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FADE TO BLACK

Triumph of the Irrational

Five Perplexing Pillars  - The Hajj

The most famous of the pagan traditions embraced by Islam, which it adapted to its needs, has to be the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. The pilgrimage’s main attraction is the Ka’ba (also spelled Ka’bah) a large a cube made of bricks and covered by a thick black cloth. On the eastern corner you will find the famous black stone, a meteorite about the size of a basketball, said to have been part of the original shrine built by Adam and rebuilt by Abraham.

In one Tradition of the Prophet, Adam and Eve were literally flung out of Paradise with Adam grabbing onto a large stone which followed him down. Eve landed near present-day Mecca and Adam, still holding on to the rock that is attached to the Ka’ba, landed on a mountain peak appropriately named Adam’s Peak on the island of Sri Lanka. A depression near the summit, in Islamic traditions, is believed to be the footprint left by Adam when he landed. At 1.8 m, it is a sizeable dent that only a big man could have made.

Narrated Abu Huraira:

The Prophet said, "Allah created Adam in his complete shape and form (directly), sixty cubits (about 30 meters) in height. When He created him, He said (to him), "Go and greet that group of angels sitting there, and listen what they will say in reply to you, for that will be your greeting and the greeting of your offspring."

Adam (went and) said, 'As-Salamu alaikum (Peace be upon you).' But they replied, 'AsSalamu-'Alaika wa Rahmatullah (Peace and Allah's Mercy be on you) So they increased 'Wa Rahmatullah'

The Prophet added 'So whoever will enter Paradise, will be of the shape and form of Adam. Since then the creation of Adam's (offspring) (i.e. stature of human beings is being diminished continuously) to the present time."

Bukhari 55.543

Adam dragged this rock all the way to where Eve was patiently waiting for him and used it to set up the first altar to Allah which would become the Ka’ba and around which grew the town of Mecca.

The pagan celebration of their Hajj was a four-month-long festival centered on Mecca, a festival referred to as the Sacred Months. Not to be confused with the Sacred Months of the Islamic calendar (11 Dhu’l-Qa’dah - The Month of Rest, 12 Dhu’l-Hijjah - The Month of Pilgrimage, 1 Muharram -  beginning of the Islamic New Year, 7 Rajab - The Month of Respect).

The pagan's sacred months allowed pilgrims to make their way to Mecca and back unmolested. Their celebration of the Hajj had a deep, what you might consider a very progressive religious component that embraced all faiths. During this sacred period anyone, no matter whom they worshipped, who made the trek to Mecca could place a representation of their god(s) or goddess(es) or revered religious figure on the altar of the Ka’ba. When Muhammad conquered Mecca and destroyed what he considered idols, except for the meteorite his followers idolized, more than 300 religions were represented, including a fresco of the Virgin Mary. 

The pagan Hajj would make sense even today because of its duration, during which pilgrims came and went, unlike the Islamic Hajj which has degenerated into an absurdity that any god worthy of the appellation name should have anticipated.

Two and a half million is about the maximum number of pilgrims that can be accommodated at the Hajj because of the limitations of the finite space that is the Ka'ba and its surroundings. If every Muslim alive today wanted to do the Hajj, it would take more than 750 years to accommodate them all, meaning that 80%, through no fault of their own, will not be able to fulfill a mandatory pillar of Islam.

Muhammad was not so much a forecaster of the future as of the past. The events recounted in the Koran, except for Judgement Day, are all about what came before, with the exemption of the safe-bet prediction that is the bread and butter of doomsday prophets to this day: “the end is near, repent!”

Allah’s warnings that He would be bringing the curtain down on His creation sooner rather than later (without being more specific) left His spokesman holding the bag, so to speak. An sample: 

21:1 Mankind’s reckoning is drawing near, but they are turning away heedlessly.

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70:1 A questioner asked about an imminent punishment,

70:2 Of the unbelievers, that none can avert;

70:3 From Allah, Lord of the Ways of Ascent.

70:4 Unto Him the angels and the spirit (Gabriel) ascend on a Day the duration thereof is fifty thousand years.

70:5 Bear up patiently then (Muhammad).

70:6 They think it is distant;

70:7 But we think it is close.

From what Allah revealed of an impending Judgement Day, Muhammad believed it would occur before his death or shortly thereafter.

 Narrated Sahl bin Sad As-Sa'idi (a companion of Allah's Apostle):

Allah's Apostle, holding out his middle and index fingers, said, "My advent and the Hour are like this (or like these)," namely, the period between his era and the Hour is like the distance between those two fingers, i.e. very short.

