Abstract
We estimate the impact on pilgrims of performing the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Our method compares successful and unsuccessful applicants in a lottery used by Pakistan to allocate Hajj visas. Pilgrim accounts stress that the Hajj leads to a feeling of unity with fellow Muslims, but outsiders have sometimes feared that this could be accompanied by antipathy toward non-Muslims. We find that participation in the Hajj increases observance of global Islamic practices such as prayer and fasting while decreasing participation in localized practices and beliefs such as the use of amulets and dowry. It increases belief in equality and harmony among ethnic groups and Islamic sects and leads to more favorable attitudes toward women, including greater acceptance of female education and employment. Increased unity within the Islamic world is not accompanied by antipathy toward non-Muslims. Instead, Hajjis show increased belief in peace, and in equality and harmony among adherents of different religions. The evidence suggests that these changes are more a result of exposure to and interaction with Hajjis from around the world, rather than religious instruction or a changed social role of pilgrims upon return.
Introduction
Every year, more than two million Muslim men and women from over a hundred countries gather in Mecca to undertake the Hajj pilgrimage. Although the Hajj takes place on five specified days each year, pilgrims often spend a month engaged in prayer and ritual in Mecca and Medina. Pilgrims mix across the lines of ethnicity, nationality, sect, and gender that divide them in everyday life and affirm a common identity by performing the same rituals and dressing in similar garments that emphasize their equality.
Understanding the impact on pilgrims of participation in the Hajj sheds light not only on Islam and its institutions, but also on the shaping of beliefs and identity more generally. Of particular interest is how this experience affects views towards others – not only fellow Muslims with whom the pilgrim interacts but also with non-Muslims. Theories of social interaction suggest that exposure to other groups may promote empathy or antipathy towards them depending on the nature of the interaction(Pettigrew and Tropp, 2006; Stephan, 1978). In addition, the literature on social identity suggests that strengthened attachment to a group through interaction may be accompanied by negative feelings toward those outside the group (Tajfel and Turner, 1986).
Numerous pilgrim accounts suggest that the Hajj inspires feelings of unity with the worldwide Muslim community (Wolfe, 1997). Malcolm X’s experience is a vivid example. In 1964, Malcolm X broke from the heterodox Nation of Islam to become a Sunni Muslim and perform the Hajj. In a letter from Mecca, he wrote: “There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world… We were all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and non-white… [W]hat I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to rearrange much of my thought-patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions” (Malcolm X with Haley, 1965).
Some have worried that by promoting greater unity among Muslims, the Hajj could have negative implications for non-Muslims. This was a concern of colonial authorities (Bose 2006, Low 2007). More recently, after it emerged that some of the July 7th bombers had undertaken the Hajj, the British intelligence services began monitoring pilgrims, fearing that the Hajj may help spread radical views (Sunday Times, 2007). Others have expressed concern that the Hajj induces shifts toward a particular type of Islam. Naipaul (1981) laments what he sees as the erosion of local religious traditions in South Asian Islam in favor of a Saudi or Arab version of Islam.
Of course, it is difficult to isolate the causal impact of the Hajj based on examples like those of Malcolm X or the July 7th bombers. Individuals who choose to undertake the Hajj differ from those who do not, and the choice to do so may reflect other life changes. Thus, changes in pilgrims’ views and behavior after the Hajj may not reflect its impact.
We assess the causal impact of the Hajj using data from a 2006 survey of more than 1,600 Sunni Muslim applicants to Pakistan’s Hajj visa allocation lottery. Saudi Arabia uses country-specific quotas to limit the number of Hajj pilgrims each year for safety and logistical reasons. Pakistan allocates a large share of its quota through a lottery. By comparing successful and unsuccessful applicants to this lottery, we construct causal estimates of the effect of performing the Hajj on this population, five to eight months after the completion of the Hajj.
Our results tend to support the idea that the Hajj helps to integrate the Muslim world, leading to a strengthening of global Islamic beliefs, a weakened attachment to localized religious customs, and a sense of unity and equality with others who are ordinarily separated in everyday life by sect, ethnicity, nationality, or gender, but who are brought together during the Hajj. While the Hajj may help forge a common Islamic identity, there is no evidence that this is defined in opposition to non- Muslims. On the contrary, the notions of equality and harmony tend to extend to adherents of other religions as well.
