Among the Pilgrims, but Not of Them – Individualist Intellectuals on Their Pilgrimage to Mecca

How does an individualist and skeptical intellectual who is not religious in the usual sense experience the pilgrimage to Mecca in modern times, when he or she is only one among a huge mass of pilgrims? In order to offer an answer to this question, this contribution will look at two literary texts which are quite different in terms of author, time, and genre, but show a number of similarities in terms of observations, impressions, reflections, and feelings. The first is Lost in the Crowd, the travel diary published by the Iranian thinker Jalal Al-e Ahmad (1923–1969) in 1966 on his Hajj experiences in 1964; the second is the novel Fitna by the Emirati author Amira al-Qahtani, which appeared in 2007 and takes the pilgrimage as a frame-story. It will be argued that Al-e Ahmad established a discursive tradition that had an impact on religious doubters in Iran and beyond.