage and calls for revenge seemed perfunctory. Tears made for a sort of refuge. A place to go to feel something in a wreckage that demanded numbness. For many, it was simply a waiting to die. Hope seemed vulgar in this hour, and the idea of death was so comforting and alluring that no one spoke, lest words do away with the seduction of a quiet ending.
”
”
Susan Abulhawa (The Blue Between Sky and Water)
“
Mind begins at the wake of chains,
Life begins at the wake of sect.
A hundred hajj won't make you holy,
If your heart is ever cold and dead.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Dervis Vadisi: 100 Promissory Sonnets)
“
Terry Anderson, the American journalist who was held hostage for almost seven years by the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah, relates a telling conversation he had with one of his guards. The guard had objected to a newspaper article that referred to Hezbollah as terrorists. “We are not terrorists,” he indignantly stated, “we are fighters.” Anderson replied, “Hajj, you are a terrorist, look it up in the dictionary. You are a terrorist, you may not like the word and if you do not like the word, do not do it.”84 The terrorist will always argue that it is society or the government or the socioeconomic “system” and its laws that are the real “terrorists,” and moreover that if it were not for this oppression, he would not have felt the need to defend either himself or the population he claims to represent.
”
”
Bruce Hoffman (Inside Terrorism (Columbia Studies in Terrorism and Irregular Warfare))
“
7.27 ʿAlī said: By God, a group of people will enter the Garden of Eden first on the day of resurrection. These people did not pray or fast more than others, nor perform the hajj or ʿumrah pilgrimage to Mecca more often than others. The honor is due to the worth of their minds.
”
”
al-Qadi al-Qudai (A Treasury of Virtues: Sayings, Sermons, and Teachings of Ali, with the One Hundred Proverbs, attributed to al-Jahiz)
“
Kingdom (in stark contrast to the monolithic Najd). The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was the modern reformer of Hajj, and his personal efforts dispelled the heinous pre-Islamic associations with idolatry. He restored the Ka'aba as the House of God and cleansed it of statues and symbols of pagan worship, which were sometimes stored even within its hollow core. He returned monotheistic worship to Mecca, making Hajj the pinnacle of Islamic worship, as the Quran
”
”
Qanta A. Ahmed (In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom)
“
This was Islam: Hajj! Not the Muttawa with their nightsticks and nihilism. Equality in the eyes of our Maker, whether we be men or women, rich or poor, able-bodied or deformed, black or white, was all that mattered. The frenzied, fascist supremacy of Wahabiism had simply been washed away by a torrent of truth: the multiracial, spiritually hybrid Muslims now flooding Mecca. As
”
”
Qanta A. Ahmed (In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom)
“
Like other living cre a t u res, plants' structural characteristics are encoded in the DNA in their cells. In other words, how a plant will re p roduce, how it will breathe, how it will come by its nutrients, its colour, smell, taste, the amount of sugar in it, and other such information, is without exception to be found in all of that plant's cells. The cells in the roots of the plant possess the knowledge of how the leaves will carry out photosynthesis, and the cells in the leaves possess the knowledge of how the roots will take water from the soil. In short, there exist a code and a blueprint for the formation of a complete new plant in every extension that leaves a plant. All the features of the mother plant, based on its inbuilt genetic information, are to be found, complete, down to the last
detail in every cell of every little part that splits off from it. So, in that case, how and by whom was the information that can form a complete new plant installed in every part of the plant? The probability of all the information being totally complete and the same inside every cell of a plant cannot be attributed to chance. Nor can it be attributed to the plant itself, or the minerals in the soil that carry out this process. These are all parts of the system which make up the plant. Just as it takes a factory engineer to program production line robots, since the robots cannot come by the instructions themselves, so there must be some being which gives to plants the necessary formula for growth and
re p roduction, since the plants, like the robots, cannot acquire these by themselves. It is, of course God who implanted the necessary information in the plants' cells, as in all other living things in the world. It is He who without any doubt created everything in complete form, and who is aware of all creation. God draws attention to this truth in several holy verses: He created the seven heavens one above the other. You will find no flaw in the creation of the All-Merciful. Look again-do you see any gaps? Then look again and again. Your eyes will become dazzled and exhausted. (Surat al-Mulk: 3-4) Do you not see that God sends down water from the sky and then in the morning the earth is covered in green? God is All-Subtle, AllAware. (Surat al-Hajj: 63)
”
”
Harun Yahya
“
The Mullah taught us Arabic, as well as the Qur’an, the Islamic sacred book, and hadith—the words, actions and stories of Muhammad. I was very zealous to know everything about Islam. I also received a foundation in the five pillars of Islam—the shahadah (creed), salat (five times a day daily prayers), zakah (giving to the poor), fasting during Ramadan and hajj (going on pilgrimage to Mecca) at least once in a lifetime. The Mullah also explained that it is important to be cleansed before prayer. My mother had already demonstrated how we were to ceremonially wash ourselves.
