أمريكي في مكة

:1:أمريكي في مكة
ميشيل ولف
أنا مسلم أعبد نفس الإله الذي تعبده أمي المسيحية وأبي اليهودي.الله هو الاسم العربي لرب إبراهيم وموسى وعيسى.وجدت أن عدم وجود القساوسة والحاخامات جاذب لي.الإسلام يعني توحيد الله وعبادته وحده مع التسليم له.كمسلم الله أقرب إلي من حبل الوريد.كل عام يحج ملايين الناس المؤمنين إلى مكة مرتدين ملابس الإحرام.ملابس الإحرام رمز.من يرتدي ملابس الإحرام لا يؤذي النبات أو الحيوان أو زميله الحاج .لا صخب لا جدال بل سلام سلام.أيضا من مزايا ملابس الإحرام عدم التمييز بين الغني و الفقير من يستطيع أن يحدد الفقير من الغني.في مكة قابلت ملايين البشر من جميع أرجاء الأرض ملبين نداء إبراهيم موحدين الله سبحانه.بالذهاب إلى الحج تخلف الدنيا والنشاط اليومي المعتاد إلى عالم آخر مليء بالأجواء الربانية و الروحانية.لحماية هذا المكان وطهارته الروحية للحجاج منطقة حرام حول مكة إلا للمسلمين.مكة المحاطة بالجبال مدينة حديثة يسكنها حوالي 1.2 مليون نسمة. في المشي حول أي بناية فيها كأنك ترى العالم .عند خروجي من الباب مسافة 15 ياردة هاأنا في أندونيسيا .مسافة متجرين هاهي أفريقيا.عند الزاوية باكستان ثم بنجلادش. معظم المسلمين 80% ليسوا عربا.
في الحج يقوم المسلمون بشعائر الحج التي تحوي رموزا كثيرة للخضوع لله فمثلا قبل الصلاة هناك الوضوء الذي يرمز للتطهير الروحي.الطواف حول الكعبة كتعبير عن جعل الله محور حياتنا.المبيت في منى والذهاب إلى صعيد عرفات سيرا على الأقدام والعيش ببساطة في الخيام عودة للأصل.بالوقوف في عرفات من الظهر حتى غروب الشمس لا احتفالات بل صلوات وأدعية وتأمل .الحج يدخل عقولنا وقلوبنا يذكرنا بيوم الحشر والقيامة.نحاسب انفسنا هل أدينا العبادات على أكمل وجه ؟هل آذيت أحدا؟هل انا شاكر حقا لنعم الله وعطاياه التي تحيط بنا من هواء وماء وعائلة وأصدقاء؟. قبل ان نغادر مكة نطوف طواف الوداع آخر وميض من المشاعر المقدسة. هناك مثل قديم يقول أنه قبل أن تزور مكة فانها توميء لك إيماء. أما عندما تخلفها خلفك فإنها تناديك أبدا .

