The road to Mecca is fraught with challenges – but there’s nothing like the hajj pilgrimage to turn hearts | Ali Hammoud for the Conversation

When pilgrims don the hajj attire, they discard more than their clothes. Nationality, race and socioeconomic status are tossed to the wayside

Millions of men, women and children converged on Mecca this week for the hajj pilgrimage. The Saudi government says it will be the largest crowd ever for the pilgrimage.

The hajj pilgrimage is, at its core, a pilgrimage towards God. This presents a paradox of sorts. If God is beyond time and space, then what is the purpose of travelling to a particular place? Is God not present now, everywhere?

Our sense of the divine Presence is blunted. We need to find it focused on a particular place and, for the Muslim, that place is the Ka'ba at Mecca, which he has faced every time he prayed and to which he now journeys in pilgrimage.

There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colours, from blue-eyed blondes to black-skinned Africans. But 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.

In my thirty-nine years on this earth, the Holy City of Mecca had been the first time I had ever stood before the Creator of All and felt like a complete human being.