RIYADH, 6 April 2007 — The Muslim member of the US Congress, who accompanied House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on a Middle East tour, said yesterday he hoped to return to Saudi Arabia later this year to perform the Haj in Makkah.
“I did think of going to perform Umrah (the smaller pilgrimage) but the schedule did not allow it,” Keith Ellison, a Minnesota Democrat, told AFP as the congressional delegation prepared to wrap up its regional tour.
“I hope to do the Haj this year, God willing,” he said.
Ellison was elected to the House of Representatives when Democrats swept to victory in last November’s elections. He arrived in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday as part of Pelosi’s seven-member delegation which earlier visited Israel, the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria.
They were due to fly back to the United States today.
“I had never been to a Muslim country before this visit to the area,” said Ellison, who took the oath of office in January on a copy of the Qur’an that belonged to the third US president, Thomas Jefferson.
The Haj is one of the five pillars of Islam which all able-bodied Muslims must undertake once in a lifetime if they have the means. This year, it will fall in December.
Ellison, an African American who converted from Roman Catholicism while a student in college, said he believed the United States “could do much more” in terms of engaging to seek solutions in the Middle East.
“If you want to make peace, you have to talk about the problems preventing peace,” he said.