الأصل باللغة الانجليزية

An American in Makkah
The Hajj experience of convert Michael Wolfe
I am a Muslim. I revere the same God as my Christian mother and my Jewish father. Allah is simply the Arabic word for the God of Abraham, Moses and Jesus. I find the absence of priests and rabbis attractive. Islam means acknowledging the oneness of God, surrendering to it, cooperating with the way things are. Being a Muslim, God is as near as the veins in my neck. During the Hajj each year, millions of faithful come to Mecca. The men and women wear simple lengths of unstitched cloth. The garments are a symbol. The person who wears them agrees not to harm plants and animals or fellow pilgrims. No arguments, no violence. We agree to keep the peace. The garments are a great leveler too. Who can tell rich from poor? Millions Descend on Mecca Here I join people from all over the earth, all these human beings drawn together by the call of an idea, by the oneness of God. We have left daily life behind and come to a place hardly belonging to this world, a place filled by the almost tangible presence of God. To preserve its sanctity and protect pilgrims, the sacred territory around Mecca is forbidden to all but Muslims. It lies hidden in the mountains of Saudi Arabia 50 miles from the Red Sea, a modern city of 1.2 million people. To walk around the block in Mecca is to walk around the world. I step out the door and for 15 yards, I’m in Indonesia. Down the street past a couple of stores and it’s Africa. Pakistan is just around the corner and then I’m in Bangladesh. A vast majority of the world’s one billion Muslims—80 percent—now live outside the Middle East. There are more than five million in the United States.
Muslims Perform Sacred Duties The duties of the Hajj are symbolic of the story and obligations of Islam. Before prayer, Muslims wash, representing ritual purity. The walk around the Ka’ba—the black stone block in the great mosque—is an expression of our desire to put God at the center of our lives. Pilgrims also make a journey to Mina and to the plain of Arafat, 13 miles outside of Mecca. Making our way on foot, we trade city streets and buildings for tents and carpets on the sand of the barren plain, giving up our usual comforts, getting back to basics. On the plain of Arafat, we perform the central obligation of the pilgrimage, to be here together from noon until sunset. There is no ceremony. We stroll, we pray, we meditate. The Hajj goes on inside the hearts and thoughts of each of us. This is a rehearsal for that day of judgment. How will we account for our acts? Have I injured anyone? Have I been grateful enough for the simple gifts of life, water, food, friends, family and the air I breath? Before leaving Mecca, we visit the Ka’ba one last time. For most of us, this will be our last glimpse of the shrine. There is an old proverb—before you visit Mecca, it beckons you. When you leave it behind, it calls you forever.
تحدثت معه أثناء الحج. CNN
Islamic scholar Michael Wolfe on the Hajj stampede


Michael Wolfe

March 5, 2001
Web posted at: 3:29 p.m. EST (2029 GMT)
(CNN) -- A stampede at the Hajj in Saudi Arabia on Monday killed 35 Muslim pilgrims, a civil defense chief said. The deaths occurred during the ritual of the symbolic "Stoning of Satan" that was performed by more than 2 million Muslims on a desert plain at Mina outside Mecca.
Michael Majid Wolfe is an Islamic scholar and the author of "One Thousand Roads to Mecca: Ten Centuries of Travelers Writing About the Muslim Pilgrimage."
CNN moderator: What effect has the stampede had on the pilgrimage?
Michael Wolfe: As far as I know, I can only detect among those who know about it a sadness. The Hajj area is many square miles. The accident occurred in a small part of the Hajj area. Many people won't know this happened until they watch it on television or read it in the local paper.

IN-DEPTH
The Hajj: Islam's Journey of Faith

• Key Hajj facts
• Pillars of Islam
• Hajj image gallery
• ***** map: The pilgrimage
• Video: Scenes of prayer

CNN's Riz Khan reports:
• Spiritual meaning
• Logistical challenge
• Women and Islam




