ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that hajj performance can provide answers to existential questions about being and belonging in a modern, globalized world. Oral hajj-accounts of Dutch pilgrims are discussed to demonstrate how training pious dispositions through hajj can equip West European Muslims to participate as ‘good’ Muslims in a predominantly non-Muslim environment. The desire to perform hajj for personal growth points to the merging of an Islamic discourse of ethical self-formation with a modern liberal discourse on self-identity as a ‘project’, thus illustrating that people are always informed by various cultural discourses simultaneously.
