Possible Muslim Boycott of Haj to Mecca Fraught with Significant Religious and Political Consequences

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 3 – Angered by Riyadh’s policies, Muslim leaders in several countries are urging Muslims to avoid making the haj to Mecca, arguing that going to that Saudi site is “a sin” rather than a fulfillment of one of “the five pillars of Islam” that the faithful are required to perform (svoboda.org/a/30035223.html).

            It appears unlikely that many Muslims will follow this advice. But the fact that what would have been unthinkable only a few years ago is now being promoted by leaders as authoritative as Libya’s Grand Mufti Sadiq al-Gariani both reflects and intensifies centrifugal forces within the world of Islam.

            In few other places than the post-Soviet space are these likely to be as great. During most of the Soviet period, no Muslims from the USSR were able to make the haj to Mecca and both rising costs and such appeals may mean that fewer will do so in the future. But unwillingness or inability to go to Mecca did not and will not satisfy the demand for making a pilgrimage.

            In Soviet times, many Muslims, especially in the North Caucasus but elsewhere as well, who could not hope to travel to Mecca chose instead to make pilgrimages to local holy sites, sometimes the tombs of Sufi saints and others to shrines commemorating one or another historical event.

            That pattern gave those who controlled these saints, typically underground mullahs or Sufi adepts, far more influence than they might otherwise have had and meant that when the Soviet system disintegrated, these groups played a much larger role than might otherwise have been expected.

            Some of that interest in local pilgrimages fell as more and more Muslims from the post-Soviet states have made the haj, but now it again is on the rise, with various national governments hoping to profit from what they are already calling “an alternative to the haj” in public (fergana.agency/photos/108509/; cf. windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/12/tashkent-hopes-to-profit-by-promoting.html).

            To the extent that occurs, it would likely mean not a lessening of Islamic devotion but rather a shift from Saudi-promoted Wahhabism which many post-Soviet states view as an immediate threat to Sufi-linked or other traditional forms that almost certainly will pose a greater challenge over the longer term to governments interested in promoting secularism.