Scenes of Hajj in the Qur’an

Occasion: transcript of a lecture delivered at the Islamic Center of San Antonio on June 14, 2024.Source: transcription of a recorded lecture by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — watch the original video on YouTube

We also want to ask Allah, glory be to Him, to bring all of our brothers and sisters back home (the transcript is garbled here; it seems to refer to those who went out for Hajj).

My dear brothers and sisters in Islam, it is my pleasure to be with you again. Alhamdulillah, I had a beautiful time with you earlier, in the session in Arabic and in the other one in English, and I ask Allah to accept from all of us.

A system, not a few pictures

When we speak about the scenes of Hajj in the Qurʾān, we are talking about a system, not just a few pictures showing us some actions happening here and there. Listen to the imam reciting what Allah said about it: that Hajj belongs to certain months.^[1] Allah decided a certain month, and that means we cannot make it before or after. This is the accurate time, and we perform Hajj during that very time. To be more specific: when we see ourselves going to Minā, as we mentioned in the talk today, this is the time of Minā, and this is the day of Minā. A day before it or a day after it does not work; it will not be counted.

That fixed time is a kind of teaching for me. How do I respect my time? How do I manage my time? How do I give time its right, when I deal with the religion and when I prepare myself to be among the people to whom Allah gives the mercy of Hajj? Without that, you know, we cannot even manage our work over here. So just from this one word about the time of Hajj, Allah is already giving me a lesson.

And that is the main point I want to make tonight. Hajj is not a journey. It is not a trip. It is not a vacation. It is a training. So what are the things we actually need to learn when we go to Hajj?

Taking everything off

We start with taking off our clothes. As we mentioned in the talk today, here Allah is teaching me through the action itself: stop in this place, and do not pass it without taking off your shoes, your shirt, your pants, everything you have, as much as you can, so that you are qualified, acceptable, and eligible to stand in that position.^[2] You can be accepted when you stand in front of Allah, glory be to Him, in that place. It is a transition. It is a transition from "I was" to "I will be."

Think about how many positions each of us holds right now. Let me take myself as the example, because this is my routine from the beginning of the day to the end of it. I travel from Dallas to San Antonio to give a lecture over here. I make a supplication, I see so-and-so, I fix a problem over here and come back. I see my wife and my children at that time, that is my routine. I deal with people, I go somewhere to eat. This is my routine. And now I am taking myself out of that routine and into a completely different one. When I come to that position, what do I feel when I have nothing? These are not my normal clothes. Sometimes I even feel shy. I think: come on, if something happens, oh my God, it is going to be a problem! I do not want to say the word, but I may feel almost naked, and it does happen, glory be to Allah.

Yet Allah asks me to have that feeling. Why? Because Allah, glory be to Him, wants me to feel that I have nothing. And I am not talking about the cloth at that time. I am talking about the positions we hold in this life. How much money do we have? How many deals are we doing every single day? How many people do we meet every day? How many actions are we already doing every day? We do a lot. But once Allah takes me off from all of that, it gives me a different feeling.

I have already passed a certain place, and I cannot pass it without making my intention and putting on that garment. This is the first place I come to, on the way to Makkah.

The first look at the Kaʿbah

What is the first thing I do when I get there? I am just saying hello to the House, just greeting the place, because this is the place of Allah. So the first thing I do is go around the Kaʿbah. That is the first act when I come to the Kaʿbah and see it.

The Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ is reported to have promised everyone that the very first look at the Kaʿbah comes with an accepted supplication.^[3] So let me ask you a question, and I will give you thirty seconds. Close your eyes and imagine yourself standing before the Kaʿbah, wanting to make a supplication. What is the supplication you are going to make? What do you have in your mind? What do you have in your heart? If I asked everyone right now, what do you want to ask Allah, glory be to Him, in front of the Kaʿbah? Can we do the same supplication here? Okay. But you know that the Prophet ﷺ promised me that my supplication over there will be accepted. I am not sure whether it will be accepted over here or not, and I can tell you that you are not sure either.

Oh man, but the Prophet ﷺ promised! The Prophet ﷺ promised the sincere people, those who already have that sincerity in their hearts and are making a sincere supplication for Allah. Once we have that intention, that clean heart and that clean mind, and once we are dealing with Allah directly, with nothing standing between me and Him, glory be to Him, then are you sure Allah will accept your supplication or not? It will be accepted, no doubt about that.

Sakīnah

But we go there to have something different. What is the best thing we can feel in that area? And I am not talking about Makkah only, by the way. I am talking about the sanctuary. Even if it is hot outside, even if the weather is not good, around the Kaʿbah you feel something different. What do you have over there? What is unique about it, what is its niche? Nothing else but sakīnah. How can we translate sakīnah? Tranquility is a good word, alhamdulillah. That is the feeling. And how can I have that in my heart? That is my issue.

As long as we are sitting around the Kaʿbah, we have that feeling. We are not feeling jealous. We are not looking at the people. We are not feeling like somebody is bothering me. I do not have that. Why? Because I am around the Kaʿbah. Allah, glory be to Him, brought the Kaʿbah in front of my eyes.

