﴿ لَيْسَ عَلَيْكُمْ جُنَاحٌ أَن تَبْتَغُوا۟ فَضْلًۭا مِّن رَّبِّكُمْ ۚ فَإِذَآ أَفَضْتُم مِّنْ عَرَفَٰتٍۢ فَٱذْكُرُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ عِندَ ٱلْمَشْعَرِ ٱلْحَرَامِ ۖ وَٱذْكُرُوهُ كَمَا هَدَىٰكُمْ وَإِن كُنتُم مِّن قَبْلِهِۦ لَمِنَ ٱلضَّآلِّينَ ﴾

“[However,] you will be committing no sin if [during the pilgrimage] you seek to obtain any bounty from your Sustainer. And when you surge downward in multitudes from `Arafat, remember God at the holy place, and remember Him as the One who guided you after you had indeed been lost on your way;”

Fear of God is the basic element of worship. As long as one remains in this frame of mind, it does not matter if the order of a rite is changed by mistake in performing the rites of pilgrimage, or if one attends to some private business while in the holy land. What is important is that one should enter into the spirit of pilgrimage—fear of God, remembrance of Him, prayerfulness, thanksgiving and wholehearted submission to God. While on a pilgrimage, one should make sure not to do anything which runs counter to this spirit. There should be no feeling of superiority over fellow pilgrims, that is, one should ‘press on from where the pilgrims stream forth.’ Making too much of one’s forefathers, praising their great deeds, is also against the spirit of pilgrimage: pilgrimage is for the glory of God, not for praise of the self. What place can such attitudes and activities have in Hajj, the very lesson of which is the equality of man before one, supreme God. If one does not assimilate this lesson during the pilgrimage, what chance is there of one applying it throughout the rest of one’s life?