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A Season in Mecca: Narrative of a Pilgrimage
An unforgettable report on one man's hajj--the sacred rite that brings millions of Muslims to Mecca every year In 1999, the Moroccan scholar Abdellah Hammoudi, trained in Paris and teaching in America, decided to go on the pilgrimage to Mecca. He wanted to observe the hajj as an anthropologist but also to experience it as an ordinary pilgrim, and to write about it for both Muslims and non-Muslims. Here is his intimate, intense, and detailed account of the Hajj--a rare and important document by a subtle, learned, and sympathetic writer. Hammoudi describes not just the adventure, the human pressures, and the social tumult--everything from the early preparations to the last climactic scenes in the holy shrines of Medina and Mecca--but also the intricate politics and amazing complexity of the entire pilgrimage experience. He pays special heed to the effects of Saudi bureaucratic control over the Hajj, to the ways that faith itself becomes a lucrative source of commerce for the Arabian kingdom, and to the Wahhabi inflections of the basic Muslim message. Here, too, is a poignant discussion of the inner voyage that pilgrimage can mean to those who embark on the transformed sense of daily life, of worship, and of political engagement. Hammoudi acknowledges that he was spurred to reconsider his own ideas about faith, gesture, community, and nationality in unanticipated ways. This is a remarkable work of literature about both the outer forms and the inner meanings of Islam today.
293 pages, Hardcover
First published January 7, 2005
6 people are currently reading
140 people want to read
About the author
Abdellah Hammoudi
18 books23 followersAbdellah Hammoudi was Professor at the Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco, and the first holder of the Faisal Visiting Professorship at Princeton. He was the founding director of the Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia. Professor Hammoudi has done extensive work on the ethno-history of his native Morocco, fieldwork in Morocco, Libya and Saudi Arabia, as well as participated in major development projects in these three countries. His most recent book, Une saison à la Mecque, published by Le Seuil, Paris, in 2004, was translated into English: A Season in Mecca, Hill and Wang, 2006, as well as in several other languages including Arabic, Dutch, Italian and German. Two other books published in French were translated into English: The Victim and Its Masks, Essay on Sacrifice and Masquerade in Maghreb (1993), and Master and Disciple, The Cultural Foundations of Moroccan Authoritarianism in Comparative Perspectives(1997), both published by University of Chicago Press. More recently, he edited Democratizing the South Shore, Between Persuasion and Invasion, in French, CNRS, 2007. His publications include books on agrarian policy and the relation of tribal organization to religion. He has also participated in the production of several films for television based on his ethnographic work. He teaches courses on Islamic movements, Middle East society, colonialism, French ethnographic theory, and political anthropology.
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March 29, 2013
Hammoudi is an anthropologist, a Moroccan by birth and a professor at Princeton. By his own admission a nominal Muslim, he undertakes the complex and confusing process of making the pilgrimage to Mecca both to assess it from an anthropological point of view and to see what impact it has on his faith. I was interested in both.
If you are hoping for a travelogue of a journey to Mecca and back, you’d be disappointed. If you are hoping for an anthropological treatise, you’ll also be frustrated. This kind of falls somewhere in the middle and, perhaps because of that, like a chocolate bar for breakfast, it leaves you ultimately unsatisfied.
The descriptions of the bureaucratic nightmare that going on the hajj requires are excellent. The suffocating, strenuous whirlwind that is the pilgrim’s experience once they reach Medina and Mecca is also a real mind-bender and, if you’re a non-Muslim, will make you grateful you don’t have to do it.
At times, Hammoudi reflects on his own response to the journey, to Islam, to Saudi, to humanity. The hajj is just another example of humanity’s attempt to build a ladder to heaven. No matter how zealous we get in our religious affairs, the very stuff we’re made of will always rise to the surface:
When you consider that Islam means 'submission', I think he’s being generous here.
The stipulations about how the pilgrimage is to be performed are as demanding as walking a tightrope: one slip and the entire event is a waste of time. This is scary stuff. It made me thankful yet again that I follow a guy who talked of grace.
Had the book been a combination of the above, it would have been an excellent piece of travel writing.
