Religious Experience

Hajj

The Hajj, pilgrimage to Mecca, is designed to be an religious experience for a person as an individual and as a whole. The individual religious experience is when a person travels to Mecca to partake in the worship at the Ka’ba. It is his or her obligation as a Muslim to do this as it is stated in the Quran. The experience is supposed to help make a person become closer to God. When the Hajj is moved to a communal experience, it is meant to make the community come together that does not distinguish people by their racial or ethnic identities.

Ramadan

The holy month of Ramadan is an event that happens once a year where every Muslim that is physically able must fast from sunup to sundown. When a person fasts for twenty eight days, they are supposed to realize that life and everything in it is valuable and should not be taken for granted. When something that is essential to the life of a human and it is taken away from them, they realize that what they have can be taken away from them in an instant. Performing Ramadan can be difficult, especially if it takes place during a summer month. This is why the whole community perform Ramadan. When a person is struggling through Ramadan, they remember that there are a billion other people in the world doing the same thing they are doing which make the experience easier.