After Hajj: Muslim Pilgrims Refashioning Themselves

The Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj) is one of the five pillars Islam and a duty which Muslims must perform—once in lifetime—if they are physically financially able do so. In Morocco, from where thousands pilgrims travel every year, Hajj often represents culmination years preparation planning, both spiritual logistical. Pilgrims describe their journey as transformative experience. Upon successfully completing returning home, negotiate new status—and expectations that come with it—within mundane complex reality everyday life. There many ambivalences tensions be dealt with, including managing community piety moral behavior. On personal level, struggle between staying on right path, faithful experience, straying path result human imperfection inability sustain ideals inspired by pilgrimage. By ethnographically studying lives Moroccans after return Mecca, this article seeks answer questions: how encounter variety competing demands following efforts received members community? How shape social religious behavior returned pilgrims? deal realities daily life? short, scrutinizes religious, ramifications for completion community. My research illustrates contributes process self-formation among pilgrims, non-religious dimensions, continues long over operates within, interacts specific contexts.