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Playing
Unforgettable Stories From Hajj | Imam Tom x Shaykh Elshinawy
Imam Tom Live
Unforgettable Stories From Hajj | Imam Tom x Shaykh Elshinawy
Eid Mubarak to everyone celebrating around the world!
To mark this blessed day, Imam Tom Facchine sits down with Sh. Shinawy to talk about what Hajj actually does to people. The tough guy who rolled his eyes at everyone crying at the pilgrimage — and came home a different person. The family that sacrificed everything across three generations just to reach Mecca once. The stories that don't make it into the Friday sermon but stay with you forever.
If you went this year, this will feel like home. If you haven't gone yet, this might be the conversation that changes that.
From our family to yours — Eid Mubarak. May Allah accept from all of us.
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.
The Ka'bah is the house of Allah and the Haram is the sanctuary. And this is profound because you know a lot of times we look at religiosity from the outside. If I don't pray, Allah is going to punish me.
But Hajj reminds you that not praying is the punishment. Not being allowed in his presence is the punishment. People are concerned that Hajj is getting too commercial. The prices are exorbitant, especially if you're coming from North America. At the end of the day, we have a bottom line.
The bottom line is the Prophet, peace be upon him, said going around the house and pelting those stones and pacing between Safa and Marwah, the whole thing is about remembering God. There is a push-pull dynamic here. If you want your Akhirah, you want your forever with God, it's going to have to cost something.
The meanings of Hajj are intangible, but there's an irony here that the most important part of Hajj is internal. Am I allowed to change the subject? Or turn the tables? Let's turn the tables. Your Hajj. Shaykh, what's your first experience on Hajj?
Oh man, SubhanAllah. Tell me some good Hajj stories. So this was my first time back to Medina and then of course Mecca, after I had to interrupt my studies.
Yeah, so what year is that? That was 2015. So I left in 2011. My father had his third stroke. It was a slow, challenging three and a half years, deteriorating slowly. We were by his side
trying to do our best. He passed, and I went to Hajj two months later. It was indescribable. Some things I'm going to have to leave off camera.
You know, Ibn Al-Qayyim, he says, because whatever we say in this episode, we're just going to fail at describing Hajj upfront, right? He says that the person that's up close and personal with something can't assess it correctly.
And the person trying to judge from a distance will never be able to assess it correctly. It's the person that was up close and came out, you know, step back, you'll see better, that really says, "Oh man, that's what life without salah looks like."
That's what life without Mecca and Medina looks like. So I came back and one of the good brothers saw me in Medina and he was still there studying and he looked at me and he said, "Welcome home."
And I fell apart when he said that to me because of so much inner conflict that I had to go through to make, inshallah, the right decision of staying by my dad.
I think you need to explain that story just a little bit more. I think people will benefit from it because it's a common thing and people might not know
the history of how your studies got interrupted and how you didn't let that stop you. Because a lot of people, they're really concerned or fixated on where to go study and they
don't imagine themselves having a future in scholarship or study except through this university or that university, or this place or that place. So I hate to put you on the spot. It's not about Hajj per se. We'll get back to it. I got duped.
I was told, "Come do a podcast about Hajj." But no, seriously, it's a really important story for people to hear. And also about those different things because it happened to myself, it happened to Shaykh Tahir, it happened to other people where, you know, like family goes through stuff while you're abroad studying.
And so many people have had that situation of having to choose whether to come back or to continue or under what terms. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, I was at a Mishkah fundraiser where I graduated from Mishkah University, eventually
Islamic University of North America. And Dr. Hatim Al-Hajj was the keynote and they asked him to speak on why join Mishkah University.
And his opening line was, "Who is Mishkah University not for?" And he said, "It is not for the people that have the blessing of sitting knee to knee
with the scholars, you know, classical style, the blessing of traditional seminary training, full time, you know, studious, all in mindset. It's not for you. This is for the majority who will never have that opportunity."
So recognizing that most people will not be able to do this, and I am among them, is liberating because it's not like an all or none, right?
And so I applied for Medina University year after year in my undergrad period while I was studying English literature. In fact, I went through English literature so that I can get out of college quickly and get to Medina.
And every year I would get this verbal promise that I'm in and the list comes out and you're in it.
And so I actually gave up and I got married. And then when I stopped waiting, the list came out and my phone's blowing up. People tell me you're on the list.
And so that was very difficult. How do I do this sort of, you know, I'm married now, my wife's pregnant. And so I just decided that I'm going to consult some scholars and do whatever they say is
best. I called some of those I trust across the globe. And I said, "Listen, subhanAllah, in hindsight, I think about this now, anytime you'll be able to spend in Medina will be a blessed time, regardless of how long or short it is."
So I went through the process, got to Medina, alhamdulillah, early 2011. And that summer during my break, my father had his third stroke, may Allah have mercy on him. So I came back for the fall, wrapped my things up, took my leave of absence and returned
for three and a half years. And I was devastated because I waited five years to get into Medina. As soon as I got in, I got pulled out. And that's why whenever people come and ask me about studying the sacred sciences, these
disciplines, I tell them my advice to you is to be grateful for the opportunities currently available to you. And Allah said in the Qur'an, if you're grateful, I'll increase you. So maybe this is just a stepping stone to something of greater value for you.
Long story short is, I was depressed for a while because it pulled from me after it was given to me. And I remember attending a seminar by Dr. Salah Al-Sawi, Secretary General of AMJA.
And I went to him and I said, "Shaykh, I'm in a rut and I feel like I'm not me. And I was having sort of like a crisis."
So he looked at me with that kind, grandfatherly smile. So sweet. And he said to me, "My son, it is now time for another act of worship. You pivot with Allah's pleasure wherever it is.
You don't get to choose your cards." And then he said to me, "Join Mishkah University." And so I took it slow and steady and started from scratch and studied at Mishkah online. I was their student.
