French Muslim Cyclist Completes 5,000km Journey from Paris to Mecca for Eco-Friendly Pilgrimage

While most pilgrims are used to joining Mecca by plane, Nabil Ennasri, 41, chose this year to make the journey by bike from Paris. This resident of Aubervilliers (Seine-Saint-Denis) set off on April 22 from the forecourt of the Montparnasse station and arrived in Mecca on June 25. "Right on time for the start of the ceremonies... I wanted to reconnect with a tradition of pilgrimage which is a long and self-denying path," he told the newspaper Le Parisien.

Nabil, who now has 35,000 subscribers on Instagram and 90,000 on TikTok, wished on Wednesday "from the Grand Mosque of Mecca" a very happy Eid al-Adha to his subscribers. The goal of this geopolitics researcher and Qatar specialist, in traveling more than 5,000 kilometers by bike to reach the Holy Land, is to raise awareness among the Muslim community about climate issues.

"The issue of global warming has been working on me for a long time. I have noticed that the global Muslim community is relegating this essential concern to the background," explains the forty-something who had signed a column on the Reporterre website in 2011, titled "Muslims facing climate change." He stated there that "respecting nature is a requirement and allows the believer to reconnect with the prophetic tradition of an ecologically healthy and responsible way of life."

Nabil Ennasri hopes to have impacted hundreds of Muslims with his bike pilgrimage, widely followed on social media via the hashtag #HadjByCycle. As for him, he says that this journey has "transcended and transformed" him. "It gave me a feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment. The flavor of a prayer after two months of cycling has absolutely nothing to do with what you experience after seven hours of flying."