Bukhari 63.221

Muhammad implying that Judgment Day was imminent may have had something to do with what he saw in a dream and a lucid vision while circumambulating the Ka’ba for the last time.

Narrated Zainab bint Jahsh:

The Prophet got up from his sleep with a flushed red face and said, "None has the right to be worshipped but Allah. Woe to the Arabs, from the Great evil that is nearly approaching them. Today a gap has been made in the wall of Gog and Magog like this." (Sufyan illustrated by this forming the number 90 or 100 with his fingers.)

Bukhari 88.181

Narrated Ibn Abbas:

Allah's Apostle performed the Tawaf (around the Ka'ba while riding his camel, and every time he reached the corner (of the Black Stone) he pointed at it with his hand and said, "Allahu Akbar." (Zainab said: The Prophet said, "An opening has been made in the wall of Gog and Magog like this and this," forming the number 90 (with his thumb and index finger).

Bukhari 63.215

Allah, in an either/or type of revelation, made it abundantly clear that the end would occur during Muhammad’s lifetime, or shortly thereafter.

40:77 So, bear up patiently; Allah’s Promise is true. We will either show you (Muhammad) what We are promising them, or We will call you unto Us. Then unto us they will be brought back.

Muhammad dying before the advent of Judgement Day would lead to a wholesale reinterpretation of what he had revealed about an impending doomsday.

When Muhammad died before the eschaton’s (the end of the world) arrival and the Hour continued to be delayed, the early Muslims had to radically reorient their religious vision. The Hour was thus increasingly differed into the distant future, and in less than a century Islam swiftly transformed itself from a religion expecting the end of the world to a religion that aimed to rule the world.

Stephen J. Shoemaker, The Death of a Prophet – The End of Muhammad’s Life and the Beginnings of Islam, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.

They could “reorient their religious vision” but not a ritual that was never meant to accommodate millions of believers circling a rock attached to a large cube on a specific date and time of the year.

Muhammad, when putting his stamp on rituals borrowed from the pagans, and other religions, simply did the opposite of what they did. For example, why a true believer will trim his mustache but not his beard:

Narrated Nafi:

Ibn Umar said, The Prophet said, "Do the opposite of what the pagans do. Keep the beards (as it is) and cut the moustaches short."

Bukhari 72.780

The pagans also circled the Ka’ba clockwise; believers would do so counter clockwise. Muhammad’s counter clockwise Hajj is Islam in a nutshell. In his simpleton’s endeavour to be different, he would create a contrarian religion that would literally and figuratively send a great, forward looking civilization spiralling backwards.

I am not aware in the entire history of civilisation of a more gracious, more loving, more vibrant society than that of the Arabs before Islam … [it was a time] … of unbound freedom, lofty sentiments, a nomadic and chivalrous way of life, [a land] of fantasy, joy, mischievousness, bawdy impious poetry, refined love-making …

Ernest Renan, cf. Robert Montagne, La Civilisation du désert

The Arabs became the people of T. E. Lawrence:

They were a people of primary colours; or rather of black and white … They were a dogmatic people, despising doubt, our modern crown of thorns. They did not understand our metaphysical difficulties, our introspective questioning. They only knew truth and untruth, belief and unbelief, without our hesitating retinue of finer shades.

This people was black and white not merely in clarity, but in apposition. Their thoughts were at ease only in extremes … they never compromised; they pursued the logic of several incompatible opinions to absurd ends, without perceiving the incongruity.

They were a limited, narrow-minded people, whose inert intellect lay fallow in curious resignation. Their imaginations were vivid, but not creative.

T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom:

Alice, of Alice Visits a Mosque to Learn About Judgment Day, Boreal Books, I believe said it best in comparing Muhammad’s irrational world to that of Bizarro.

Alice: I want to believe in God, in a god who is into reducing suffering not increasing it, and whose mercy is unconditional. I find it difficult to identify with Allah's definition of compassion and mercy, especially after what was revealed about Judgement Day.

Imam: What was revealed is that Allah will show mercy and compassion to those deserving of His Mercy and Compassion, the believers. DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND?

Alice: I do, in a bizarre sort of way.

Imam: What do you mean?

Alice: I used to read some of my brother’s comic books. Superman was my favorite, superman had his doppelganger…

Imam: Doppelganger!?

Alice: An opposite. Bizarro was superman's opposite. He lived on a "bizarro world" where up was down, left was right, go meant stop, goodbye meant hello ... Bizarro is a term often used to describe a person or thing that uses a twisted form of logic.

The Arabs did not see what was coming. Because of our willful ignorance of what Islam is all about, neither do we, and that has to change if we are to have any hope of at least containing the spread of the irrational.