Became two kids, incoming. Eight years later I graduated, became an instructor at Mishkah and other places and still learning on the job, hoping the job won't prevent me from learning as they say. So all right, so back to Hajj.
So then you go to Hajj like two years after that, or sorry, you said two months after your father passed away. Correct. Two months after he passed away.
And yeah, subhanAllah, like walk us through like, is that what was going through your mind? So I was very keen on doing it right.
So I was invited by a Hajj company and I refused to go as an advisor the first time around because I wanted to pay out of pocket, which is probably not the best thing Islamically to borrow money for Hajj.
But I borrowed money for Hajj because I said to them, "At least the first year I'm going to pay for myself and then I can sort of come accompanying your group as the religious advisor."
So I borrowed money and I paid for my own Hajj and that's a good point of reflection as well. The Prophet, peace be upon him, says, "Alternate between Hajj and 'Umrah because they remove poverty and sins the same way fire does away with the
corrosion of metal." And like I came back and I had three job opportunities and I was sharing that with a brother, an elderly Albanian brother in our community recently, and he's like, "You too."
He said, "You know, before I became fully Muslim," he said to me, "I heard that 'Umar ibn Al-Khattab said, 'Whoever has the ability to make Hajj and does not make Hajj might as well die as a Jew or a Christian.'"
Of course, that probably doesn't mean disqualify Islam altogether, but he's telling them like, "What is recognizable about your Islam exactly, if the pillars of Islam get deprioritized for a few decades?" Yeah. So I got really nervous. I went to my father and we went to Hajj and I left everything, I left my business and
all that. And he says, "I remember being on the flight back from Hajj and they're giving out the newspapers in the airplane and I saw that my stock went up four times. I made back the money before I landed stateside." I made back the money before I landed stateside.
That's crazy. So anyway, I borrowed the money and I went to hajj and one of the things that stayed with me throughout the days and nights of hajj is that the obligatory hajj you only make once.
It's like the only sort of pillar of Islam that the obligatory offering is one and done in your lifetime. So even if you're blessed to make a second or third hajj, this one is special.
And that's why they say Ibn Taymiyyah wept profusely for days straight saying that statement. This is the only wajib that doesn't get repeated in a lifetime. Like I hope I'm doing it right. So that was really front of mind.
I was super worried, super anxious about doing it right. And it was incredible. I mean, just being at Allah's door, you know, so many things that the meanings of hajj are
intangible, right? They just like reach into your soul and they just change things. Work is done on you. Work is done on you. Without you even realizing that work is being done on you.
You don't realize that you're being reformatted and represented to Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala. You know, there's a statement from Sufyan al-Thawri, rahimahullah. I found it out years later and I'm like, yes, yes, yes.
This one, this one, this is it. So I've never seen anyone explain hajj this way. Maybe it's a good time to share it now. For people that don't know, hajj of course is centered around the Ka'bah. Then you go out into the campsites of Mina, which, and that's called the sacred precinct.
It's all part of the haram. And then you go to Arafah, which is the most important part of hajj. But there's like an irony here that the most important part of hajj is outside of the sacred precinct. The Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, said that hajj is all about Arafah, meaning if
you miss Arafah, there's no, you gotta come back next year. There's no make up for it. Everything else you can sort of compensate with a sacrificial offering or something. So Sufyan al-Thawri, rahimahullah, who is like the Abu Bakr al-Siddiq of the Tabi'in, of the successor generation after the Companions.
He says, I got to Mecca and then I saw Ja'far ibn Muhammad, Ja'far al-Sadiq, rahimahullah, the great, great grandson of the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, and the great scholar of Islam. He says, and I asked him, I have a question for you.
How come the most important part of hajj is outside of the haram? So Ja'far ibn Muhammad said to him, listen, the Ka'bah is the house of Allah and the haram is the hijab.
You know, like when you go to royalty, there's the hijab, they're sort of like one step removed. Not everyone comes into inner circle. The hijab of the house of Allah, that's the boundary.
He says, and Arafah, the mawqif of Arafah, where you stand, that is the gate. That is the outer gate. So when people came to Allah, like you come, you even make an 'umrah in the beginning, oftentimes,
right? Allah says, no, stand outside the door and make your request. So you go to Arafah and that's where you leave it all on the ground, right?
That's where you break yourself in sort of like humility. This is where you show your brokenness, your need for Allah, you plead with him and all of that. He says, and so when you do that, you know, reintroduce yourself to Allah's mercy.
You know, they say the first crime committed after Arafah is assuming Allah didn't forgive you, right? All of that. Then you are permitted to step into the sanctuary. Then you step into the sanctuary that night of Muzdalifah before you come to the Ka'bah.
He says, that is when you continue pleading and you don't take it for granted and you spend the night hopeful. He says, and then he forgives you and tells you, all right, present your sacrificial offerings.
And so you present your sacrificial offerings and then you're permitted to come to the house. You're permitted to come to the Ka'bah. And this is profound because, you know, a lot of times we look at religiosity from the outside.
We look at our relationship with Allah from the outside and it's like, you know, if I don't pray, Allah is going to punish me. But hajj reminds you of like, not praying is the punishment, not being allowed, you know, in his presence is the punishment.
And so you're allowed to come to his house at that point. You know, before, you know, you come to the house, you got to present your sacrifices. Before you're allowed to make sacrifices, you got to step outside and knock on the door like everyone else, no favoritism.
And then Sufyan said to him one final question before he left him alone. He's like, well, why at the culmination of things, we can't worship Allah more in the sense of eating and drinking. Why is fasting haram in the three final days of hajj, the day of Eid and so on and so forth.
He said, because now you're inner circle, you're his guests, you've been invited into his house and it's inappropriate for you to refuse eating in front of your host. Just like, that's what it was.
And SubhanAllah, it is, you know, I wasn't eating and drinking. I wasn't fasting per se for like the day of Arafah or whatnot. But he just like, I got to do this right. I got to do this right.
