Thank goodness DrMatrix doesn’t know about my visit to the Vatican!
He might close this thread too.
It would not be easy getting into Mecca, as a genuine pale-face western convert, unless you had changed your name to a muslim name, and had a passport to prove it. To go on Hajj anyway one has to apply, even as a Muslim. AFAIK it is done through authorised travel agencies, though every year they are getting more high tech with databases and stuff. There are also a limited number of visas given out every year for Hajj.
Arabic is not a requirement - thousands that go are poor, illiterate Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, even Indonesians, who have spent their whole life savings to make the trip.
I know many Muslims that have done Hajj, and they all say it is amazing. Some will almost have tears in their eyes. If you have done Hajj, you earn the nickname “Hajji” (men anyway) but this is not always used.
The nicest thing for me about Hajj is that it is the one occasion that men and women mix in prayer. At all other times, in mosques, they are separated. They have separate prayer rooms in offices, or they arrange to pray at separate times. Then put this into the context of Saudi - where men and women are ALWAYS separated.
And yet - in the holiest of holiest places, at the most sacred of sacred times, in the most extremistly wahhabist land - they are all in one big crowd.
Actually I can think of a possibly easy way for a non-Muslim to do Hajj - if you were the wife of a Muslim. Eg if a Christian woman married a Muslim man, took his name etc (and nationality perhaps too - if he was from a muslim country) and if he declared she was muslim, even if she hadn’t actually converted, they would probably both get visas. The more she covered, and the more she looked Muslim (eg a Sudanese Christian woman - as half of Sudan is Muslim anyway) and I doubt there would be too much trouble. Just a guess though.
It doesn’t work the other way round because technically speaking, Muslim women cannot marry non-Muslim men - the men have to properly, officially convert first.
Ah yes, I remember that old thread, Coll certainly had some issues.
Has anyone seen Baraka? In the film (more a documentary) they go and film all around Mecca, including the black cube thing. I always wondered how they pulled that off.
I found out today that the Qaba - black cube thing - is actually hollow, with rooms inside it, containing treasures. I always thought it was solid before.
Apparently the King of Saudi Arabia goes to the Qaba every year and cleans it himself - this is considered a huge honour - because he is literally the Servant of God. Fahd of course isn’t doing it by now, being an invalid, but his son/Crown Prince is.
And my muslim friends insist this is actual cleaning - not just a symbolic thing. (Though I find it immensely difficult to imagine any corrupt, spoiled and decadent Saudi royal pulling on the rubber gloves and getting out a mop, to be quite honest).
[QUOTE=istara]
It would not be easy getting into Mecca, as a genuine pale-face western convert, unless you had changed your name to a muslim name, …/QUOTE]
Really?!
Probably - this is just IMO. These are somewhat paranoid times. They would need some documentation as proof that the person was a genuine convert (letter from an imam as I think Coll suggested in another thread) but it might not be helpful if you had kept your name as Moses Kleinbaum, or Christina Godfrey.
You don’t need to change it all - I know of a Sharif Abdullah Schleifer, a Jewish convert to Islam. That said I also heard he suffers from the suspicion of being Mossad. Anyone western over here who learns Arabic is often suspected of being CIA. They love conspiracy theories here 
Based on my study of Sir Richard Francis Burton’s life, I think a good case can be made for this theory: Burton was not an infidel pretending to be a Muslim. He actually was a convert to Islam. He wasn’t fooling the Muslim people, he was fooling the British public (to sell more books to them). He was a Muslim pretending to be a non-Muslim pretending to be a Muslim. This sort of multi-level disguise is just the sort of thing that would appeal to Burton’s smart-aleck devious mind.
See answer below. As other’s have indicated it’s a custom not a Koranic command. It’s was the year after the ninth year of the Hijrah.
The Proclamation of Surah Bara’ah or Al Tawbah
[quote]
Although Mecca had been conquered and its people were now Muslims, the official order of the pilgrimage had been changed; the pagan Arabs performing it in their manner and the Muslims in their manner. It was only after the pilgrims’ caravan had left Al-Madinah in the , when Al-Islam was dominant in North Arabia, that the Declaration of Immunity, as it is called, was revealed. The Prophet sent a copy of it by messenger to Abu Bakar, leader of the pilgrimage, with the instruction that Ali was to read it to the multitude at Mecca. Its purport was that after that year Muslims only were to make the pilgrimage, exception being made for such of the idolaters as had a treaty with the Muslims and had never broken their treaty nor supported anyone against them. Such were to enjoy the privileges of their treaty for the term thereof, but when their treaty expired they would be as other idolaters. That proclamation marks the end of idol-worship in Arabia. (Introduction to the Translation of Holy Qur’an, Lahore, Pakistan, 1975)
There is a very good National Geographic documentary on the Hajj that shows a lot of the details that non-Muslims cannot easily see. It should satisfy most levels of curiosity. Your local libary is usually pretty good about carrying these videos.