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Rabat – As the 2023 Hajj season approaches, Nabi Ennasri – a French writer and geopolitics expert of Moroccan origin – is making his journey more special by riding a bicycle from Paris to Mecca, while documenting the journey online.
Ennasri’s journey started on April 22, when he posted on Twitter: “That’s it. I left for Mecca this morning from Gare Montparnasse.”
The station he used to depart carries special meaning for Ennasri, as it is the location where his father first set foot in France, he told news outlet TRT World.
“A big thank you to the 100 people who came to give me strength for this long Hajj journey InshAllah,” he added. “Let’s go pedal for the planet and pay tribute to our ancestors.”
The journey aims to bring awareness to what Ennasri calls “the most crucial issue for humanity,” namely climate change.
“I humbly wish to bring the Muslims of the world to participate in this common effort to preserve the creation that Allah has given us as a deposit (Amâna),” he told TRT World.
The pilgrim biked across Europe to get to Turkey, then continued his journey through Jordan and Palestine before reaching Saudi Arabia, crossing 10 countries in total with the support of a small team.
Recently, he posted videos on Twitter of him arriving in Medina, one of the three holiest cities in Islam, along with Mecca and Jerusalem.
The analyst has been documenting his journey on his social media platforms, and hopes it will be a motivation for fellow Muslims and members of the community to re-examine how they travel.
“We must review the meaning of travel because even when it comes to pilgrimage, we tend to make it an object of consumption when it should be a walk (path) towards the sacred which must lead us to change ourselves deeply,” he said.
Read also: Hajj 2022: 15,392 Moroccans to Make Pilgrimage to Mecca