And think about it: when I start my prayer, facing the Kaʿbah is a condition, one of the prerequisites of the prayer. I am facing the Kaʿbah five times a day. I am doing that. I am turned toward the Kaʿbah, in a sense looking at it, all the time, and I am around it. So what is its importance? That is the thing we said. But the question is whether the Kaʿbah is here with me, in my heart and in my mind. What do I need to take with me over there? This is the only thing, or one of the important things, to remember.

How hard they struggled to hand over this religion

Remember how the people before us were really struggling to deliver this religion to the next generation. And remember with me why Allah mentions the offspring in that place.^[4] This is the second generation. He is talking about the offspring, about the second generation, and the third, and the fourth, and the eighth generation.

This is my question to myself before anyone else: what is my son going to have when I meet Allah? When I talk about his inheritance, what will he have? He can have money, though as an imam my position does not give me that amount. But he can have the religion. When I showed a brother today my son leading the prayer over there, he said, māshāʾAllāh, he has a good voice. That is my treasure. That is what I am going to leave, to this religion, when I meet Allah, glory be to Him. And this is my question: what about you?

A few minutes ago we were in the Qurʾān, and a brother told me, glory be to Allah, that he hopes more people will come to memorize the Qurʾān. We had a man who recited beautifully and performed the Qurʾān, and I said, wow, God is great, what blessings we have! And we are missing them every day when we keep our children at home with their moms. "Habibi, stay with me over here, do not go to the masjid." Come on! What are you going to leave to your children?

I am sure everyone over here works from the beginning of the day to the end. But do you think this is a good treasure to leave to your children: just paying the bills, just paying the utilities of the house, just taking them on vacation?

One of my friends is a good example. I told him: we have a good program this summer, a summer camp, six days a week for eight weeks, and I sent him the flyer. I said, okay, what about your children? He said, I am sorry, but every once in a while I take my children to make the pilgrimage. Come on, man, to make the pilgrimage? Why? He said: you do not know what change happens in their hearts when they go and when they come back. And he is, alhamdulillah, in a good financial situation. But even so, he takes them in the normal class, not the high class, just to let them suffer with the people, walking long distances every day, for many days. Glory be to Allah, you know what I mean. That is what we are going to leave to our children, so that they will have something behind us when we go to Allah, glory be to Him.

Two kinds of people

One time, when Allah spoke about Hajj in the Qurʾān, he said, glory be to Him... and you can continue with the verses over there. I am seeing somebody starting to move. I will not take long from you, thank you for your patience.

Allah divided the people into different kinds. We have a first kind of people: they need to have everything in this world, and they do not care about the next. Imagine, Allah is talking here about people who are already performing the rites. And we have a different type, a different category.^[5] What do they ask Allah? The first group, what they asked Allah for, when we talk about them, we talk about money, positions, and so on. But when he talks about the other group, he does not mention anything except ḥasanah.

What is the meaning of ḥasanah? Anything that makes me closer to You. Anything. If I smile to show my brother my smile, and you are going to be happy with that, this is a ḥasanah. This is the hug with my brother: "Oh man, how are you doing today?" "I am good, alhamdulillah." This is my ḥasanah. I cannot give him five bucks, but this is my ḥasanah. When they say, "What a hand we have today, so good, you look … man," this is my ḥasanah. I can make it a ḥasanah when I give my wife something to make her happy, even something small or minor. When you give your children something, this is your ḥasanah. This is the mission in this religion. They are not looking at anything else.

What the Companions were looking at

I have a famous hadith that I usually repeat. A group of the Companions came to the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ and said they had a problem. Imagine, the Companions had a problem while the Prophet ﷺ was among them! Oh my God, does that make sense? He asked, what is wrong with you? How can I help? They said: the rich people took all of the rewards with them. How come? They pray like us, they fast like us, and so on, but they have money to give in charity and we do not have that.^[6] That is our problem.

So what are the Companions looking at right now? They are looking at money, yes, but not at money coming to them. They are looking at money going out of their pockets. They are looking at how they can give, not at how they can take advantage of people, carry other people along, steal from here and there, or cheat this one or that one. They are not looking at the religion that way. They are looking at the religion in terms of how they can get more and more and more.

If I have a chance to go somewhere to give a lecture, why not? This is my way to get more. When I stand before Allah and He asks me, what did you do, I will tell Him: I went everywhere to spread whatever You taught me, glory be to You. If you have five bucks in your pocket and you can leave it to the masjid to build another project, or to do something for the Qurʾān, or for teaching the people, so and so, this is your way. Everybody has his way to achieve his goal. But the point is: what is our goal? When Allah, glory be to Him, asked us to go to Hajj, He taught us to decide the exact goal I need to have. This is my point, I want to hit it, nothing else.

