The Pilgrim's ProgressivenessDoes going to Mecca make Muslims more moderate?

By Ray Fisman
Posted Friday, April 25, 2008, at 7:05 AM ET
Muslim pilgrims in the holy city of Mecca

Last
December, more than 2 million Muslims from around the world converged
on Saudi Arabia to participate in the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to
the holy site of Mecca. The Hajjis spent a month performing religious
rituals, mingling with Muslims from all walks of life, and, in some
cases, taking part in communal chants of "Death to America" led by Islamic extremists. This was understandably unnerving
to the 10,000 or so Americans who made the pilgrimage, not to mention
those who didn't. Such behavior raised concerns that the Hajj is a
breeding ground for anti-Western sentiment—or worse.

Then
again, the spirit of friendship and community that typically prevails
during the Hajj has also been known to promote tolerance and
understanding across peoples. Malcolm X famously softened his views on
black-white relations during his pilgrimage to Mecca, where he
witnessed a "spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in
America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and
non-white."

So does the Hajj open minds, or does it expose
Muslims to radical views that unite them against the non-Islamic world?
To find out, researchers David Clingingsmith, Asim Khwaja, and Michael Kremer surveyed more than 1,600 Pakistanis, about half of whom went on the Hajj in 2006. In a recent, as yet unpublished study,
they report that those who went to Mecca came back with more moderate
views on a range of issues, both religious and nonreligious, suggesting
that the Hajj may be helpful in curbing the spread of extremism in the
Islamic world.

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All
Muslims are expected to make the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in
their lives, though many have to overcome significant obstacles to do
so. The Hajj is a huge expense for a typical Pakistani. The cost of
making the trip starts at $2,500, nearly three times Pakistan's average
income. Poor families save for years in order to attend. And what does
$2,500 buy you? A once-in-a-lifetime religious experience, but one that
involves a month of sleeping on a hard mattress in an overcrowded
hostel and travel that often requires trekking dozens of miles through
the desert to visit various pilgrimage sites.

Despite these
hardships, there are many more Pakistanis who wish to go to Mecca each
year than there are Saudi visas. In 2006, nearly 140,000 applicants
vied for 80,000 visas through the Pakistan government's Hajj program.
In order to decide who gets to go, the government holds a lottery. As a
result, among the visa applicants, there's a group of people randomly
selected to participate in the Hajj and a comparison group of would-be
pilgrims who applied but didn't get to go. The two groups look very
similar—the only systematic difference is that applicants in one group
won the lottery and those in the other group didn't. If the Hajjis come
back from Mecca more tolerant than those who didn't get to go,
therefore, we know it's the result of the Hajj, not something else.

Six
months after the Hajjis of '06 returned home to Pakistan,
Clingingsmith, Khwaja, and Kremer had a survey team track down 1,600
Hajj applicants, half of whom had been selected to go to Mecca and half
who hadn't. The Hajjis were asked questions on topics ranging from
religious practices (frequency of prayer and mosque attendance, for
example) to women's issues. Perhaps not surprisingly, the study found
that after a monthlong immersion in communal prayer, the pilgrims were
15 percent more likely to report following mainstream Muslim practices,
such as praying five times a day and reciting the Quran. This came at
the expense of local Pakistani religious traditions—Hajjis were 10
percent less likely to follow local rituals like using amulets or
visiting the tombs of local saints.

But the changes from the Hajj experience transcended mere shifts in
religious observance, inspiring many pilgrims with newfound feelings of
tolerance. While in Mecca, Hajjis can't help but rub shoulders with
Muslims of every shape and size. Sunni and Shiite, African and
Pakistani, all live and pray together as a single congregation of
millions. This intermixing of peoples in Mecca seems to have caused the
Pakistani Hajjis to express more tolerant views of other Muslims. Just
over half of the Pakistanis who didn't go on the Hajj told the survey
team that they had a positive view of other Muslim countries. This
figure jumped to nearly 70 percent among Hajj survey respondents.

Even more surprising, Hajjis were 25 percent less
likely to believe that it was impossible for Muslims of different
ethnicities or sects to live together in harmony—a finding that would
seem to be of particular interest for those trying to bring peace to
the streets of Baghdad. This greater sense of goodwill among peoples
even extended to non-Muslims (who were obviously not represented in
Mecca). Hajjis were more likely than non-Hajjis to hold the opinion
that people of all religions can live in harmony. Hajjis were also less
likely to feel that extreme methods—such as suicide bombings or attacks
on civilians—could be justified in dealing with disagreements between
Muslims and non-Muslims.

The findings of the study suggest that
the Hajj may help to improve the lot of women in Islamic countries as
well. Fewer Hajjis thought that men are intellectually superior to
women, and a greater fraction expressed a concern for crimes against
women in Pakistan. Why should a prayer trip to Mecca raise
consciousness about women's issues? Perhaps because in Mecca, men and
women pray together. By contrast, women in Pakistan rarely attend
religious services, and when they do, they're relegated to a separate
part of the mosque from the men. Familiarity seems to breed tolerance
and respect.

And
what about views of the United States? Does the Hajj have pilgrims
chanting "Death to America" by the time they board the plane to go back
home? Despite anti-American rallies and the presence in Mecca of
religious fanatics, Hajjis don't return with views of the West that are
any more negative than those who stayed home. They were no more likely
to believe that Jews or Westerners were involved in the Sept. 11
attacks and were no more hostile to Western values or innovations than
non-Hajjis.

Pilgrims may not return from the Hajj harboring warm
feelings for America, but it's heartening to find that the Hajj may
help to undermine support for the violent methods that have been so
devastatingly deployed against Americans in the past. And if we're to
bring an end to violence in Iraq and elsewhere in the Muslim world, it
is imperative that Iraqis and others believe that they can peacefully
settle differences among themselves. According to this study, the Hajj
may help to achieve both of these objectives. Rather than worrying
about the hate-mongering extremists that seem to exist on the fringes
of the Hajj, perhaps the United States should consider redirecting some
of its aid to Pakistan (and perhaps Iraq and Iran) to help more
pilgrims make the trip.