But what let the whole thing down is that, being a professor at Princeton, Hammoudi seems to feel obligated to pad large sections of the book with the kind of stuff only the intelligentsia would claim to understand. It made me wonder whether this was required by some funding he might have got or an overzealous publisher. Either way, it reduces what would have been an excellent book into a bit of a confused mess.
Take this passage for example:
At this point, you’re quite engaged. You feel for him as he stands at the mercy of some petty official in some windowless, numberless room somewhere. But having given him your undivided attention, look where he takes you:
Er… what? Facts “haunt us”? Facts return and we’re “no longer in them”? Despite re-reading such passages, I come away none the wiser. And I particularly detest authors waxing intelligent and introducing their thoughts with “of course” when there seems to be nothing “of course” about it. Drivel. Here’s another piece of tangential piffle:
Come again?
With the major problem of the book being waves of incromphensibility, the fact that it’s not edited well just adds to the frustration. On one page I came across a lengthy paragraph repeated twice. Now, I’ve seen this in books before. What made this particularly noticeable though was that it was in fact two drafts of the same passage. Classic. Maybe it’s the start of a new A/B literary genre where the readership get to choose which version is finalised.
And that the entire experience was, for Hammoudi, confusing and contradictory is evident everywhere. He admits as much several times. There are conflicts between his nominal religious beliefs and the zealous forms of Wahhabi Islam he encounters in Saudi, conflicts between his ideas and that of his travelling companions and physical conflicts between pilgrims on several notable occasions.
There were further contradictions in the points Hammoudi was making as he went along. Early in the pilgrimage, he talks about how the western world has made a mistake in conceiving Islam as a militant religion. Then, later, he says “the others talked on and militated in favor of “bringing Islam back into our societies.”” A slip of the pen perhaps? Hmmm. Later, his statement that
strikes me as a man who must be profoundly ignorant of both Christian and Hebrew traditions. You can barely read a chapter of the Torah without coming across a divine mandate to meet together in a corporate act of worship. And these writings predate Islam by thousands of years. I expect better from a professor, I really do. Even one at a US university.
Whether Hammoudi actually completes the pilgrimage seems uncertain. When it comes to sacrificing a lamb, the event, despite its build up, is glanced over very quickly. It turns out that he paid someone to make the sacrifice for him. Might as well pay someone to do the entire hajj for you, surely. And, amazingly I thought, instead of enduring the long return to Morocco with his fellow pilgrims, he makes a bolt for the airport in a taxi! This did leave me though with one important anthropological insight: you can take the Moroccan out of the US but you’ll have a hard time getting the US out of the Moroccan.
If you are hoping for a travelogue of a journey to Mecca and back, you’d be disappointed. If you are hoping for an anthropological treatise, you’ll also be frustrated. This kind of falls somewhere in the middle and, perhaps because of that, like a chocolate bar for breakfast, it leaves you ultimately unsatisfied.
The descriptions of the bureaucratic nightmare that going on the hajj requires are excellent. The suffocating, strenuous whirlwind that is the pilgrim’s experience once they reach Medina and Mecca is also a real mind-bender and, if you’re a non-Muslim, will make you grateful you don’t have to do it.
At times, Hammoudi reflects on his own response to the journey, to Islam, to Saudi, to humanity. The hajj is just another example of humanity’s attempt to build a ladder to heaven. No matter how zealous we get in our religious affairs, the very stuff we’re made of will always rise to the surface:
…even a dozen meters from the Prophet’s tomb. Each time goods or services were distributed, each time a goal had to be reached, the religion of Me, Me first, Me before everyone else pushed Islam to the edge.
When you consider that Islam means 'submission', I think he’s being generous here.
The stipulations about how the pilgrimage is to be performed are as demanding as walking a tightrope: one slip and the entire event is a waste of time. This is scary stuff. It made me thankful yet again that I follow a guy who talked of grace.
Had the book been a combination of the above, it would have been an excellent piece of travel writing.
But what let the whole thing down is that, being a professor at Princeton, Hammoudi seems to feel obligated to pad large sections of the book with the kind of stuff only the intelligentsia would claim to understand. It made me wonder whether this was required by some funding he might have got or an overzealous publisher. Either way, it reduces what would have been an excellent book into a bit of a confused mess.
