Page 44 - Demo

44No. 293 | May 2025The violation of sovereignty calls upon Muslim thinkers/actors and youth to disavow and repudiate this new form of polytheism that worships multiple gods of materialism for the sake of money. It posits hedonism as the value for the pursuit of pleasure and self-indulgence. The Gaza Genocide is the naked evidence of the lack of self-restraint for the pleasure of land theft %u2013 as was the logic of bombing Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Vietnam.The violation and new polytheism oblige Muslims to sharpen their cognitive and spiritual capacities through education-in-motion to confront and defeat neo-imperialism with its many-headedness. Neo-imperialists are neo-polytheists. While Hajj is a global assertion of monotheism, it also entails a struggle against neo-polytheism. This demands a new approach to Hajj when there is only unity. Basic CharacterizationsCognition is characterized by language, learning, memory, intelligence, and thinking, in which language is preeminent because it makes the other four aspects manifest. Hajj in and by itself is a unique globalized social language through which all pilgrims communicate ritually. It makes the world more intelligible. It makes learning, memorization, and thinking easier. It sharpens intellectual acuity. Spirituality is characterized by the intangible realm of emotions, feelings, thoughts, intentions, intuitions, instincts, perceptions, and beliefs. Hajj deepens spiritual expertise as it sharpens cognitive skills. It reinforces the purpose of monotheism to spread goodness and eschew evil.Hajj: Return to the State of fitrah, as a UnifierAs all human beings are born in a state of fitrah (natural predisposition), Muslims nurture the intention to perform Hajj in order to return to that state of purity of natural predisposition because it gets diluted in the course of living.While Hajj is a physical journey to the Kaaba, it is, at a deeper level, a journey into one%u2019s self. The inner journey begins with repentance, which manifests itself as humility.The rituals begin with ihram, marking the dress rehearsal. The tawaf unifies the body, mind, and