Answer
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In this fatwa:
1- Hajj inculcates the spirit of love and devotion to the One and Only God.
2- Hajj unifies peoples’ minds and hearts on almost the same purposes, i.e. to please their Lord and to have their sins forgiven. So all those who perform Hajj, despite their differences in ethnicity, culture, and language, share the same rites and hopes. Even those who do not perform Hajj turn their hearts and eyes towards the Kabah.
In his response to your question, Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, a senior lecturer and Islamic scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto, Ontario, Canada , states:
The hajj benefits for the individual and the Ummah are enormous. Here are some of them:
1- Hajj revives the spirit of utter love and devotion to the One and Only God by keeping alive the faith, struggle, and path of Prophet Ibrahim and his son Isma`il.
2- Hajj helps humans break the many barriers of race, language, ethnicity, and color that divide them, and helps them to create the unity of a single human family based on the recognition of God as the Creator and Sustainer of all creation.
3- Hajj helps keep alive the memory of humanity’s final standing for judgment before their Lord and Judge.
4- Hajj helps individuals become whole once again after cleansing themselves of the many sins they accumulate over the course of their lives. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “Whoever performs Hajj and stays away from lewdness, wrangling, and obscenities will come home like a newborn.” (Al-Bukhari and Muslim)
Almighty Allah knows best.
Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.