Maternal Agency and Ritual Memory: Hajera and the Feminist Dimensions of Islamic Pilgrimage

This paper examines the central role of motherhood in shaping religious ritual and collective memory through the story of the biblical figure Hagar . According to Islamic tradition, Hajera ran desperately between the mountains of Safa and Marwa searching for water to save her infant child. Her act of maternal survival later became institutionalized in the ritual of Sa’i, performed by millions of Muslims during the pilgrimage of Hajj. Through this ritual, a mother’s struggle becomes sacred practice and communal memory. Pilgrims—both men and women—reenact Hajera’s running, embodying the act through which she sought to secure the future generation. Yet while their bodies repeat her movement, ritual prayers often invoke Abraham rather than Hajera. Drawing on Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of the borderlands, this paper argues that Hajera’s story reveals how maternal agency, survival, and displacement become foundational to religious ritual even when women’s voices remain partially absent from formal religious memory.