Rights over Rites: Hypocrisy at Hajj
By Muhammad Noor
A-Madinah Institute
28 September 2016
Today beneath the shadow of the Kaaba, and its towering clock tower and construction cranes, lurks the same exploitative culture that resonated with an orphaned shepherd and heralded an iconoclasm of not only stone but of deep societal change. Skyscrapers, luxury hotels, shopping and entertainment surround and defile the sanctity of the area by not only the corporate and class interests they represent, but by the very means in which they came into existence. Migrant workers, fellow Muslim brethren, are exploited daily. Workers face lack of mobility, discrimination, sexual violence and lack of redress under the lingering kafala work sponsorship agreements.1 Our Muslim brothers live lives of instability and peril in the land where those were promised before Islam.2 The famous 7th century “League of the Virtuous” (Hilf Al-Fudul) pact, though prior to revelation, greatly influenced the Prophet ﷺ as he stated, “If I were called to it now in the time of Islam, I would respond”.3 Companions and generations of scholars see this pact as the basis for the protection of individual rights in Islamic legal theory.4
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