In France, the hajj has recently become the object of particular attention. The number of departures has doubled from 10,000 to 20,000 pilgrims between 2010 and 2012, standing at around 17,000 pilgrims per year since this date.1 Alongside this enormous increase of pilgrims, other sociological developments can also be observed: the number of pilgrims with French citizenship has increased, including sub-categories of converts and young pilgrims. In 2014, pilgrims with French citizenship outnumbered foreign residents for the first time. Until recently, most Muslims postponed concluding their religious duties by performing the fifth pillar (hajj) at an advanced age. Today, younger generations choose to visit Mecca in early adulthood, and thus hajj performance often marks a turning point in their religious trajectories. The number of women has also steadily increased in the last decades; women presently make up around 50 % of the total number of French pilgrims.2 Parallel to the feminization of hajj, more and more couples perform the sacred journey, particularly within the first years of marriage. Most of the time, however, they do not travel as a couple but either accompany widowed mothers or invite their parents to join them. Finally, the journey is no longer considered a once-in-lifetime event; pilgrims returning regularly to Mecca either to perform repetitive hajj pilgrimages or to undertake the ʿumra—the small pilgrimage—is a growing trend.
By analysing the hajj and the ʿumra practices of young French pilgrims, this chapter aims to shed light on developments in the religiosity and sociality of today’s young French Muslims. In particular, we seek to understand in what ways the pilgrimage to Mecca contributes to the empowerment of these young pilgrims. What motivates young Muslims to perform the pilgrimage? Why do they choose to visit Mecca so regularly? In addition to religious motivations, several factors will be examined in an attempt to explain a pilgrim’s desire to visit the holy sites around Mecca—where the hajj and ʿumra are performed—and Medina, where the grave of the Prophet Muhammad is located. We argue that the current context of social and political discrimination in France is central for understanding any pilgrim’s desires and motivations. Another key factor is generational, migratory narratives. In this regard, to understand the motivations of pilgrims to visit Mecca in addition to the circumstances in France as the home country of young pilgrims, the country of origin of their parents must also be taken into account.
Two erroneous views continue to inform debates about Muslims in the French public sphere. The first view claims that leading a religious life is a way to compensate for the precarious existence of people living at the margins of modernity. This can be dispelled by considering the high cost of a hajj package in France, which on average costs around 6000 euros per pilgrim, and the rising number of hajj participants from France with migration backgrounds. Together, these statistics indicate that today’s French Muslims with migrant backgrounds are fully integrated into the consumer society (Göle 2015). French pilgrims are, however, diverse in terms of their income bracket, varying from those who are unemployed to engineers and doctors.3 This diversity confirms the emergence of a Muslim middle class and the presence of religious lifestyles in the marketing sphere (Haenni 2005).
The second misconception is to interpret the intensification of religious practices as a decline in non-religious senses of belonging, such as language or nationality. In France, as elsewhere in European countries, migrants who visit their country of origin or participate in the pilgrimage to Mecca are often viewed by non-Muslim fellow citizens as withdrawing from the national community. Indeed, an idea in the dominant French discourse is that Muslim citizens with migration backgrounds are more loyal to their ‘home’ countries Algeria, Tunisia or Morocco than to France. This chapter aims at demystifying such misconceptions. Furthermore, this chapter participates in anthropological literature in recent years that has begun to analyse the effects of globalization on national and religious belonging, which includes examining public controversies considering the loyalties of Muslims with migration. According to some scholars, migration and the resulting transnational senses of belonging destabilize the nation-state and notions of national identity (Cordero-Guzman, Smith and Grosfoguel 2001; Giddens 1991). For others, the increasing permeability of borders reinforces national and local identifications (Fourchard 2005; Hervieu-Léger 2001). Pilgrimage to Mecca clearly questions the assumption according to which the construction of national identities depends on strong and permanent geographical roots. We argue that the hajj and the ʿumra are actually part of larger patterns of movement. Besides the fulfillment of one’s religious obligations, they also allow pilgrims to reconnect with their familial heritage, thus creating a link between Islam’s holiest sites, their country of residence, and their country of origin.
Having operated in the margins of academic research for a long time, the study of ‘Islam de France’ in the late 1990s has resulted in a large body of literature focusing either on the involvement of state institutions in the religious sphere or on notions such as ‘integration’, ‘islamophobia’ or ‘radicalization’. Despite its richness, there is a gap in this literature; it tends to not take into consideration the impact of globalization on the religious sphere. Sometimes perceived as a sign of an emotional attachment to the country of origin and other times as the adherence to the Wahhābī model, we propose to study the pilgrimage to Mecca in a wider social context in order to better understand French Muslims’ practices in their articulations with the observed forms of globalization.
The first part of this chapter will show how performing the hajj at a young age enables pilgrims to represent themselves as messengers of the ‘true Islam’ freed from what they conceive of as the ‘superstitions’ inherited by their parents’ generation. Also, visiting Mecca is part of a desire to re-appropriate their Islamic patrimony and to revalorize their cultural and religious heritage in response to perceived or experienced forms of discrimination.
The second part will more specifically investigate the recent phenomenon of young couples performing the hajj and the meanings that these journeys have for them. A recent phenomenon among French Muslim communities is for brides to demand a package tour to Mecca as a dower (mahr). Compared to older generations, today’s trend to travel to Mecca as a couple points to a stance of gender equality in terms of sharing religious obligations and financial responsibilities.