He's telling you, I want you to enjoy your relationship with me. I want you to connect good memories. I don't even want to cheapen it and say like serotonin and dopamine and all that. But really, even physically, he wants you to sort of celebrate your servitude to God.
So that, without having all the language for it that I'm sharing now, that just happens. And that's why I encourage everyone to just never hesitate. Yeah. Well, you know, some of the things that other people remark, like, what did you observe
about the Ummah that maybe surprised you or like that you clocked, that maybe wasn't on your radar before, just being in that mass, the throng of different people and bodies
from all over the Muslim world? Yeah, SubhanAllah, the idea of the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, was the only person that ever, you know, purged the society from racism. And we know that it's alive and well right now.
How did he do it when the superpowers of the world still aren't able to pull it off? Part of how he did it was by refusing to just give charismatic speeches about racial equality, about no classisms and so on and so forth.
It is by him walking the talk, peace be upon him. And so seeing the diverse, you know, even we're always going to cite Malcolm X because that was like the moment that changed him seeing hajj.
You know, what people don't realize also about Malcolm is that Malcolm had met nice white people in his life, and he speaks about this.
He said, but I never met people that looked at me as an equal, even though I was Black, like they were nice to me. But it always felt like the same way you'd be nice to a cat or a dog.
And this may have been his words, if I recall them correctly, from one of his speeches. He says, but to see it sort of like in living color, it is very, very, very different.
And you know, I even had one of the Albanian brothers, different Albanian brother, with us at 'umrah once. Sounds like you hang out with a lot of Albanians. I hope the Bosnians don't get offended.
I'm talking about unity while stoking sectarian or like strife here. And so he was with us, and we went out after Isha once just to get him some tea or something.
And his son used to always tell me, my dad does not like Arabs. I really hope he has a good experience. He has like a lot of baggage from like, I don't know what, in New York City. So SubhanAllah, we were called over on the side of the road by a bunch of Arabs just
sitting, you know, in the traditional way, drinking, they're like, no, you're not allowed to buy tea. You're going to take tea from us. And he's like, what? He's like, and you're eating kunafa. And they're sitting there and even making cringe inappropriate sort of like, and they're
laughing it up with each other and complete transformation. And so seeing that we can never sort of be substituted by hearing about it. Also how Islam can instantaneously discipline a group of people.
That's another one. I remember once in New York City, there was a guy that came up to a bunch of like us Muslims from my local masjid at a barbecue and said, how long have you guys been practicing that? We're like, practicing what?
He's like, you guys all just got up and got in a line and started doing the same motions and stuff. I guess we're like, we don't know each other. We're here for a barbecue. It was like six people. He thought it was like a dance routine. So he's like, I'm military. And you guys were on a tight ship here.
So six guys, can you imagine a few million people at the Haram and just everyone knows that just, that's part of the cement that Allah wanted for this Ummah, right? And you can go in any masjid in the world and just fall in line and feel familiarity,
right? Yeah. And that's a really profound point that I think when I look to say Christianity, for example, and I think, you know, right now it's a really interesting time in the U.S. where there's like this revival of Catholicism.
A lot of people on the right are kind of getting reinterested in Catholicism and there's a whole bunch of factors that play into that. But I think that that standardization and that cement is like really appealing to people.
Like why should a church in West Africa have a different, you know, liturgy than a church in East Asia?
And that's also why then you see just sociologically these communities balkanize along ethnic lines and language lines and racial lines and these sorts of things. Whereas there is something that's very, very open access.
You can pretty much go to any masjid in the world and you pretty much know what's going on. You pretty much know what to expect. I mean, of course, it depends on which masjid. By and large, we take it for granted.
We just Google "mosque near me" and we just walk right in. Yeah. Other people don't have the privilege and maybe on the inside as a Muslim you may not appreciate it, but people don't operate like this. No, it's true. It's a unique blessing.
The mu'allim will say, okay, like there's this great, you know, ethos to Islam. But one of the things that many people are concerned about is the commercialization of the rituals and the process.
So we have the ideal, and I've always thought of it like this, where I see an intentionality or at least a latent intentionality between the different stations of Hajj in terms of like how insulated they are from potential commercialization.
So when you are in Mina, let's be frank, some of the Western camps in Mina are very, very luxurious.
Even when you get to Arafat, there's inequality at Arafat, let's just say that, between some of the accommodations that certain nationalities have versus other nationalities.
But Muzdalifah, like I tell people straight up, it's like Muzdalifah is my favorite because there's no—I don't know, I have not been to bathrooms nastier than the ones in Muzdalifah.
Well, maybe a couple, but like it's pretty—it's on the ladder, it's low on the ladder and you're going to be digging around in the dirt collecting pebbles just like everybody else. And I love that.
I think that is so important that you spend so little time in Muzdalifah and Muzdalifah is useful, you know, pardon the word, for so little of the year that it's the worst investment if some big vulture capitalists were to come in and try to make it into a very luxurious experience, like you'd be losing money, right?
The ROI isn't there. So it remains this place where you sleep outside under the stars.
You might have some food if you're in a really, again, like a more luxurious Hajj accommodation, you're going to have some nice food, but the facilities are, yeah, they're rugged, they're rugged.
And I always remember some of the Mashaikh talking about the imagery of like, imagine the night of Muzdalifah, like a helicopter passing over and he's got all these people that it resembles like resurrection.
Because everybody's like dead, about to wake up the next morning and then go—it's literally like a rebirth that's happening. You actually have to like, you're supposed to sleep. You're not supposed to sleep. You're not supposed to stay all night praying.
There's no like, whatever—it's like, and you're tired because you've been doing all your things all day in your life. The sleep of your life. Insha'Allah. Insha'Allah. Depending on who you're next to and how loud they snore. But like, yeah, you're exhausted.
It's like everybody has been, it's almost like the trumpet has been blown. Fajr comes, then everybody comes back awake and alive. But it's also peak equality. It's peak equality.