Take this passage for example:
At provincial headquarters [in Morocco], the passport department was dealing with hajj matters. “You’re late professor!” shot a mustachioed civil servant in dark suit and red tie. He was seated, I was standing.
Nonplussed, I didn’t know how to reply.
At this point, you’re quite engaged. You feel for him as he stands at the mercy of some petty official in some windowless, numberless room somewhere. But having given him your undivided attention, look where he takes you:
Yet my memory told me I had some capacity to endure this – not enough, though, since memories of past facts are not the facts themselves. When the facts return, we are no longer in them; we’ve already been through them, and their unfolding and consequences are no longer unpredictable. Of course, they haunt us nonetheless, but at that point they are part of what we’re living through in the present. So my previous dealings with bureaucrats did little to protect me, especially since I had tried to ensure I never habituated myself to them.
Er… what? Facts “haunt us”? Facts return and we’re “no longer in them”? Despite re-reading such passages, I come away none the wiser. And I particularly detest authors waxing intelligent and introducing their thoughts with “of course” when there seems to be nothing “of course” about it. Drivel. Here’s another piece of tangential piffle:
All these [Islamic] prohibitions, which seemed to bear on things outside the self, in fact touched equally, if not more so, on the uses and representations of the body. Since I eat and drink and, in normal time, have a sex life, I secrete matter. These secretions cross the surface of my skin, their channels starting and ending mostly on my face. But because something has to reach the mouth, nose, ear, eye, skin, starting point for excitation, the very ideas of arrival and departure prove to be relative. In any case, the usage of the world is the usage of the body, and nothing escapes its coordinates. Thus by this progression, the entire universe gets mapped out, returning to the body the matters and forms appropriate to its usages.
Come again?
With the major problem of the book being waves of incromphensibility, the fact that it’s not edited well just adds to the frustration. On one page I came across a lengthy paragraph repeated twice. Now, I’ve seen this in books before. What made this particularly noticeable though was that it was in fact two drafts of the same passage. Classic. Maybe it’s the start of a new A/B literary genre where the readership get to choose which version is finalised.
And that the entire experience was, for Hammoudi, confusing and contradictory is evident everywhere. He admits as much several times. There are conflicts between his nominal religious beliefs and the zealous forms of Wahhabi Islam he encounters in Saudi, conflicts between his ideas and that of his travelling companions and physical conflicts between pilgrims on several notable occasions.
There were further contradictions in the points Hammoudi was making as he went along. Early in the pilgrimage, he talks about how the western world has made a mistake in conceiving Islam as a militant religion. Then, later, he says “the others talked on and militated in favor of “bringing Islam back into our societies.”” A slip of the pen perhaps? Hmmm. Later, his statement that
There is no doubt that it was Islam that first called for communal solidarity in its acts of worship, and indeed explicitly enjoins believers to engage in it.
strikes me as a man who must be profoundly ignorant of both Christian and Hebrew traditions. You can barely read a chapter of the Torah without coming across a divine mandate to meet together in a corporate act of worship. And these writings predate Islam by thousands of years. I expect better from a professor, I really do. Even one at a US university.
Whether Hammoudi actually completes the pilgrimage seems uncertain. When it comes to sacrificing a lamb, the event, despite its build up, is glanced over very quickly. It turns out that he paid someone to make the sacrifice for him. Might as well pay someone to do the entire hajj for you, surely. And, amazingly I thought, instead of enduring the long return to Morocco with his fellow pilgrims, he makes a bolt for the airport in a taxi! This did leave me though with one important anthropological insight: you can take the Moroccan out of the US but you’ll have a hard time getting the US out of the Moroccan.
August 5, 2022
First time reading Hammoudi and I chose this book just because of the context: it was Dhul-Hijja and one has this tendency to try and live the requirement of Hajj, even-though through someone else's shoes and words.
Prior to this book I was disappointed by Aourid's account on Hajj رواء مكة- it remains valid as his very own experience, but I don't think I closed his book with a feeling of having witnessed anything other than his endless monologues (I'm clearly still irritated ...)
This one compares positively and "de loin" - it is an English translation, the only available copy to me, and in all honesty this has allowed me a sort of distancing and to an extent an objectivity in reading about his experience in yet a third language!