A request: read Sūrat al-Ḥajj

Did I waste your time tonight? No, no, no, you say, okay. Then let me ask you something, if you do not mind. Please try to read the verses of Sūrat al-Ḥajj and try to understand the words there literally, every letter, and ask why Allah said that. Try to read some interpretation of it too. And we have a sūrah in itself that carries this name, by the way. If you look at it, you are going to find just a few verses talking about Hajj, and the rest of the verses do not talk about it. So we can ask ourselves why Allah called the sūrah by this name, and you are going to find the answer.

It comes between the sūrah before it and the sūrah after it. This is my way when I think about the Qurʾān: to connect between the verses and between the sūrahs, and to see in what direction we are going. What is the sūrah before it? al-Anbiyāʾ, the Prophets. And what is the sūrah after it? al-Muʾminūn, the Believers.^[7] The Believers is supposed to come directly after the Prophets, because the believers are the followers of the prophets. So why did Allah put Hajj in between? Why did He do that? Because this is the link. The prophets used to sacrifice for this religion, and the believers need to learn the same concept before they are believers: the concept of giving. This is one of the main things they are doing over there. And to act similarly to them is what we have over here. It is a kind of giving: not just giving your time, not just giving your words, not just giving your mind. You are giving even your money. This is the concept of giving in this religion.

A question about fasting on Saturday

I am going to end with the answer to a question that came to me, about fasting on a Saturday: how can we fast a Saturday without the day before or the day after it? Can we fast Saturday by itself or not?

The answer is that we have things that are forbidden, prohibited, by themselves, such as wine: we do not need another reason to say this is ḥarām. By itself it is ḥarām. And we have other things that are performed but are close to being prohibited because of a reason, and the reason is what the Prophet ﷺ mentioned. So what is the reason the Prophet ﷺ gave for not fasting on Saturday alone? Once we are not doing it for that reason, we are allowed to do it. Am I clear with the answer? As long as I am not doing it because I am trying to be similar to those people, and nobody is going to do that, especially if there is a certain reason in itself for the fast, then it is allowed.^[8]

And we have the example of the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ in fasting. How many are going to be fasting tomorrow? I am sorry, it is almost today. Alhamdulillah, māshāʾAllāh. Okay, we have a promise from the people right now, right? And the second thing: how many of you will remind us in your supplications, today and tomorrow? (The recording breaks off here.)

--- ^[1]: توثيق المحرر: يعود إلى قوله تعالى: ﴿الْحَجُّ أَشْهُرٌ مَّعْلُومَاتٌ﴾ [البقرة: 197]. لم يقرأ المتحدث الآية في التفريغ نصًّا، وإنما قال إن الله حدّد شهرًا معيّنًا لا يُقدَّم عليه ولا يُؤخَّر. ^[2]: توثيق المحرر: يريد المتحدث الإحرام عند الميقات، لكن المصطلحات العربية سقطت من التفريغ الآلي أو شُوِّهت، فالتسمية من استنتاج المحرر من وصف المتحدث لنقطة لا تُجاوَز إلا بنزع الثياب ونية الدخول. ^[3]: توثيق المحرر: لم يذكر المتحدث لفظ الحديث ولا مصدره، وفي ثبوته كلام عند المحدّثين، فيُنقل هنا بصيغة ما رواه المتحدث دون جزم. ^[4]: توثيق المحرر: الفقرة مضطربة جدًّا في التفريغ؛ ويبدو أن المتحدث يشير إلى ذكر الذرية في سياق الحج (ربما دعاء إبراهيم عليه السلام)، لكن الاسم لم يتضح، فلم يُصرَّح به. ^[5]: توثيق المحرر: الإشارة إلى سورة البقرة، الآيتين 200–201: ﴿فَمِنَ النَّاسِ مَن يَقُولُ رَبَّنَا آتِنَا فِي الدُّنْيَا وَمَا لَهُ فِي الْآخِرَةِ مِنْ خَلَاقٍ ۝ وَمِنْهُم مَّن يَقُولُ رَبَّنَا آتِنَا فِي الدُّنْيَا حَسَنَةً وَفِي الْآخِرَةِ حَسَنَةً وَقِنَا عَذَابَ النَّارِ﴾. وصف المتحدث المجموعتين دون أن يتلو الآيتين نصًّا، فأُثبتتا هنا توضيحًا لما أشار إليه. ^[6]: توثيق المحرر: حديث فقراء الصحابة «ذهب أهل الدُّثور بالأجور…» ورد في صحيح مسلم من حديث أبي هريرة ومن حديث أبي ذر رضي الله عنهما بألفاظ متقاربة. وقد ذكره المتحدث بمعناه. ^[7]: توثيق المحرر: سورة الحج هي الثانية والعشرون، وقبلها الأنبياء وبعدها المؤمنون. وقد ذكر المتحدث عدد آياتها بصورة غير دقيقة (٨٦ أو ٨٧) فلم يُثبت الرقم. ^[8]: توثيق المحرر: سقطت من التفريغ كلمات الجواب الأساسية (علة النهي المذكورة في الحديث وتسمية الفئة المشار إليها)، فلم يُبنَ على المقطع حكم ولم يُركَّب له معنى زائد على ما ثبت.