On foot for the Haj: Bosnian walks 3,600 miles to perform Haj in Saudi Arabia

He crossed six countries on foot because he had no money

October 22, 2012

A 47-year-old Bosnian Muslim man reached Saudi Arabia this week to perform the annual pilgrimage after travelling nearly 3,600 miles (5,900 km) on foot from his Bosnian village, Saudi newspapers said on Monday.

Senad Hadzic set off from Banovici in north Bosnia Herzegovina in December 2011 during which he crossed six countries, including Turkey, Jordan and Syria before entering Saudi Arabia this week.

Newspapers quoted him as saying in a You-Tube film that he walked all that distance because he had no money.

“I wanted to perform Haj but I had no money…I decided to walk to Saudi Arabia, having only 200 euros,” he said.

“I slept at mosques, schools and other places, including houses offered to me by good people…some people asked me whether I was scared when passing through wild places and I told them ‘why should I…God is with me.”

The Bosnian pilgrim left last December on pilgrimage to Makkah by foot arrived in the holy city of Mecca after passing through seven countries including war-torn Syria.

“I arrived Saturday in Makkah. I am not tired, these are the best days of my life,” Senad Hadzic, 47, told AFP when reached by phone.

He said he had covered some 5,700 km in 314 days of walking through Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria and Jordan to Makkah, with a backpack weighing 20 kg.

He charted his progress on his Facebook page, where he posted a picture apparently of an entry/exit card for foreigners issued by the Syrian Interior Ministry.

“I passed through Syria in April. I walked some 500 km in 11 days. I went through Aleppo and Damascus and passed dozens of checkpoints held by pro-government and rebel forces alike, but I was never detained,” Hadzic said.

“I walked in the name of Allah, for Islam, for Bosnia-Hercegovina, for my parents and my sister,” he added.

On his Facebook page, he said God had shown him the way in dreams, including to go through Syria instead of Iraq.

During the pilgrimage, Hadzic faced temperatures ranging from minus 35 Celsius in Bulgaria to plus 44 Celsius in Jordan.

He said he had to wait in Istanbul for several weeks to get permission to cross the Bosphorus Bridge on foot and two months at the border between Jordan and Saudi Arabia to obtain an entry visa.

Film on the Holy Prophet: The truth behind the "Muslim Rage"

Who's afraid of Muslim Rage?

by Avaaz Team 

A US magazine cover (below) screams out the general media slant of the last two weeks: the Muslim world is burning with anti-western anger over an Islamophobic film, with hordes of violent protesters on the streets threatening us all ... but is it really? Citizens and new media are responding, and Gawker has brilliantly satirised the hype with alternative images of "Muslim Rage":

8 / 13

When Newsweek asked readers to tweet their own stories about #MuslimRage, many thousands did, hilariously:

Seven things you may have missed in the 'Rage':

Like everyone else, many Muslims find the 13 minute Islamophobic video "Innocence of Muslims" trashy and offensive. Protests have spread quickly, tapping into understandable and lasting grievances about neo-colonialist US and western foreign policy in the Middle East, as well as religious sensitivities about depictions of the Prophet Muhammad. But the news coverage often obscures some important points: 

1. Early estimates put participation in anti-film protests at between 0.001 and 0.007% of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims – a tiny fraction of those who marched for democracy in the Arab spring.

2. The vast majority of protesters have been peaceful. The breaches of foreign embassies were almost allorganised or fuelled by elements of the Salafist movement, a radical Islamist group that is most concerned with undermining more popular moderate Islamist groups.

3. Top Libyan and US officials are divided over whether the killing of the US ambassador to Libya was likely pre-planned to coincide with 9/11, and therefore not connected to the film.

4. Apart from attacks by radical militant groups in Libya and Afghanistan, a survey of news reports on 20 September suggested that actual protesters had killed a total of zero people. The deaths cited by media were largely protesters killed by police.

5. Pretty much every major leader, Muslim and western, has condemned the film, and pretty much every leader, Muslim and western, has condemned any violence that might be committed in response.

6. The pope visited Lebanon at the height of the tension, and Hezbollah leaders attended his sermon, refrained from protesting the film until he left, and called for religious tolerance. Yes, this happened.

7. After the attack in Benghazi, ordinary people turned out on the streets in Benghazi and Tripoli with signs, many of them in English, apologising and saying the violence did not represent them or their religion.

Add to that the number of really big news stories that were buried last week to make room for front page, angry Muslim "Clash" coverage. In Russia tens of thousands of protesters marched through Moscow to oppose Russian President Vladimir Putin. Hundreds of thousands of Portuguese and Spaniards turned out for anti-austerity protests; and more than a million Catalans marched for independence.

Muslim rage or Salafist strategy?

Meet Sheikh Khaled Abdullah, the Salafist TV host who peddled the film (Ted Nieter)

The "Innocence of Muslims" was picked up and peddled with subtitles by far-right Salafists – radical followers of an Islamic movement long supported by Saudi Arabia. The film was a cheaply made, YouTube failure until an Egyptian Salafist TV host, Sheikh Khaled Abdullah (right) began promoting it to viewerson 8 September.

Most insulted Muslims ignored the film or protested peacefully, but the Salafists, with their signature black flags, were leading instigators of the more aggressive protests that breached embassies. Leaders of the Egyptian Salafist party attended the Cairo protest that broke into the US embassy.

Like the far-right in the US or Europe, the Salafist strategy is to drag public opinion rightwards by seizing on opportunities to fan radical anger and demonise ideological opponents. This approach resembles that of anti-Muslim US pastor Terry Jones (who first promoted the film in the west) and other western extremists. In both societies, however, the moderates far (far!) outnumber the extremists. A leading figure in Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood (the more powerful and popular political opponent of Egypt’s Salafists) wrote to the New York Times saying: "We do not hold the American government or its citizens responsible for acts of the few that abuse the laws protecting freedom of expression".

Good reporting

A lonely band of journalists and scholars have approached the protests with an intent to truly understand the forces behind them. Among them, Hisham Matar, who powerfully describes the sadness in Benghazi after J Christopher Stevens' killing, and Barnaby Phillips, who explores how Islamic conservatives manipulated the film to their advantage. Anthropologist Sarah Kendzior cautions against treating the Muslim world as a homogenous unit. And Professor Stanley Fish tackles a tough question: why many Muslims are so sensitive to unflattering depictions of Islam.

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