I hope everyone’s Ramadan is going well and everyone is benefitting from the holy month and gaining closeness to Allah.
It’s almost a week of fasting even though it feels like much longer it’s going quick.
If you haven’t read my blog on tips for productivity in Ramadan you can have a read, the main objective is to achieve set goals, to improve ourselves and our worship.
In the spirit of Ramadan I decided to write another blog on it and my experience of Ramadan on Umrah.
The other day whilst fasting I was feeling content and happy and I had the same feeling when I went to Umrah in 2007, a very long time ago. My one and only time, I pray I get to go back soon Ameen. I remember it and the feeling it gave me.
I was getting into Islam, I wasn’t wearing hijab full-time and I was invited by my aunt to go to Umrah. I initially said no but I called back and thought screw it I’m going even though I didn’t really know anything. It changed my life.
It was tough on me let me tell you, I found fasting very very difficult back then, the heat, the tiredness, the pollution affected my asthma badly. I got ill with food poisoning in Medina and had to go to hospital. This is before we even went to do Umrah.
Fast forward to the last day, we went to do our farewell tawaf early in the morning. It was serene, calm, quiet not hustly and bustly like usual, not too hot either.
Once completed we sat on the steps near the kabah looking at it for a while. My family said to make dua (prayer) and at that moment I didn’t want a single thing, I just wanted to sit there forever looking at the kabah (in hindsight I should have made that dua). I was so happy, so content, so relaxed, I never felt that way before and I was wondering how this is possible.
I’m fasting so I’m not eating and drinking, I’m hungry, thirsty, hot, dehydrated. I’ve barely slept and exhausted, I’m in my ragged clothes that are dirty and dusty, no designers. No jewellery, no make-up, no perfume, I look like crap, I don’t have a penny on me. I’m doing the complete opposite of what the world tells you will bring you happiness and yet I felt the most content.
It’s then that I submitted to Islam and believed. If worship and obedience to God can bring me this much contentment it has to be the truth.
To the non-Muslims find out more about Islam.