sharing a reflection over Hajj, by Br. Khalid Latif.
please share your thoughts on his reflection of the journey for Hajj, if you like.
best,
Dushwari
For all of you who are going, and for those of you who are not, below I wanted to share with you some thoughts before I left and after I came back.
pre-Hajj thoughts
It only occurred to me a few hours ago how important and real my journey to Mecca is. When I decided to go for hajj a few months ago, the thought of it all was somewhat intriguing. My mind would sometimes wander here and there, thinking about everything from the kaaba to the masjid of the prophet Muhammad salallahu alayhi wa salaam, to being able to eat a halal whopper from the burger king next to the haram. But now as I sit on my bed less then twenty four hours away from leaving the United states, my thoughts lie elsewhere.
Today a lot of people who I have been blessed with being close to said good-bye to me. For the next three weeks I will have no communication with them whatsoever. I am leaving behind the emails, the instant messengers, the blackberries, and the text messages. When I put my hand in my pocket it won’t be to silence a vibrating cell phone, beckoning me to answer it by the rhythmic tremors it unleashes upon me until I give in to its whims. When I awake in the morning, my first inclination won’t be to run to my laptop to see what new correspondence I might have received electronically during the course of the night. When I return to my place of rest in the evening from a day out in the world, it wont be in a state of tiredness that disallows the formulation of any coherent thoughts; a state that is further inhibited by an array of broadcasted images spewing notions violence, hatred, anger and injustice from all over the world. None of this will be with me when I leave from here.
What I will take is myself and the advice that has been given to me.
All around me people have been telling me what I should do and what I shouldn’t do. Literally about 200 people have sent me emails with their advice, their insights, but most importantly their requests for du’aas. The idea that their name might be mentioned in the holiest city in the world is an opportunity that they cannot let pass them by. But then the thought enters my mind that who am I to seek anything on their behalf? That it is true that I will be in the city, but what justice can I do to the sanctity that embodies it? That here is the place where Hajar alayhi salaam ran between the hills of Safa and Marwa, ascending to their very summits in hopes that she might find some nourishment for her infant child Ismael alayhi salaam. That here is the place when Ibrahim alayhi salaam, the friend of Allah, built, or rebuilt, the blessed Kaaba along with Ismael Alayhi salaam, many years ago. That this House, the kaaba, throughout time was under the protection of Allah, even when
armies marched with elephants against it and the people fled to the hills, their fleeing was done with the understanding that Allah would protect His city, and protect He did. That most importantly in this city some generations late the best of creation, Muhammad ibn Abdullah, salallahu alayhi wa salaam, would be born; that that streets are not just streets, but they are more that that because he walked on them; that the winds are unique in that they carried his blessed words throughout the town to anyone who would hear it; that his blessed forehead prostrated on that same ground that potentially two million hajjis would be prostrating upon in the coming weeks. What then could I possibly offer to such a noble place? In trying to find answer to this question, I was reminded of some words that a close friend and teacher of mine sent to me when I was going to visit Mecca before. Although at that time I was going for umrah, a smaller pilgrimage, his overall message still applies
.
“Dear Khalid, Umrah is a great blessing to this Ummah and the Tawfeeq to perform it is indeed a special mercy from Allah Ta’ala, a manifestation of His love for you, for with the open invitation for all here is His guidance for you to actually embark on this noble and virtuous journey to the sacred house of Allah subhanahu wa ta’aala, any invitation to ones home is a symbol of affection and care and remember the nonbelievers are not even allowed therein and of the believers only a privileged few, this is the smaller pilgrimage and pilgrimage is a migration from all else to Allah swt, an act of devotion and a quest of the pious, every prayer there in is multiplied, every Subhaan Allah, every Allahu akbar even to gaze at the holy ka’aba itself is an act of reverence and a measurement of your love for Allah ta’ala.
You may pray and beg for everything and every one and maybe even for me but most of all ask for the victory of Allah for the Ummah of His beloved Muhammad saws, pour your heart out let the heart ache you feel for the rest of this glorious nation find representation in your dua and tears there in the holiest of places, the pain of orphaned children, the hunger of our poor, the bleeding heart of our mothers, the screams of our tortured and the agony of our elders and pious, may almighty Allah change our hearts and the material mind set we have cultivated and the negligence to Salaah and our collective distance from the sacred Sunnah for victory comes from and only with righteousness and verily everything else is temporary and deceiving, may Almighty Allah in His greatest kindness accept and bless you your sacred Umrah.”
From here I start my journey. I’ll be back in a few weeks inshallah. I request of all of you who are reading to please keep my in your prayers; that Allah accepts my Hajj and the Hajj of all those who have gone before me, who are going now, and will be going in the future; that He makes things easy for all of those who we are leaving behind and allows us to be together again soon, and that He accepts all of our prayers and secret wishes, as there are no secrets from Him. He is the All-Knowing, the Merciful. Ameen.
