Inner Aspects of the Hajj

Allahuma Salli Alaa Muhammadin wa Aali Muhammad A'udhu Billaahis-Samee-il-Aleem Minash-Shaytaan-ir-Rajeem, Bismillahir-Rahmanir-Rahim. Wa Sallallahu Alaa Sayyidina Muhammad wa Alaa Aalehi-Tayyibeen-at-Tahireen. Rabbi Shrahli Sadri wa Yassirli Amri wahlul Uqtada-mil-Lisani Yafqahu Qawli, Amma Ba'ad, Faqad qaalAllahu fi Kitabi hil Kareem wa Qawluhul Haqq, A'udhu Billaahis Minash-Shayṭaan-ir-Rajeem, Bismillahir-Rahmanir-Rahim - "Wa La Tamutunna Illa Wa Antum Muslimun", SadaqAallahu-al-Aliy-ul-Adheem.

Insha'Allah the topic that I chose to speak about today was the inner aspects of the Hajj, because it is the season of Hajj and our gathering is much smaller because of all the people that have already left for the Hajj.

But before I start on my topic, we have had in our community - over the last couple of days - a couple of very sad deaths. That of Qasim Jafar, who many of us knew as an exceptional volunteer, and Gulbanu bhai as well. In order to remember them, first of all, I would like to dedicate this speech to both of them and to all of our marhumeen.

And secondly, I wanted us to remind ourselves of the advice of Prophet Ibrahim that he gave on his own deathbed. Prophet Ibrahim gave an advice which is narrated to us in the Holy Quran. It is a very succinct advice. It is only one line long but within that one line, Prophet Ibrahim manages to express the whole purpose of life.

He says: "InnaAllaha Astafa Lakumu Ad-Din". He says to his children that "God has chosen for you the religion". "Fala Tamutunna Illa Wa Antum Muslimun", which is the part of the ayat that I said at the beginning, "so do not die unless you are Muslims"(2:132). Now, as you know, at the time of Prophet Ibrahim, the religion of Islam was not present. So what he means by "do not die unless you are Muslims" is not the name of Islam. It is the meaning of Islam, the essence of Islam. Because if we refer to the ayat before that, that is where Allah, Subhana Wa Ta'ala, says: "Idh Qala Lahu Rabbuhu Aslim". So Allah, Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, said to Prophet Ibrahim "submit" and Prophet Ibrahim says: "Aslamtu Lirabbi Al-Alamin - I have submitted to the Lord of the Worlds".(2:131)

So in this very brief statement, Prophet Ibrahim has laid out to us the foundation of what we need to try and aim towards in our lives. He said do not die - if you need to make sure of anything before you die - do not die except that you have reached this level of submission. This level of submission which is the essence of the way of Prophet Ibrahim and is the essence of Islam.

Now, of course, submission is not an easy thing and it is something that is comprised of a number of levels. And one of the things about the Holy Quran is that it expresses levels. It expresses levels of itself; the Quran as a book. It expresses levels of existence. So we have, for example, the seen and the unseen. So in the beginning of Surat al-Baqarah: "Alladhina Yu'uminuna Bil-Ghayb"- They believe in the unseen aspect (2:3). So we have the seen and unseen. Sometimes when we hear the outward and the inward, maybe those terms are confusing for us.

But the seen and the unseen are something that we are familiar with. We see, for example, each other, but sometimes we don't see the feelings that are within each of us. There could be someone going through trouble but their face, on the outside, seems to be happy. So we have a seen aspect of their personality and we have the unseen aspect, which is what they are hiding within. And then within that there are more unseen aspects so - seen and unseen. And the Holy Quran also speaks about an unseen of a human being - in terms of his Ruh. So we have the unseen level of the Quran, the unseen level of the human being, and we have the unseen level of the cosmos as a whole - that Allah,Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, calls the Ghayb. Or in other places, He says the Malakut, the celestial kingdom, as opposed to the Mulk, which is the kingdom that we all see. The Ghayb and the Shahada. Shahada is that which you see and the Ghayb that which you don't see.

And this concept of seen and unseen is something that covers all of our Ibaadaat as well. There is a seen aspect to our Ibaadaat, our worships, and there is an unseen aspect. So our salah has a seen aspect, the actions that we perform, and an unseen aspect, which is the states of the heart as we pray. And all of our worships.

And the interesting thing is that our Imams, for some of their companions, they were not satisfied that some of their companions remain just on the seen level of things. They were not satisfied with their companions when it came to their worships that they just performed the outward level of worship. It's true that the outward level of worship is the essence in the sense that without it, the unseen elements can't come about. You have to have the foundation before you start building on the foundation. But that foundation was only suitable for a number of companions, but for other companions, the Imams were not satisfied with that.