Like, you know, it doesn't matter who you are, where you come from, how much money you have. Simply for sleeping on the ground. The impermissibility of wearing headgear. Yeah.
If people just understood some cultural context of what that meant for a person, what does it mean for love them or hate them? The princes of the Emirates and the Gulf. You got to show up with their balding or their whatever. To remove your headgear.
This is humongous. It's huge. Right. And so as you said, it's latent. It's built in. And this is something, you know, that we should also not just appreciate, but lean into and benefit from.
I was reading about how, you know, corporate greed, some of the strongest players in the tobacco industry worldwide are having such a struggle
getting buy-in from the Shar'iah councils of Bangladesh a few years ago to just say it's halal already. Right? No, the harm principle is sort of not going to be overturned.
Actually, my first Hajj, the Sheikh that was with us, Sheikh Sami, a beautiful local Sheikh, you know, community founder.
He's collecting pebbles and then I'm leaning over and I'm like collecting with him. And I'm a little bit unsure because the books aren't reality.
What's the difference between a chickpea and a hazelnut? Too big, too small. Wait a minute. When's the last time I had hazelnuts? So he thought I was sort of getting a little disgusted. And I was just like, I was just hesitant in terms of, you know, size.
And so he said to me, "Muhammad, you're bothered by this. Sayyidul Khalq did this. The Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, put his hands through the dirt looking for the pebbles. This is an act of worship.
You have no value except in recognizing that Allah is great and we are all from dust to dust. And I wasn't bothered at all, but I'm glad he thought I was so he could introduce me to that concept.
These things are, you know, you're going to wear the ihram, you're going to wear the ihram. No matter how fancy it gets, at the end of the day, it's a thin fabric. And it's very akin to your death shroud. No matter which sector you're in in Muzdalifah, you're going to be sleeping on the ground. That's right.
So people are concerned, and this is where I, you know, began to bring this up. People are concerned that, other than Muzdalifah, the Hajj is getting too commercial. And that the prices are exorbitant, especially if you're coming from North America or far away.
The hotel accommodations seem to be skewing towards luxury travel sort of thing. And even like the whole Burj Al-Sa'a, the clock tower. It's fairly controversial, at least in my circles.
Like some people really hate it and they see it as a symbol of capitalism and overreach. And it's kind of like an eyesore. Other people like it and they say, what's the big deal? So I don't know, like how do you think about this? What are your thoughts on this?
Obviously, things are always a mixed bag of continuous good and warding off potential harm. But how do we deal with that?
I think there are certain no-brainers about what can detract from, down to the validity sometimes. But at the very least, the value of your Hajj experience being a transformative experience.
Because at the end of the day, we have a bottom line. The bottom line is the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, said,
that the whole idea of going around the house and pelting those stones and pacing between Safa and Marwah, the whole thing is about remembering God. And so you're going to have to make some room in your heart for the greatness of God,
which is the downplay of the ego, the downplay of sort of the attempting to secure your comforts at all times. There is a push-pull theory here. If you want your akhirah, you want your forever with God, it's going to have to cost something. Absolutely.
And so, like in our annual Umrah with my masjid, I always tell them, guys, I'm going to tell you upfront, you're going to have tons of opportunities to take pictures. But I am toxic when it comes to seeing you pull your phone out during Umrah.
It's two hours, guys, two hours. No one's phone should be out. This is almost like prayer. And so there are certain red lines we want to be aware of that many people are not aware of.
Like when you're at the Haram, you're at Allah's house and you're taking pictures of a clock tower or sort of like video calling someone, showing them that you're making Tawaf. Do you video call someone when you're making Sujud too?
Like this is probably far more sort of pretension-worthy, pretentiousness-worthy than prayer. Because everyone makes prayer. Not everyone gets to spend $10,000. So you should be even more worried about the sincerity.
Then there's the whole, you know, recreational extravagance element of this. Like, are we just like restaurant hopping and like hotel flexing? And like, is this what it's about? Is it a shopping spree?
It becomes uncomfortable when it's like Instagram travel culture kind of merges with religious. I mean, even the concept of religious tourism, I mean, it's uncomfortable, right?
It's flying pretty close to the sun when it comes to, is this for God or is this for... And I think there's some value in reflecting on like, why Mecca? Right, absolutely.
Mecca, as you said, is not really a place you're going to be able to invest in much. I mean, it's a desert and yes, it's gentrifying. But it's not the Vatican. Even today, it's like in Medina as well.
It's like, they're not—like people, if they want a good time, you don't go to Medina and Mecca. You go to Jeddah, you go to Riyadh, you go to Dammam. You don't... So you're supposed to remember that God brought your heart here.
It wasn't your nafs or your shahwah, your lust or your appetite for recognition. God brought you here because Abraham prayed for the hearts to flock towards Hagar and Ismail. Hearts continue to flock here now, even beyond that.
He brought you here in the middle of nowhere to spend your life savings. Don't get robbed for it en route. You know, that's something we need to constantly hold each other accountable about and gently remind each other about. It's everything.
Am I allowed to change the subject? Yeah. Or turn the tables? Let's turn the tables. Your Hajj. Okay. I made Hajj three times, alhamdulillah, while I was a student in Medina.
Because it was more profitable for the Hajj companies to employ the students that were already living there. To fly someone over. Yeah, to fly someone over. So we were given tasrih.
That was a big opening for me, alhamdulillah. I'd be grateful for Allah subhana wa ta'ala and for also the senior students that kind of hooked me up with that because that was also an important source of income for me. I was teaching English on the side.
I was just sort of like making ends meet month to month. And then when I started doing tours, and it began as just like tours of the Prophet's Masjid, it's wild, you know, sometimes I'll still run into people that'll be like,
yo, you gave my group a tour of the Prophet's Masjid in like 2015 or 2016. Unfortunately, my memory is very poor. So I'm like, wow, did I? That's really great.
