Standing Alone Read Online Free PDF

I always thought a Muslim was a Muslim was a Muslim. Sami explained the history to me. Wahhabism is the ideology of Saudi Arabia. What I was going to learn was that just as Christianity has different denominations, Islam is not a monolithic religion. It has two sects, the majority Sunni and the minority Shi’a. The Sunni history was marked by scores of schools of jurisprudence called madhabs . Four schools had survived into the modern day: Hanafi, Malaki, Shafi’i, and Hanbali, named after the scholars who led them. Mystical Islam, or Sufism, evolved both in peace and in conflict with these schools of jurisprudence. Wahhabism sprang out of the Hanbali madhab, and it is more puritanical and rigid than most other schools of Islam practiced around the world. It arose in the eighteenth century through a religious reformer, Muhammad Ibn ’Abd Al Wahhab, and later the ruling Saud family had made it the law of the land in order to use religion to control the masses. Following this brand of Islam, Saudi Arabia doesn’t allow cinemas or theaters because it considers most entertainment frivolous and often haram , or “unlawful,” according to Islamic standards. The country not only forbids churches andsynagogues but prosecutes Christians for holding religious services in their homes. To Sami’s professional horror, Wahhabi clerics had dismantled the prophet’s house in Mecca to clamp down on anything that might be interpreted as worship of the prophet Muhammad. (In Islam the prophet Muhammad is considered a very great man, but still a man; in the Wahhabi interpretation, there should be no tokens of his life that Muslims could worship.) In the process, Wahhabi clerics had destroyed other relics from the lifetime of the prophet Muhammad. Their religiosity is akin to the Puritan practice of Christianity in early American history. When I next called home to West Virginia, I shared with my father what I’d learned from Sami. He lamented the loss of so much history in the name of religion.
    Trying to get a visa, I realized that I was going to have to overcome other expressions of Wahhabism before even landing in the desert with my father. An official at the Saudi consulate in Karachi told me my passport had to be submitted with the passport of my mahram. The process seemed ridiculous. After all, I had traveled freely through Pakistan, a Muslim country, without a mahram. Just three months earlier, I had applied for a visa into the Taliban’s Afghanistan without a mahram. (I was turned down, but for other reasons, not least of which was the looming war with the United States.) My travel experience was just more evidence that as much as the puritan Wahhabis insisted their path was the only true Islam, there were alternative ways of practicing Islam.
    As a last-ditch effort, I visited the consulate of Saudi Arabia. A polite Pakistani man behind the counter ushered me into a meeting with a hajj official. Sitting in his office, I eyed the piles of hajj applications around me.
    â€œIsn’t there a way that I can get my visa through the Karachi consulate and my father get his visa through the Washington, D.C., embassy? We could meet first outside Saudi Arabia in, say, Amman, Jordan, and travel into Saudi Arabia together?”
    â€œI am sorry. That is not possible.” He explained the rules: we had to apply together through a registered tour operator, and the tour operator would submit the application to the government of Saudi Arabia.
    Trying to work every angle, I asked, “Okay, you can’t give me permission. But how might I get permission?”
    He looked at me curiously, as if wondering why his denial wasn’t good enough. He scribbled on a piece of paper and passed it to me. “Hajj Ministry.” This was the government office in charge of Pakistani pilgrims. I could try to get a tour operator to agree to let me go with hisgroup. Every time I called a local travel agency,