If I want to put an example, look at our Ibaadaat. If you have someone and you say to them, they're allowed to take 1000 penalty shots. So you have a goal, you give them a ball and you tell them you're allowed to have 1000 penalty shots. If they shoot the thousandth penalty shot the same way they shot the first penalty shot, you would say to them you took a thousand penalty shots, but you didn't improve in any way. It would be something that would not be normal for a human being. Or, for example, if you had an employee at work and you gave them a task and after the hundredth time of doing that same task, they made the same mistake as they did in the beginning of the task. That's not satisfactory to many of us as employers and some of us as employees as well.

So in the same way, the imams were not always satisfied that a person after 40 years of worship, after 30 years of worship, after 10 years of worship, would have the same worship that they would have at the beginning. But if you look at these examples that I gave you, you will see why sometimes we stagnate in things. Why would someone shoot the thousands penalty shot the same way they shot the first penalty shot? Well, maybe because all they were doing was taking penalty shots. They didn't look into the technique of taking a penalty shot. They didn't see, for example, that you have to vary where you place the ball. You have to decide if you're going to use the outside of the foot or the inside of the foot. You can't hit it in the same place every single time, otherwise, the goalkeeper is going to guess where you're going to hit it. So there needs to be some element of learning the technique of taking the penalty shot for you to get good at it. In the same way, the person who is making the same mistake at work because they haven't looked over their work and checked their work or haven't been pointed out the mistake, they still continue to make the same mistakes.

In the same way, for our Ibaadaat, for our worships, if we can use knowledge to help with our action, then there will be a natural progression that occurs within our actions. Which is why it's important to have lectures on the inner aspects of our worships. And if we do not judge ourselves and our own worship, we will never improve in our worship. It is like the worker that makes the same mistake. If we don't look and judge ourselves and say, for example, for me, I perhaps was even better at my worship when I was younger. I was more zealous, more into deen. Now, there are kids, there is family, there is noise, I live on a street where there are lots of motorbikes, so on and so forth. So, maybe, for me there is regression. So now when there is regression, I have to go back and say: "Now that there is regression, let us try and bring that back to a normal and then after that, there is progression."

So let me read you some of these riwayat where the Imams are not satisfied. If we look at Salah, there is a Hadith in a book called Fiqh Al-Ridha. This is a book that is attributed to Imam Al-Ridha. Although there is doubt in the attribution, some have accepted it.

It is a hadith from Al-Alim, "The Scholar". Now, usually when we have a hadith, we have a name of an imam - like "from Imam Ja'far Al-Sadiq". Or we have a title, like for example "from Imam Zain-ul-Abideen". Or something called a Kunya, which is where you either have "father of..." or "son of..." like "from Abul Hassan" - "'an Abil Hassan" as that would be.

But here we have "from the Scholar" it is because the only Imam to be referred to in this way - as either Al-Alim or Ar-Rajul, which just means "the man", "from the man" - is Imam Al-Khadim because of the level of taqiyya that had to be practiced in his time. In the whole corpus of our riwayat if you find Al-Alim, if you find Ar-Rajul, this refers to Imam Al-Khadim.

So, in a hadith from Imam Al-Khadim, he says: maybe half of a salah will be accepted or maybe one third or maybe one sixth. That is all dependent on how much the person who is praying is concentrating or is present in the prayer. And he says maybe there'll be a prayer that nothing of it is accepted and it will be thrown back to the person praying in the same way you throw back a shabby piece of clothing. So if you went to a clothes store and they gave you something that was real shabby you would just chuck it back at them, right?

In the same way, sometimes if our salah has no concentration from beginning to end, it's given back to you. It is not that is not valid from a fiqh perspective. You have done your fiqhi, wajib obligation. But the Imam here is talking about a deeper aspect of Islam. He's talking about an inner aspect of Islam. An aspect that is hidden for us because if we didn't know that this was the case, that your salah is accepted according to the level of your concentration, then that might have escaped us. So the Imam here is not satisfied. He's not satisfied with us remaining on the outside level.

What about fasting? There's another riwayah in the same book that says that backbiting breaks the fast of the person fasting. Now, if we all quickly go back to our Risalah, you will not find that Gheebah (backbiting) is something that breaks your fast. But here, the riwayah is saying that Gheebah breaks your fast. And it's not the only one, there are many of them. The Imam here, again, is not referring to the outward fast. When you make your fast within the conditions that are laid out in your Risalah, you have made your fast. It is accepted as a fast. But the Imam here again is pushing us towards a higher level.