(If you read way too many books of auteurs marocains d'expression française, like me you would have a hard time detaching from the language and focusing on the essence of the experience.. Maybe reading Aourid in Arabic after all was what made me this resentful)
Being an anthropologist, Hammoudi tries to explain and define Hajj the last pillar of Islam as a collective experience, that is a culmination point of the other pillars and departs from a set of "mise en garde" against his personal implication in this work. Given that he was a Mulsim, and again a Muslim that stopped practicing for some decades... This has given way to a sort of detached attitude at the beginning but as soon as the author was reaching the end of his journey he would come closer and closer to his lost identity ...
Other than his own personal transformation, I think that his work traces perfectly the outline of the Moroccan persona and mentality before, during and after the accomplishment of the pilgrimage: between prayers and shopping, the misunderstandings, "scholarly" conflicts among, the social dynamics between men and women, ...
My favorite part of the book was the chapter "Memory of violence" and that gave me a sudden heartache speaking of our realities:
"My Babel was the colonial Babel; to this day it multiplied collages, passageways, Escher's perpetual staircases, and the floors I climbed and climbed, feeling I was close to a destination I never reached. In this Babel, which lived in my home, languages pulled me into their mutual transparencies and lines of perspective. At the end of these courses, there were thick forests one had to clear and clear again to reconquer their territory."
Prior to this book I was disappointed by Aourid's account on Hajj رواء مكة- it remains valid as his very own experience, but I don't think I closed his book with a feeling of having witnessed anything other than his endless monologues (I'm clearly still irritated ...)
This one compares positively and "de loin" - it is an English translation, the only available copy to me, and in all honesty this has allowed me a sort of distancing and to an extent an objectivity in reading about his experience in yet a third language!
(If you read way too many books of auteurs marocains d'expression française, like me you would have a hard time detaching from the language and focusing on the essence of the experience.. Maybe reading Aourid in Arabic after all was what made me this resentful)
Being an anthropologist, Hammoudi tries to explain and define Hajj the last pillar of Islam as a collective experience, that is a culmination point of the other pillars and departs from a set of "mise en garde" against his personal implication in this work. Given that he was a Mulsim, and again a Muslim that stopped practicing for some decades... This has given way to a sort of detached attitude at the beginning but as soon as the author was reaching the end of his journey he would come closer and closer to his lost identity ...
Other than his own personal transformation, I think that his work traces perfectly the outline of the Moroccan persona and mentality before, during and after the accomplishment of the pilgrimage: between prayers and shopping, the misunderstandings, "scholarly" conflicts among, the social dynamics between men and women, ...
My favorite part of the book was the chapter "Memory of violence" and that gave me a sudden heartache speaking of our realities:
"My Babel was the colonial Babel; to this day it multiplied collages, passageways, Escher's perpetual staircases, and the floors I climbed and climbed, feeling I was close to a destination I never reached. In this Babel, which lived in my home, languages pulled me into their mutual transparencies and lines of perspective. At the end of these courses, there were thick forests one had to clear and clear again to reconquer their territory."
December 29, 2012
ظننته كتاباً يحكي رحلة الحج كما تدعي نبذة الغلاف الخلفي وقلت لا بأس ببعض الخواطر هنا وهناك. ولكني لم أجد رحلة وإنما مقتطفات متفرقة عنها. وجل الكتاب هو خواطر الكاتب في هذه الفترة عن الحج والإسلام والمسلمين وعندما ركبت بحر الخواطر غرقت فيها ولم أفهم شيئاً. قد أجد له عذراً في كون الكتاب مُتَرجَم وكثير من الأفكار العميقة والعواطف تضيع في الترجمة
مقدمة فلسفية مملة جداً كدت خلالها أترك الكتاب ! وليتني فعلت