”
”
Samaa Habib (Face to Face with Jesus: A Former Muslim's Extraordinary Journey to Heaven and Encounter with the God of Love)
“
Among the lessons I learned on Hajj was that I needed to be mindful and keep the inner connection with God at all times and that self-improvement is definitely a never-ending struggle.
”
”
Kristiane Backer (From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life)
“
As pilgrims we effectively slip into the role of our spiritual ancestress and run back and forth between the hills seven times. This symbolises our own quest in this world for whatever we are seeking and God’s Mercy which fulfils our quest even beyond our expectations.
”
”
Kristiane Backer (From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life)
“
the essence of the Hajj is Arafat. On the ninth day of the Hajj month all pilgrims gather on the great Plain of Arafat to offer their deepest heartfelt prayers. It’s a reminder of Resurrection, when everyone will stand “naked” before God on Judgement Day and nothing counts but our actions and their effects upon our soul’.
”
”
Kristiane Backer (From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life)
“
God was inviting me to go on Hajj, but before that I needed to settle my debts. Muslims may only embark on their pilgrimage if they are debt-free or at least have made an arrangement for repayment.
”
”
Kristiane Backer (From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life)
“
but here at Hajj, just like everywhere else, women talk and try to find solutions for problems by networking!
”
”
Qanta A. Ahmed (In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom)
“
my goal for us is jannah. If I fail you as a husband, this gift of hajj, in shaa Allah, will stay with you through the hereafte
”
”
Zara J. (Dowry Divas (Muslim Drama Fiction Women Seeking Marriage and Love))
“
In 1217 a Christian pilgrim, Master Thetmar, discovered a small chapel with two Greek monks in the deserted ruins of Petra.[114] Petra continued to served as an important stopping-off point on the trade and Hajj routes between the Arabian Peninsula and the rest of the Mamluk and Ottoman lands. The Mamluk Sultan of Egypt, Baibars, visited Aaron’s tomb on Mount Hor and one of the crusader castles in 1276 CE.
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Charles River Editors (Petra: The History of the Rose City, One of the New Seven Wonders of the World)
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Like the Bedouin tribes, these guilds were organized, powerful, and politically independent. They had their own guild masters and ran their own courts. They legally exercised monopoly power to set prices, collect fees, share profits, and create barriers to entry. For centuries they had run the Hajj purely for their own profit.
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David Rundell (Vision or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads)
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Others resented Abdulaziz’s management of the Hajj—particularly, the limits that he placed on service charges paid by pilgrims. Many simply disliked the Al Saud, their Bedouin army, and Wahhabi clerics. The most discontented formed the Hejaz Liberation Movement.
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David Rundell (Vision or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads)
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Hajj Khaled looked up at the sky. He reached out for his yellow keffiyeh and wrapped it around his neck. He placed his coat in Hamama's saddlebag. He looked at his two companions, and in his olive-green eyes they saw a mysterious gleam. He smiled.