In the spirit of this, what he's saying is that although you stop yourself from doing those deeds that break your fast, there are other deeds that you do that break your spiritual fast. There are deeds that you do that you're supposed to abstain from while you're fasting. And if you do them, they break that fast. Because the meaning of fasting means to abstain. So, this here, is another example.

The third example is when one of our Imams says: "laysa minna man lam yuhasib nafsahu fee kulli yawmin" The person who does not self account for himself - so you remember the same way the worker had to look over his act - the person who does not look over their acts every single day is not of us. Sounds like a very strong hadith. The person who does not look over their actions, every single day, is not of us. This here again, the Imam is not trying to push us away. What he's trying to do is encourage us. To say to us that this practice is so vital in your spiritual development that you must do this every single day. So, he's not happy for us just to not do this, for some of us that are able to do it.

And then all of this, of course, is a build up to the inner aspects of the Hajj. The Hajj also, we have riwayat where, in this specific case, Imam Zain al-Abideen is not satisfied with his companion when he performs just the outward Hajj. This companion, his name, is al-Shibli. He goes and performs a Hajj. As we say, 'he performed his waajibaat'. Not only did he perform his waajibaat, he performed the mustahabaat. So he did what we would all consider to be a very good Hajj. He performed the waajibaat and he performed the mustahabaat.

So once he had performed his Hajj, he had come to Medina and he awaited to accept and to welcome the Imam, Zain al-Abideen (a.s.). When the Imam came, the Imam asked him 'Did you perform Hajj?' and al-Shibli said 'Yes'. And then after that, a conversation ensues between al-Shibli and Imam Zain al-Abideen where the Imam asks him about each action of the Hajj. Every single little detail of the Hajj and first asks him if he performed the action and al-Shibli always says yes because he performed a complete Hajj in that sense. But then after asking him if he performed the action, the Imam then asked him about the inner aspect of the action. He says to him, for example, that 'Did you go to the Miqat?' (you have to start your Hajj from one of the Miqats you have to put your Ihram on). Imam asks, 'Did you go to the Miqat? Did you take off your sewn clothes? (because you have to wear unsewn clothes). And did you make Ghusl?' (which is mustahab). So this is one of the mustahab actions that al-Shibli did. And al-Shibli says 'Yes'. So the Imam says to him, 'Well, when you reached the Miqat, did you intend that you were taking off the garment of disobedience and putting on the garment of obedience?' and al-Shibli says 'no'.

So the Imam asked him, 'When you took off your sewn clothes, did you intend that you were taking off riya?' Riya is to act religiously in front of other people where you're not religious. So, for example, if someone's in the room, you pray slowly. And if someone's out of the room, then it's quick. This is called riya. 'Did you intend that when you took off those clothes that you were taking off riya and you were taking off going into doubtful things and you were taking off hypocrisy?' And al-Shibli says 'No'. So the Imam asked him, 'When you made the Ghusl, did you intend that you were washing off all of your sins and your mistakes?' and al-Shibli says 'No, I didn't think of any of these aspects'. He didn't think of any of these aspects.

So the Imam says to him, 'In that case, you did not go to the Miqat' - this is the level of extent that he wanted al-Shibli to concentrate on the inner. 'You didn't go to the Miqat, you didn't take off your clothes and you didn't make the Ghusl'.

The Imam here is stressing to him the importance of the inward because as they go through the whole conversation, al-Shibli is broken down, broken down, broken down until at the end the Imam says, 'Go back and do your Hajj because you did not make Hajj'. And at that point, al-Shibli breaks down into tears and he spends the whole year learning until he can go back and make the Hajj again.

Here, it is not that his Hajj is not accepted in terms of the outward aspect of his Hajj, his Hajj is an acceptable Hajj. But the Imam here is showing him that, look, you are able to do this excellent Hajj. But if you want to go every year and just do the waajibaat and the mustahabaat and continue and stagnate, then this is not satisfactory from a companion of the Imam. You have to go into those deeper levels. You have to think about those deeper levels.

And all of the riwayat that I have said right now, there is a principle in riwayat, which is said from the Holy Prophet, Sallallahu Alayhi Wa Alihi Wa Sallam. He says that the Anbiya (the Prophets) are ordered to speak to people on the level of their intellect. So when you have any hadith where you have a companion and an Imam, the Imam is speaking to his level. It does not mean that after that level, there are no more levels.

So, for example, if we take concentration in prayer. There is a level where we concentrate on prayer and we know, for example, the meanings and our heart is present. There are some levels of prayer, as we know, from Amir Al-Mumineen, where an arrow can be pulled out of your heel. So the concentration has got levels. In the same way, fasting has got levels. What you leave behind has got levels. We have in our riwayat that the Anbiya (the Prophets) fast with their heart, nothing comes into their heart except Allah Subhana Wa Ta'ala.