الفصول الأولى أفضل من الأخيرة حيث وصف الكاتب جانباً من إجراءات التحضير للحج وسخر من الممارسات الرسمية بطريقة جميلة. مثال ذلك تعليقه عن نظام الكوتا الذي نعته بمنجم رشاوي للإداريين ، وتعليقه عن سياسة الانتظار في الحكومات المتخلفة هذه السياسة التي تجعل الإنسان يرضخ وينفذ كل ما يُطلب منه كي يقضي مصلحته ويذهب. ولكن لا يوجد كثير سوى ذلك. ثم بدأت أقرأ بطريقة القفز
أحزنني هذا الكاتب الباحث عن المعرفة ولكنه في الواقع لا يرى سوى القذارة في المسلمين ، ولاتوجد قذارة في الإسلام
مقدمة فلسفية مملة جداً كدت خلالها أترك الكتاب ! وليتني فعلت
الفصول الأولى أفضل من الأخيرة حيث وصف الكاتب جانباً من إجراءات التحضير للحج وسخر من الممارسات الرسمية بطريقة جميلة. مثال ذلك تعليقه عن نظام الكوتا الذي نعته بمنجم رشاوي للإداريين ، وتعليقه عن سياسة الانتظار في الحكومات المتخلفة هذه السياسة التي تجعل الإنسان يرضخ وينفذ كل ما يُطلب منه كي يقضي مصلحته ويذهب. ولكن لا يوجد كثير سوى ذلك. ثم بدأت أقرأ بطريقة القفز
أحزنني هذا الكاتب الباحث عن المعرفة ولكنه في الواقع لا يرى سوى القذارة في المسلمين ، ولاتوجد قذارة في الإسلام
August 22, 2018
الأسلوب ركيك....الترجمة سيئة...الكتاب فيه إساءة للإسلام والمسلمين
Not recommended at all
September 8, 2016
The description of navigating the Moroccan kleptocracy to get one of the visas allotted to the county is an example of Hammoudi's excellent narrative capability. Other highlights are his descriptions of the intimidating preparatory classes, the shopping sprees, an animal sacrifice, the oversold buses with the blaring religious tapes, the people he meets, the failings of tour operators and the pilgrims' reactions to them and the petty bureaucracy he encountered upon trying to leave Saudi Arabia.
Not all the descriptions, though, are up to this level. For instance, I couldn't envision the run between Safi and Marwa, including the "gallery" over the path. (bleachers for watching? a place with religious art?) Are there hundreds bunched the way marathons start, or in small clusters? What of the woman who cuts the lock of his hair afterward? (Can anyone just reach out and cut anyone's hair or is it arranged?) I didn't fully understand the lodgings (esp. with his gender mixed group). He does mention an air conditioned tent, but what of the other places? Motels? Temporary trailers? How did they (the women, that is) cook in them (stoves? Bunsen burners?) and what of these rest rooms (down the hall? 1 for X number people? showers?) that they lined up to use?
Hammoudi is sensitive to the very second class status of women. They have all the same religious obligations as the men and have to cook too. They pray in a padlocked area. Some of the instances beg for more. For instance, he says some the women were sick because of the pills they had taken to stop menstruating (they did not want to be unclean in holy places). This is all that is written on this.
The major shortcoming, however, is Hammoudi's tendency to over-intellectualize. Much of this relates to his feelings of being an outsider. A lot of it I just couldn't follow.
Despite these limitations (and that this Hajj is in 1999), this is an insider's look at the pilgrimage, without any idealization or fluff. Hammoudi calls it as he sees it with refreshing honesty about his beliefs and feelings.
Not all the descriptions, though, are up to this level. For instance, I couldn't envision the run between Safi and Marwa, including the "gallery" over the path. (bleachers for watching? a place with religious art?) Are there hundreds bunched the way marathons start, or in small clusters? What of the woman who cuts the lock of his hair afterward? (Can anyone just reach out and cut anyone's hair or is it arranged?) I didn't fully understand the lodgings (esp. with his gender mixed group). He does mention an air conditioned tent, but what of the other places? Motels? Temporary trailers? How did they (the women, that is) cook in them (stoves? Bunsen burners?) and what of these rest rooms (down the hall? 1 for X number people? showers?) that they lined up to use?
Hammoudi is sensitive to the very second class status of women. They have all the same religious obligations as the men and have to cook too. They pray in a padlocked area. Some of the instances beg for more. For instance, he says some the women were sick because of the pills they had taken to stop menstruating (they did not want to be unclean in holy places). This is all that is written on this.
The major shortcoming, however, is Hammoudi's tendency to over-intellectualize. Much of this relates to his feelings of being an outsider. A lot of it I just couldn't follow.
