Pilgrimage deepens faith of young Americans

Mina: The 20-year-old American tells his Haj stories a mile-a-minute, his hands moving in excitement about how he arrived in Makkah days ago, lost amid the massive crowds, and saw a man drop dead while circling the Ka'aba.

"Dude, I saw it, the guy had the most peaceful smile on his face," Adil Muschelewicz, performing the pilgrimage for the first time, said on Sunday.

The young man from Easley, South Carolina, had arrived alone in Makkah because of a travel agent mix-up that prevented his family from catching up for three days. He was with hundreds of thousands of others circling the Ka'aba, when he saw the elderly man fall dead. The body was quickly lifted out of the crowd.

Muschelewicz didn't know the cause of the man's death exhaustion maybe, he said but it became one of the many powerful religious moments that have shaken him during the trip.

"I looked at his face and I looked at the Ka'aba, and it was like he was happy, he'd gotten close to God. It just went boom, like this deep bassline in my heart," he said.

Emotional

"It was so emotional. I was by myself, in this wild place I'd never been before." For young American Muslims far from home, the Haj is an awesome adventure that they say not only deepens their faith and connects them with the wide range of Muslim peoples.

Amid the hundreds of thousands of people moving on foot for kilometres, you can turn and find the friend by your side has disappeared. Pilgrims often go days on only a few hours sleep.

It is also a sensory overload, with a soundtrack in languages from around the world Arabic, English, Turkish, Malay and Bahasa, Urdu and Hindi.

More than 20,000 Americans are participating in this year's Haj.

At the Haj, Muslims seek forgiveness of their sins and meditate on their faith.

But for American Muslim parents, it is also a chance to connect their children with a religious heritage they have only heard about growing up in the US. Some of the younger pilgrims children of immigrants from the Islamic world may have occasionally visited their parents' homelands.

Others, whose parents are converts to Islam like Muschelewicz have less direct connection to the Middle East.

"This is really a learning experience for the young," said Tabassam Qureshi, of Westchester, New York. He and other Americans were resting in their tent at Mina, a desert valley outside Makkah.

His son Amir slept nearby, recovering from burst blisters on his feet. The elder Qureshi recalled their own adventures over the past few days: spending 16 hours on a bus caught in traffic between Madinha and Makkah and sleeping outside on blankets in the dirt outside another holy site, Muzdalifa.

Help each other

"Today, I put my hand on Amir's shoulder and asked him what he's learned, and he said, 'sabr'" Arabic for patience, said Qureshi. "They learn that you have to help each other to get through difficulty. And he'll go back and tell his friends all about it." In the tent, the young men swapped tales about the past week. They talked about the awe they felt performing the rites, the people they had met.

Muschelewicz's father, Ken, said he and his wife had been planing the trip for two years, a chance for his son and daughter, Aliya, and mother-in-law to experience the pilgrimage, which he first took in 1995.

"It's been eye-opening for both of them," he said.

Tahar Amrouni, a 21-year-old from Houston, said that "you realise the sheer magnitude of the Muslim world, how different all the Muslim cultures are and what they share." "I see people here with only the clothes on their back, and I thank God for what I have," Amrouni said. As he spoke, his father came over and proudly handed him the knitted skull-cap worn by "Hajis," those who have performed the pilgrimage. Amrouni worked it down over his shaved head.

"Does it fit OK?" he asked. "I can't tell, is it on right?"