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Ibrahim Nasrallah (زمن الخيول البيضاء)
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heard stories from family who’d undertaken this most significant event in a Muslim’s life. She envisioned standing in a circle around the Great Mosque, or Al-Masjid al-Haram, in Mecca, performing her prayers. The pilgrimage continued in Muzdalifa, where the Night Prayer was observed and twenty-one pebbles were picked up for symbolic stoning of Satan at Mina. Two or three days were spent in Mina for various ceremonies before the return to Mecca. Families who made the pilgrimage were allowed to add the term “hajj” to their name. As a little girl Djamila had been especially drawn with anticipated delight to stories of the four-day celebration afterward, the ‘id al-adha, the Festival of Sacrifice, also known as the Major Festival. She had also looked forward to painting
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David Baldacci (The Camel Club (Camel Club, #1))
Francisco Gil-White (Hajj Amin al Husseini: Palestina y los Nazis (El Colapso de Occidente: El Siguiente Holocausto y sus Consecuencias nº 1) (Spanish Edition))
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Cuando se intensifica la violencia musulmana, crece también el clamor a favor de la interpretación pacífica del ‘verdadero’ islam. Luego de los ataques del 11 de septiembre, 2001, defendidos en nombre del islam por importantes figuras musulmanas (incluyendo a quien se jactara de ser autor y artífice), el presidente George W. Bush, como relámpago, “se reunió con líderes musulmanes para defender al islam como una religión de paz, no terrorismo.”[394] Al poco tiempo, “el presidente Bush visitó la mezquita más importante de Washington y declaró [nuevamente] que el islam es una religión de paz.”[395]
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Francisco Gil-White (Hajj Amin al Husseini: Palestina y los Nazis (El Colapso de Occidente: El Siguiente Holocausto y sus Consecuencias nº 1) (Spanish Edition))
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surah which is followed by two numbers, the first indicating the surah, and the second indicating the verse,: Al-Araf 7: 206; Al-Raad 13: 15; Al-Nahl 16: 50; Al-Isra 17: 109; Maryam 19: 58; Al-Hajj 22: 18 & 22: 77; Al-Furqan 25: 60; Al-Naml 27: 26; Al-Sajdah 32: 15; Saad 38: 25; Fussilat 41: 38; Al-Najm 53: 62; Al-Inshiqaq 84: 21 and Al-Alaq 96: 19. If you do not perform a prostration when you read or listen to any of these verses, you have done badly because you miss out on the reward of performing a prostration for God. You incur no sin and violate no divine order.
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Muhammad Saed Abdul-Rahman (Tafsir Ibn Kathir Part 2 of 30: Al Baqarah 142 To Al Baqarah 252)
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Hajj is now. In this very moment, you are orbiting a Kaaba in your life. Just as the Earth spins around its own axis, we humans orbit a central point. What is your Kaaba?
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A. Helwa (Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Heart of Islam)
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Ibn Abbas RA reported: The Holy Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “Verily, the Umrah pilgrimage during Ramadan is equal to Hajj or equivalent to performing Hajj with me.
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Sahih al-Bukhārī 1782, Sahih Muslim 1256
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Ibn Abbas (r.a.) reported: The Holy Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “Verily, the Umrah pilgrimage during Ramadan is equal to Hajj or equivalent to performing Hajj with me.
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Sahih al-Bukhārī 1782, Sahih Muslim 1256
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Comic book fans
come in many forms -
Some attend comicon,
Some visit the vatican,
Some visit vrindavan.
Some bury head in the bible,
Some bury head in das kapital.
When pages of books are
prioritized over humanity,
world gets infested with sheeple.
Mind begins in the wake of chains,
Life begins in the wake of sect.
A hundred hajj won't make you holy,
If your heart is ever cold and dead.
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Abhijit Naskar (Dervis Vadisi: 100 Promissory Sonnets)
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A hundred hajj won't make you holy, if your heart is ever cold and dead.
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Abhijit Naskar (Dervis Vadisi: 100 Promissory Sonnets)
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Saudis appear generally to have an ambivalent attitude about the religious aspects of the Hajj, similar to that of the people in most countries where a popular holy shrine is located. On the one hand, they view the Hajj not as the culmination of a life's mission, as do so many Hajjis from distant lands, but as annual religious event in which they are most likely to participate. No Saudi would ever take the title Hajj- one who has made the Hajj- before his name, although in some Muslim countries this is a title of highest respect.
