RALEIGH -- Three million Muslims from across the world are participating in the annual pilgrimage toMecca today. On Wednesday, students from the Al-Iman School got a chance to walk in their shoes.
About 188 children, students at the Muslim day school off Ligon Street, walked the floor of the Al-Iman gym to re-create the five-day journey that adult Muslims are making. At one end, they boarded a make-believe plane to Saudi Arabia. In the middle of the gym they circled a velvet-draped Kaaba look-alike representing the black cubed building in Mecca that is Islam's most sacred site. At yet another spot, they ran between the Safa and Marwah hills.
"This is part of our curriculum, and we wanted to make it more interactive," said Mussarut Jabeen, principal of the Raleigh private school.
The annual pilgrimage, known as the hajj, is a journeythat Muslims are required to undertake once in their lives if they are physically able.
Many Muslims know about the various stages of the pilgrimage. But very few get a chance to physically re-create the journey.
Last year, Barbara Abdalqader, vice president of the school PTA, heard about some Muslim schools in New Jersey creating a mock pilgrimage and decided Al-Iman could do it, too. She built the Kaaba in her garage from plastic plumbing pipes and draped a sheet of black velvet around the cube she constructed.
"This has been a learning process for me," said Abdalqader, who recently converted to Islam. Her daughter Sabrina, 6, a first-grader at the school, performed the re-enactment along with the other children in grades kindergarten through eight.
The boys wore long white tunics similar to the two-part garment men are required to wear during the pilgrimage. The girls, for the most part, wore black dresses, though there is no dress code for women making the hajj.
The white tunics symbolize equality and unity, and that is a big part of the meaning of the pilgrimage for Muslims. During the pilgrimage more than at any other time, Muslims share a membership in a worldwide community of fellow believers.
"The whole purpose of the hajj is that we are equal in the eyes of God," said Jabeen, the school principal. "Everybody looks the same, and they are there to worship God and follow his teachings."
Eid-al-Adha
The pinnacle of the hajj is the Eid-al-Adha, a celebration during which Muslims slaughter an animal as a way of remembering Abraham and his willingness to sacrifice his son for God.
This year, Eid-al-Adha falls on Friday, and some Muslims planned to postpone their Thanksgiving feast to coincide with the religious holiday. The Muslim year is determined by the lunar calendar, which is 11 days shorter than the Gregorian calendar. That means the days of the Muslim holidays change from year to year.
At the end of the re-enactment Wednesday, students got to go outside to see some goats in a pen. Although lambs or goats are typically slaughtered for Eid-al-Adha, most Muslims nowadays pay someone to have the animal slaughtered and distribute the meat among family, friends and the needy.
Thirteen-year-old Muhammad Samara, who helped guide the children through the re-enactment, said he liked the experience and learned a lot. But asked whether he was ready for the real pilgrimage, he replied, "You have to reach the age of puberty to do the hajj."
