Bahman Aghai Diba
Every year a huge number of Muslims from all over the world travel at certain times of the year to Mecca in the Saudi Arabia for performing the Islamic ritual of Hajj and getting the title of Haji. The ritual is in fact one of the ancient rituals of the nomadic Arabs before the advent of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula and like many others it has been reclaimed (Islamizied) through “expediency” by the Islamic sources. Although I have read Koran, Nahjolbalaqeh (collection of Ali’s words) and Najolfesaheh (collection of Mohamad’s words) and some other Islamic books during my long years of imprisonment in Evin Prison of Iran, I do not intend to question the history of this ritual. However, according to these important resources and based on the books of rulings (Fatwa) of important sources of emulation and religious teachings, a person becomes eligible for performing Hajj if:
1- He has no debts- this clearly means that if someone owes money or something else in any form or is keeping something that does not belong to him or her, before going to Hajj, he or she has to pay his debts and return what belongs to others. So, if a Muslim has a mortgage in any form (mortgage itself is against Islamic rules of Sharia on economy, because of interests. Any kind of interest on lending money is considered as Haram or religiously forbidden) he cannot go to Hajj. A Muslim that owes money to his wife or husband, children, relatives, companies in private or public sector, because his or house, place of work, car or anything else is not qualified for Hajj.
2- According to the same rules, the person who wishes to go to Hajj, has the obligation to make a research in the neighborhood and if in the radius of 40 houses from his or her residence, there is anyone that may need the money that he intends to spend on Hajj, for a better use, that persons has the priority to get the money. This means that if the person finds out that in the radius of forty houses from the residence, there are people who for any reason such as poverty, sickness, hospitalization, old age, and marriage need the money that he has is set aside for Hajj, the Muslim must give the money to that person.
Having these conditions in mind, you may not find even a few persons that are eligible to go to Hajj, while every year, only from Iran, one million persons travel to the Saudi Arabia for this pilgrimage. In fact there is story or Hadith that says: Someone told one of the big imams of the Shiites that he was amazed how many people had gathered in Mecca for Hajj, and the imam told him to look through his fingers to the crowd of pilgrims and when he did, he saw that most of those circling around the Mecca were domestic and wild animals.
