We have reached a point in this pandemic where most of us have adjusted to a new way of doing things. For most of our lives, we worked and studied in such specific ways that it commonly became accepted as convention. Today,…
PILGRIMAGE (Hajj) –like Prayer (Salah)– in Islam is a sequence of physical acts performed at a distinctive destination and designed to channel and to develop mankind’s innate longing to come “close’ to their Creator-Sustainer. Pilgrimage is common to the world’s religions. Central…
Concept 2: Why Anti-Clockwise Circumambulation at the Kâ’bah? First, let us say the obvious, that there must be one direction for a circumambulation ritual,[i] not a mixture of the two possibilities. Worshipping Allah and praising Him when all the Hajjis are moving…
Discerning the Effects and Benefits of Ṭawwaf Here we bring to bear discoveries about our physical world, about the pattern of forces at work on the surface of our earth and throughout the planet, as related to the geographical location of Makkah/…
As we know, Makkah is the central religious and spiritual pivot for Muslims, situated in present-day Saudi Arabia, in a narrow valley surrounded by the Ṣirât Mountains, with peaks ranging from 1,200 to 2,500 feet (365 to 760 metres) in height, and…
ONE OF THE first pictures our children identify is that of the Ka‘bah. There it is: A black cube. Simplistic in taste. Overwhelming in presence. Surrounded by a sea of people clad in white. This is Allah’s House, our children know. My…
RECENTLY I CAME across un-mailed postcards in my cupboard. Nearly 9 years old already, they bore beautiful pictures and lovely words, written to old friends in faraway lands. They spoke of circles and lines, white and black, a presence of people, and…
"The fifth pillar of Islam conjures up mixed feelings. And for me these feelings have produced a level of obsession that pushes me to dissect, analyze, and intimately understand the Hajj before I undertake the journey. But reading about the rituals alone…
THE PROPHET I have thought about most in my life, after the Seal, is Ismâʿîl. I remember when it began. My father told me as a boy the meaning of his name—God Hears!—and how Ismâʿîl was the answer to the prayer for…