Muslims who undertake the hajj "return with more positive views towards people from other countries," are more likely to say "that people of different religions are equal," and are twice as likely as other religious Muslims to condemn Osama bin Laden, a study has found.
"People become more orthodox yet more tolerant," one of the study's authors, Asim Ijaz Khwaja of Harvard University, said of hajjis -- those who make the pilgrimage.
He described the study's findings yesterday (Monday December 8, 2008), as this year's annual pilgrimage reached its climax, the symbolic stoning of the devil on the festival of Eid al-Adha, an Islamic holiday that traditionally marks the end of the hajj.
This year's hajj ends today.
Habib Allah, a 24-year-old Pakistani who never left his home country before undertaking this year's hajj, echoed sentiments expressed by many people in the study, which surveyed pilgrims from 2006. The Pakistani said he felt like he had seen "the whole world" in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
"I felt like we are all brothers," he said. "I never thought about this before. The hajj has changed my thoughts about other Muslims from other countries. The hajj has united us as Muslims and as brothers."
And that feeling extended to non-Muslims as well, he said.
"After I performed the hajj, I felt that the world is small and we all sharing one place ... the earth. We should all live in peace with each other, whether with Muslims or non- Muslims," he said
Hamoud al-Massri, a 29-year-old teacher from Cairo, Egypt, expressed similar thoughts about his hajj journey this year.
"The hajj taught me that at the end we are all human beings [who] need each other. From now on I will start reading more about other cultures, and not only Muslim cultures but all others," al-Massri said.
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