And in the same way, self-accounting has got levels and the Hajj itself has levels because the inner aspect of the Hajj - the macro that covers all the inner aspects of the Hajj, is that Hajj is a journey to move away from the way you were, to move towards Allah, Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, in a whole fresh way. Which is why many people change on Hajj. They reflect on the meanings, they repent for the life that they have led, and they have a new opportunity to move into a new life.

And this is the beauty of spirituality as well because we who are left behind - it doesn't mean we can't participate. We have sometimes a wedding, you might really wish you were at the wedding but you have certain circumstances that prevent you from going to that wedding. It doesn't mean that you don't love the people getting married. It doesn't mean that you're not happy that they're getting married. Sometimes you could be happier than somebody else who doesn't have that relationship with the person that is getting married.

And in the same way, if we would like to participate in the spiritual and the deeper aspect of Hajj, it is to re-examine our own lives and to see what improvements we can make and put that within the framework of "Wa La Tamutunna Illa Wa Antum Muslimun" (3:102). Put that in the framework of the advice of Prophet Ibrahim when he says, 'Do not die, except that you are Muslims'(3:102). Muslims with the inner and the deep meaning of Muslims, Muslims in the way that he showed us to be Muslims.

When Allah said to him "Aslim" be submissive, that meant that throughout all the trials in his life, throughout all the different aspects of his life, he was always striving to reach that deeper, deeper level of servitude towards Allah, Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, and that deeper, deeper level of submission towards him. And that is why we are called Muslims, as you know, the Holy Quran tells us that is Ibrahim that called us Muslims. It is Ibrahim that called us Muslims because this here is the essence even of all of the worships.

All of the worships, they build you more and more and more towards that submission in front of Allah,Subhana Wa Ta'ala. So this is the practical advice of how to share in the Hajj. This is the practical advice of how to look now at our Ibaadaat, to analyze our Ibaadaat,our acts of worship, and to see where we can improve.

And inshallah, we pray that Allah, Subhana Wa Ta'ala. Accepts all of our Ibaadaat, we pray that Allah, Subhana Wa Ta'ala, allows us to come for Hajj in the years that come, we pray a lot for our marhumeen and especially our two great community members who we have lost in the last few days, and we ask Allah, Subhana Wa Ta'ala, to accept all of our amaal.

As you know, the people that are Hajj at the moment, some of them may be in Madinah. And if they are in Madinah, they could be standing between Masjid Al-Nabi and between Jannat al-Baqi. And when you stand in that place, you can't help but notice that there are graves missing. The grave of Ali, poisoned with the sword in Kufa. The grave of Fatema Al-Zahraa, hidden because of the enemies. The grave of Husayn.

In these days, Husayn will leave Madinah, the land of his grandfather, and he will miss the opportunity to be buried near him. He will leave him because people will try to strong arm him into giving allegiance to Yazeed and a man like Imam Al-Husayn cannot give allegiance to Yazeed. He will move with his caravan towards Mecca. In his caravan will be the greatest of the people of his time. There is Abbas, there is Ali Akbar, there is Qasim, there is Zaynab, there is Umm Kulthum. They are all present.

But Imam Al-Husayn will not be able to make the Hajj. For the sake of the sanctity of the Kaaba he will have to move away. As he moves away, he moves towards a land where he knows that the people there are not going to welcome him. He knows his own destiny. But his purpose is not his own destiny. His purpose is to save Islam.

I used to always have a question when I would read especially about Ali Akbar and how they said that he was the closest to the Holy Prophet,Sallallahu Alayhi Wa Alihi Wa Sallam, in terms of his features and his character. I used to ask myself because there were also riwayat to say that Imam al-Husayn was the closest to the Holy Prophet in terms of his features and of his character. But as I read more, I came to understand that there was a difference why it was that Ali Akbar was the one that looked more like his grandfather. And that is because it is narrated that Imam Al-Husayn looked like his mother al-Zahraa, salamullahi alayha.

As this beautiful caravan moves on - this caravan of love, this caravan that will save humanity moves on - they reach a land. A land that is well known, a land that was visited by Amir al-Mumineen. They stop at that land and Imam Al-Husayn asks, is this the land of Karbala? And he's given the answer of the affirmative, it is the land of Karbala. And he replies, 'Hadha Mawdhi Karbin wa Bala". This is the land of tribulation, this is the land of trial. This is the land where we will rest and this is the land where our men will be killed and our blood will be spilt.

"Ala Lanatullahi Ala Al-Qawmi Dhalimeen Wa Sa Ya'Lamulladhina Dhalamu Ayamun Qalibin Yan Qalibun Wa Akhirun Da'wana Anil Hamdulillahi Al-Rabbi Alameen"