The third part will underline the importance of analysing the hajj and ʿumra as part of other forms of travel, including to the country of origin. If, on the one hand, young pilgrims disapprove of some of their parents’ religious practices, which in their eyes are based on religious ignorance, on the other hand, Mecca appears to be a place where young Muslims reinitiate their parents into—what to them is—the ‘true Islam’. Mecca is also a place that paradoxically allows for a reconnection with the country of origin. Indeed, after visiting the Holy Cities, pilgrims often initiate return trips to their country of origin, whether labeled or not in religious terms (hijra). It also appears that pilgrims mentally link Mecca to parental stories about past migration trajectories.
This chapter is based on a joint study on the hajj market in France that the authors carried out by between 2016 and 2019, during which they collected over 150 interviews with various stakeholders in the hajj business. Most interviews were with officials, guides, and hajj organizers, but their customers, that is, pilgrims, have also been interviewed. Our empirical data thus focuses on both the discourses of hajj tour leaders along with the stories of female and male pilgrims. The results of this study are also the outcome of a postdoctoral research conducted by Leila Seurat4 and of additional semi-structured interviews conducted by Jihan Safar on the dower (mahr) issue during the pilgrimage.
In this chapter, the term ‘French Muslims’ is used, because the majority of young pilgrims carry a double nationality. Our research participants were mostly young Muslims with migration backgrounds but also included converts. In addition to discourse analysis of the pilgrimage stories of our interlocutors, in order to grasp their subjectivities, we also paid attention to the biographies of individual pilgrims.
1 Grasping a Cultural and an Islamic Patrimony beyond the Beliefs Inherited from the bled (country of origin)
The trend among European young Muslims to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca at an early age reflects the individualization of religiosity. A large number of sociologists have demonstrated that religion has not disappeared among Muslims but is rather relocated, provoking an individualization of practices and beliefs. They argue that globalization has transformed the religious expressions and the relation between religion and citizenship. Marjo Buitelaar has shown how, in the case of Dutch Muslims, being embedded ‘in Islamic discourses of ethical self-formation’, the hajj experience is also ‘merged with a modern liberal discourse on self-identity’ (Buitelaar 2018). Therefore, the motivations of young French Muslims should be first and foremost understood as a desire to distinguish themselves from the religious styles of their parents and develop their own religiosity.
For a majority of our interlocutors, the decision to undertake the hajj is related to the wish to fulfill the religious obligation for all Muslims, regardless gender, who are financially and physically able to perform it.5 Their ‘correct’ understanding of Islam makes them conceive of the hajj as an obligation to be performed as soon as possible. The fact that their parents did not perform the hajj during their youth but believed that it was better to postpone it until old age is seen as a misconception of religion, as, for example, Soraya, a 35 years Algerian Berber woman, who arrived in France in 2004, and works as an accountant, stated:
We need to undertake the hajj as soon as possible because the older you get, the more difficult it is. It’s a farḍ (obligation). Our parents used to do it as part of tradition, but we don’t follow traditions. The real Islam has nothing to do with the traditions inherited by our parents.
This description shows that younger generations perceive a break between themselves and older generations with regard to Islamic practices. Younger generations present themselves as Muslims who know best how to believe and practice. Jaouad, a young Franco-Tunisian born in France in 1988, stated:
My parents say to me: ‘Wait until you retire for the hajj’; but I have the physical and material abilities to go, so why shouldn’t I go? Parents are full of misconceptions they brought with them from the days in the bled [place of origin, usually implied to be a rural area, authors]. They often came back from Tunisia with a hand of Fāṭima to hang on the wall.
Several reasons were given by pilgrims to explain their motivations to perform the hajj. Many informants referred to the benefits of having accomplished the pilgrimage, such as the expiation of sins, while others referred to their fear of death. For them, death can announce itself any time. For this reason, it is preferable to perform the compulsory pilgrimage as soon as possible. Besides these explanations, it is also important to situate the hajj and the ʿumra in the social and political context of the home country—in this case study, France.
One of the main motivations our interlocutors mentioned for performing the pilgrimage is to acquire more knowledge about Islam. The decision to go to Mecca generally builds up by attending Arabic or Qurʾanic courses in schools, mosques, or through eLearning. In particular, the close relationship between the teacher and their students amplifies the desire to travel with a religious teacher rather than with a classical hajj travel agency. During the pilgrimage, the teacher becomes a religious guide. The majority of preachers, such Abdelmoneim Boussenna and Rachid Eljay, recruit their ‘pilgrim-clients’ via their Facebook pages. Zeid, a 32 years Moroccan, and a bank employee who performed his hajj in 2019, explained: ‘I have chosen a guide and not a travel agency. My guide is an imam; he is not famous but I trust his ethics.’ Wahid, 33 years, a Franco-Tunisian working in IT, and a future pilgrim, argues similarly: ‘I will choose a guide and not an agency because the guide cares for his pilgrims.’
All of our interviews revealed the importance of the specific religious teacher or guide. Marwan Muhammad, the president of the non profit organization ‘La plateforme des Musulmans’, also stresses the need to follow a good guide:
The pilgrim goes on hajj in order to end up with a ‘white page’, to erase his past and live a better life. He needs the religious security to smooth his manāsik (hajj rites).
Also, in our interviews, pilgrims avowed being worried about not knowing enough about Islam. In such circumstances, the presence of a guide they trust appears decisive. However, Abir, a Franco-Moroccan born in France, was very disappointed by the guide during her last ʿumra:
We hardly saw the guide! They only organized one meeting at the airport in Paris, that was all. We had no courses, no conferences. They pretended to be busy with the organization.
