A New Session of the Pilgrimage Course, ALRI Spring 2011

St. James Major (Santiago), 16th Century, Alabaster 

Victoria & Albert Museum, London

©eop

The Pilgrimage course, one I greatly enjoy leading, is to be offered at ALRI again in the Spring 2011 term, and I am looking forward to it. As always when a course it repeated, it is a chance to do some additional research and to flesh out ideas and topics covered in the past. 

I have been doing some reading about pilgrimages in exotic places including the Shikoku pilgrimage, about 1,300 kms on the island of that name in Japan. The husband of a former student was so kind as to give me a copy of a book I had scan read a long time ago, Japanese Pilgrimage by Oliver Statler (1983. New York: Morrow. ISBN 0688018904). I plan to do enough reading about that fascinating Buddhist trek to comment more intelligently on it in the Spring, having just shown a map and said the route existed the last time I taught the course. I also plan to spend a little time looking further into the Qoyllurití pilgrimage in Peru. If time allows, I would also like to do a little work on pilgrimages in Africa, a part of the world largely ignored in the past editions of the course due to my ignorance.

The year 2010 was a holy year for Santiago de Compostela, and I had hoped to walk at least a part of one of the pilgrimage routes. An ankle injury in last winter's ice and snow made that impossible, but I do hope to be in shape to walk some section of one of the Camino routes this coming autumn. As a consequence I have been doing some reading about routes other than the popular Camino Frances from the Pyrenees to Santiago. Having walked that 800 kms twice, this next time I am considering the possibility of the short Camino Portuguese from Lisboa or perhaps only from Oporto as well as the rugged Camino del Norte (also called the Camino Primitivo) and the spectacular Camino de la Plata from Sevilla via Extremadura through Salamanca and onward to Santiago. The last is the most attractive but also by far the longest (2 months about) and most difficult option.  

Hajj 1431 ( November 2010 in the Western Calendar)

Grand Mosque, Mecca 2010 Hajj

Source: Chiru Fans Site, India

The 2010 Hajj saw a peak of nearly 3 million pilgrims in Medinah and Mecca over the period 14-18 November, and it passed without major problems. Torrential rainstorms near the end of the Hajj made for slippery conditions, but otherwise the weather was cooperative, and there were no problems of terrorism, no stampedes or other events which have marred pilgrimages in past years.

Meanwhile the Saudi government is remaking Mecca with the eventual goal of allowing 5 times as many pilgrims to make the Hajj annually. Much redevelopment of the core of the city has already occurred, but it mostly provides luxury accommodations for the rich. Poorer pilgrims making the required visit to the sacred city have not fared so well. The Pakistani government has arrested the official in the Ministry of Religious Affairs responsible for Hajj and there has been a call for the minister to step down after poor pilgrims were badly housed in Mecca. The charge is misappropriation of funds after housing in the Saudi city was unfinished and pilgrims stayed in places without adequate water and sanitation and no electricity. At nearly $3000 each charged by the Pakistani government for transportation and housing, poorer Pakistanis must save over many years to pay the cost of the pilgrimage.

An American company arranging for visas to Saudi Arabia for United States Muslims returned passports somewhat late, and those passports were, in turn, delayed by the customs service. The delay caused a number of pilgrims from northern Virginia to miss scheduled flights. The customs service was forced to pay for replacement flights in order to get those pilgrims to the international airport at Medinah on time to make Hajj. The Saudi goverment has been concerned with firms not meeting contractual obligations when providing services for pilgrims.