Despite these limitations (and that this Hajj is in 1999), this is an insider's look at the pilgrimage, without any idealization or fluff. Hammoudi calls it as he sees it with refreshing honesty about his beliefs and feelings.
January 7, 2008
In 1999 Princeton anthropologist Abdellah Hammoudi undertook the hajj. During the pilgrimage he record his thoughts and experiences and later crafted them into this rather curious work. Hammoudi shifts fitfully between recording events, pondering religion through an anthropological lens, and deep personal introspection. The book is worth reading just for Hammoudi's day-by-day descriptions of the life on the hajj. He conveys how piety, materialism, awe, and chaos intermix to make the hajj unlike any other event on Earth. His anthropological analysis can often be much more obscure and I found myself having to give up on drawing any meaning out of certain passages. (This may be a fault with the translation from the French Hammoudi wrote the work in.) I am guessing those with a deeper background in anthropology will draw more from this work, but even for lay people like me it offers a rarely available picture of the modern hajj.
August 21, 2016
من أين أبدأ ؟
من تذبذب الكاتب بين المغربي المسلم المتمرد بشكل أو بآخر على هذين الصفتين وبين الأنثروبولوجي المتثاقف مع الرؤية الفردانية الأمريكية ؟
أم من نعته لذبح اضحية العيد بجريمة قتل، دون أن يخجل من أكله لحم الدجاج مع الحجاج في المدينة ومكة ؟
أم من صواب تساءله حول إغفال الدور الهاجري الأساسي في الأسرة، موضوع حكاية الحج ؟
أم من صفحات كاملة من التحليل الغامض أو على الأقل المستعصي ؟...
في نظري، هذا كتاب يستحق القراءة ويتطلب موازاته بالتامل والنقد المتعدد الاتجاهات.. أي تجاه المقروء، وتجاه الذات، وتجاه تأويلات مناسك الحج..
من تذبذب الكاتب بين المغربي المسلم المتمرد بشكل أو بآخر على هذين الصفتين وبين الأنثروبولوجي المتثاقف مع الرؤية الفردانية الأمريكية ؟
أم من نعته لذبح اضحية العيد بجريمة قتل، دون أن يخجل من أكله لحم الدجاج مع الحجاج في المدينة ومكة ؟
أم من صواب تساءله حول إغفال الدور الهاجري الأساسي في الأسرة، موضوع حكاية الحج ؟
أم من صفحات كاملة من التحليل الغامض أو على الأقل المستعصي ؟...
في نظري، هذا كتاب يستحق القراءة ويتطلب موازاته بالتامل والنقد المتعدد الاتجاهات.. أي تجاه المقروء، وتجاه الذات، وتجاه تأويلات مناسك الحج..
August 16, 2012
I'm writing this review knowing that I'm not going to do the book justice. The number one reason is that I'm far too removed from academia now and far too pressed for time to be able to follow closely and read and reread each passage. The second reason is that I read the first 141 pages more than a year ago. When I put this book up on PaperBackSwap.com, to my surprise it was immediately requested. I'm too cheap to buy a book and not finish it before giving it away, so I finished the book this morning, the 2nd of Shawwal 1429.
When I started reading the book, I was turned off by what I saw as the author's complaining about the endemic corruption of the developing world, similar to the WAWA (West Africa Wins Again) of U.S. travelogs in west Africa. The author's mentioning his disregard for ritual requirements and prohibitions and his lack of reverence for the blessing of Allah's invitation to His house pained me. And I just stopped reading the book.
But from page 142 on, and I don't know if I'm imagining it, it was as if I was reading a totally different book. The participation in the rituals of ziyara, umra and hajj, no matter how "defective" the author's intention, changed the tone of the narrative. It was as if the magnitude of the crowds, the power of the stories the rituals reenacted, the landscape, the buildings, the sounds and the words of the Quran flooded over the dam of the author's preconceived research plan. But this flood was not destructive. Rather, the water initiated the germination of the seeds of Muslim identity lying in a soil enriched, not polluted, by the European-American discipline of anthropology.
Now I may still be on a post Eid al-Fitr high, and I have to say just thinking about Makka is enough to make me cry (even this instant!)-May Allah azza wa jall invite us all there!-but I thought this author made me as a Muslim think about the hajj in ways I had not considered. And is there worship better than pondering Allah's signs in His messengers and His judgments?