We find that Hajjis (those who have performed the Hajj) are more likely to undertake universally accepted global Muslim religious practices such as fasting and performing obligatory and supererogatory (optional) prayers. The Hajj reduces performance of less universally accepted, more localized practices such as using amulets and the necessity of giving dowry. For example, the Hajj increases regularly praying in the mosque by 26% and almost doubles the likelihood of nonobligatory fasting. At the same time, it reduces the practice of using amulets by 8% and the South Asian belief of according unequal marriage priority to widows relative to unmarried women by 18%.
The evidence suggests that the Hajj increases tolerance, which seems to apply not just within the Islamic world but also beyond it. Hajjis return with more positive views towards people from other countries. Hajjis are also more likely to state that various Pakistani ethnic and Muslim sectarian groups are equal, and that it is possible for such groups to live in harmony. These views of equality and harmony extend to non-Muslims as well. Hajjis are 22% more likely to declare that people of different religions are equal and 11% more likely to state that adherents of different religions can live in harmony.
We also find evidence that Hajjis are more peacefully inclined. For example, while not many in our sample are willing to publicly condemn the goals of Osama Bin Laden, Hajjis are almost twice as likely to do so. Hajjis are also more likely to express a preference for peace with India and are 17% more likely to declare that it is incorrect to physically punish someone who has dishonored the family.
There is little evidence that participating in the Hajj increases support for an enhanced role of religion in the state or politics, or that it induces negative views of the West. Hajjis are in fact less likely to believe that the state should enforce religious injunctions and that religious leaders should be able to dispense justice. Hajjis and non-Hajjis report similar views regarding the adoption of Western values and on the plausibility of conspiracy theories regarding the Sept 11th and July 7th attacks.
The feelings of unity and equality brought about by the Hajj extend across gender lines to an extent. Hajjis report more positive views on women’s attributes and abilities. For example, they are 6 percentage points more likely to think women are spiritually better than men, an increase of over 50%. They also express greater concern about women’s quality of life in Pakistan relative to other countries and about crimes against women in Pakistan. Hajjis are also more likely to support girls’ education and female participation in the professional workforce. Hajjis show an 8% increase in their declared preference for their daughters or granddaughters to adopt professional careers. While these effects are larger for female Hajjis, male Hajjis show similar changes in views.
However, not all views on gender change. In particular, Hajjis are no more likely to question Islamic doctrine, such as unequal inheritance laws across gender, or to express views that potentially challenge male authority within the household, such as the correctness of a woman divorcing her husband. This suggests that Pakistani Hajjis’ altered views on women reflect a movement away from local prejudices against women and towards fairer treatment within Islam, rather than a more general trend towards feminism.
Hajjis, primarily women, report lower levels of emotional and physical well being. This may be due to the physically taxing nature of the Hajj rituals, as well as changed beliefs and greater awareness of the Muslim world outside Pakistan, particularly for women.
Contrary to some of the historical literature on the Hajj (c.f. Azarya, 1978; Donnan, 1989; Yamba,1995), we do not find evidence in our sample of major changes, at least in the medium term, in the social engagement or role of Hajjis after their return.
While it is difficult to isolate what drives the impact of the Hajj, the evidence suggests that exposure to Muslims from around the world during the Hajj is important. While we find that Hajjis do not acquire greater formal religious knowledge, they do gain experiential knowledge of the diversity of Islamic practices and beliefs, gender roles within Islam, and, more broadly, the world beyond Pakistan. The Hajj’s impact on such knowledge and on some of the tolerant attitudes toward other groups tends to be larger for those traveling in smaller groups, who are more likely to have a broad range of social interactions with people from different backgrounds during the Hajj. Hajjis also show the largest positive gain in their views of other nationalities for Indonesians, the group they are most likely to observe during the Hajj other than Saudis. Hajjis’ changed views toward women also reflect the exposure channel since the Hajj offers Pakistani pilgrims a novel opportunity to interact with members of the opposite gender in a religious setting, and to observe interactions across the sexes among Muslims from nations which are more accepting of such interactions.
Further work is needed to examine how each of these effects generalize to other populations and how they may vary over time. For example, the impact of the Hajj on gender attitudes towards pilgrims from other countries where mixed gender interaction is more common may be smaller than the impact we see for Pakistani pilgrims. Moreover, to the extent the gender results reflect a convergence to the mean views of Hajjis, the Hajj may instead induce more conservative gender views for pilgrims from countries with more liberal gender attitudes than those of the average Hajji.
