Since its establishment as an independent state Malaysia has striven to bring the pilgrimage within the means of more of its Muslim citizens, and to make their trip to Mecca orderly and safe. The Pilgrimage Management and Fund Board, Tabung Haji, has now largely achieved this goal under the creative leadership of Dato' HAJI HANAFIAH BIN HAJI AHMAD. HANAFIAH entered the Civil Service from the University of Malaya and was posted in 1963 toJiddah, Saudi Arabia. Encountering Malaysian pilgrims scrambling for food and accommodations amidst strange surroundings, he energetically undertook to help them. These efforts prompted Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak to choose HANAFIAH as Tabung Haji's Deputy Director General in 1974. Within three years he was made Director General.

Aware that many pilgrims are rural folk without experience in foreign travel, HANAFIAH has expanded Tabung Haji's activities to make it an effective "people's organization." Formerly discouraged by ignorance and bureaucratic hurdles, pilgrims now seek assistance from the 69 branch offices of Tabung Haji throughout the country which coordinate the issuing of passports, visas and health documents, and which brief the pilgrims thoroughly about each stage of their prospective journey. Today's pilgrim is whisked from Malaysia directly to Jiddah aboard jets chartered by Tabung Haji from the national airline, staffed with personnel trained to attend to their needs. From Jiddah buses carry them to prearranged quarters around Mecca. Throughout the holy rituals they are cared for by Tabung Haji staff members who provide information, banking facilities and familiar Malaysian foods, and who organize mobile clinics and a hospital to keep illness and mortality to a minimum. Today the vast majority of Malaysia's pilgrims—nearly 25,000 annually—avail themselves of Tabung Haji's comprehensive services.

Financing their pilgrimage has been a chronic problem for most Muslims; savings for this event formerly might be hidden away beneath the house floor in earthenjars or secreted in a bamboo rafter. But today, due to public confidence instilled by HANAFIAH, over 1,000,000 Malaysians deposit their savings with Tabung Haji, which keeps individual computerized accounts. This growing fund is astutely invested in oil palm plantations, rubber estates, electronics firms, real estate and other profitable projects. Besides earning an approximate eight percent dividend for its investors—all in strict keeping with Islamic precepts— Tabung Haji serves a secondary purpose, as a source of capital for spurring Malaysia's progress.

Born 49 years ago in Kedah, HANAFIAH personifies a new generation of Malaysian civil servants who have been trained at home and abroad since independence. Under his devoted and upright leadership Tabung Haji's 900-member professional staff is providing facilities whereby Muslims may both carry out the precepts of Islam (which is Malaysia's off'icial religion), and enhance their own prosperity. The new 38-story office tower which houses the organization's national headquarters—a gleaming architectural wonder on the skyline of Kuala Lumpur—is a dramatic symbol of Tabung Haji's high national profile and its importance to Malaysia today.