I dream about traveling to Mecca one day…
I wish that one day I would be able to travel to Mecca together with my family to perform the holy pilgrimage Hadj.
It is a costly venture and it takes a lot of effort to travel all the way to Saudi Arabia and fulfill all the religious rituals in the blazing sun of the hot Arabian climate.
The funniest thing is, that today 28.06.2023 is actually the day of celebrating Eid Athha, one of only two islamic celebrations. Those holydays don’t have fixed dates, they move all the time according to the lunar calendar.
So it was a sheer coincidence that I had to write about my dream journey as a pilgrim to Mecca, the holy city for all muslims around the world, today on the day of Eid, the celebration of the Holy pilgrimage itself.
Hadj takes place in the holy month of Dhul Hijjah, which is the twelfth month of islamic calendar.
In 2023 Hajj starts from the evening of 26 June and will continue until 1 July.
The hajj in islam is a reformed form of pilgrimage performed by pagan Arabs in the pre-islamic era. It was purified and restored to its original state by our beloved Prophet Muhammad (SAS) as it used to be in the times of Prophet Ibraheem AS (Abraham).
The annual pilgrimage to Mecca in the Middle East is in fact one of the five pillars of Islam. So every Muslim is obliged to perform hajj at least once in a lifetime if he or she has sufficient funds for that and is able to do that.
That’s why millions of muslims annually make their way to Mecca from wherever they live.
kilde: https://youtu.be/u4AKb0aW3IQ
The hadj is not only the legacy of muslims from our Prophet Muhammad SAS, but also from Prophet Ibraheem AS, the father of three main religions in the world : Islam, Christianity and Judaism, his wife Hajar and baby son Ismail.
According to various narrations, prophet Ibrahim left his wife and baby son in the barren desert with only food and drink enough to go through two days only. He left them without turning back, because The God Almighty ordered him to do so. His wife asked him if it was God’s will that she and her baby had to be left alone in the middle of nowhere. When her husband didn’t answer her, she realized that it was Almighty’s plan for her and her little son, and so she accepted her fate.
After two days when food and drink were gone, and baby Ismail became thirsty and hungry and began crying, his desperate mother ran between hills of As-Safa and Al-Marwa seven times in order to find something to drink or eat for her son, before she collapsed with exhaustion.
Then suddenly archangel Jibreel (Gabriel) appeared and began to strike the earth with his feet, and miraculously from under beneath it began to appear the holy water spring that is called Zam-zam.
Hajar was relieved and got enough water to quench her babies and her own thirst and became an owner of the Zam-zam well. Now she was able to trade waters of Zam-zam to passing-by nomad tradesmen and became quite a wealthy and important woman and needed not to worry about her son’s sustenance anymore.
The Hadj is constant reminder for all muslims about extreme hardships that undergone the family og Prophet Ibrahim AS. many centuries ago.
The hadj is the great test of patience and character for each pilgrim. It is a challenge that muslim pilgrims are willing to take both physically, emotionally and spiritually in order to gain pleasure from the Almighty Allah and purify themselves from all their sins.
I would like to end my post with famous hadith ( islamic narration) from our Prophet Muhammad (SAS):
«Whoever performs hadj for the sake of Allah and does not utter any obscene speech or do any evil deed, will go back (free of sin) as his mother bore him.»
Hadith Buhari and Muslim
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