Historically, the hajj was never organized around the figure of a religious teacher as a guide. The phenomenon of popular religious guides appears to be quite recent. And their success as a guide for these pilgrimages is not related to any specific certificate (ijāza) in Islamic scholarship. It seems that their rising popularity is more the result of the dynamics of social networks. These religious leaders have their anchoring in French society and derive their popularity from their ability to speak to younger generations. This phenomenon reflects the sociological change of pilgrim’s profiles: they are much younger, they desire to learn about the history and meaning of rites, and they seek a personal spiritual experience rather than acting out rites as a sign of obedience only (cf. Buitelaar 2020).
During the pilgrimage, the guide answers all kinds of questions related to the rites that make up the hajj, the kind and number of ablutions required, and the nature and appropriate moments for specific supplication prayers (duʾā) and supererogatory prayers (nawāfil). The guide also helps non-Arabic speakers to memorize the different supplications. If, in theory, any logistic guide is supposed to be able to answer these questions, in practice, the presence of a spiritual guide reassures the pilgrim: their journey will be organized around conferences (durūs) where talks take place before entering the state of iḥrām or consecration. Such lectures are also held in the tents in Minā and at ʿArafa during the hajj, while for ʿumra, the preacher gives his talks in hotels and other venues and has more time to provide conferences (durūs) or initiate pilgrims to the appropriate Arabic formulas and prayers.
An example of how pilgrims learn more about Islamic history is the battle of Uḥud, a well-known battle between the followers of the Prophet Muhammad and the army of the Quraysh who ruled Mecca, which took place in 625 CE. Most hajj and ʿumra package tours include an excursion to the site where the battle took place at the mountain of Uḥud, which is located a few kilometers outside Medina. This site is particularly suitable for powerful narratives. During the battle of Uḥud, Ḥamza, the uncle of the Prophet Muhammad, died and the Prophet himself almost lost his life. The story about the battle of Uḥud functions as a narrative to teach lessons about military strategy, faith, and kinship. The story also includes the theme of female devotion through an articulation about the role of Nusayba in the battle, who is known as the first female Muslim warrior: while her initial mission was to bring water to the fighters and take care of the wounded, she took up the sword to protect the Prophet. A large number of our young interlocutors told us that they had named their daughter Nusayba in memory of this female role model in the battle of Uḥud.6 Actually, most of the hajj packages offer a stay in Medina before or after the stay in Mecca, proposing visits to the first mosque (al Quba mosque) and to the Uḥud mountain where the guide tells the story of the battle.
We would argue that the desire of young pilgrims to acquire knowledge through their hajj performance is also a desire to gain recognition and has to be understood in the context of lived and experienced discrimination in France. In our interviews, a large number of pilgrims complained that the kind of knowledge that is taught at the republican schools they attended acted to other them. Thus, the desire for Islamic knowledge needs to be interpreted as an alternative path of knowledge acquisition, allowing young Muslims to valorize themselves by appropriating a patrimony they perceive as their own. It struck us that particularly women are active in this search for specific knowledge to reconcile religious commitment with living in a stigmatizing environment. As we will discuss in more detail in the next section, acquiring religious capital is, for most younger female pilgrims, a way of regaining their own sense of dignity and femininity. In the words of Nabil Ennasri, president of al-Shāṭibī institute:
Our community is very fragmented, with generational and ideological cleavages. We have also noticed a gender shift in our association: twenty years ago, the public of the conferences was exclusively male, and today, we have 80 % women.
The quest for knowledge does not necessarily pertain to the acquisition of formal theological knowledge, but should rather be seen as part of what anthropologists refer to as the ‘do-it-yourself kit’ of modern religious individualism.
Besides guiding pilgrims and teaching them about Islam’s history on their journey to Mecca, outside the pilgrimage season many spiritual guides act as marriage brokers and advisers. Identifying and addressing a ‘marriage crisis’ in the Muslim community, coming to the fore in serious marital conflicts, and helping a considerable percentage of singles and divorcees, these guides surf on the so-called ‘couple crisis’ by proposing ways to ‘succeed in marriage’. The case of Nader Abou Anas, a preacher who regularly organizes hajj and ʿumra trips, is emblematic. MyNisf (literally: My half) is the new matrimonial website promoted by Abou Anas that offers ways for couples to meet in a modern context legitimized by the presence of imams. There are also charismatic imams such as, Ismael Mounir and Hassan Bounemcha (‘Uncle Hassan’) who organize marriage lectures. All three of these speakers are active during the pilgrimage season and even more particularly so during ʿumra trips, giving lectures at the Association Entraide at Aubervilliers.7 Suhail, a 33 years Franco-Tunisian, a divorcee who is in search of a husband and who performed the hajj with her parents, often visits the Association Entraide, which has a Pole marriage or marriage platform where people meet in a halal (lawful) way. The marriage platform allows pilgrimage guides to expand their audience and, indirectly, to recruit new pilgrims. In the following section, we will zoom in on the nexus between marriage and hajj with reference to the motivations and desires of pilgrims.
2 Hajj, Marriage and Female Empowerment
‘What comes first, the hajj or marriage?’; ‘Which is more important, to go on hajj once one has amassed the money, or use it to get married?’ The dilemma of choosing between hajj and marriage is at the heart of many of the narratives of young Muslims and points to a reinterpretation of the hajj obligation. The dilemma of prioritizing the hajj over marriage was almost non-existent for older generations of Muslims, who tend to view the hajj as a religious duty to be performed at an advanced age after many years of marriage (cf. Buitelaar 2020).
