Eid al-Adha

God is greater. A prayer that bursts from thousands of throats, in strength and faith before man, and in lowliness and reverence before the Judge. God is greater than the gods carved as idols in stone and marble. God is greater than kings, all kings, and greater than tyrants, all tyrants; greater than the Caesars and the Chosroes. God is greater than money and pride, than lineage and pedigree, than the sword and oppression, than lust and sin. God is greater than the jahiliyya, all the jahiliyya, however fierce it grows, however it arms itself, however far it spreads. God—with all that His name enfolds of the meanings of goodness and virtue, of love and beauty—is greater than all the material powers that make their assault as falsehood does, and then soon scatter into dust before the truth of the One God.

This prayer, so brief in its wording, so far-reaching in its aim and its meaning, bursts from the throats of thousands of people, come from the four quarters of the inhabited world. Their faces differ and their tongues are many, yet they have put on a single garment—the simplest garment possible—and set to repeating, with one heart and one tongue: God is greater. And so the message of the Divine Unity is fulfilled in essence and appearance alike.

The French philosopher Bergson—one of the spiritual philosophers who believe in God—says: every religion must have its rites and ceremonies. Human beings, on the whole, cannot give themselves purely to God unless this is accompanied by movements and stillnesses in which beliefs take body and by which faith is nourished; and prayer and fasting, according to systems, rules, and appointed times, are precisely of this kind. And when I review the rites and ceremonies of Islam, I find the pilgrimage—the fifth pillar—great among these rites and ceremonies, abundant in effect in carrying out religion's message: that is, in refining people spiritually and cultivating them socially—that is, in making them happy in the next world and in this one.

The pilgrimage is, before all else, a goal hard of attainment; it is not within the reach of every Muslim, as fasting and prayer are. It is fraught with hardship—above all in the days when it was made on the backs of camels—and it demands expense. That is, it is reserved for the striving, struggling Muslim, and closed to the idle stay-at-home. Whoever would enjoy its blessings, would see from close at hand the qibla toward which he turns every day in his prayer, and would dwell beside the place where the revelation came down, must go forth in the land and earn an honest living that will provide him the costs of the blessed journey.

And he must at the same time be of such strength of mettle and resolve as to bear the toils of travel and its dangers.

Then comes the running between al-Safa and al-Marwa seven times, which reminds the pilgrim in a practical way that our lady Hagar would never have found the water to slake the thirst of her child Ishmael, had she sat down to bewail her lot and despair of water's existence. He remembers that in movement there is blessing, and that resolve triumphs at the most critical of moments and over the worst of circumstances.

And in the stoning of Iblis with the seven pebbles there is a splendid symbol. O Muslim, it is not enough for you to curse Iblis and flee from him; you must wage against him an all-out war, and feel in yourself the power to defy him and strike him—once, and twice, and seven times if need be—until you destroy him: that is, vice and lust and folly; that is, everything that troubles the serenity of this life and disfigures its beauty and its harmony.

As for the ihram—how magnificent an emblem, in which humanity reaches its utmost limit. With the ihram the pilgrims cast off the clothes they are used to, as though they were casting off their stains and their sins; they cast off ease, lavishness, and luxury, and put on austerity and plainness—white cloth, symbol of purity, simple, unsewn, without trace of craft or ornament in it—and they all appear, rich and poor, princes and paupers, white and yellow and black, Arabs and Tatars, men and women, as equal as the teeth of a comb; and they learn by tangible means that thus they were created and thus they stand before God, none having merit over another by his lineage or his pedigree, his silk or his velvet—merit lies only in piety and good works; and that the ihram is a kind of general rehearsal for the Day of

Gathering, the day when people are raised up to their Lord and stand before His heavenly court, with nothing to shield them but their souls and the good they have sent before them.

As for the standing on Arafat, it is the recompense and the reward. Yes, O righteous Muslim: you have run and you have prayed; you have been smelted—a giant before Satan, lowly before the Merciful; you have been purified of your defilement, and so the reward is rightfully yours; it is rightfully yours to reach the summit, the summit attained only by the repentant and the sincere—so blessings upon you.

And in the pilgrimage, in the spot that brought forth Muhammad—peace be upon him—on the earth where he walked with guidance, his lance never bending, Muslims come to know one another and to love one another. Acquaintance here means the exchange of knowledge, and mutual love means understanding. Who can count the benefits mankind used to reap from this annual world congress, before congresses existed, before communications became easy, before inventions multiplied? Who can count the books the pilgrims carried back to their countries, and the information, and the customs?

People may well disfigure many of the rites of religions, till they become theatrical gestures and hollow appearances; they may—if there is no one among them to open their eyes and sharpen their feeling—forget what lies behind the symbol, through the working of repetition. Prayer may become a habit, and fasting an endurance. But however locked people's hearts and however narrow their horizons, however ingenious they grow in disfiguring the rites of religions, they will never be able to touch with harm the merits of acquaintance and understanding in the pilgrimage; they will not stand in the way of the blessings of contact between human beings, and the drawing-together that contact works. Indeed, it is within people's power to make this world congress, convened in the shelter of God and under the banner of a spiritual ideology, more successful and deeper in effect, by preparing for it a wholesome bodily atmosphere—an atmosphere of the utmost cleanliness, order, and arrangement. It is in their power to profit from civilization, which is part of God's guidance, and to call upon its best means to secure health, comfort, and beauty around the Ancient House, laden with the majesty of antiquity and the lights of heaven.

Yes, the pilgrimage is spiritual peace and a social message with a comprehensive human aim, and we must restore to it all its meanings in the light of the development of modern societies, so that in this season there convene scientific, economic, and political circles. And all Muslims must share in building up the places of pilgrimage, and in making them the finest spot in the Islamic world, so that the pilgrim, from wherever he comes, feels that Islam—which says, work for your world as though you would live forever, and work for your hereafter as though you would die tomorrow—has reached the summit in its own home, and that this home is a wing of Paradise.