Our results connect to a broad literature on social interaction and the shaping of beliefs and identity that spans social psychology, political science, and economics. This literature uses evidence from laboratory experiments to suggest that while group interactions in competitive settings can exacerbate conflict, interactions that reward cooperation can improve relations among groups(Aronson and Patnoe, 1997; Johnson and Johnson, 1983; DeVries and Slavin, 1978; Slavin and Cooper, 1999). Given the dearth of natural experiments such as ours that randomly mix representative populations, it is difficult to determine how exposure to others in various real-world contexts affects relations between groups. Boisjoly et al. (2006) report evidence that exposure to African-American roommates generates more positive attitudes toward African-Americans among white students. Putnam (2007) suggests that, in the US context, religion may play a particularly important role as “glue” that unites disparate groups.
Our results also shed light on social identity theory, in particular the idea that strengthening the attachment to an in-group may lead to more negative feelings towards an out-group (Sherif et. al. 1954; Tajfel, 1970; Tajfel and Turner, 1986). Our evidence suggests that while Hajjis positively update their views towards groups they were exposed to on the Hajj, this positive updating also extends to their views on groups they were not exposed to.
Our findings also relate to a question in the sociology and economic modeling of religion about why religions often incorporate individually costly practices, and more broadly about the impact of religion on development (Barro and McCleary, 2003; Berman, 2000; Glaeser and Glendon, 1998; Guiso et al, 2003; Iannacone 1992; Sacerdote and Glaeser, 2001). Iannaccone (1992) suggests a model in which these practices serve a signaling role. Pilgrimage could potentially be seen in this light, but our results suggest that the Hajj may play a more direct role in contributing to the survival of Islam as a unified world religion. Over time, religions with far-flung adherents tend to evolve separate strands which may eventually break away into different religions. Our analysis suggests that the Hajj may reduce dissent and splits in Islam by moving Hajjis toward a common set of practices, making them more tolerant of differences among Muslims, and by creating a stronger shared identity. This may be particularly significant for a religion, such as Islam, without a centralized hierarchy that can enforce common practices and beliefs and promote unity among followers.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 gives some background on the Hajj, focusing on aspects that contextualize our findings. Section 3 lays out our statistical approach, outlines aspects of the visa application process that are important for our identification strategy, and gives details of the survey. Section 4 presents the main empirical results on religious practice and belief, tolerance, gender, and well-being. Section 5 explores potential channels for the observed effects. Section 6 concludes with some underpinnings and broader implications of our results.
To read full document click this link:
Estimating the Impact of the Hajj: Religion and Tolerance in Islam’s Global Gathering
We estimate the impact on pilgrims of performing the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Our method compares successful and unsuccessful applicants in a lottery used by Pakistan to allocate Hajj visas. Pilgrim accounts stress that the Hajj leads to a feeling of unity with fellow Muslims, but outsiders have sometimes feared that this could be accompanied by antipathy toward non-Muslims. We find that participation in the Hajj increases observance of global Islamic practices such as prayer and fasting while decreasing participation in localized practices and beliefs such as the use of amulets and dowry. It increases belief in equality and harmony among ethnic groups and Islamic sects and leads to more favorable attitudes toward women, including greater acceptance of female education and employment. Increased unity within the Islamic world is not accompanied by antipathy toward non-Muslims. Instead, Hajjis show increased belief in peace, and in equality and harmony among adherents of different religions. The evidence suggests that these changes are more a result of exposure to and interaction with Hajjis from around the world, rather than religious instruction or a changed social role of pilgrims upon return.
Introduction
Every year, more than two million Muslim men and women from over a hundred countries gather in Mecca to undertake the Hajj pilgrimage. Although the Hajj takes place on five specified days each year, pilgrims often spend a month engaged in prayer and ritual in Mecca and Medina. Pilgrims mix across the lines of ethnicity, nationality, sect, and gender that divide them in everyday life and affirm a common identity by performing the same rituals and dressing in similar garments that emphasize their equality.
Understanding the impact on pilgrims of participation in the Hajj sheds light not only on Islam and its institutions, but also on the shaping of beliefs and identity more generally. Of particular interest is how this experience affects views towards others – not only fellow Muslims with whom the pilgrim interacts but also with non-Muslims. Theories of social interaction suggest that exposure to other groups may promote empathy or antipathy towards them depending on the nature of the interaction(Pettigrew and Tropp, 2006; Stephan, 1978). In addition, the literature on social identity suggests that strengthened attachment to a group through interaction may be accompanied by negative feelings toward those outside the group (Tajfel and Turner, 1986).
Numerous pilgrim accounts suggest that the Hajj inspires feelings of unity with the worldwide Muslim community (Wolfe, 1997). Malcolm X’s experience is a vivid example. In 1964, Malcolm X broke from the heterodox Nation of Islam to become a Sunni Muslim and perform the Hajj. In a letter from Mecca, he wrote: “There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world… We were all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and non-white… [W]hat I have seen, and experienced, has forced me to rearrange much of my thought-patterns previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions” (Malcolm X with Haley, 1965).