Another generational change is how married couples go on hajj. For the older generation, it is common for men to perform their first pilgrimage in the company of male friends or relatives, while the women usually only perform their hajj once their children have reached adulthood and have left the parental home. If their husbands cannot join them, older women generally travel with another member of the family, such as a son, a daughter and/or son-in-law. Alternatively, they travel with a group of women on a trip organized by a local mosque. Sabiha, a Franco-Moroccan who arrived in France in 1980, for example, was 65 years old in 2018 when she went on hajj with a friend and her husband’s friend. She explained: ‘My husband went on hajj alone; that was a long time ago.’ Sabiha then performed the ʿumra in 2019 with six of her friends.
Young couples, on the contrary, prefer to undertake their first hajj in each other’s company and often do so shortly after their wedding, before starting a family. This has been also observed among young Moroccan-Dutch women (cf. Kadrouch-Outmany and Buitelaar 2021). One of our interlocutors, who herself travelled to Mecca a year after she married, pointed out the difference between herself and Muslims of an older generation by stating: ‘My parents-in-law went on hajj the year of my marriage … once their son was finally married!’ The male privilege of men who perform the pilgrimage before their wives that can be observed among older generations, is thus disappearing among younger couples. Salima, a young Malinese pilgrim who visited several countries with her husband, explains her mother’s attitude towards the couple’s journey:
My father went on hajj in 2011, while my mother went recently with ten Malinese women from her association. Even my aunts went alone to Mecca without their husbands. My uncles too, they went alone. I find it very bizarre not to travel as a couple! My mother says she was not ready to go with my father in 2011. She also says she doesn’t want to keep the apartment empty or leave her children alone. They have this particular fear, but I don’t understand why! I told her: ‘Would you at least go for a ʿumra with my father?’ She answered negatively, saying she won’t leave her children and grandchildren alone.
But even when older couples do travel together to Mecca, the significance of this sacred journey for them in some respects differs from the meanings that young couples at the beginning of their marital life attach to hajj performance. For the elderly, a feeling of ‘entering the last stage of life’ remains dominant. Abas, a pensioner who went on hajj in 2016 together with his wife, explains this logic:
I saved money for two years to pay for this journey thanks to my retirement pension. I had to accomplish the hajj once in my life. From now on, I can die quietly any time.
In an interview with us, an imam from Trappes pointed to another new trend he noticed: ‘Couples now also perform ʿumra with their children. Before, it was myself myself (nafsi nafsi).’ Indeed, different from prior generations, this younger, French Muslim generation not only make repeated ʿumra trips, but they also choose to bring their children to see Mecca. In this way, pilgrimage becomes a family trip.
The decision of new married couples to perform the hajj together is often informed by a combination of motivations. The first relates to the idea that it will confirm and strengthen their marriage bond. This motivation is related to the Islamic heritage. A large majority of pilgrims believe that Adam and Eve ‘met’ again in ʿArafa after a long separation, beginning with their expulsion from Paradise. To honor this reunion, at ʿArafa—derived from the Arabic root ‘to know, to meet’—Muslims perform the most important rite of the hajj: the wuqūf or ‘standing’ between midday and sunset to contemplate their life and beg God for forgiveness for their sins. While couples spend much time during the hajj in sex-segregated groups, like Adam and Even they are reunited in ʿArafa. At this particular moment, the pilgrims reconstruct Islamic themes that older generations are often not aware of (Saghi 2010). Designated by Jabal al Raḥma, (or Mountain of Mercy), ʿArafa is also considered as a place of forgiveness.8 In this regard, ʿArafa is marked as a key site of signification for young, married couples.
Figure 12.1
Young couple taking in the view of the Kaʿba (photograph published with consent of anonymized research participant project Buitelaar)
Another motivation we discerned is related to socio-demographic factors in the French context. Currently, there is a high and rising divorce rate among Muslims.9 One reason for couples to go to Mecca early on in their marriage is to conduct supplication prayers (duʾās), for preserving and bringing baraka or blessings to their union. In the case of conjugal conflicts, the hajj can have a healing effect. However, as our interlocutor Zeid, 31 years, a Franco-Tunisian pilgrim married in 2017, stated, this effect is not automatic:
People think problems will disappear if a couple goes on hajj! It’s a superstition. Going on hajj is a good intention when couples face problems, but if the basis is not solid, problems will restart!
In a same vein, Saliha, head of ‘Muslim Trotter’, a halal travel designer, stated:
Going on hajj as a couple is not a pledge for marriage! But for me, the fact that my husband had already performed his hajj before our marriage was a strong incentive for choosing him as a husband.
Amina, 32 years, Franco-Berber Algerian born in France, who went on hajj in 2017, explained in our first interview with her that her marriage had become more harmonious after she and her husband had been on hajj, including that she felt a stronger religious bond: ‘We pray together every day, in addition to supererogatory prayers, we perform dhikr, Qurʾanic recitation … My husband has a beautiful voice.’ Unfortunately, however, apparently the beneficial effects of joint hajj performance did not last long; during our second interview in 2019, Amina announced her desire to separate.