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David Edwin Long (The Hajj Today: A Survey of the Contemporary Pilgrimage to Makkah)
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It has been the policy of the Saudi government ever since to prevent the Hajj from being exploited by any state or group for political gain. For example, in 1937, King 'Abd al-'Aziz prohibited the Supreme Arab Committee of Palestine from holding a conference in Makkah during the Hajj. In a letter to the the Committee, he said that he did not wish to mix religion and politics.
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David Edwin Long (The Hajj Today: A Survey of the Contemporary Pilgrimage to Makkah)
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How difficult it can be for a widowed mother of ten siblings to pass from the rich to the poor within a few years of my father's death;
A mother who could not read on her own but enlightened her children with higher education and dignity, my mother was also among such mothers.
I didn't know why I kept telling my mother in my childhood that whenever I grew up, I would go on a pilgrimage with her. My mother always replied with a smile, study first; if you earn money by doing a job, then we perform Hajj.
I grew up before I grew up. I joined the army and came back. From Larkana to Karachi and then to the Netherlands, where the oppression of the oppressors was waiting for me, and oppression ruined my life.
I miraculously fulfilled my promise to perform Hajj with my mother in 1985. Two years later, my mother could not survive a heart attack and left everyone alone. May Allah raise her rank in heaven.
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Ehsan Sehgal
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I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being, neither white, black, brown nor red.
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Malcolm X (el-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz)
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Defeat, exile, and restoration had altered ancient Israel's religion, but the Second Temple's obliteration, coupled with Jews' declining status in the Roman Empire, would force a far greater reconstruction. Lacking a single agreed-upon holy place, modern Christians, however empathetic, may have difficulty imagining the magnitude of the liturgical renovations that the Temple's loss demanded, though Orthodox Byzantines watching Hagia Sophia—their monumental cathedral—reconfigured as a mosque certainly could. Muslims contemplating a hypothetical demolition of Mecca's Masjid al-Haram (Sacred Mosque) and the consequent disruption of the hajj (pilgrimage) may be able to entertain a more visceral understanding of what the Second Temple's loss portended for Judaism.
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Charles L Cohen (The Abrahamic Religions: A Very Short Introduction: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions))
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Bus carrying Hajj pilgrims attacked at Kota in India , Hajis forced to raise Jai shri Ram slogans
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Hinducracy and India
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IT’S NOT FAIR! I CAN’T GO ON HAJJ. I’VE GOT TO GO TO SCHOOL. I DON’T HAVE TIME TO GO TO MECCA. IT’S NOT FAIR! “Welcome to the twentieth century. It’s not fair. It’s never fair.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Each year more than two million pilgrims arrive in Mecca for the Hajj. They gather on an empty desert plain to pray; listen to sermons; and sacrifice thousands of goats, sheep, and camels. This immense, multinational congregation provides Saudi leaders with a rich opportunity to promote their views, demonstrate their special role in Islam, and host important Muslim leaders at a spiritually significant moment in their lives.
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David Rundell (Vision or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads)
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Pilgrimage: to journey to a sacred place.
Pilgrim: a traveller or wanderer, a stranger in a foreign place.
Crusaders: pilgrims with swords who attempted to conquer the Middle East.
Hajj: the journey to Mecca, one of the five pillars of Islam. Shahadah, Salat, Zakat, Sawm, Hajj.
Pleasant, perhaps, to say that I am a pilgrim, but looking at it, counting the swirl of white as the devout move round the sacred stone in Mecca, watching the fans scream at the movie premiere, listening to the old men sitting on their benches by the sea who report that everything changes, and that’s okay…
fuck me who isn’t a fucking pilgrim anyway?
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Claire North (The Sudden Appearance of Hope)
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To perform Hajj. (i.e. Pilgrimage to Mecca)
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Muhammad Ibn Ismail Al-Bukhari (The Hadith: Sahih Al-Bukhari)
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In the strictures of Arrakis, human flesh remains the most durable and reliable resource for the Hajj. Perhaps it is the implicit awareness of this fact which makes Arrakis the ultimate mirror of the soul.
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Frank Herbert (Children of Dune (Dune, #3))
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Babylonians made pilgrimages, as did the Greeks, Israelites, Chinese and Mayans. The Arabic word for pilgrimage, hajj, comes from the Hebrew word for celebration, hag. In Tibetan, the word for human being means “goer.
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Anonymous