But it was a tremendous opportunity to be able to both do that work and benefit from the students who I shadowed to kind of like learn the ropes. But then it also paved the way for me to make Hajj.
And, you know, with that gratitude, you know, like it also shows you the business side of things. Because if you're not going as like the religious guide or the spiritual guide,
you know, you're like a young minor student of knowledge, then you're kind of like doing the grunt work and a lot of the grunt work. And so, yeah, I have a lot of reflections on it.
A bunch of stories come flooding back. I think one thing I'll say about the industry, it's kind of an interesting industry to be trying to facilitate people's religious experiences.
And I think that Hajj companies have to be careful to make it distinguished and different from vacation.
And in my experience, seeing people approach Hajj and 'Umrah, usually they fall into those two categories, like people who are like treating it with the expectation of like a vacation
and people who show up and they realize it's for worship. So, as you know, things are going to go wrong. You're going to get bags lost. You're going to have rooms not ready. It's going to be like, it happens. Lots of punches to roll with. Like opportunities for patience. And in my experience, there were two types of people.
There were people that were like, okay, showed up and the room wasn't ready and the airline lost my bag. Where's the guide? Show me where and just like text me when you figure it out. And like those were the people that were just like hit the ground running
and like they were really locked in like from the beginning. There were other people that like spent the whole time like complaining and I want to talk to the manager and like whatever and this is not acceptable. And you guys, I had a guy actually literally tell me over breakfast.
He's like, okay, I know this religion, like patience, patience stuff. Okay. Like he said it like that. But someone's got to be held responsible. I was like, whoa, dude, what did you come here for?
That's not to avoid accountability, obviously, you know, like mistakes get made. But there's definitely as the user experience, you got to have the right mindset coming into it. You know, it is not sort of olden times Arabia's primitive life dynamics
that made Hajj difficult. Hajj will remain with a degree of difficulty by design. Well, it has to be. Like she said, do women have to perform jihad?
He said, yes, jihad in which there is no combat. He called it. Yeah. So it is meant to be jihad. Absolutely. And there's no. And so that's sort of like, you know,
approaching it from a consumer point of view or expecting no hardship. It's really like we have to understand. And that's why it's like the categories are different. Like we have to make sure that categories remain distinct. It's like you're coming to something different. Like this is, as we said, supposed to do work on you.
And in order for it to do work on you, you've got to let it do work on you or you got to show up with that attitude. Yeah. I mean, I benefited a lot from obviously being there from 2015 to 2020.
I was able to make 'Umrah a ton of times. Just having the ability to cruise down there on a Thursday afternoon,
like take the bus, the Saptak, right. And ride down and then do it in the middle of the night and then come back was a tremendous blessing.
Just some nuts and bolts stuff for people watching that have been there 'Umrah is really, really nice to make before Hajj, if possible, because like to orient yourself as to where everything is and which direction you're going. Also, another thing that I reflect upon is like who you're there with
and when you do it with other people versus when you do it by yourself. So I think that unfortunately, one of my, one of my first, my first 'Umrah actually was not the best experience.
I went with the 'Umrah that the university funded. So they were, mashallah, very intent on trying to get students who had never made 'Umrah before, like give them a chance and stuff like that.
But I had some guys around me that were like really, how do I put this? Like they were really heavily curating, like my experience of it, like to the point where they wanted to be there when I first laid eyes on the Ka'bah.
I felt like so much pressure to have a certain emotional response that actually, yeah, that was like, well, this is pre-social media days, but like I was, I was, I felt very self-conscious. I wasn't able to have like an intimate emotional connection,
to be frank, on the first time because I felt like, yeah, like that sort of extra layer or filter was kind of like hanging over me. But Alhamdulillah, I had plenty of opportunity to do things beyond that.
And yeah, it's just a very, very beautiful, serene. I honestly, I like love the Hijaz, like as, as, as geography, as landscape, like Allah has placed love in my heart for the Hijaz.
Like it's different from the Najd, it's different from the Tihamah, like people speak Arabic. These are like geographical, you know, regions. Like, so the Tihamah is the coastal plain, Jeddah, it's humid, it's hot.
You know, the Najd is the interior desert. That's much more sandy. The Hijaz is very gravelly and rocky and sparse. And I don't know, I just love it.
Like I just find it absolutely fascinating. There's such a, there's such an interesting solitude and beauty to it. Like one of the places that I like a lot is if you drive west from Medina, it's called Fiqrah, right?
It's this village way up in the mountains. Like, so there's two different, as you know, there's two different roads to go. So like you can take the longer route by Badr, and that's like an easier like incline. But the really steep one that is not even accessible like all year,
like goes through Fiqrah, and it's like much more dramatic. All that area is just gorgeous to me. I think it's absolutely fascinating. And it's got, when I was there, they had that, a ton of They say that Medina and perhaps the surrounding areas
are all about the Jamal, the Jamal of Allah SWT being manifested. I see it. And then Mecca and Ta'if, but Mecca in particular, of course, the Jalal of Allah, the rigor and the majesty.
Yeah, no, I see it. It's majestic there and sort of like endearing here. I don't, yeah. I mean, it's not something that I would in abstract think that I would find beautiful, but there is so much profound beauty to it.
So a lot of just, you know, even just staring out a bus window So a lot of just, you know, even just staring out a bus window
and just taking in the scene is really, really pleasant. I know that now there's other— Back then I was like, wow, it would be really interesting if people actually retraced the steps of the Prophet ﷺ for the Hijrah or the ways in which they used to go.
Now I know that there's more initiatives that are trying to do that. I think that's also fascinating too because just the— Like we said, it's jihad. And so to understand what goes into it, what has to go into traveling from Mecca to Medina,
from Medina to Mecca. How much do you have to feed a camel? How often do you have to stop? Like how do you hobble it at night? Like those are like anthropological details that are really fascinating to me. Even like the food and like the stuff they ate
and what they would take with them. Maybe it's like an Ibn Umar tendency or whatever, but all that stuff is extremely fascinating to me. And I feel like even just— Again, similar to Muzdalifah, though not quite the same.
