# Hajj is the Great Equalizer | Imam Tom Facchine

**Author:** Tom Facchine
**Series:** Imam Tom Live
**Published:** 2025-05-28
**YouTube:** https://youtu.be/JNWo7udw0JA
**URL:** https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/hajj-is-the-great-equalizer-imam-tom-weekly
**Topics:** Faith, Identity, Islamic Ethics, Politics & Practical Theology

## Description
Many claim to believe. They speak of love for their scripture, loyalty to their prophet, and devotion to God. But belief without obedience is hollow. When revelation challenged comfort, it was ignored. The book was honored in words, but neglected in action. This episode exposes the gap between...

## Transcript
**[0:00]** Hajj season is right around the corner and one of the sociological dimensions to Hajj is how it's a great equalizer, how it puts people on an equal plane. Even though there are distinctions, and some of them are unfortunate distinctions, what your Hajj package is and how much money you spent and what hotel you're going to stay in,

**[0:22]** that the structure of Hajj does a lot of work to equalize between human beings. That means that within the Haram, at the Ka'bah, making tawaf, you could be a rich person, a business person, something or other, a performer, or you could be just a janitor.

**[0:39]** And you will be in the milieu together. You will be wearing generally the same clothes. You will be doing generally the same things. You have to go from the same place to the same place to the same place. And one of the things that's wild about Hajj is that the way that Hajj is set up, it almost seems like it takes you on a journey to part with your worldly comforts piece by piece.

**[1:01]** You start out in Mina and unfortunately there is a lot of disparity at Mina. There are people who eat lobster at the buffet in Mina in their air-conditioned tent. And then there are people who will sleep on the concrete with just a cardboard box underneath of them right next to that same tent.

**[1:19]** But then if you progress, you go from Mina to Arafat, then Arafat is even more rugged and you spend a little less time in Arafat compared to Mina. You don't have the same luxuries or the same trappings. The price point's not right. It's very bad for business if companies were to build out Arafat for all of this infrastructure that would deliver the same level of comfort.

**[1:39]** But by the time you get to Muzdalifah and you're only in Muzdalifah for a night, literally, you're getting there around Maghrib or after Maghrib and then you're leaving around Fajr time. And you have to pick up your pebbles out of the dirt and put them in a plastic water bottle. At that point in Muzdalifah, you're just like everybody else. Nobody has air conditioning at Muzdalifah. Nobody has luxury for the most part at Muzdalifah.

**[2:03]** Muzdalifah is perhaps the most equal place on earth. Everybody's luxuries, for the most part, have been completely stripped away. You're going to use a really, really nasty bathroom when you have to use the bathroom in Muzdalifah. You're going to be on your hands and knees getting those pebbles. You're going to sleep under the open air.

**[2:21]** And one of the scholars said that that night of Muzdalifah, when everyone's the same or at least mostly the same and everybody's wrapped in white, at least the men are all wrapped in white. Imagine if you were to fly a helicopter over Muzdalifah. All those people. It's almost as if everybody has died. It's almost as if it's a metaphor for death and resurrection itself.

**[2:41]** Fajr hits, everybody wakes up and they go back to everything. But everyone is so equal and without pretense. Very, very hard to be arrogant at Muzdalifah. This is one of the lessons or wisdoms of Hajj and how Hajj happens. That no matter, yes, where you come from, you will be on your hands and knees digging through the dirt to get your pebbles.

**[3:01]** And so we realize one of the lessons that Allah delivers to us through Hajj, nobody knows if their Hajj was accepted or not. The hot shot surgeon and the janitor might go to their respective homes and it might be accepted from the janitor and rejected from the surgeon. We don't know.

**[3:19]** So Hajj gets at and symbolizes and distills a lot of the ethos of Islam regarding equality and the extreme, we could say, egalitarianism that Islam has. There's a lot of points that are said in Surah Al-Hujurat, "Inna akramakum inda Allahi atqaakum." The best person on the side of Allah is just the most pious, the person with the most taqwa. And that is delivered and an important message for us to reflect on every Hajj.

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