My Hajj Story
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For Allah, Not People | #MyHajjStory
Sometimes we get caught up with some of the systems built around the Hajj experience, but it's important to recalibrate and remember that it's about our relationship with Allah, not our relationship with people. Dr. Tamara Gray looks back on her experiences accessing spaces as a woman performing Hajj.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Going on Hajj is about a relationship with Allah and not about a relationship with people. Assalamualaikum. I'm Tamara Gray and I am here to talk to you about my Hajj story. And I think, you know, I've gone back and forth about how I want to tell this story. And I want to say two things. I want to say that the experience of Hajj can be the most dramatic growth spurt of your life. You can go to Hajj, go around the Ka'bah, experience that closeness to Allah. Find that all of your du'a has been answered. You can go to visit the Prophet and feel a closeness that you've never felt before. Or, Hajj can be a very difficult experience, especially for women. When women go, they're often disappointed to see, in Medina especially, how much we're kept away from. To see next to the Ka'bah, how difficult it is to be in that space as a woman and not have access, for example, to... ...and during the prayer, to praying in a place that you can actually see the Ka'bah. And I hesitated talking about this because I thought, well, I think we're supposed to speak only about positive things today. But for those of you who are women who have been in Hajj, you may have those deep feelings of conflict. And so I want to acknowledge them and I want to say that the Prophet ﷺ welcomes us, even if the buildings do not. And the Ka'bah is there for us, even if the system is not. And going on Hajj is about a relationship with Allah ﷻ and not about a relationship with people.
And as we go around the Ka'bah and to make du'a, as we visit the Prophet ﷺ, as we go on the Sa'i, and remember the Sa'i, especially subhanAllah, when Sa'i is the running back and forth between Safa and Marwah, which of course is the act of a woman who had full tawakkul and full effort. And we are all men, women, young, old, in the Hajj and Umrah, asked to remember her and to uphold her... this act of great belief and great worship. So my Hajj, I've had two only, which is unusual, I think. A lot of people, a lot of my colleagues and friends have been to Hajj so many times that I've only been twice. And I will highlight for you two things. One is the Day of Arafat. My first Arafat, I was under the absolute burning sun. But as I went out to look for a place to sit, I found a little white plastic chair, sitting under a few leaves of a palm tree. And I was in that space very much alone with my du'a. And I want to share that with you because it was a reminder to me of the great forgiveness of the forgiver. Al-Ghafar, al-Ghafoor, al-Tawwab, the great forgiveness of the One who created us. And also our great need for forgiveness. I wrote a little bit after that and when I go back and read what I wrote, I'm reminded of my feeling of our great need for forgiveness.
So this is Arafat coming now and I want to recommend to all of us that even though we're not on the plane of Arafat, we're still on the Day of Arafat and so we should put our hands up and turn to the One who forgives and ask for forgiveness. My second Hajj was actually last year and I was a leader. And there's much to say about that Hajj because both of them were beautiful. But the one last year, there was something really special about being in this very, the leader of women, at Hajj. So I was the one who was trying to make sure we got a place near the Ka'bah. I was the one trying to make sure that when we were near and next to the Ka'bah, we were having a good experience. I was the one making sure that we were all together in our tawwaf. And that experience also taught me so much. It taught me about the importance of women's leadership and also the importance of women together and how important it is for us wherever we are in the world to be tightly together to protect one another. So that someone amongst us is looking out for us to find a place for us to sit together, to worship together, to be together. And both Hajj's, one of the things I did was I walked up to Hira, the cave where the Wahi came to the Prophet ﷺ. This is not a rite of Hajj, but it is a, in both times, it was a very powerful experience for me personally because as a woman, you can go there without any difficulty. And it was just amazing. And the feeling of standing in that little alcove, it's much more of an alcove than a cave. The place where angels of Riyad came to the Prophet ﷺ was something that I can't, it's difficult to describe.
But I think again, there's a learning there, which is the learning of the reality of the power of when human meets or met angel and the power of revelation. And that we have for us, even this year as we can't go to Hajj, if you were planning to, or even if you weren't planning to, it's different to be told you can't. The power that we hold within us, that Allah ﷻ has given us here in our homes, the Qur'an itself, the Wahi, the revelation sits in our hands. The ability to seek Allah's forgiveness is there. Our ability to read and to send salawat and salam to the Prophet ﷺ remains with us. Our ability to come together as women, as Muslims in this ummah, to help one another and support one another remains with us. So let's make these 10 days days of du'a and togetherness. I'd like to encourage any of you who are women to join our Pilgrims at Home game, which we are doing at Rabata, a very special worship game. You can get on a team. You don't even have to get on a team. You can just grab the score sheet and give yourself some fun in seeing how much ibadah can you do in a day. And if you're wherever you are in the world, if you can just think about these days as days of closeness to Allah ﷻ. Take advantage of them. Don't let them slide away. Don't let them be regular, ordinary days. These are days where the Prophet ﷺ said to us are the days where no deed is better to be done than on these days, except for jihad fi sabilillah. Well, excuse me. No, even jihad. They asked him, even jihad, ya Rasulullah? And he said, even jihad except for the one who goes out and returns without his money, without his life. So in other words, the only thing better than these days is if you have given everything to Allah ﷻ.
So these days are unique and special. Take advantage of them wherever you are. There is certainly a place that is very special that we are missing and our hearts are longing for. But let us help our hearts long for the presence standing before the Prophet ﷺ and standing on the prayer carpet and having that intentional presence with God. And inshallah we'll pray that we will all be together at Arafat next year and able to seek forgiveness from the forgiver at the place of forgiveness and the day of forgiveness together. Alhamdulilahi rabbil alameen. Salat wa salamu ala Sayyidina Muhammad wa ala his hafiz. Thank you. Salamu alaikum.
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