There's now Al-Baik and there's bus stops, right? What's that one big stop on the road? I can't remember. It's the one where Al-Baik is at. Yeah, it's a big gas station. Yeah, the big gas station and stuff like that. But it's like those details to me matter
and it's not just about like being romantic for a time gone by. It's about proximity to Allah's creation. Like I believe that the way that Allah created the world is ayat. He said that.
And the closer you are to the ayat, the more you can appreciate different things. Even like how thorny some of the trees are. You go out to Baida, right? Outside of Medina. And it's like, that tree has that many thorns on it? And you find it in a hadith. It's like, that's crazy.
Like when they referenced it as an example of a thorny tree, like they were not lying. Like that thing has thorns on thorns on thorns. So I was— So where do I sign up? Now I definitely need a trip with you. Let's go.
I thought I knew the terrain there, but you're blowing this out of the water. No, I mean, yeah, no. Yeah, I'm very grateful to have experienced it in the time that I was there. So yeah, I mean, when it comes to Hajj itself,
I mean, I had positive experiences. I did have some concerns about the way in which maybe certain commercial interests or logistical interests were prioritized over the experience at various points.
But in general, I mean, it's just a tremendously humbling experience. There's a festive atmosphere. When it comes to the Ayyam al-Tashreeq and the—
after you get through the day of Eid, and you just feel— I mean, it's stereotypical and it's cliché, but you do feel close to everybody. Like, you feel like you're all on the same team.
That doesn't mean you're not going to see nonsense. You see nonsense. You see people who try to go the wrong way. Just like we see in our families, which we're deeply familiar with. Exactly. It's like you're going to see people trying to get to the Black Stone, you know, unfortunately going too gung-ho about that.
You're going to see people who, you know, when the Jamarat, like, you know, you got hit in the back of the head with a stone or something, you know, people who are a little bit reckless, but those are village problems. You got to deal with it. That's what it means to be in community with people.
But yeah, absolutely. Very, very transformative experiences. And I think that in my experience being a group leader, especially if people are watching, if you're able to bring your children there, I think that's absolutely a must,
especially when they get to middle school, high school age, just having them understand that they're not just a 1%, 2%, 3% minority in a Western country,
that you are part of a huge group of people worldwide, and that this thing is way bigger than maybe you imagined. I think that that's really a trend. I've seen it transform people. I've seen it transform youth.
And this is one of the most compelling cases for the objective, demonstrable truth of Islam, that every once in a while, Shaitan or society or a combination of those two make you feel like, you know, Islam is this religion,
this cult of like 40 people in the corner of the room, including your parents, and that's it. But then when you zoom out and say, wait a minute, like there's like 2 billion people that follow this. There's, you know, people from the East, people from the West,
people like with much higher IQs than me, like they can't all be resonating with the same thing, unless it strikes at the core of what it means to be, you know.
It'd be conspiratorial. It'd be such an outlandish philosophy of history and human psychology. Actually, this is funny, because this came up today with a class that I taught,
and there was a female student who said that, yeah, she read some book that was polemical against Islam, and, you know, trying to imitate the Qur'an and these things. I said, okay, but like, does anybody know the name of that book that tried to imitate?
You know, nobody knows the name of it, right? So it's like all these 2 billion people who read the Qur'an, and how many millions of them have memorized it from cover to cover, for 1400 years. It's like the red and blue states, forget them.
Just New York and New Jersey can't agree on stuff. Yeah, exactly. You're telling me across time and space. I was actually between Safa and Marwa at the Ka'bah once, and a brother who had just taken the shahādah said, I saw this flyer, I'm coming with you.
Just took a shahādah, doesn't even know how to pray. He comes with me from San Diego, and we were going through Safa and Marwa together, and I just, I don't talk to anybody during 'Umrah at least.
And so, but he said something that got me, I had to speak up. He said, there's no way this religion is not from God. Yeah. So I look at him, I was like, what you mean? He said, look at all these people. Like he sees like the Russian group and the Malaysian group,
and then sort of the Kenyan group and the Germans, right? And he's like, there's no way it's not from God. I was like, speak, don't speak. Couldn't Christians say that? He said to me, absolutely not. I was like, what do you mean?
For 1.8 billion, they're 2 billion. So he's like, nah, man. He goes, Christianity, where I came from, is a placeholder. It's a catch-all. They don't actually do the same things. They don't even believe the same things. Yeah, it's kind of like a Hinduism,
it's kind of like an amalgamation of— It's quite subjective, sort of innumerable iterations. And I was like, wow, I've never felt it explained to me that way before. This is certainly true.
And I just want to encourage everyone to just go see it for yourself. Go experience it. Go taste it for yourself. Often when I get on the, there's no more bus. That's why you couldn't remember the name of the gas station, by the way, because now we're in trains and the trains are two hours. The bus used to be six hours.
And I used to tell people on the trains that this train will take two hours. In the time of the Prophet ﷺ, the trip from the, you know, Miqat, sort of the point, to Mecca is two weeks. We're about to do this in two hours.
You have no excuse to lose your lid or blow a gasket or get impatient. I said to him, let me tell you one story. It's usually the story I begin the trip with. I say, as soon as they left Medina, hadith of Jabir, in Sahih Muslim, when they got to the Miqat, al-Halaifa,
Asma bint Umais goes into labor and she delivers her child and asks the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, can I still come? He said, sure, wrap up your baby and come. Like two weeks through a perilous scorpion-filled, thorny, plant-
laid desert, like you can pull this off in two hours in an air-conditioned with Al-Baik in front of you, by the way, with the fried chicken spot, you know, delivered to the train car. It is nothing. It is absolutely nothing. And it will give you everything.