Post-Hajj Thoughts
I cannot begin to imagine how to fathom a means by which I can describe the beauty that is Hajj. The entire atmosphere that exists there is one that is simply beyond description. Every sense I have was pushed into a place that it didn’t know existed. When I close my eyes I can still see the sky as I sat back and watched it from dusk to dawn run through every shade of red, orange, yellow, blue and black, its beauty only increased by the Kaaba that it surrounded. When I breathe in the air I can still smell that wonderful smell of desert sand and the wind that would blow it; that wondrous wind that carried the prayers and supplications of millions of pilgrims who left behind their homes, their families, and their belongings all in search of something greater. When I put my head to the ground I can still feel the cool marble floor of the Haram pressing against my forehead, offering even more comfort to me in a position that is already most comfortable and making it even harder f
or me to get up from my prostration. When I take a sip of water, I can still taste that refreshing zam zam, a liquid so pure that it was the only thing used from this world when the angels came down to clean the prophet salallahu alayhi wa salaam’s heart; that zam-zam which was all around me for 17 days, and now I have none to find. When I sit in silence I can still hear the pilgrims calling out to Allah, saying Labayk Allahuma Labayk, testifying to their presence in that serene city or Mecca; I can still here the call to prayer echoing through the streets, inviting everyone and anyone who it reached to come to success and come to life, but more importantly to come and stand side by side with what seemed like an endless number of individuals, young and old, male and female, black, white, brown, and yellow, all different in some way or another, but all standing together as equals at those times of prayer. Each sense I have was affected in some way or another, changing the way
I perceive things that exist all around me. Everything was so beautiful, so exquisite. But what I learned about a person’s insides is even more remarkable.
I am reminded of a story of a man by the name of Musa ibn Esa who served as a governor during the classical period of Islam. One night he was sitting with his wife and as they began to speak words that only a husband and wife can speak to one another, it is said the he tells her that she is more beautiful then the moon and if she isn’t, then he is divorced from. The wife becomes cognizant of what her husband has says and she brings him back to reality and explains the situation, asking him that do you realize you have said that if I am not more beautiful then the moon above us, I am divorced from you. He goes now to seek out the advice of a scholar, trying to find out if he can some how stay married to his wife, but one after the other tells him that there is nothing that can be done and he is in fact divorced from her. But then it is said that he goes and speaks to a scholar by the name of Imam Shafi’I, who tells him, much to the disapproval of his colleagues, that he is no
t divorced. His evidence: that Allah has said in the Qur’an La Qad Khalaqnal Insaana fi ahsani taqweem; that “we have indeed created man in the best of forms” and that means that man surpasses any of God’s creations in its beautiful form, be it the moon, the stars, or even the sun. At hajj I truly understood what this meant. I was witness to so many different acts of kindness, grace, and beauty.
I remember one individual who offered to bring water to the people sitting around him in the masjid. When he asked who was thirsty, dozens of people began to throw bottles at him from every angle, but rather then getting upset he quickly gathered up each one, filled it up with zam zam from the closest container, and made sure that each bottle was returned to its rightful owner. I remember sitting next to an African man on the steps of the haraam, he speaking his own dialect and I speaking mine. Neither one of us could speak a word from the same language, but we were able to communicate and understand each other still just the same. I remember seeing people circumambulating the Kaaba in the heat of midday. A woman who was pushing her mother in a wheelchair suddenly fell to the ground out of exhaustion from the heat and almost immediately a hand reached out to her to help her up while another handed her some water to quench her thirst. I remember the tears. Tear after tear fal
ling to the ground, each one inshallah sincere enough to be accepted by Allah. A tear seeking forgiveness for one’s own self, for one’s friends, and for one’s family, those who passed away and those who still remain; a tear seeking forgiveness for all those whom one had wronged as well as for all those whom one had been wronged by; a tear out of praise for each and every blessing given in life, from the ability to walk to the ability to talk to being able to see and hear ; each tear unique to itself and to the beautiful person that was fortunate enough to cry it.
If my thoughts are incoherent, it is because I really don’t know how to explain it. There is nothing that I can imagine is even close to an experience like the Hajj. I pray that inshallah Allah grants all of us the means to take a similar journey in our lives, the He allows all of us to always be grateful for what we have and treasure all that we have been given, that He grants us all the highest level of paradise in the company of those whom we love and care for, that He increases our trust in Him as that is a trust that will never fail us, that He increases us in knowledge that is beneficial and protects us from knowledge that does not benefit, that He grants us the wisdom to implement that knowledge into our daily lives, that He grants us all that our hearts desire and He lets there be good in every thing that they beat for, that He allows us the tawfiq to smile on this day as well as every tomorrow that we see, and that He guides and blesses us. Ameen ya Rab al’alameen.
was’salaamu alaykum
Khalid Latif
Imam Khalid Latif
New York University
Director/Chaplain
Islamic Center at NYU