Amina is not the only person we spoke to for whom the hajj eventually did not result in an improved relationship with their partner. Sometimes it can even lead to conjugal conflicts upon return, particularly in regard to the issue of veiling. While some women desire to wear a veil after their hajj, their husband might not be in favour, some fearing the severe consequences it might have on employment and mobility in French public space.10
Nevertheless, many young couples value performing the hajj early in their marriage. This may be particularly the case in ethnically mixed marriages, especially when family members of the couple disapprove of these unions. As Rabih, an interviewed pilgrim of 39 years old, Franco-Algerian born in France explained, going on hajj may facilitate family approval: ‘We observe more and more mixing between Algerians and Africans. Some families are still racist … They go on hajj to bless their marriage, taking Bilal as an example.’11
Besides wishing to strengthen one’s marriage bond, atoning for sins is another explanation that couples give. A person may, for example, seek forgiveness for sexual relations before marriage, visiting nightclubs, alcohol and drug consumption, etc. Men and women see hajj performance as a good incentive to start a chaste life. This is particularly the case for converts, for whom Islamic regulations are new. Hajj performance is considered as cleansing the soul and a ‘reset’ that allows one to start a new life. Conducting the hajj also creates an image of a ‘good Muslim spouse’, facilitated today by selfies, snapchats, or videos distributed by the couple to family and friends. The couple’s image in Mecca appears symbolically as strong as a wedding picture. Other couples go to Mecca just after marriage to simply get their religious obligations out of the way, as an imam explained: ‘They want to finish and perform their obligation rapidly. They want to respect their duties, even if the person is not ready in his mind.’ Furthermore, one could say that going on hajj has also become ‘fashionable’. Some of our interlocutors pointed to the social mimicry and social status increase that comes with the hajj:
The hajj was not scheduled. It’s more that once married, the idea crossed my mind; and more specifically when my sister-in-law returned from hajj. I then asked myself if I was financially capable of paying a hajj.
Going to Mecca as a couple also has a pragmatic aspect for women in need of a maḥram, a male ‘guardian’ that all women under the age of 45 must have according to Saudi hajj regulations. A husband is the most obvious companion for women. One guide even stated: ‘There are cases where women marry just to perform a pilgrimage!’ For Suhail, a 33-year-old divorcee, Franco-Tunisian with two children, the option of remarrying would be an ideal solution to perform her pilgrimage. ‘I would love to find a husband who accepts to go for a ʿumra with me every year.’ As part of the Vision 2030 in October 2019, the Saudi authorities took a radical measure to cancel the maḥram law for the ʿumra, allowing women of all ages to travel without a maḥram.12 With this new law, we expect to see a growing number of single and divorced women travelling in groups in Mecca in the coming years.
A last motivation that deserves mention is for couples who have difficulties to conceive a child to perform the hajj to make invocations for pregnancy. This practice is also quite new: older women tended to be more ‘fatalist’ in terms of their fertility. Lamia, 35 years, Franco-Algerian born in France, explains:
Three friends of mine went to hajj with their husbands after more than five years of marriage. They were trying to have children, and went to Mecca to make duʾā. Thanks to God, all of them had a baby after their hajj! Difficulties in having babies can be related to changes in the climate, stress and work of women. The generation of our mothers generation was fatalist, and such a practice was not observed.
All of these factors are part of a larger trend in the last decades: a generational shift in how pilgrimage performance is signified, particularly among young married couples who today share the sacred travel experience. The re-interpretation of the hajj obligation by women is another generational change with women’s desires to share economic responsibilities and to participate in the payment of their own hajj and also of their parent’s hajj.
2.1 Employed Women and Sharing Responsibilities
According to Bianchi (2015, 33), women’s empowerment and their role ‘in making the hajj a distinctly family affair reflects their wider importance in the workforce, in managing businesses, and in owning property’. In France, women financing their own hajj is one of the most noticeable changes in the hajj market with women re-appropriating the compulsory pilgrimage to Mecca in egalitarian terms.13 As one of our female interlocutors stated: ‘All my friends went to hajj after marriage, we don’t have any excuses when we have money’ (compare Asmae in Buitelaar's chapter 10 in this volume). Again, this view is relatively new, particularly among young women. Many older women with a professional life only undertake the hajj after retirement rather than at the beginning of their professional life. ‘A large number of women in their late fifties work in care jobs, namely as nannies; they constitute the majority of my pilgrims,’ declared the director of a travel agency. Halima’s story serves as an example: she is a 67-year-old Franco-Moroccan widow who travelled to Mecca in 2018 with a group of women from her mosque. She paid the 5,400 euros for the package tour by drawing from her own pension and that of her deceased husband. Differently, young, pious Muslims start planning their hajj as soon as they enter the labour market. Alia, 29 years, Franco-Moroccan born in France, for example, is a mother of two children, who paid for her hajj after getting her first job:
I was a married medical student for eight years before getting a job at the hospital two years ago; I then decided to perform the hajj with my husband who waited until I had finished my studies. Hajj is an obligation, plus I started working. When I was a student, it was difficult to plan a hajj because of my exams and my schedule, although I could perform a ʿumra. Today, the hajj comes first. I paid my hajj from my own salary, and my husband did the same for his hajj.
In addition, employed women often finance the hajj of their parents. For some, being offered a hajj by others is not quite the same as having saved money oneself. They consider the religious merit one is rewarded by God to be higher for a person who paid for their own hajj journey. Ismail Mounir, a famous guide, for example declared:
My brothers and sisters, we all paid for the hajj of my mother. But of course, the benefits for a person who saved money all his life are higher than for a person who was offered a hajj.
The status of the employed female pilgrim is a recent phenomenon, showing that young French Muslims are today part of a middle class society. This status reveals also a generational change that has occurred in the new family logistics of the hajj organization.