So many people ask, like, when did you change at Hajj? When did you start praying at Hajj? When did you sort of like, you know, pivot in your career path at Hajj, you know? Subhanallah, what you said about rizq is so true as well. Actually, one of my professors who taught us
usul fiqh a couple of different semesters, he told us a story of somebody who asked him for advice. It was a sister. I think she was a Moroccan sister living in Spain
and she worked at an alcohol factory. Okay. And her father wanted to make Hajj, didn't have the money. And so she wanted to fund her father's Hajj, but she works at an alcohol factory.
So she's like, what do I do? And the Shaykh, he responded to her. He said, pay for him to go to Hajj and ask Allah at the Kaaba for halal rizq. And so she followed that advice.
And, you know, he heard from her like 10 years later. And then like when she got back, like, you know, she got a different job opportunity. She was able to walk away from that and do something halal. And then like the doors just opened, you know,
obviously there's a, you know, there's a letter of the law consideration there as to whether it's valid, but you see here like a plan up to daraj, right? About trying to do better for better and then better and then better. And how it is like,
it is the fulcrum in a lot of people's lives, right? Which is also why, again, like I doubled down on people taking their kids because a lot of people have, people don't, you know, they get in lockstep and they don't necessarily realize what they're prioritizing
and how those priorities are communicated subconsciously to their kids. I mean, when you sort of prioritize reading novels, which is way better than screens, but it actually creates disinterest or crowding out Qur'an, by the way,
the stories of the people versus the stories of the prophets, the story of the Divine, subhanahu wa ta'ala. When you sort of like, don't have in your bucket list Hajj and Umrah, but you're going everywhere else at every opportunity. When you just listen to music,
even if you're going to say it's halal music, nasheed or even nasheed without instruments to keep it extra halal, you're going to sort of not enjoy the Qur'an. This is, there is a, there's passion fatigue. It's a reality in the human experience. And you want to,
I used to always wonder like, how does it make sense, this Black Stone thing and the prophet's grave thing? Because Islam doesn't like idolatry and these will all too easily be mistaken as, you know, idols and statues. And you need a tangible earthly pivot
to help you with your stamina in believing in the unseen. Allah knows we're impatient creatures. Our hardest test is believing in the unseen and keeping that belief in the unseen until we meet Him.
We can have it and then sort of like, you know, life happens and just like, oh, like Umar says, you know, I know you're a stone. He was kissing the Black Stone, in Sahih al-Bukhari. You don't benefit, you don't harm. He had to remind himself, because like right there, but if it's right there that dangerous
for people to mistaken what this is for, why not just remove the Black Stone altogether? Right. But Allah knows that we need it. We need sort of something physical that was from Jannah, which is ghayb. He knows that sort of the prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, being visited as we intend to visit his masjid,
we pass by his grave. We need that. You know, one brother actually in Hajj, he, Umar said, I didn't complete Umar. I know that you're a stone that doesn't benefit or harm. And had I not seen the prophet, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, kiss you, I would not have kissed you.
That idea of this is from Jannah. My lips are landing where the prophet's lips landed, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. But when we were in Medina, there was his brother. He was like, Shaykh, why is everybody crying, man? We grown men. Why are we crying for? And he goes, and I honestly felt very afraid for him.
Like I was afraid, you know, how much he would be disconcerted by these feelings of inadequacy. And so I tried to explain to him, and like I think I failed at explaining to him, like why you should feel tender-hearted and brittle.
And you chose to show, you know, that's not his personality type. And then we continued on our Hajj journey. I made so much du'a for him. And then like weeks later, when I got back on the internet, I had stumbled on his social media profile.
And it was just a picture of the prophet's chamber. Off of his phone. And he just had four words. He just wrote, when it hits you. That's all he posted.
That's all he posted. Like that's what he needed. It's like this, we read about it in the books, and we hear about it in the sermon. It's real. So we need something of the physical reality to help us with the metaphysical reality, which is greater.
But we're blindfolded from it, at least with these eyes, right? And so it's from Allah's rahmah to have Mecca and Medina available for everyone to come. It's so easy to get there and take in your kids. You know, if I have time for actually one more story, real quick.
My first Hajj, the flood is coming, as you said. There was this Uzbeki taxi driver. 64 years old. I think he told me he was. Because I had come to Medina and then heading over to Mecca for Hajj.
I wanted to go to the university one more time and the bookstores. And I told him, how long have you been living in Medina? He said, yeah, I was born here. I was like, oh, Mashallah, when did your family come? He said, my grandfather back home in Uzbek, in Bukhara,
made du'a to Allah that if He gives him a son, he's going to make Hajj. You're not supposed to do that because you're supposed to make Hajj regardless. No prosperity gospel here. But he did it. He made an nadhr to Allah,
a vow to God that if He gives him a son, he's going to make Hajj. So God gave him a son. After a whole bunch of girls, he had finally had a son and then the son became 10, 12 years old. He's like, man, I made God a promise. I need to go. So he says, we,
my grandfather and my father now, traveled down to India and ran out of money. So they worked for one to two years to make enough money to get on the ship,
to buy the ticket to get to Hajj. He says, the ship was going once a year. Hajj is an annual trip. By the time the year came, we only had money for a ticket and a half.
And we begged them. They let us on the ship without the full cost of the second ticket. We got to Jeddah or we got to whatever the shore was on the eastern side. As soon as we got there, my grandfather dies. So my dad's there now,
12, 13 years old. He says, and he's there a few months before Hajj. And he's sort of like, you know, meandering between, and they were grabbing people that didn't have paperwork and just sending them back or whatnot. He said, but at the same time,
Saudi at that time was selling citizenship for one riyal. Yes, I have that corroborated from Syrians that I used to. Yeah. He says, so the cops grabbed him and said, one riyal or you're out. He said, I don't have anything. My dad just died.
Subhan'Allah, it created a soft spot in their heart. They wrote him a citizenship. He gets a Saudi citizenship. Before the oil embargo. Before the oil embargo. He runs into a Hajj group from Jordan.