Some have worried that by promoting greater unity among Muslims, the Hajj could have negative implications for non-Muslims. This was a concern of colonial authorities (Bose 2006, Low 2007). More recently, after it emerged that some of the July 7th bombers had undertaken the Hajj, the British intelligence services began monitoring pilgrims, fearing that the Hajj may help spread radical views (Sunday Times, 2007). Others have expressed concern that the Hajj induces shifts toward a particular type of Islam. Naipaul (1981) laments what he sees as the erosion of local religious traditions in South Asian Islam in favor of a Saudi or Arab version of Islam.
Of course, it is difficult to isolate the causal impact of the Hajj based on examples like those of Malcolm X or the July 7th bombers. Individuals who choose to undertake the Hajj differ from those who do not, and the choice to do so may reflect other life changes. Thus, changes in pilgrims’ views and behavior after the Hajj may not reflect its impact.
We assess the causal impact of the Hajj using data from a 2006 survey of more than 1,600 Sunni Muslim applicants to Pakistan’s Hajj visa allocation lottery. Saudi Arabia uses country-specific quotas to limit the number of Hajj pilgrims each year for safety and logistical reasons. Pakistan allocates a large share of its quota through a lottery. By comparing successful and unsuccessful applicants to this lottery, we construct causal estimates of the effect of performing the Hajj on this population, five to eight months after the completion of the Hajj.
Our results tend to support the idea that the Hajj helps to integrate the Muslim world, leading to a strengthening of global Islamic beliefs, a weakened attachment to localized religious customs, and a sense of unity and equality with others who are ordinarily separated in everyday life by sect, ethnicity, nationality, or gender, but who are brought together during the Hajj. While the Hajj may help forge a common Islamic identity, there is no evidence that this is defined in opposition to non- Muslims. On the contrary, the notions of equality and harmony tend to extend to adherents of other religions as well.
We find that Hajjis (those who have performed the Hajj) are more likely to undertake universally accepted global Muslim religious practices such as fasting and performing obligatory and supererogatory (optional) prayers. The Hajj reduces performance of less universally accepted, more localized practices such as using amulets and the necessity of giving dowry. For example, the Hajj increases regularly praying in the mosque by 26% and almost doubles the likelihood of nonobligatory fasting. At the same time, it reduces the practice of using amulets by 8% and the South Asian belief of according unequal marriage priority to widows relative to unmarried women by 18%.
The evidence suggests that the Hajj increases tolerance, which seems to apply not just within the Islamic world but also beyond it. Hajjis return with more positive views towards people from other countries. Hajjis are also more likely to state that various Pakistani ethnic and Muslim sectarian groups are equal, and that it is possible for such groups to live in harmony. These views of equality and harmony extend to non-Muslims as well. Hajjis are 22% more likely to declare that people of different religions are equal and 11% more likely to state that adherents of different religions can live in harmony.
We also find evidence that Hajjis are more peacefully inclined. For example, while not many in our sample are willing to publicly condemn the goals of Osama Bin Laden, Hajjis are almost twice as likely to do so. Hajjis are also more likely to express a preference for peace with India and are 17% more likely to declare that it is incorrect to physically punish someone who has dishonored the family.
There is little evidence that participating in the Hajj increases support for an enhanced role of religion in the state or politics, or that it induces negative views of the West. Hajjis are in fact less likely to believe that the state should enforce religious injunctions and that religious leaders should be able to dispense justice. Hajjis and non-Hajjis report similar views regarding the adoption of Western values and on the plausibility of conspiracy theories regarding the Sept 11th and July 7th attacks.
The feelings of unity and equality brought about by the Hajj extend across gender lines to an extent. Hajjis report more positive views on women’s attributes and abilities. For example, they are 6 percentage points more likely to think women are spiritually better than men, an increase of over 50%. They also express greater concern about women’s quality of life in Pakistan relative to other countries and about crimes against women in Pakistan. Hajjis are also more likely to support girls’ education and female participation in the professional workforce. Hajjis show an 8% increase in their declared preference for their daughters or granddaughters to adopt professional careers. While these effects are larger for female Hajjis, male Hajjis show similar changes in views.
However, not all views on gender change. In particular, Hajjis are no more likely to question Islamic doctrine, such as unequal inheritance laws across gender, or to express views that potentially challenge male authority within the household, such as the correctness of a woman divorcing her husband. This suggests that Pakistani Hajjis’ altered views on women reflect a movement away from local prejudices against women and towards fairer treatment within Islam, rather than a more general trend towards feminism.
