four million Muslims each year. My father was unable to accompany my mother on this trip, and because the rulings of Hajj require a female to be accompanied by a male, I was given the opportunity to visit Mecca. My visit to Mecca was life changing. The group tour was led by Ayatollah Shaikh Jafar al Baqiri, a relative of ours who resided in Melbourne during the last decades of his life. This trip to Mecca lasted 14 days, and paved the way for me to become more attached to my religion. On our first stop in Medina, I visited Masjid al Nabawi, Prophet Mohammad’s mosque and burial site, along with Al-Baqi, the demolished shrines of his household.
Islam teaches that prayers offered in Prophet Mohammad’s mosque are rewarded much more than prayers offered anywhere else.
Mecca is a rich city that reflects the history and development of Islam. Muslims believe its land is pure and sacred as it embraces the Kaba – the cuboid stone structure that is considered to be Allah’s holy home. Our tour bus stopped in front of the hotel where we were to stay for the next seven days. With the millions of pilgrims flooding the city and the congregational prayers at the Kaba, a queue extended to the front door of our hotel located one kilometer away. On my first day in Mecca, because of my sense of awe, I was extremely anxious entering the mosque that contains God’s home. The glory and ambience of the building captured me instantly.
During my first evening in Mecca, tens of our group members were speaking about their visit to the Kaba as an indescribable and unexplainable experience. I knew my time was coming, and that I would have to enter the holy mosque, but I wanted to enter with the right mindset and appropriate approach. The next morning, I performed my washing ritual and made my way towards the house of God, the Kaba. When I was younger, I was taught that every step towards the Kaba carries great rewards and every prayer performed around it is equal to a thousand or more prayers elsewhere.
I stood before God in the holy mosque, wearing nothing other than two pieces of cloth covering my body, representing complete detachment from the materialistic world and a connection to a high level of spirituality. This practice reminds us that at the beginning of creation we owned nothing, and that we will return to meet God wearing simple and humble material.
After completing my prayers, I began walking towards the glorious Kaba, feeling the gravity of the black cube drawing me towards it. I found myself gravitating towards and rotating around the house of God with four million other pilgrims. I felt breathless, gasping for air as I got closer to the Kaba. It was such an intense feeling. It became seriously hard to move and/or breathe as I reached the location of the “Black Rock,” a rock believed by Muslims to have descended from paradise.
We were taught that it’s a great honor to reach the Black Rock, which was mounted onto the Kaba by Prophet Mohammad. I was eager to touch the rock, and I knew I was going to achieve this. I looked at the bottom edge of the Kaba and noticed the base had a two-inch edge formed from thick marble tiles. Being younger and only weighing about fifty kilograms, I believed it would be a good idea to walk across the edge of the base of the Kaba and reach the Black Rock to avoid the wave of people. As I stepped on the edge, I was dragged down by an Indonesian female pilgrim who tried to climb up on the edge with me. I quickly got back onto the edge and moved towards the Black Rock. Finally, I was right above it. Being less than a meter from the ground, I threw myself onto the crowd made up of millions of pilgrims, all wanting to touch the Black Rock. The wave of people pushed me towards the Black Rock. I landed with my back towards the rock, sealing it completely. AllI had to do now was turn around and fulfil my wish of touching it. The one mistake I shall never forgive myself for was wearing a robe on that day. My robe became stuck between the people around me, preventing me from turning around to face the rock. I managed to touch the rock eventually, and the problem was now to get out of this wave of humanity. I felt myself beginning to suffocate. Luckily, I was dragged out of the crowd by a large African man whom I thanked profusely.
As I was completing my prayers, I noticed an elderly man from Pakistan who had lost the group he had come to Mecca with. I could not understand what he was saying but he showed me his hotel card, so I knew where he was residing – he was in the city. I did not know the route to the hotel, and he had difficulty walking. We walked all the way back to his hotel after some assistance from members of the public. When we reached the hotel, I entered to make sure it was the one he was residing in with his friends. He came in behind me to confirm that it indeed was the very hotel he was looking for. He had a smile on his face and insisted that I joined him for dinner. I excused myself as my mother was awaiting my return, but as I turned around he placed his hand on my shoulder, and I turned around to find him raising his hands towards the sky and praying for me. I felt very humbled by this gesture of his and sometimes I tell myself that this good deed might have been the reason behind the good I have been blessed with in later years.
We slept a night in Muzdalifah, one of the locations all pilgrims must visit. Upon waking up to offer my dawn prayers, I heard clapping followed by loud and happy cheering voices. Suddenly, Saudi Arabian authorities flooded the scene to arrest those who were celebrating. Moments later we learnt that Saddam Hussain had just been executed, and those celebrating were victims of the oppressive Ba’athist regime. They were Shia Muslims, and their happiness angered the Sunni and Saudi authorities who cherished their relationship with the Iraqi dictatorship.
An incident that I shall never forget occurred during this trip to Mecca. I was returning to the hotel after having lunch in a nearby restaurant and ran into the disgraced Grand Mufti of Australia, Taj El-Din al Hilaly. I discovered that he was residing in the same hotel as our group from Australia. We waited for the lift to come down, and as we both entered the lift, he asked what floor I was in. I responded saying level 5. He then pressed number 5 and number 14, which was the top floor. He then smiled at me and said, “I’m sleeping on the fourteenth floor, much closer to God.” This is when I realized that we as a Muslim community in Australia had serious problems. In my heart I told myself, there are taller buildings in Israel. I wonder if he thinks Jews are closer to God when residing on the 30th floor. If you haven’t heard of Hilaly, he was Australia’s first Grand Mufti, and the one who compared “uncovered” Australian women to cat meat.
We had also travelled to Medina before Mecca, where I first gazed on the dome of the mosque and mausoleum of Prophet Mohammad. This time I was standing in front of the Prophet Mohammad. I noticed a fence surrounding the grave with a Sharia Law police officer roaming the inside with his shoes on; I had never seen such disrespect, as we were taught to take our shoes off in revered and holy locations. I managed to pass through the crowd and get close to the grille of the holy grave. As I reached out to touch the window of the grave, the Sharia police officer struck my hand with a baton and yelled “Shirk!” which means “Paganism!” According to Wahhabism, seeking aid from the dead is paganism, even though the spirit of the dead will always remain alive. I exited the Mosque of Prophet Mohammad to walk to Al-Baqi Cemetery, where Mohammad’s family and household are buried. I saw the site that was demolished by fundamentalists, who believe that building domes over graves is a pagan ritual; but it somehow seemed perfectly acceptable for the Prophet Mohammad to have a grave and a dome only a few steps away. I realized that hatred towards the offspring of their own ProphetMohammad was deeply entrenched in their Wahhabi ideology, leading to the complete demolition of one of Islam’s most important shrines.
In Al-Baqi Cemetery, I saw my mother walking towards a group of females who had joined a tour group from Australia. I noticed that the group was completely segregated, with men separated from the women. Furthermore, I noticed that the clergyman of the group had disappeared. So, I asked one of the organizers why the group was segregated. He answered that Saudi Arabian authorities accuse Shia Muslim clergymen of engaging in sexual activities with females within the group. So, they separate the two genders to prevent such accusations and to avoid giving extremists an excuse to tarnish their reputation. It was after this incident that I realized that the hatred towards us as a Shia Muslim minority was very real.
I returned to Australia a more religious and astute Mohammad Tawhidi, who knew much more than he did before travelling to Medina