2.2 Complex Family Logistics
When both spouses are employed, they must organize their vacation time from work together for the pilgrimage. Going to Mecca for a short period of time—usually around fifteen days—is much more feasible today compared to the 1990s when pilgrims used to travel from France by bus. Short-term package tours that include air travel is particularly popular amongst women, because it is more adaptive to familial and professional obligations. In general, young couples prefer to perform the hajj before having a child. This is because the biggest hurdle for some hajj participants is organizing childcare.14 ‘It’s more practical for couples to go on hajj when they don’t have babies! They are also psychologically more ready,’ explained Rabih, a pilgrim of 39 years, Franco-Algerian born in France himself father of five children. Newly-wed women are actually encouraged by female organizers, such as bloggers or women working for hajj travel companies, to perform the hajj before motherhood. Female organizers thus play an active role in modifying women’s agency with regard to their hajj decision. When the hajj market was still dominated by male actors, such support for female pilgrims was quite absent. The director of the travel agency Muslim Trotter stated:
Having postponed the hajj for years before performing it is the main regret of women who get pregnant. That’s the reason why I recommend them to perform the hajj when they are young and before having children. They will otherwise always feel a big frustration, will fantasize about the journey, and return disappointed from their hajj.
Women bloggers also play a role in stimulating women’s personal growth by recommending couples not to stick together during the hajj, and instead choose physical and spiritual detachment; ‘hajj is an individual experience with God, and a collective experience with peers’ is what Linda from the travel organizer PartirenOmra stated, adding that women must try to see their husbands not simply as husbands but rather as ‘creatures of God’: ‘Nothing must distract us from performing the hajj. We are not the wife or the husband of someone, but the servant of God.’ In her view, sharing a room with other women rather than with one’s husband is a sacrifice for God, and it builds relations with other sisters.15
In addition to professional, familial, and organizational dimensions of planning one’s hajj, bank loans are another major hindrance for couples wishing to accomplish their pilgrimage. According to Islamic law, a bank loan is not tolerated, nor is it permissible to borrow money to finance one’s hajj. For this reason, those who plan to go on hajj strive to settle their debts before performing the pilgrimage to Mecca. Our interlocutors Jean, a French converted and Abir, a Franco-Moroccan born in France, for example, endeavoured to pay off their mortgage before organizing their hajj journey in 2017: ‘We paid off our credit in five years thanks to the help of our parents.’ This, and other testimonies, shows that French married couples are re-investigating and re-interpreting performing the hajj obligation in more egalitarian terms. Other generational changes on the nexus between hajj and marriage in the French context have been observed in regards of the dower (mahr) practice.
3 Mahr and Pilgrimage
Performing the hajj as a couple either as a honeymoon or a year after marriage has emerged among Muslims in France around the 2010s (Saghi 2010). Moreover, brides are asking to receive their dower (mahr)16 in the form of a pilgrimage package tour. Regarding this trend, a young member of Milli Görüs, a Turkish confederation that organizes the hajj, stated the following:
It is logical to perform the hajj as a couple. First of all, I want my wife to get rid of her sins. Second, I consider the hajj her best dower. The hajj is emotional; it’s romantic to be in Mecca for a wedding night.
A wife can also help her husband finance his hajj thanks to her dower. A father of four children explained:
My wife decided, by herself, to sell her mahr which consisted of jewelry, so that I can accomplish my hajj. At the time of our marriage, I had a better salary.
In comparison to older generations, where the mahr was an important asset safeguarding the wife’s financial security should the marriage break up, brides today often ask for a ‘symbolic’ mahr in the form of a pilgrimage.
Women’s employment and growing religiosity are thus transforming both the matrimonial and the pilgrimage market. The mahr has become less important to Muslim women in France, in part due to their changing economic capacities. Since women can obtain well-paying occupations far more easily, they are less reliant on their husbands and on their mahr for financial security, as a woman working for a hajj travel agency declares:
Young Muslims are into dīn (religion). My two friends asked the hajj as a dower. Women work today, they can buy whatever they want. That’s why they ask for a hajj (…) Women work and don’t need a set of gold like in the past. They have everything; they don’t know any more what to ask as a dower!
This shift in the meaning of the mahr is part of the islamization process that can be witnessed in France. Indeed, the mahr is considered by young Muslims to be part of their ‘distinctive identity’ in western societies where Muslims constitute a minority. ‘It’s very French to go on hajj when a woman asks for it as a dower, because it brings more piety,’ confirmed Ismail Mounir. It should be noted that despite its ‘symbolic’ value, the mahr remains costly, particularly because hajj packages cost more than 6,500 euro. Husbands use both religious and economic arguments as reasons for offering the hajj as a mahr, explaining that ‘it is shared with God’; ‘it is a communion with God’; ‘a man cannot refuse such a demand because it is a religious duty’; and also that it is not a ‘waste of money’. In this manner, women ‘buy’ conjugal happiness and accumulate ḥasanāt (religious merit) for the afterlife.
It must be noted, however, that some of the men interviewed were surprised to hear about the hajj being offered to women as a mahr. In our first interview, Wahid, 33 years, Franco-Tunisian working in IT, who married in 2018, mocked the idea: ‘The link between mahr and hajj is nonsense! Let a woman find a husband before thinking about this. The real problem is celibacy, not the hajj as a dower.’ In our second interview with Wahid, he was a bit embarrassed:
After our interview, I spoke to my wife about the idea of giving the hajj as a mahr, which I found very weird. But, I was very much surprised to discover that my wife herself had thought about having the hajj for her mahr! She had apparently hesitated between jewels and hajj and finally chose the jewels. She never mentioned the idea of hajj!
Wahid then explained his ‘relief’ regarding his wife’s decision:
If she had asked for the hajj, it would have been hard, because the mahr is usually given to women to help them rebound in case of divorce. So, for me, the mahr is associated with divorce; and linking hajj with divorce is a sad idea.