For the non-Muslim reader, I hope that the latter half of the book will bring attention to Islam as a religion rather than as a political movement.
This book has by far the best description of the replacement and sacrifice of Ibrahim, Hajar and Ismail alayhim assalaam that I've read. In my brief Internet search, I came across a good article by Carol Delaney's Was Abraham Ethical? Should We Admire His Willingness to Sacrifice His Son? But Professor's Abdellah's discussion is at a whole other level.
The book reminds me a lot of the only other "deep" anthropology book I've ever read, Paths Toward a Clearing by Michael Jackson. I have to read these kinds of books repeatedly to find their rhythm. If you have the time, it's well worth it.
When I started reading the book, I was turned off by what I saw as the author's complaining about the endemic corruption of the developing world, similar to the WAWA (West Africa Wins Again) of U.S. travelogs in west Africa. The author's mentioning his disregard for ritual requirements and prohibitions and his lack of reverence for the blessing of Allah's invitation to His house pained me. And I just stopped reading the book.
But from page 142 on, and I don't know if I'm imagining it, it was as if I was reading a totally different book. The participation in the rituals of ziyara, umra and hajj, no matter how "defective" the author's intention, changed the tone of the narrative. It was as if the magnitude of the crowds, the power of the stories the rituals reenacted, the landscape, the buildings, the sounds and the words of the Quran flooded over the dam of the author's preconceived research plan. But this flood was not destructive. Rather, the water initiated the germination of the seeds of Muslim identity lying in a soil enriched, not polluted, by the European-American discipline of anthropology.
Now I may still be on a post Eid al-Fitr high, and I have to say just thinking about Makka is enough to make me cry (even this instant!)-May Allah azza wa jall invite us all there!-but I thought this author made me as a Muslim think about the hajj in ways I had not considered. And is there worship better than pondering Allah's signs in His messengers and His judgments?
For the non-Muslim reader, I hope that the latter half of the book will bring attention to Islam as a religion rather than as a political movement.
This book has by far the best description of the replacement and sacrifice of Ibrahim, Hajar and Ismail alayhim assalaam that I've read. In my brief Internet search, I came across a good article by Carol Delaney's Was Abraham Ethical? Should We Admire His Willingness to Sacrifice His Son? But Professor's Abdellah's discussion is at a whole other level.
The book reminds me a lot of the only other "deep" anthropology book I've ever read, Paths Toward a Clearing by Michael Jackson. I have to read these kinds of books repeatedly to find their rhythm. If you have the time, it's well worth it.
November 29, 2014
موضوع شيق و شائك
و استفدت شخصيا من أسلوب الأنثروبولوجي الذي لا ينسى أنه جزء من الموضوع
فكثير من الباحثين الأنثروبولوجيين ينظرون نظرة فوقية أو يحاولون نفي كيانهم و وجودهم من دراستهم
لكن عبد الله حمودي تناول نظرته للخارج من الداخل.
و عموما الرحلة شيقة و لا تستطيع الانقطاع عن القراءة خصوصا أنك تبدأ معه من الرحلة المخزنية
داخل بيروقراطية المقاطعات إلى أن تزور معه المدينة و مكة و ترى من خلال حروف قلمه
مظاهر التأسلُم و الإسلام و تتضح معالم عجيبة قد تشاطره النظرة نفسها و قد تراها مختلفة.
و استفدت شخصيا من أسلوب الأنثروبولوجي الذي لا ينسى أنه جزء من الموضوع
فكثير من الباحثين الأنثروبولوجيين ينظرون نظرة فوقية أو يحاولون نفي كيانهم و وجودهم من دراستهم
لكن عبد الله حمودي تناول نظرته للخارج من الداخل.
و عموما الرحلة شيقة و لا تستطيع الانقطاع عن القراءة خصوصا أنك تبدأ معه من الرحلة المخزنية
داخل بيروقراطية المقاطعات إلى أن تزور معه المدينة و مكة و ترى من خلال حروف قلمه
مظاهر التأسلُم و الإسلام و تتضح معالم عجيبة قد تشاطره النظرة نفسها و قد تراها مختلفة.
December 8, 2008
This text is in a serious engagement with the ongoing debate over what constitutes ethnographic writing.
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