Standing alone in Mecca— A Pilgrimage into the heart of Islam;
Asra Q Nomani, HarperCollins, 2007, pp 413, Rs 395.

More than the pilgrimage, Asra Q Nomani’s book ‘Standing Alone in Mecca — A Pilgrimage into the Heart of Islam’ is a personal voyage of self discovery. The very assertion of ‘standing alone’ by a Muslim woman in Mecca smacks of ‘defiance’ but that’s not the author’s intention. It’s a candid exploration of the self through her religion and her confrontations with the dogmas propounded in the name of Islam. The book is introspective as it progresses through the dilemmas the author faces in her life as a Muslim woman and the way she resolves them, with a deeper and better understanding of Islam.

Asra, a Wall Street journalist, was born in India but migrated with her parents to the US. Her personal confession, at a public meeting with the Dalai Lama in Allahabad was that she, “a daughter of Islam, had grown up with the mocking understanding of the deities to which Hindus bow their heads, but sitting in a retreat colony... I understood that the spiritual intention of a polytheist is no different from a monotheist, who prays in a synagogue, church or mosque.”

Her first confrontation with her understanding of Islam and the practice was when she was told that an unescorted woman cannot take the pilgrimage. “You must go with your mahram....your father, your husband, your son, or your brother,” said the ticket agent at the Saudi Arabian Airlines counter in Lucknow, where she had gone to enquire about Haj.

“I had jetted into the cities of the world ....but I couldn’t fly to the holy cities of my religion?” She questioned. The man explained that as per the Sharia, a woman must do Hajj with a mahram. Asra does manage to do the Hajj with her parents, niece and nephew and her “illegitimate” son Shibli born out of a wedlock. She had committed zina (the Arabic concept of illegal sex), which under the Sharia, is an offence and in Saudi Arabia, people found to have sex outside marriage, are stoned. But she stands by her conviction and decides to take the journey into the “heart of Islam.”

“I had always thought of a pilgrimage to Mecca as an assignment. But I realised that maybe I was ready for something deeper, I had started reading about a woman named Hajjar. She was one of the few hits I got when I did a Google search of “Islam and single mother’, I didn’t know her story, but somehow it was intertwined with the Hajj, and I knew I needed to know more,” says Asra in ‘Standing Alone in Mecca.’

Her constant confrontation with the religion as it is and the dogmas is a revelation not only to her but all Muslim women. “My experiences with mixed gender tour groups and forays into the Sacred Mosque where men and women prayed together.....revealed to me the inherent contradictions in Muslim society. Men and women mingled comfortably in Mecca...how could they interact without this burden of sin in Mecca but not elsewhere?” Is a dilemma most Muslim women may be faced with.

Though the book is a compelling narrative of a person, this explains best what Asra discovered in herself. “Throughout my life I had so much pressure from my culture and religion to get married that I often stayed in dead-end or unhealthy relationships longer than I should have. Breaking free of unhappy relationships was symbolic of my wider effort to question the rigid acceptance of rules set forth by others, be they religious, government or community leaders or family members. Islam reinforced the idea that we must think for ourselves. Religion is supposed to inspire the best in ourselves. That was why, despite being abandoned by Shibli’s father, and despite the judgement of others, I could be in Mecca and stand with my child before God.” Nothing explains better than this.