CNN moderator: The stampede that occurred at this year's Hajj is tragic but not an isolated incident. Accidents are perhaps inevitable given the sheer crush of humanity there. But, in Koranic terms, is there a special significance in a death that occurs during the Hajj? Are the souls of such victims received differently into heaven?
Wolfe: A Muslim who dies on Hajj holds in his or her heart the notion that they've died on sacred ground. In Muslim tradition, this means they have an immediate access to paradise. To die on sacred ground is a blessing. This softens the suffering and the pain of the families of these people.
CNN moderator: The Saudi authorities have been widely praised in recent years for improvements in logistics and crowd control at the Hajj. What more can they do to prevent incidents such as this stampede from occurring in the future?
Wolfe: I am not a crowd control expert, but I think breaking up the crowd into smaller units and having them proceed unit by unit might help. Most of the difficulty seems to center around the Jammarat -- the area where the stoning takes place. Hopefully the experts will be able to concentrate on this area now that there is no doubt about where the problem spot is. The trick with the Jammarat crowd is never to pick up anything you drop. If you drop something, leave it. Keep moving forward. Unfortunately people stop to pick up what they drop. Sometimes then they get into a crush. So education plays a part here, too.
Question from chat room: Roughly, how many Muslims participate in the Hajj?
Wolfe: This year according to your statistics and the Saudi authority, about 2.7 million people. They come from 160 different countries. If you walk among the crowds here, you hear so many different languages and see so many different faces, skin color, height, weight, shapes of limbs. And you understand that Islam is a world religion.
Question from chat room: Is conversion to Islam popular?
Wolfe: It seems to be. I'm not a population expert, but I notice in the U.S., where I live, Islam has added about 2 million people to its numbers in the last 15 years. And it is called the fastest growing religion in the world. Conversion is particularly interesting in the Western world, where again, in the U.S., over half of the Muslims were born there and about 35 percent are African-American, who have become Muslim in the last 50 years. It's a very easy process, and there are so many shared concepts between Islam, Christianity and Judaism that conversion is a relatively simple affair.
Question from chat room: Have you seen a more organized worship anywhere in the world?
Wolfe: No. I have not. This is one of the images that sticks with me most powerfully about the Hajj. The idea of praying five times a day all over the world is a very orderly idea. To see this idea enacted by almost 3 million people in one space at the same time is awesome. When the prayer takes place in Mecca with this many people it's so quiet you can hear clothing rustle as the people change their postures. It is a stunning event. Also, to realize that while they are praying hundreds of millions of people around the world are also praying-- it just makes it that much more powerful.
Question from chat room: Is there any plan to build a proper public transport (i.e., light rail transit, subway, etc.) in Mecca and Medina?
Wolfe: That's a good question. About half of all pilgrims now walk from Arafat back to Mina, the longest part of the journey. Even 10 years ago that number was only 10 percent. The pilgrims themselves are getting tired of trucks and buses and cars. There was an experiment with a light rail train 25 years ago. It was a very small monorail. You can still see the lines if you look very hard for them in Mina. So far, that idea has not been developed. The best thing is to walk -- in my opinion. But I hope there is more investigation of this question.
CNN moderator: According to Islam, all Muslims are one community, or umma. But, as with Christianity and other faiths, there are various branches of Islam as well, with different interpretations of the religion -- ranging from Sufism to the Islamic interpretation of the Taleban in Afghanistan. Is there an effort by Islamic scholars and clerics to perhaps move toward reconciling various branches, in an effort to strengthen the faith and its propagation even further? Or is there room in a "big tent" for all interpretations?
Wolfe: Both. There is an enormous literature in the Islamic tradition, very lively, including many points of view. At the same time there is a strong tendency to give other people their due and their point of view, even if it isn't your own. People are people. Sometimes they argue. Most people would like to get along, and this is true of Muslims, too.
CNN moderator: When Islam speaks of "jihad," there are various interpretations of that phrase. Most people regard it as "holy war" -- but according to the Koran, it can also mean "opposition" or "resistance." Should such a term be taken to mean violent struggle? Or is there room in Islam for the kind of nonviolent struggle as practiced by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.?
Wolfe: Yes, there is plenty of room in Islam for the later. Jihad, if you had to attach one English word to define it, you would use the word struggle. From the earliest days in Islam, there have been two kinds of jihad. One is called the greater jihad, and the other is the lesser jihad. The greater jihad, or struggle, is the struggle against one's own ego: greed, selfishness. The lesser jihad is the struggle in defense of one's beliefs. When Mohammed returned to Mecca and conquered his homeland and the war of 10 years had ended, he told his people that the lesser jihad was over. And the greater jihad had begun. This is a word that is too often misused by non-Muslims and by Muslims.
CNN moderator: Do you have any final thoughts to share with us today?
Wolfe: The Hajj is an event that Muslims make once in a lifetime if they are able. From the outside it may look chaotic. From the inside, this is a very quiet crowd of people pursuing a spiritual event, in a sacred geography. It means a lot to each one of them. The Hajj may be on television, but it takes place in the hearts of the believers.
CNN moderator: Thank you for joining us today
Wolfe: Thank you, and it's always a pleasure.
Michaelf Wolfe joined the chat room via telephone from Jeddah, and CNN.com provided a typist. The above is an edited tran****** of the interview on Monday, March 05, 2001, at noon EST.

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