Jet-Age Pilgrimage : ‘Freeway’ to Mecca Serves Malaysians

Salamet Taib and his wife, Fatima, had come to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital, from the southern state of Johore. They were finishing paper work and waiting for visas, preparing to fulfill their obligation--and dream--as Muslims here at the edge of the Islamic world.

They were going to Mecca, making their first pilgrimage, the hajj . And, under a unique Malaysian program for Muslim pilgrims, they were going in relative style.

“We went for the package deal,” Salamet said. “Food, hotels, everything arranged.”

The fit-looking 42-year-old, with a brush haircut and wearing a red polo shirt, was comparing notes with a small group of this year’s pilgrims. By appearance, they could have been sitting around an Encino patio table, mapping out a trip to San Diego for a Padre game.

Season Begins in June

In some ways, the hajj has become a freeway run. When the season begins in late June, three DC-10 jumbo jets, leased from World Airways and filled with 380 Malaysian faithful apiece, will lift off every day from Kuala Lumpur’s international airport for the nine-hour flight to Jidda, the Saudi Arabian Red Sea port. There they will be sheltered in the vast Hajj Terminal, the first stop on what, for many Muslims, is a once-in-a-lifetime trip.

In times past, a lifetime was not necessarily enough. Historical accounts say some Muslims set out for Mecca as boys and arrived as old men. Many began the journey but never completed it, dying at sea, in Asian or African jungles or in Middle Eastern deserts. But, according to Muslim belief, anyone who had declared their intention and set out to make the hajj is guaranteed entrance to paradise.

Pitched Tents on Deck

“Before the world war, my grandfather made the voyage in a cargo boat of the old Blue Funnel Line,” recalled Mohammed Salleh, who will be making his second hajj and had joined the group making preparations here. “That was before they used passenger ships and long before airplanes were used. The pilgrims used to pitch tents right up on deck, my grandfather said, and they were blown to shreds by storms along the way.”

In his novel “Lord Jim,” Joseph Conrad described the 19th-Century pilgrims of Southeast Asia:

“They streamed aboard over three gangways, they streamed in urged by faith and the hope of paradise, they streamed in with a continuous tramp and shuffle of bare feet, without a word, a murmur or a look back. . . .

“Eight hundred men and women with faith and hopes, with affections and memories, they had collected there, coming from North and South and from the outskirts of the East, after treading the jungle paths, descending the rivers, coasting in prahus along the shallows, crossing in small canoes from island to island, passing through suffering, meeting strange sights, beset by strange fears, upheld by one desire.”

In the age of DC-10s--even executive jets if one can afford them--the magnetism of Mecca and the adventure of the hajj have not lessened. Last year, a record 24,640 people made the journey from Malaysia, one of the highest per capita rates for a Muslim country. All told, according to Saudi estimates, 2 million pilgrims arrived in the holy city during the 1986 hajj season. Before World War II, the figure never exceeded 100,000.

Tengku Sidek, a 36-year-old engineer, will be making his fourth hajj this year.

“I have four children,” he said, “and I have taken them to Disneyland and to Mecca. When I asked them which they’d rather visit this time, my son said: “Father, there’s no way I want to go to Disneyland.’ ”

What once was a perilous journey, even in Arabia, has now become merely strenuous. Shepherding pilgrims in the holy land is a milestone in logistics, with the Saudis given much credit for improving security and facilities. Mecca has become a city of modern hotels and restaurants, and the 45-mile road from Jidda is now a broad highway.

But no country has organized the hajj quite like Malaysia, where Muslims make up more than half the country’s 16 million population, Islam is the official religion and government policy is strongly pro-Islamic (and anti-Israel).

The effort is spearheaded by the Pilgrims Management and Fund Board, reporting directly to the prime minister and housed in a spectacular 38-story building in downtown Kuala Lumpur. Both the structure, a $45-million cylinder nipped in at the waist, and the board are known simply as Tabung Haji.

The director-general, Hanafiah Haji Ahmed, put it briefly in an interview: “This fund board was conceived to assist the pilgrim.”

But Tabung Haji is much more than a traveler’s aid society. It is a savings bank, an investment fund (food processing, flour mills, electronics and soap) and a conglomerate (transportation, agriculture, construction and real estate), all in the Islamic way, which encourages profits but forbids the paying out of interest.

Savers are, however, paid a “bonus” on profits, after the deduction of the zakat , the Islamic tithe that goes to the government’s department of religion.

When predecessor organizations were formed more than a quarter century ago, the focus was on savings. Prospective pilgrims often took years to accumulate the money needed for passage to Mecca and expenses in the Muslim holy city. The practice, particularly among the poor, was to bury the cash in earthenware jars or put it under carpets, a “clean” method of saving without incurring the forbidden interest.

Sold Land, Possessions

Others would sell their land or other possessions to raise money for the journey.

“We know that families would sell off their farms so they could go,” Hanafiah said.

Both practices had a harmful effect on Muslim society in Malaysia, a thin majority in a country with large Chinese and Indian communities. Hidden and idle savings robbed the Muslim community of investment opportunities, and the property sales left returning pilgrims in poverty. The founders of Tabung Haji and its forebears clearly had in mind strengthening the economic position of Muslims while organizing the hajj at the same time.

