Experience-Based Religious Values Education in the Umrah Pilgrimage: Mixed-Methods Evidence of Uneven Change Across Religiosity Domains

Abstract

This study examines Umrah as an experience-based learning cycle that reshapes pilgrims' religiosity, integrating a da'wah-communication framework with the phenomenology of religious experience to explain the mechanisms behind it. An explanatory sequential mixed-methods design measured five religiosity dimensions — practice, belief, knowledge, feeling, and effect — among 329 Umrah pilgrims from Makassar City using paired retrospective before-after measures, followed by in-depth interviews with 45 informants. The Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test showed four dimensions increased significantly (r = 0.15 to 0.62), while religious knowledge declined slightly but significantly, challenging the assumption that the cycle strengthens all domains at once. Qualitative data, mapped onto Kolb's four phases, showed that manasik training delivers procedural content before departure, while the muthawif acts in situ as a facilitator, reframing procedures into meaning and easing ritual anxiety rather than adding factual knowledge, which explains why affective and behavioral change outpaced cognitive change. Pilgrims' experiences are positioned as an emic articulation of categories already documented in the phenomenology of religious experience. The study proposes experiential religious values education as an initial conceptual contribution, framing intensive rituals as a natural laboratory for Kolb's cycle in an Islamic context. A single-group retrospective design without a control group, memory bias, and a self-developed instrument not validated by factor analysis restrict causal and psychometric claims. Further research with follow-up measurements three to six months later and a validated scale is recommended to test whether these patterns persist over time.