CNN particularly CNN International and its Hajj 2006 website always seems to have the best coverage of hajj year in and year out in the mainstream western media.
Since Riz Khan retired, Hala Gorani and Zain Verjee have alternated anchoring their network’s hajj coverage although I have yet to see anything top Michael Wolfe’s Nightline hajj documentary. That documentary is my earliest memory of encountering anything more than a superficial introduction to Islam and to some of its beauty.
That documentary affected me in a profund way and I never forgot the saying mentioned toward the end that “Before you vist Makkah it beckons to you, and when you leave it behind it calls to you forever”. Quite unexpectedly, about five years later I converted to Islam.
I’ve attempted to go for for umrah twice and for hajj twice but it has never worked out, visa applications denied or this or that so my computer screen is about as close as I can get to going Makkah and Madinah but I can say alhamdulillah it wasn’t written for me yet each year around this time you feel that pull and tug at your heartstrings…
May Allah accept the hajj from each and every single pilgrim, accept our repentance, forgive our sins, and make us all from the hujjaj. Ameen.
Ify Okoye 
Amen, and may Allah grant you your wish and one day you might visit the Hajj. My mom went there several times, she was there last year, I guess she is one of the lucky one. Mansha Allah
Happy Eid Apple!
Ameen! Eid Mubarak!
I’m not sure if its the same documentary, but I saw one on youtube called Journey to Makkah (I think…) it was nice mashaAllah.
What I would really like to see is the new jamaraat, we saw the construction at Mina this summer but it wasn’t very detailed. wa Allahu ‘alam. InshaAllah we can ask the hujjaj when they return.
๐
Sooo very true, sister! @ “Before you vist Makkah it beckons to you, and when you leave it behind it calls to you forever.โ
May Allah take you there someday, and enable you to make the most of the most beautiful experience you can have in this life! Ameen
Eid Mubarak!
My sweetest and warmest Eid Mubarak to everyone.
This is the Michael Wolfe hajj documentary that appeared on Nightline and you can see part of the re-designed Jamarat in this CNN report.
SubhanAllah, it’s amazing that the quote stayed with me over the years because it never occurred to me until the day I converted that I would ever become Muslim and be able to make the hajj.
And then after I converted, I realized just being Muslim was not enough to go for hajj either. And of course, nothing happens unless Allah has willed it to happen.