The Koran, the Islamic holy book, says that all Muslims, both men and women, should make the hajj, but only if they can afford it. Under the Tabung Haji formula, savings are encouraged to finance the trip.

The hajj, Hanafiah said, “is a case of conviction . . . we believe in God.” It is also an obligation, one of the five tenets of Islam, along with faith, prayer, fasting and giving alms. “And when you come back to your village,” Hanafiah explained, “you are given certain respect, treated as an elder.”

Those who have made the journey and performed the rituals become known as hajis , which many, like Hanafiah, incorporate into their name. In a crowd they can be identified by a distinctive white cap, a symbol of the haji.

Extending both the financial and hajj services over the years, the Tabung Haji headquarters staff has grown to nearly 1,000. Savings accounts have topped $600 million. Muslims from other countries, including the United States, have come to Tabung Haji for help in making their pilgrimage.

Learn Rituals

For first-time pilgrims like Salamet and Fatima Taib of Johore, the process at Tabung Haji includes an orientation program in the daunting rituals to be performed in the holy city.

“You don’t know what you have to face over there,” Salamet pointed out. “You want to memorize the ritual as much as possible so when you are in the holy land, you can concentrate on the religious experience.”

For all pilgrims, the staff provides help with passports and visas, flights and welfare and medical needs. The cost is a minimum of 5,000 Malaysian ringgits (about $2,100), with another 1,000 ringgits for expenses. Each pilgrim leaves Malaysia with a hajj kit provided by Tabung Haji--manuals, water bottles, prayer rugs.

During the season, 40 staff representatives are stationed in Saudi Arabia to offer special services, including medical care and Malaysian meals.

“Arab food is a bit greasy,” one staffer noted.

The general handling of the pilgrims, however, is left to the Saudis, the keepers of the Islamic holy places in and around Mecca.

Muslims can go to Mecca to pray at any time--non-Muslims, however, are barred from the area--and many make a short trip called an umrah , or, as the Tabung Haji staffers say, “the mini-hajj.”

The hajj, however, follows a prescribed pattern, takes an average of 30 days--many Malaysian firms grant hajj leave--and is rooted in the history of Islam. Mecca is the center point. It was the birthplace of the Prophet Mohammed. In Islamic belief, it was also the place where the patriarch Abraham was called upon to sacrifice his son Ismhael.

It was there that Abraham left his woman Hagar and Ishmael to wander in the desert. On the third day of Abraham’s absence and without water, Hagar ran seven times between two hills, seeking mercy. The Archangel Gabriel created for her the Well of Zamzam, whose waters are drawn by pilgrims today.

When God spared Ishmael from sacrifice, the father and son built a temple at Mecca, embedding a miraculously produced black stone in the southeast corner.

According to the Koran, God spoke to Abraham: “And proclaim the pilgrimage among men; they will come to thee on foot and on every kind of camel, lean on account of journeys through deep and distant mountain highways. . . .

“Then let them complete the rites prescribed for them, perform their vows and circumambulate the Ancient House.”

A 50-foot-high stone block structure, the Kaaba, standing in the courtyard of the Grand Mosque of Mecca, is revered by Muslims as Abraham’s church, later cleansed of idolaters by Mohammed.

At the height of the Hajj season, 500,000 faithful will jam the Grand Mosque, circling the Kaaba seven times, counterclockwise, kissing or touching the black stone each time they pass the southeast corner, or, if they cannot get close, pointing at it. In an adjacent covered corridor, pilgrims run seven times between two hills, re-creating the ordeal of Hagar.

The men are dressed in two pieces of simple, seamless white cloth, the women in any modest gown with their heads covered. Elderly or sick pilgrims are borne on stretchers or chairs, seven times around the Kaaba.

Even in the multitude, the concentration is inward.

“I shook,” said Tengku Sidek, the engineer, of his first trip to the mosque. Added another haji, Said Mohammed: “It’s like an electric shock. I felt my body thumping.”

Visit Other Sites

And the mosque in Mecca is not the highlight of the hajj. To complete the journey, a pilgrim must visit several sites within a hot and dusty mountain valley called Haram, 20 miles long and six miles wide. The most important stop is on the Plain of Arafat, precisely on the 10th day of the Muslim month of Dhu al-Hijjah. It was above the plain, seated on a camel on the Mount of Mercy, that Mohammed gave his last address to the faithful, just months before he died in 632 AD.

A pilgrim can miss any other stop in the holy land, but if he is not on the Plain of Arafat on the 10th of Dhu al-Hijjah, he will not fulfill his obligation. On the 9th, planes are landing at Jidda at the rate of one a minute.

“This is the roll call,” Mohammed Salleh said. “There will be 2 million people on the plain. It’s an incredible experience.”

The pilgrims are provided tents--air-conditioned ones for the wealthy--and the main risk is getting lost.

“I was sure I’d lose my wife in that throng,” he said. “I made her wear a lilac ribbon on the back of her head.”

After a feast concluding the hajj, and often a trip to the holy city of Medina, the pilgrims will begin to trickle home, to nearby Arab states, to Africa, to China, Europe and the Americas, and here to Southeast Asia, where the devout pray five times a day, facing west.