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Pilgrims Find Changes on Both Ends of Journey
amatullah
02/16/03 at 20:57:49
February 16, 2003
By SUSAN SACHS


On the way home from the hajj, his emotion-laden pilgrimage
to Islam's holy shrines in Saudi Arabia, Shamsul Quadir
began to worry that he might get in trouble for coming back
a changed man.

"I left clean-shaven and with a full head of hair, and now
look at me," Mr. Quadir said after clearing the immigration
and customs booths at Kennedy International Airport in New
York on Friday.

Indeed, Mr. Quadir, a Pakistan-born shopkeeper from
Louisiana, wore a five-day growth of dark beard, and when
he shyly lifted his baseball cap he revealed a bare, shiny
scalp. In the Muslim tradition, he had shaved his head as a
sign of piety, and his appearance did not quite match his
passport picture.

"I was a little scared," he said, "with all the security
issues."

So it was for many American Muslims on their homecoming
from this year's annual religious pilgrimage to the
birthplace of Islam, an event that would normally stand as
the unalloyed religious high point of their lives.

They came back transformed, often physically and certainly
spiritually. They also arrived, with a jolt, back in a
country on heightened alert for hidden terrorists.

Many of the returning pilgrims, disconnected from the press
of daily news and living in vast tent cities in Mecca,
learned only on their way home that the national threat
level had been raised over fears of terror attacks timed to
coincide with the end of the hajj.

Their journey brought more than a mood shift. In the United
States, many Muslims have felt on edge since Sept. 11 and
defensive about the image of Islam. In Saudi Arabia, they
said, even in a throng of nearly two million Muslims during
a solemn ceremony meant to erase such differences, they
felt the distinction of being American.

Again and again in interviews, the first wave of returning
pilgrims spoke of how Muslims from other countries made a
point of probing whether they were truly comfortable living
in the United States after the terrorist attacks of Sept.
11.

"When they'd see me and realize I was American, they acted
as though I must have an F.B.I. agent following me
everywhere and that I was fingerprinted at every grocery
store," said Irfan Malik, a Baltimore engineer of Pakistani
descent on his first hajj.

"They had all these misconceptions," Mr. Malik added.
"They'd heard that some Muslims were getting arrested and
then assumed that everyone was getting arrested."

Mr. Malik, 49, said he tried hard to reassure the people he
met in Saudi Arabia that his family's life was normal, that
government agents were indeed arresting and investigating
some Muslims, but that over all, Muslim Americans had a
voice in their country's affairs.

When he felt hints of hostility, it was directed toward
American policy in the Middle East and the prospect of war
on Iraq.

"We didn't hear anyone saying Saddam is a good guy, yet
also they didn't want thousands and thousands of orphans
and people being killed," Mr. Malik said.

Customs and immigration officials said they were not
singling out the hajj flights from the Middle East for
special attention. All border entry points to the United
States, they said, have been on high alert for terrorists.

A spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in New
York, where many of the direct hajj flights land, also said
strict security precautions were being applied to all
passengers and flights.

Immigration officials said both Saudia and Egypt Air, the
airlines that most American hajj travel agencies used, were
among the airlines that now provided passenger manifests to
authorities here while their flights were en route to the
United States. The names are supposed to be compared
against those on databases of suspected terrorists before
the flights arrive.

Those pilgrims who returned over the past two days said
they had been told to expect long waits at the airports,
going out and coming back, for extra security checks. Some
were taken to the airport in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, six
hours or more in advance of their return flights and said
that their bags were opened and searched when leaving Saudi
Arabia and searched again as they transferred to connecting
flights in the United States.

Dr. Aziz Ahmad, a lean man in a white skullcap, was one of
American Muslims who learned about the alarm in the United
States on the plane coming home to New York City.

That is when he heard, as well, that the Bush
administration had advised Americans to stock up on things
like duct tape and plastic sheeting to seal their homes in
the case of a biological or chemical attack.

Dr. Ahmad, 31, was not at all sure whether airport
officials would consider him prescient or suspect when they
saw his luggage, which he had wrapped in duct tape before
leaving Saudi Arabia to keep it closed.

"Anyway, I've still got some left," he said after greeting
his father at the airport.

Making the pilgrimage, which starts on the eighth day of
the 12th month of the Muslim lunar calendar, is a
requirement in Islam, an obligation that every adult Muslim
with the financial means and physical ability is supposed
to complete at least once.

It is an arduous experience, not least because of the
polyglot crowds from all over the world. The hajj involves
long uphill walks, camping out and exacting rules for when
and how to pray during symbolic rituals re-enacting events
in the life of the biblical patriarch Abraham and his son
Ishmael. Muslims regard Abraham as a prophet and Ishmael as
the father of the Arabs.

"It's a very humbling experience," said Mona Negm, a
retiree who left her home in Baltimore to perform the hajj
in honor of her mother, who at 80 was too infirm to go.
"There are people who can't walk, who don't have the means
to be living in luxury, and we all gather in one place and
we all worship one god."

It is also exhausting. "It's like giving birth," Mrs. Negm
said as she waited, clutching a hard-bound edition of the
Koran, to transfer planes in New York. "It hurts when
you're going through it, but then you just remember the
wonder of the experience."

Mrs. Negm, too, was struck by how often she was asked about
discrimination in the United States. She shrugged the
questions off. "They're fascinated to know how we're being
treated," she said. "I just say it's a wonderful country,
and we're lucky to be part of it."

This year's hajj drew more than 1.9 million Muslims to
Mecca, according to Saudi authorities. All but about
500,000 of the pilgrims came from outside Saudi Arabia,
with at least 10,000 of them from the United States.

For this year's pilgrimage, Saudi authorities issued visas
only to people who came as part of tour groups organized by
travel agencies accredited by the Saudi government. As a
result, many pilgrims spent much of their time with fellow
Americans.

Some people, though, said they felt an undercurrents of
hostility toward the United States and, by extension, to
the American pilgrims.

Faheem Zahir, 49, from Bridgeport, Conn., could not shake
the memory of standing in a pharmacy in Medina, where the
prophet Muhammad is buried, and waiting in vain to buy
cough medicine. The pharmacist, Mr. Zahir said, pointedly
ignored him.

"This was supposed to be my Muslim brother," Mr. Zahir
recalled when he landed in New York. "I did feel some
discrimination because I was American. It just wasn't a
good experience."

Others said they managed to come to a mutual understanding
with those they met.

Dr. Hahd Alsaghir, a physician from Bloomfield Hills,
Mich., said an Indonesian man cornered him for 45 minutes
after discovering he is American, peppering him with
questions about the situation of Muslims in the United
States.

"I talked about how people need a better understanding of
Islam and how we've been connected to terrorism and it's
not fair," said Dr. Alsaghir after arriving in Detroit. "We
are both frustrated by the far right in our religion."


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