The Effects Of Islamic Pilgrimage On Individual Religious Life: A Typing Attempt

Worships in the life of a religious individual has important functions. Worships provide that the relationship between individual and his/her religion remains constant, and helps the individual to organize and maintain his/her life according to religious orders and prohibitons. It can be argued that the Islamic pilgrimage (hajj) affects the individual in a stronger way in terms of religion because of some of the features that contains in itself and makes it different from other worships. It can be evaluated from this point of view that hajj is performed once in a lifetime, combines financial and physical necessities, and is exprienced less frequently but in a more intense spiritual atmosphere compared to other worships. In today's world, it is seen that the individual has difficulty in allocating sufficient time for his faith and religious life. Hajj can be said to offer this sufficient time to the individual. Modern man, sometimes wants to move away from the fast life brought by modernity, set aside time for and be alone with himself/herself. For this reason, hajj can be an invaluable opportunity for modern individual who did not have time to make an internal reckoning by being alone in his/her daily life or who did not have an intellectual infrastructure for this internal reckoning. Moreover, it can be stated that the prohibition of some behaviors during the hajj which are considered as halal in daily life allows the pilgrim (hajji) candidate to go beyond his/her stereotyped lifestyle. The prohibition of harm to living beings, and the prohibition of sexuality can be evaluated in this context. Throughout the hajj, the individual controls the negative behaviors he has done before, and he/she can reflect this attitude and effort to his/her life after the hajj. In the present study, it has been tried to reveal that what are the effects of hajj on individual’s religious life. For this purpose, interviews were conducted with a total of 50 hajji (27 women, 23 men) in Adana. As a result of the interviews conducted, it is determined that the hajjis decided to go on hajj with different expectations from the psycho-social perspective. Among the main motivations that pushed the participants to decide to go on the hajj, answers “to fulfill God's command” and “see the holy places” were more prominent. In addition, among the preparations made before going to hajj, answers “giving blessings to each other” and “reading books about hajj” were more preferred. Considering the findings about the experience of hajj, it is determined that hajj evokes death and life after