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In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to God, the Lord of the worlds. And peace and blessings be upon the honour of the prophets and messengers. Muhammad is the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him, and upon his family and companions. Peace be upon him, and upon him, and upon him.
And after that, my brothers and sisters, alhamdulillah, the Hujjaj have gone for Hajj. We ask Allah to accept their Hajj and make it easy, inshaAllah. And also give us the opportunity to repeat those who haven’t done to do it, and those who have done to repeat, inshaAllah.
Imam Ghazali, alhamdulillah, wrote something very beautiful about Hajj, about a thousand years ago. He said that the whole Hajj, the pilgrimage, is a rehearsal. For the journey of the soul after death. So he says that the departure itself, the Haji and the Hajjah, they must treat this as a true departure. As if you are leaving the world permanently. Because even though we go today, I mean, people in the past used to go by surface transport. So they genuinely believed that maybe they will not come back. But there is no guarantee just because you are flying in a plane. So whether you will come back or you don’t come back is up to Allahﷻ.
So, settle debts, seek farewell, seek forgiveness. So the first step, Imam Ghazali, alhamdulillah, said the first step of Hajj is not towards Makkah, but away from this world. And then he said, the next one is travel. The journey to Makkah is the soul’s departure rehearsed in your own lifetime. So if you see the travel itself, all the hardships of travel. In our today’s times, you have long flights and crowded buses and so on. Traffic jams, depending on people. You have never met in lands, maybe you have never seen before. And people doing things for you that you couldn’t do for yourself. Imam Ghazali says that this is exactly what the soul experiences when it leaves the body at death. Stripped of comfort. Separated from everything familiar. Carried forward by something. Something larger than itself.
Next you wear the Ahraam, which is for the man, it’s like a coffin. It’s like the cloth that you will be buried in. And for the woman also in the sense of, she’s wearing something which is an act of Ibadah itself. Completely removes all barriers and all the trappings of power and money and this and that. There is no difference between the king and the beggar. And everybody is saying the same thing. Labbaik Allahumma labbaik. Answering the call of Allah. Like we will answer and like we will say when the Sur, when the trumpet is blown on the Day of Judgement. Then the first sight of the Kaaba is like seeing Allah when we meet him, inshaAllah. We ask Allah to grant us his tidaar, to grant us that we should see him, inshaAllah. It is a direction, it’s a house, pointing to its Rabb. Imam Ghazali says that the pilgrim who weeps for the stones but forgets the one who placed them there has missed the whole point of the journey. The soul did not travel across the world for a building. He traveled to meet the one whom it was made for.
The tawaaf, the seven circles, the body joins in time what the malaika, the angels do eternally outside of time. Imam Ghazali says the real tawaaf is the heart’s tawaaf. Refusing to settle on anything but Allah. And it’s not distracted by what is in the external world. Next is the Sayyid, between Safa and Marwa. The soul moves between hope and fear. Bainal khawf batama’a. Which is the position of the believer. Between hope for Allah’s mercy and fear of Allah’s punishment. This is Hajar, her mother. Her path when she ran between the two hills searching for water. For her child. And saved by a gift. Which she did not earn. She didn’t dig the well. The well was provided for her. And that’s what the message for us. That the forgiveness of Allah is not because of what you do. But because of the mercy of Allah.
Then the pilgrim, the haji moves to Mina. Where Imam Ghazali says, The soul rests before the great gathering. Before the Hajr al-Aswad. The soul does not arrive at its great gathering unprepared. Before Arafat. Which he says is like the day of judgement. Made visible. The pilgrim draws into a quiet valley which is Mina. With no rights to perform. There is no special vanasik in Mina. No crowds to navigate and so on and so forth. It’s all peaceful and quiet. Just dua and zikr of Allah and reflection on what is coming. Then comes Yawmul Arafat. Which is the soul’s day of judgement. Made visible. Millions standing under the open sky. Disabled, weeping, stripped of every distraction and distinction. That mattered yesterday. Imam Ghazali says, This is the rehearsal of Yawmul Hajar. Yawmul Din. The gathering. The day when every soul will be summoned. And each will be preoccupied with itself. No one able to help another. The standing at Arafat is the soul’s day. Pleading with Allah before the real standing comes.
