The Hajj

Normally I wouldn’t give it a passing thought, mainly because it was a transitory incident that aroused no more than a ripple of curiosity. I came across it in an Associated Press report from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia— “Police in Mecca say they have arrested a Saudi taxi driver who helped an Israeli-Jewish reporter sneak into Islam’s holiest city, defying a rule that only Muslims can enter the area.

Gil Tamari a veteran Israeli reporter was among three Israeli reporters who had been allowed into Saudi Arabia to cover President Biden’s visit. However, Tamari, Israeli TV channel 13 world news editor, came to Saudi Arabia for another purpose. He badly needed a scoop to invigorate his newsmedia image. So, he hired a taxi and without revealing his Israeli identity asked the driver to take him to Mecca.

He filmed a selfie at various sites in and around Mecca. The lightly edited segment was aired on Channel 13, Monday night prime-time. Among the places he visited was Mount Arafat, a key site on the hajj pilgrimage route where Muhammad delivered his final sermon some 1,400 years ago.

There was an immediate backlash on social media, especially from Muslims expressing their anger over his deception and apparent disregard for the sanctity of the site.

The reporter and Channel 13 responded on Twitter after the report aired. The news channel, in both Hebrew and Arabic, said Tamari’s report was driven by “journalistic curiosity” and a desire to witness and see things firsthand. The channel apologised for any offense caused by his visit,

This preamble serves to introduce the main topic, a relatively new study of Britain’s involvement in the Hajj.

Dr. John Slight, from the Faculty of History and a Research Fellow at St John’s College, University of Cambridge has written about the British Empire’s responsibilities regarding the Hajj. “Contrary to its remote, even exotic image, he argues that the pilgrimage, which millions of Muslims undertake at least once in their lives was at one time a matter of major British concern. Leading historical figures, and the general public, became fascinated by the ritual, as the business of running a vast Empire impelled Britain to behave as if it was a Muslim power in its own right.

Queen Victoria, King George V, Lord Kitchener, Lawrence of Arabia and Winston Churchill all took an active interest in the Hajj, debated its management, and pencilled it into their calendars.

Slight’s research covered a period from 1865, when a cholera outbreak forced Britain to manage the Hajj more pro-actively, to 1956, when the Suez Crisis significantly reduced its capacity to do so.

For most of that time, Britain ruled over approximately half of the world’s Muslims, across an area that stretched from West Africa to Southeast Asia. In global terms, the Empire’s first religion was Islam, and the Empire contained more Muslims than any other religious group.

As a result, the Hajj became a British question. Churchill himself observed in a 1920 memo to the British Cabinet: “We are the greatest Mohammedan power in the world. It is our duty to study policies which are in harmony with Mohammedan feeling.”

Slight’s research reveals that Britain’s stewardship of the Hajj started with controls to prevent disease, but soon expanded into a full-blown bureaucracy. By the mid-to-late 19th century, the British authorities were increasingly obliged to manage the pilgrimage so as to be seen as a friend and protector of Islam.

“It was one of the most significant unintended consequences of Britain’s rule over a large part of the Islamic world,” Slight said. “Britain ended up facilitating the pilgrimage in an ultimately futile attempt to gain legitimacy among its Muslim subjects. Inadvertently, it ended up acting like a Muslim power.”

Thomas Cook was called in by the Government in 1886, after a scandal surrounding the near-sinking of a pilgrim ship that made the front page of The Times. The firm was given a contract to arrange tickets, train journeys, ships and other logistics enabling Muslims living in India, as subjects of the British Crown, to perform Hajj.

However, hundreds of thousands of destitute, “pauper” pilgrims barely able to go in the first place, ran out of money by the time they reached Mecca and were stranded at Jeddah. Repatriating them proved an ongoing problem for the British government.

By the First World War, Britain was essentially underwriting the cost of taking these pilgrims home, at great expense.

“We have the idea that the British Empire was run through some sort of top-down imposition of power, but in fact, it was a very haphazard enterprise,” Slight said. “Instead of an image of British officials in their pith helmets dispensing justice to colonial subjects, this is a story where the main actors on both sides were Muslims, who to some extent shaped Imperial policy.”

Gil Tamari’s foolhardy visit to Mecca is not without precedent. Other visitors were more discreet, better informed and well disguised.

Sir Richard Francis Burton, British explorer, writer, scholar, and soldier was one of them. He was famed for his travels and explorations in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures. According to one count, he spoke twenty-nine European, Asian, and African languages.

Burton's best-known achievements include: a well-documented journey to Mecca in 1853, when Europeans were forbidden access on pain of death;

Although Burton was certainly not the first non-Muslim European to make the Hajj (Ludovico di Varthema did this in 1503 and Johann Ludwig Burckhardt in 1815), his pilgrimage is the most famous and the best documented of the time. He adopted various disguises including that of a Pashtun to account for any oddities in speech, but he still had to demonstrate an understanding of intricate Islamic traditions, and a familiarity with the minutiae of Eastern manners and etiquette.

I’ll conclude with some good news from Saudi Arabia.

A Saudi family investment vehicle with ties to the world’s largest Islamic bank has become the biggest shareholder in Israeli mobility intelligence company Otonomo Technologies Ltd.

 Mithaq Capital SPC, a family office for the AlRajhi family that is incorporated in the Cayman Islands but headquartered in Riyadh, recently increased its stake in the Israel-based company to 20.41%, according to a July 20 regulatory filing. 

“We like the innovation and the technology culture that Israel has, and we try to find ways to benefit from that,” said Muhammad Asif Seemab, managing director of Mithaq Capital. “As part of our investment process -- other than Shariah compliance -- we are country-agnostic, and sector-agnostic.”

 

Have a good weekend.

 

Beni,                                                               28^th of July, 2022