Men and women from almost every country on Earth, dressed alike, stand together on one plain at the Hajj. The Saudi statistics authority counted 1,673,230 pilgrims in 2025, and 1,707,301 in 2026.
Gathering people takes years of planning. Gathering stars takes millions of years of gravity. Al-Jāmiʿ, the Gatherer, gathers everything, and everyone, by will.
Start with what we know
Start with something we know. Then take away everything it needs. What is left is not a bigger version of us: it is the Name.
Episode 1
In us
The Hajj is one of the largest regular gatherings of people anywhere. According to Saudi Arabia's General Authority for Statistics, 1,707,301 people performed it in 2026. Pilgrims from Indonesia, Nigeria, Britain and Bosnia wear the same simple white cloth and stand together at ʿArafāt, the plain outside Mecca. It takes years of saving for many families, visas, flights, tents, water, medical teams and hundreds of thousands of workers. It is a triumph of human organisation. But every gathering we arrange needs planning, money and logistics, and it ends when people go home.
Episode 2
In nature
On winter evenings across Britain, flocks of starlings swirl into vast shape-shifting murmurations before roosting. In 2008 Michele Ballerini and colleagues, filmed starlings over Rome. They reported in PNAS that each bird keeps track of only about six or seven of its nearest neighbours, not the whole flock. From those small connections, a single moving shape of tens of thousands of birds appears. It is one of nature's most beautiful gatherings. But it lasts minutes, and it scatters at dawn.
Episode 3
At our best
Gravity is the weakest of the four fundamental forces, CERN explains, but it has an infinite range. Over millions of years it pulls thin clouds of gas and dust together until they collapse into stars, as in the Pillars of Creation photographed by Hubble and Webb. Every star in the sky was gathered this way. We understand it well enough to simulate it on supercomputers. Yet gathering by force is slow and blind: it takes millions of years, and it gathers only what is near enough to fall.
Episode 4
The Break
Our gatherings need force, time and logistics, and scattering always follows. Every gathering we know is held together by something, for a while: gravity, a flock's rules, a timetable. Al-Jāmiʿ gathers likes and unlikes, al-Ghazālī said, and even opposites. He gathers people on one Day, and gathers the scattered parts of every heart. “Our Lord! Lo! it is Thou Who gatherest mankind together to a Day of which there is no doubt. Lo! Allah faileth not to keep the tryst.” (Qur'an 3:9, Pickthall).
The Qur'an tells that when Abraham (peace be upon him) and his son Ishmael (peace be upon him) had raised the foundations of the House at Mecca, God told Abraham: “And proclaim unto mankind the pilgrimage. They will come unto thee on foot and on every lean camel; they will come from every deep ravine.” (Qur'an 22:27 · Pickthall).
Classical commentators, such as Ibn Kathīr, report from Ibn ʿAbbās a moving detail. Abraham said: Lord, how can my voice reach people? He was standing in a barren valley with hardly anyone in it. He was told: you call, and We will make it reach. So he stood and called, and the tradition says his call was carried to everyone who would ever answer it.
More than four thousand years later, by the traditional reckoning, the pilgrims still answer. As they arrive they say: labbayk Allāhumma labbayk, “Here I am, O God, here I am.”
In his Farewell Pilgrimage, the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ (peace be upon him) spoke to that vast crowd. No Arab, he reminded them, is better than a non-Arab, and no non-Arab than an Arab, except in goodness (Musnad Aḥmad 23489). The gathering itself was the lesson: one Lord, one human family.
What each faith says
Read:
Judaism
“A Song of Ascents; of David. Behold, how good and how pleasant it is For brethren to dwell together in unity!”
The Torah promises a scattered people that God will gather them again: “the LORD thy God will... return and gather thee from all the peoples, whither the LORD thy God hath scattered thee.” Its hope of the ingathering, kibbutz galuyot, is in the daily Amidah.
Psalm 133, sung at many Jewish gatherings, celebrates the joy of being together: “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.”
Gathering is built into Jewish prayer itself: the fullest public service, with the Torah reading and the mourners' Kaddish, needs a minyan, a gathering of at least ten.
Christianity
“a great multitude, which no man could count, out of every nation and of all tribes, peoples, and languages”
The Book of Revelation pictures a great gathering before God: “a great multitude, which no man could count, out of every nation and of all tribes, peoples, and languages”.
Christians believe God's purpose is to gather all things together in Christ (Ephesians 1:10). On a Sunday morning, many British churches, especially in the cities, bring together people whose families come from many different countries.
At Pentecost Christians celebrate the day the Spirit came on a crowd in Jerusalem “from every nation under the sky” (Acts 2:5), each hearing in their own language. Many churches read the passage in several languages that day.
Islam
“O mankind! Lo! We have created you male and female, and have made you nations and tribes that ye may know one another. Lo! the noblest of you, in the sight of Allah, is the best in conduct. Lo! Allah is Knower, Aware.”
Al-Jāmiʿ appears in the Qur'an in prayers like 3:9 and in 4:140. The Qur'an explains why God made people different and then brings them together. “O mankind! Lo! We have created you male and female, and have made you nations and tribes that ye may know one another. Lo! the noblest of you, in the sight of Allah, is the best in conduct. Lo! Allah is Knower, Aware.” (49:13, Pickthall).
Muslims gather five times a day in rows, weekly at Friday prayer, yearly at the two Eids, and once in a lifetime, if they can, at the Hajj.
Same and different
Psalm 133, Revelation's great multitude and the Hajj all celebrate many peoples gathered before one God. All three faiths gather weekly and on festivals. They differ in what they hope the final gathering will be around. For Christians, it is Christ; for Jews, the restoration of Israel and the nations; for Muslims, the Day of Judgement before God.
A moment to reflect
What is the biggest gathering you have ever been part of? How did it feel?
What have you learned from someone very different from you?
Who is missing from the gatherings in your neighbourhood?
Watch
BBC's Life in the Air on how starlings flock without crashing into each other.
The British Museum's film on the Hajj, the journey to the heart of Islam.
Do it together
families / neighboursStarling evening
Between November and February, find out where starlings roost near you (the RSPB lists sites) and go together at dusk. Count how long the murmuration lasts.
faith groupsOpen doors
Arrange a visit to each other's places of worship on a festival day: an Eid prayer, a Shabbat service, a Sunday service. Read Psalm 133:1, Revelation 7:9 and Qur'an 49:13 together.
Episode 1