The owner of the Hajj group has a daughter, finds out this little Bukhari kid, young man, extended adolescence is ruining my brain. But this young man, 13-year-old man has a Saudi citizenship. He marries him to his daughter right there. Subhan'Allah.
They finish their Hajj. They go to Medina. The taxi driver is telling me like it's a funny story. Like it's all, isn't it amazing? And you know, turn of events. And they made Hajj. They went to Medina. And then they had me in Medina. I was born in Medina. And then he turns to me and I'm sobbing. Because my father just passed away.
Subhan'Allah. I wasn't enjoying the story at all. I was like, but your dad, he never saw his sisters again. And like I'm playing a completely different tape. And he's like, oh, come on. I'm like, you guys never went back. He's like, oh Medina, I got Medina. He goes,
everyone on earth is vying to be in Medina. Everyone on earth is vying to be in Medina. May our hearts always be attached to Makkah and Medina. So Imam Tom, you've led these Hajj groups. I'm sure you've seen lots of aunties and uncles that probably have the same anxieties
I've come across in people that I don't think I'm gonna be able to pull it off. Even though they get there, they want to even abort mission there. What do you tell them? Or what would you tell them? I mean, I've never seen anybody regret it. No, that's the thing.
And lots of people have these kind of miraculous Hajj stories where just like Allah does it at the end of the day. And it happens. And almost without exception,
people wish that they had done it sooner. You know, like one of my most profound, I think, Hajj stories, there was one year, there was a group of three Moroccan women, and they were older,
probably in their 60s or 70s. And they really had like a transformational experience. We went and we touched the Ka'bah as a group together, and you know, stuff like that. So they were on cloud nine.
And one of the comments that one of them said to me, it kind of like was nice in a flattering way, but it also kind of broke my heart at the same time. She said, you know,
we wish that when we were young, we had like imams like you guys. And I was like, ouch, like that hurt because I could almost like see and imagine like the type of Islam that they grew up with,
where the kids are noisy, be quiet, get out of the mosque. What are you doing here? You know, all the things that a lot of people grow up with that type of practice or that type of sensibility. And you could tell that like, you know,
these ladies were coming back to practicing Islam like after decades of living their lives. So it was like, so for a lot of people, like again,
this fulcrum or this point of transformation, you want to have it as soon as possible, right? Like you don't want to delay it. It will do work on you. It will be transformative.
And I think comparing yourself to people around you is one of the biggest tricks of Shaytan to deflate you, you know, like all these young guys and these young gals and so on and so forth. Allah's not measuring you against them.
Allah's measuring you against the capacity that he knows he gave you. And so if he withheld from you a certain ability, he's not going to deprive you of the reward because he knew you didn't have that in you. You know,
when the Prophet ﷺ was approached by a man, hadith of 'Abdullah ibn Bishr رضي الله عنه, he said to him, إِنَّ شَرَائِعَ الْإِسْلَام تَكَثَّرَتْ عَلَيَّ A very elderly man says to him, the rituals of Islam are too much to keep up with.
He literally told him that. So give me something to hold on to. أَتَشَبَّثُ بِهِ, like a rope to hold on to so I don't drown. He said to him, لَا يَزَالُ لِسَانُكَ رَطُبًا بِذِكْرِ اللَّهِ
Just keep your tongue moist with the remembrance of Allah سبحانه وتعالى. That's it. You know, the Prophet ﷺ even spoke about the least capacity imaginable. Imagine someone almost, essentially paralyzed, physically paralyzed. He said,
let no one of you die except while he's assuming the best of his Lord. Like there's even for someone who can't move and is just, he sees the angel approach. All he has to do in that moment is all he can do, which is assume the best of his Lord.
When they come to him and say, يا رسول الله, I can't keep up. Like I'm not competent to do and say everything you and Mu'adh do. He said to him, what do you say in your du'a? He said,
I just ask Allah to be pleased with me and give me Jannah and to not be angry with me and keep me from the fire. He said, everything we do circles around that. It's not that serious. Don't be so hard on yourself. You know,
even sometimes a little bit of knowledge regarding what Hajj looked like in time of the Prophet ﷺ is helpful from a different way. Of course, like it was a struggle for them. So it's not as much a struggle for us. That's a part of it. But another part of it is like,
you can do the whole Hajj seated without a physical impediment. The Prophet ﷺ made tawaf on an animal, on a camel. So like, oh man, I don't want to do it if I have to be in a chair. If you need to be in a chair, be in a chair. It's so easy. And you know,
what's interesting is that a lot of older folks, they almost, I don't know where this comes from, but they almost feel like they have to do it the hardest way possible or else it doesn't count. I have an 80-year-old uncle who said,
I need to repeat my Hajj because it was too comfortable. Yeah, it's like, calm down guys. It's like, it's really, it's really easy now. It's like, and you know, like there's concessions and it's actually, you know, and like I said,
like everybody has a story of people swooping in to help and assist and there's accessibility and there's wheelchairs and there's accommodations and there's, you know, they've made it pretty easy. And then as you started with Allah's, Allah's tawfiq,
His divine grace. I remember someone telling me in Hajj, he goes, Sheikh, what's going to happen? He goes, can you believe that? I was like, what? He said, I didn't take any of my medication the last four days. I forgot. I was like, and you're okay? He's like, I have tons of medication, like 12 different things I take daily.
I took nothing. I was like, okay, make sure you get back on your medication. But Allah carried him through those days. And you know, the Shaytan always wants to get us to, you know, the fear of the thing, anticipating it is always worse than the actual thing itself.
Whether it's a blood test or a Hajj journey, anything, right? Like Shaytan wants to psych you out and he would love to prevent you from doing something that Allah loves any way that he can. that he can. That's the hadith of Arafah, right? right?
There is no day in which the Shaytan is smaller and more humiliated and more dejected than the day of Arafah due to what he sees happening. So don't let Shaytan win. Just get in there. Have the last punch. Even if life's been life, just have the last punch.
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