Despite the attractiveness of the hajj and ʿumra for newly-weds, it appears that couples also consider more ‘extraordinary’ travels, which, like the pilgrimage to Mecca, may also be asked as a dower. ‘Muslim tourism to holiday destinations is becoming a trend because it offers more intimacy for couples than ʿumra or the hajj’, explains Saliha, head of Muslim Trotter. For Saliha, this trend is explained by the market transformation:
In 2015, it was a trend to go for a ʿumra. But the prices for other destinations have decreased due to numerous offers in the market, that’s why people desire more extraordinary travel destinations today. Performing a ʿumra has become accessible to all and at any time; this was not the case for couples before 2010.
Finally, when compared to the older generations, the wish to share religious duties and financial responsibilities is stronger among young pilgrims who tend to frame their marriage—and thus travelling to Mecca—more in terms of gender equality. Undertaking religious travels with parents or children also illustrates the middle class affordances of both male and female young French Muslim’s, which places this study within the realm of global religious tourism.
4 Reconnecting with the Familial Cultural Heritage and Country of Origin
4.1 The Hajj and the ʿumra Embedded in Other Forms of Movement: When Mecca Meets the bled
In today’s globalized world, traveling is becoming more and more accessible for an increasing number of people; many pilgrims point to this accessibility, a reason that allows them to perform the hajj at a younger age. Layla, a Franco-Algerian with a PhD in Islamic studies who arrived in France in 2003, declared:
When traveling, I often noticed pilgrims at the airport and felt very guilty about not going to hajj. How can I continue to travel so much while ignoring Mecca? It wasn’t possible anymore.
Indeed, the pilgrimage to Mecca is one of many other forms of travel and movements that may or may not be described as religious travel. Understanding the motivation of pilgrims to visit Mecca lead us to consider the pilgrimage alongside others forms of travel, particularly for those who wish to travel as an ‘ethical Muslim’. The French term ‘Islam compatible’ defines touristic tours that match the basic precepts of Islamic ethics, such as staying in Muslim-friendly halal hotels. In this regard, travel agencies like Terre de Culture, Les Clés du Savoir, or Havre de Savoir offer tours to Bosnia under the guidance of famous preachers such as Mohamed Bajrafil or Hassan Iquiouissen.
Travelling must also be understood as an exploration of one’s migratory heritage. In the first part of this chapter, we described how the pilgrimage practices of younger French Muslims reveal a breaking point with traditional familial practices. However, a critique on popular forms of religiosity does not necessarily imply a willingness to distance oneself from family ties. Rather to the contrary: in the stories of our interlocutors, Mecca appears as a place for intergenerational encounters that help older generations to familiarize themselves with new religious practices. A large number of younger pilgrims perform the hajj together with their parents. Alternatively, many who have performed the pilgrimage before their parents often choose to return to Mecca with their parents at a later time. This is notably the case when these parents have resettled in their homeland in North African countries like Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco, where access to the hajj is severely restricted due to the Saudi visa policy for Muslim majority countries, according to which only a very small percentage of applicants can obtain a visa. The countries mentioned above have organized the distribution of visas through a lottery system. For this reason, many young Muslims with French residence permits decide to bring parents who live in North Africa to France in order to realize their dream and religious obligation of performing hajj.
Apart from being a place for family reunion and bonding, Mecca is also a place where some pilgrims forge plans for future projects of returning ‘to the bled’, meaning to rediscover the country of their ancestors. Some see this kind of return as a religious obligation to leave a country where Islam does not rule, emulating the so-called Hijra or migration of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Medina. Others decide to make a short trip to their parents’ country of origin. The hajj tour guide Sami of PartirenOmra is a good example; he took up the idea of organizing other forms of travelling while he was in Mecca. Thanks to his solid group of followers, he now offers a selection of travel tours, such as trekking in the Algerian desert. To a large extent, his customers consist of pilgrims he first accompanied to Mecca. Similarly, Nabil Ennasri, president of Al Shatibi Institute, organizes what he calls ‘Remembrance trips’. Ennasri emphasizes the importance for young Muslims to discover their heritage:
We have organized five trips this year; to Andalusia, Malaysia, Uzbekistan and Jordan, all with the objective of discovering new cultures that are of spiritual interest, as well as building a perfect cohesion amongst our groups’ members. Next year, we are heading for Fes and maybe to other North African cities for a trip that immerses one into the Arabic language. Our parents are at the end of their lives we need to get close to our primary identity to educate our children and future children.
The way our interlocutors link Mecca and the country of origin sheds light on their identifications and confirms the analytical relevance of notions such as ‘transnational social space’ (Pries 1999) or ‘circulatory territories’ (Tarrius 2001) to underline the diversity of spaces in which senses of belonging that people may experience in today’s context of globalization (Sassen 2001).
4.2 Hajj, ʿumra and the Interiorization of Past Familial Migratory Memories
To understand these religious travels, we considered different temporalities and spatialities not only pertaining to the geographical locations themselves, but also to the narratives in which they feature. Our research data indicate that pilgrims’ attachment to Mecca tends to reactivate painful familial memories. Without suggesting that all pilgrims clearly link the pilgrimage to Mecca to a parental country of origin, the analysis of pilgrims’ discourses and practices enable us to shed light on a complex relationship with a migratory memory.