Hajjis, primarily women, report lower levels of emotional and physical well being. This may be due to the physically taxing nature of the Hajj rituals, as well as changed beliefs and greater awareness of the Muslim world outside Pakistan, particularly for women.
Contrary to some of the historical literature on the Hajj (c.f. Azarya, 1978; Donnan, 1989; Yamba,1995), we do not find evidence in our sample of major changes, at least in the medium term, in the social engagement or role of Hajjis after their return.
While it is difficult to isolate what drives the impact of the Hajj, the evidence suggests that exposure to Muslims from around the world during the Hajj is important. While we find that Hajjis do not acquire greater formal religious knowledge, they do gain experiential knowledge of the diversity of Islamic practices and beliefs, gender roles within Islam, and, more broadly, the world beyond Pakistan. The Hajj’s impact on such knowledge and on some of the tolerant attitudes toward other groups tends to be larger for those traveling in smaller groups, who are more likely to have a broad range of social interactions with people from different backgrounds during the Hajj. Hajjis also show the largest positive gain in their views of other nationalities for Indonesians, the group they are most likely to observe during the Hajj other than Saudis. Hajjis’ changed views toward women also reflect the exposure channel since the Hajj offers Pakistani pilgrims a novel opportunity to interact with members of the opposite gender in a religious setting, and to observe interactions across the sexes among Muslims from nations which are more accepting of such interactions.
Further work is needed to examine how each of these effects generalize to other populations and how they may vary over time. For example, the impact of the Hajj on gender attitudes towards pilgrims from other countries where mixed gender interaction is more common may be smaller than the impact we see for Pakistani pilgrims. Moreover, to the extent the gender results reflect a convergence to the mean views of Hajjis, the Hajj may instead induce more conservative gender views for pilgrims from countries with more liberal gender attitudes than those of the average Hajji.
Our results connect to a broad literature on social interaction and the shaping of beliefs and identity that spans social psychology, political science, and economics. This literature uses evidence from laboratory experiments to suggest that while group interactions in competitive settings can exacerbate conflict, interactions that reward cooperation can improve relations among groups(Aronson and Patnoe, 1997; Johnson and Johnson, 1983; DeVries and Slavin, 1978; Slavin and Cooper, 1999). Given the dearth of natural experiments such as ours that randomly mix representative populations, it is difficult to determine how exposure to others in various real-world contexts affects relations between groups. Boisjoly et al. (2006) report evidence that exposure to African-American roommates generates more positive attitudes toward African-Americans among white students. Putnam (2007) suggests that, in the US context, religion may play a particularly important role as “glue” that unites disparate groups.
Our results also shed light on social identity theory, in particular the idea that strengthening the attachment to an in-group may lead to more negative feelings towards an out-group (Sherif et. al. 1954; Tajfel, 1970; Tajfel and Turner, 1986). Our evidence suggests that while Hajjis positively update their views towards groups they were exposed to on the Hajj, this positive updating also extends to their views on groups they were not exposed to.
Our findings also relate to a question in the sociology and economic modeling of religion about why religions often incorporate individually costly practices, and more broadly about the impact of religion on development (Barro and McCleary, 2003; Berman, 2000; Glaeser and Glendon, 1998; Guiso et al, 2003; Iannacone 1992; Sacerdote and Glaeser, 2001). Iannaccone (1992) suggests a model in which these practices serve a signaling role. Pilgrimage could potentially be seen in this light, but our results suggest that the Hajj may play a more direct role in contributing to the survival of Islam as a unified world religion. Over time, religions with far-flung adherents tend to evolve separate strands which may eventually break away into different religions. Our analysis suggests that the Hajj may reduce dissent and splits in Islam by moving Hajjis toward a common set of practices, making them more tolerant of differences among Muslims, and by creating a stronger shared identity. This may be particularly significant for a religion, such as Islam, without a centralized hierarchy that can enforce common practices and beliefs and promote unity among followers.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 gives some background on the Hajj, focusing on aspects that contextualize our findings. Section 3 lays out our statistical approach, outlines aspects of the visa application process that are important for our identification strategy, and gives details of the survey. Section 4 presents the main empirical results on religious practice and belief, tolerance, gender, and well-being. Section 5 explores potential channels for the observed effects. Section 6 concludes with some underpinnings and broader implications of our results.
To read full document click this link:
Estimating the Impact of the Hajj: Religion and Tolerance in Islam’s Global Gathering
