Pilgrimage and Identity Commitments

February 21, 2007

In my Hajj class the other way we were talking about the definition of pilgrimage. The trick is to make the definition broad enough to accommodate experiences that are not necessarily "religious".. but which most people will want to call a pilgrimage. For example, a trip to Graceland to see where Elvis is buried.. or a trip to the site where Flight 93 went down near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

I try to explain these different sites by pointing out that all such sites are in some way connected to an identity commitment. So, for example, an American will feel a certain emotional tug when visiting a site connected to 9/11 or Gettysburg.. a Mormon will likewise feel a similar tug when visiting the birthplace of Joseph Smith.. an African American man may feel something quite similar during a visitation of the sites connected to Civil Rights. And all of these feelings or tugs could be experienced by one person.. a Black Mormon American. In other words, we have stacked levels of identity commitments, and those commitments will often be associated with places that are significant.

Religion is thus one more identity commitment. My instinct is not to view religion as different in kind from a national, ethnic, or cultural identity. The emotions felt by an extremely patriotic person at "ground zero" in New York City are likely to be quite similar to those felt by a devout Muslim when standing in front of the Kaabah. I am not interested in defining why one experience is "religious" and the other somehow different (which will forever remind me of Rudolf Otto's absurd explanation as to why religious notions of the "sacred" are somehow different than Burke's notions of the sublime).

This conception of religion as an identity commitment allows me to talk more meaningfully about an issue like religious violence. It always grates me to hear people talk as if religion per se is an inciter to war and violence.. and then inevitably comes the impossible wish: "If only we could stamp out religion" (I am thinking here of Sam Harris, my disagreement having been expressed earlier). I find this an unimaginative intellectual stance.

Because of this view I am able to talk about religious violence differently: divisions are caused by the identity commitments that split the world into "us" and "them".. religions do this, but so do all forms of nationalism.. and any other identity commitment that you can think of (tribal, ethnic). If you could magically erase religious commitments, surely some other identity commitment would arise.. and it would lead people into the same conflicts. One way out of these conflicts would be to nurture a commitment to all human beings as a global "us".. being therefore a kind of neo-Stoicism. Such a view would not erase other identity commitments (an individual would still be English or Buddhist), but it would help water down to some extent the stark divisions.

I take the danger of Islamic fundamentalism to be precisely in its willingness to max out the religious identity commitment to the exclusion of all others forms of identity. Sayyid Qutb, the fundamentalist theorist, pushes Muslims to disregard all other commitments.. especially nationality or family:

A Muslim has no country except that part of the earth where the Shari'ah of God is established and human relationships are based on the foundation of relationship with God; a Muslim has no nationality except his belief, which makes him a member of the Muslim community in Dar-ul-Islam; a Muslim has no relatives except those who share the belief in God, and thus a bond is established between him and other Believers through their relationship with God.

The starker and more overpowering the identity commitment, the greater the risk of conflict.

Coming back to pilgrimage, it is reasonable to suspect that the strength of a person's identity commitment would be connected to the emotional experience of a place. A Muslim who saw the world in the terms laid out by Qutb would at the Kaabah be facing the symbol for his or her identity. A liberal Mormon making his or her way back to the temple in Salt Lake City would feel much less affected by that experience.. seeing as how Mormonism had become a relatively weak identity commitment. But whether one is going to Graceland (where I've a reason to believe we all will be received) or the crash site for Flight 93, we are drawn by our need to physically touch one identity by which we define ourselves.