Amina’s trajectory shows how this memory can be activated around the pilgrimage project. As a young Moroccan-French woman who arrived in France in 1992 at the age of three, Amina performed her hajj in 2016 together with her husband. During our interview, she detailed the journeys the couple has undertaken over the past years, recalling, amongst others, their numerous ʿumra trips. While living in the Parisian suburb of Creteil, Amina went as far as the North of France to book her pilgrimage trip to Mecca from the association Havre de Savoir, which regularly recruits spiritual guides for the pilgrimage who are affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood, an initiative that might appear strange. Amina studies at the IESH (Institut Européen des Sciences Humaines), a private institute offering courses in the Arabic language, Islamic science, and Qurʾanic studies, which is connected to the Union des Organisations Islamiques de France (close to the Muslim Brotherhood) (Godard 2015). During our interview, Amina largely referred to Ḥasan al-Bannā, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, or to Ahmad Jabala, the president of the IESH. But, rather than ideological motives, the reason that Amina travelled to the north to book her pilgrimage with Havre de Savoir was related to the familial history and her wish to insert herself into her family narrative about that past. She explained that coming from Morocco, Le Havre is the city where her father had settled after a brief stay in Corsica. His trajectory—Corsica, Le Havre, and finally the Paris suburbs—is the classical trajectory of hundreds of Moroccan recruits in the French army after the Second World War. Departing for the hajj from Le Havre represents, for Amina, both a religious trip to Mecca and a return trip through her family’s migration memory, as it has been narrated to her throughout her childhood. This mental connection illustrates the importance of taking into account the interiorization of past familial trajectories in the shifting identifications of the pilgrims.
5 Conclusion
In this chapter, we have analysed the motivations of French pilgrims to Mecca at the crossroads of several dynamics: the individualization of religiosity, an increase of mobility, multiple identifications and their relation to migration and colonial history.
The narratives that our interlocutors shared with us about their longing for Mecca point to a form of religiosity that is far removed from the popular Islam transmitted to them by their parents. In particular, our research demonstrates how young pilgrims who live in a context where they are often confronted with discrimination try to re-appropriate their Islamic heritage in new ways, illustrated, amongst others, by the emergence of the figure of the spiritual guide that we described. The stories about the hajj and ʿumra experiences of our interlocutors and the meanings they attribute to pilgrimage to Mecca also point to a trend away from more patriarchal views and practices towards a more gender egalitarian view on sharing religious and financial dimensions of undertaking the hajj. This comes to the fore particularly in the practice of young couples who now mostly perform the hajj together with their spouse to strengthen the marriage bond, rather than waiting until old age or the husband preceding his wife while she takes care of the children and the house.
The hajj and ʿumra are also embedded in other forms of travel and movement: the ease to travel in the contemporary world contributes to explaining why young French Muslims choose to perform the pilgrimage at an early age. While the pilgrimage practices of young French Muslims are part of trends such as the individualization of belief and a break with the kind of popular Islam transmitted to them by their parents, the hajj and ʿumra are also occasions for family reunion and reconnections with a family heritage. It is no coincidence that return journeys to the bled often originate in Mecca. In fact, the relation of young French Muslims with their country of origin remains complex. The pilgrimage to Mecca contributes to a plural and complex spatial and temporal redefinition of identities. Far from testifying to supposedly unchanging identities of French Muslims, the pilgrimages offer young French Muslims various senses of belonging and different ways to revalorize themselves and their history. This can help them to reappraise or at least clarify their place in the French society.
These numbers (until the year 2014) were given to us by a representative from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After 2014, the official statistics on the number of pilgrims from France are difficult to gather. The data we could gather from the hajj organizers and from the Saudi consul in Paris reveal however important gaps between the two sources in terms of the number of pilgrims.
On their website, the travel organizer PartirenOmra indicates for example that in 2018, 80 % of its pilgrims were younger than 40 years old, while the number of males equalled the number of females. Also, 80 % of the pilgrims travelled with their family; and out of them 50 % were couples.
Young pilgrims often contribute to the payment of their parents’ pilgrimage, also illustrating their middle class positions.
European University Institute Florence 2017–2018.
The obligation to perform the hajj concerns both men and women. A husband does not have the right to refuse the pilgrimage of his wife because it is an obligation (farḍ) for all Muslims. While a wife must ask her husband’s permission to go on hajj, his approval is not stipulated for the obligatory pilgrimage. However, if the hajj is supererogatory, a husband can refuse that his wife travels to Mecca.
This name has become fashionable among the French Muslims.
It is also the place where the Prophet delivered the Farewell Sermon.
Data on divorce rates among French Muslims are not available, but many imams communicate about the divorce problem. On Facebook, Nader Abou Anas mentions that in France, about one marriage out of two ends in divorce according to the INSEE statistics, representing 130,000 divorces per year, adding: ‘Unfortunately, the Muslim community is no exception to this rule. In view of the information we receive as leaders of the association, we believe (even if nothing is official) that the number is much higher.’
This is mainly the result of discriminatory measures felt by the Muslim community in France, in particular since the veil affair in 2004, followed by other ‘Muslim affairs’ such as the burkini one (see Scott 2018; 2009).
Bilal was a black man who became Islam’s first muezzin, that is, a person who performs the call for prayers, mostly from a minaret.
In addition to that, new tourist visas have been issued for citizens of 49 countries, among them France.
According to Islamic law, a man is not obliged to pay for his wife’s hajj; and if he does pay, he gains ḥasanāt (good deeds) and ajr (religious merit one earns by performing ḥasanāt).
For couples with children, much planning and organization of family affairs precedes the trip to Mecca. Generally, children stay with their grandmothers or aunts who live in France or are invited to come over to France for this purpose. Other couples go to the country of origin to drop children at their family’s place.
According to Islamic law, the groom is obliged to pay a mahr to his future wife.
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