Emily Stuart: The Ka'ba

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In my Visions of Islam course this semester, we focused in part on one of the Five Pillars of Islam: the Hajj. The Hajj is a religiously mandated sacred journey to the religiously mandated sacred city Mecca. Muslims from all over the world travel to this holy place to remember the original journey of the Prophet Muhammad and his followers from Medina to Mecca. Inside Mecca lies a sacred place called the Ka’ba, a holy alter that is said to have been created by Adam and used as the sacrificial alter in the story of Abraham. This is where is gets interesting: before the foundation of Islam, the Ka’ba was used for polytheistic worship, including human sacrifices. But now, the Ka’ba has been transformed into a place of monotheistic worship, with Islamic ritualistic aspects such as circling and praying towards the black cube. It is interesting that a place, which holds so much spiritual significance to a highly ritualistic and symbolic culture such as Islam, was once the opposite of what they stand for. It displays our human transformation of otherworldly sacred places.