And he says that if you cannot weep here. Surrounded by mercy. And given the chance. What will you do when the real day arrives? Muzdalifah is the stillness of the grave. After the great standing. The pilgrim lies on bare earth. Under an open sky. No bed. No roof. Just ground beneath. And stars above. Imam Ghazali says, This is Barzakh. The soul at rest in the grave. Between the reckoning that has passed. And the resurrection still to come. The pebbles that are gathered. Are not only for the next day. They are what the soul carried forward. When nothing else remains. The quiet deeds. Gathered in darkness. That arm you. For what comes next.
Then you make your way to the Jamarat. The stones are aimed at the enemy. Who pursued you your whole life. Imam Ghazali says that this is not a ritual at some lifeless pillar. It’s a soul’s declaration of war. Against the deceiver Shaitan. Who whispered from your first breath. He gave you wasawis from the beginning. And every pebble. The heart says, I see you. I reject you. And I belong to Allah. So this is to be done with that awareness. Throwing absentmindedly. It’s only stones. Then comes the Udaya. Or the Qurbani. The animal is not the offering. Your nafs is the offering. Imam Ghazali says, That the real sacrifice. Is the lower self. The ego. The appetite. The base desires. The part of you that wants the world more than it wants Allah. The animal laid down is a sign of the self laid down. With every part offered hope. That a part of yourself is freed from the fire. And from the world. And from the long pull. Of the nafs.
Then you shave your head. And you emerge as one reborn. The vanity is gone. The self is lowered. The slave is standing bare. Before his master. Now Ghazali says that this is the soul that has died to itself. And returned. Clean. Stripped of pretension. And returned to. Its original simplicity. The final tawaf al wada. Last tawaf. Is the soul meeting its Rabb in Jannah. Every stage that led here. The departure was leaving the world. The haram was the shroud. The kafan. The journey was the soul’s passage. Arafat was reckoning. Muzdalifah was the grave. Mina was the final battle. And this circling the house one last time. Unwilling to leave. Is the soul that has crossed. Everything and finally arrived. Where it was always meant to be. Imam Ghazali says that the pilgrim should depart. With a broken heart. Longing to return. Because the soul that has tasted nearness to its Rabb. Cannot bear distance again.
Alhamdulillah this is a beautiful lesson from Imam Ghazali. We ask Allahﷻ to reward the scholars and the people who help us to understand our deen. InshaAllah. It’s a reminder for the Hujjaj. But also for all of us. Even though we have not gone, we are not going this year.
Thought and the remembrance. That death is only a beginning. Death is not the end; it is when a door opens into a world which has no end, and that is something to remember. InshaAllah tomorrow we will talk about that. But for today, it is very important for us to remember that we only have the ability to do anything until that door opens. Once that door opens, the ability is gone. Then, if we have not done something which we should have done, or if we did something which we should not have done, there is only regret. And that regret is not good. We ask Allah to save us from that regret. So let us do our best. We ask Allahﷻ to have mercy. InshaAllah Allah will have mercy. There is no doubt about this, but the mercy of Allahﷻ needs an excuse, and some effort must be made.
Right, I prayed my salah. Maybe the quality of salah is not good. What? Maybe we know it is not good. We ask Allahﷻ to forgive us. But if I don’t even pray, then where is the question of saying whether salah is good or bad? We never prayed. So that is the thing: the thing is to make the effort, no matter how small. We give some sadaqah. Maybe I should have given more, but I gave something. Right, I have tried to make some effort. But if you make no effort, then there is no excuse for this. So we ask Allahﷻ to help us to understand this.
And when I am talking about “some effort,” this is the basic minimum; we should actually make as much effort as we can because we have *yaqeen* in Allahﷻ. We have *yaqeen*, InshaAllah, in the meeting with Allahﷻ, and we have *yaqeen* in Allahﷻ’s forgiveness. And we must do whatever we can to achieve that. We ask Allahﷻ to make it easy for us, to help us to remember this, and to help us to live our lives in a way that pleases Him. Wa sallallahu ala nabeel kareem, wa ala alihi wa sahbihi ajma’in. Bi rahmatika arhaman ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. Al Fatiha.