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The death of 14 Muslims made news last week when pilgrims converging on a holy site in Mecca collided with crowds leaving it. Security forces intervened and blamed the deaths on "pilgrims not following the rules."  But Mecca is by no means unfamiliar with disasters of this kind—in 1990, for example, nearly 1,500 people were trampled to death. The problem has become so severe that it has necessitated 300 video cameras and the creation of a command and control center to monitor the thousands of people streaming through.

This kind of experience has little resonance for modern Westerners, whose travels to the Holy Land today look more like recreational tours than death-defying treks. But the pilgrim impulse still animates many Jewish and Christian believers, as it does Muslims. While the Ministry of Information in Saudi Arabia reported last year that over 250,000 Muslim pilgrims had already completed their hajj to Mecca and Medina by early March, Pope John Paul II's visit to Israel in 2000 generated so much interest that US Catholic bishops drafted guidelines for pilgrims traveling to the Jubilee celebrations, and one online directory touts 14 travel agencies (serving both Catholic and Protestant clientele) devoted solely to religious pilgrimages.

So what is it that draws believers from each of these world religions to holy sites?

To start with, Islamic law requires Muslims to go on hajj—or pilgrimage to Mecca—once in their lifetime. Yet the journey has its own magnetism for the Islamic faithful. Muslims claim the vicinity of Mecca as the site of Hagar's wandering in the desert after Abraham and Sarah expelled her in Genesis 21. The story goes that Abraham visited Hagar there and, with Ishmael's assistance, built the first mosque in Mecca, ordaining that all those submitted to Allah should journey there. As part of their pilgrimage, Muslims throw stones at pillars to identify with Abraham's conquering diabolic temptation to not sacrifice his son Ishmael. (The Qur'an places Ishmael, not Isaac, in the biblical story.) Later, the pilgrims gather in a plain outside Mecca to rehearse a "final judgment" that they believe will take place in Jerusalem. By making the pilgrimage to Mecca, Muslims both remember their beginnings and anticipate history's culmination.

Jews date the practice of pilgrimage to the feasts described in Deuteronomy 16:16—the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Passover), the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost), and the Feast of Booths (Succot). Mosaic law required every Jewish male to observe each feast every year "at the place which God will choose." Although Shiloh was the first choice for celebrating the feasts, the center shifted to Jerusalem after Solomon built the Temple around 1000 BC—and pilgrimage began there in earnest. The Babylonian exile, which began in 586 BC, only heightened that desire, and Herod's renovation of the Temple (started in 20 BC) no doubt encouraged mass pilgrimage.  Even after Titus's destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, Jews continued to travel (and settle) there in small numbers. Scholar Harry Partin calls this a pilgrimage of "center"—indicating that the faith of many Jews is still very much focused on their holy city. At the end of Passover every year, Jews end their feast with the wistful "Next year in Jerusalem."

Christians, on the other hand, have no biblical mandate to travel to the Holy Lands. In fact, Christians throughout the centuries have had an ambivalent attitude toward the land. Augustine, for example, argued God cannot be contained in space, and that Christians do not need to travel far to find God; rather, if we humble ourselves, he will draw near to us. Protestants especially have picked up on this suspicion of pilgrimage—John Milton critiqued it in Paradise Lost: "Here Pilgrims roam, that stray'd so farr to seek/ In Golgotha him dead, who lives in Heav'n."

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February (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47