Why am I here? Hajj 2026
I saw the Kabah for the first time in my life on the 9^(th) of May 2026, around 9:00pm Mecca time. I had left home at 2:30am for my flight to Jeddah, running on maybe an hour’s worth of sleep in the past 24 hours, so cut me a little slack before I say this: as I saw the Kabah for the first time, I was mesmerized for a bit, maybe at the symmetry or the squareness of it, but as I walked towards it for my first round of Tawaf, I didn’t feel a lot else. Just a weird stillness. It looked like a pretty straightforward building, if you know what I mean. The craziest thing about it is probably that Ibrahim (AS) put the foundation of it some 4000 years ago, but apart from that I couldn’t get much else. I thought that meant I was maybe an incomplete Muslim. I mean, looking at the Kabah changes lives, people tell stories of seeing it for the first time and remembering it forever, but I felt none of that. Maybe I was lacking. Maybe.
As anyone who knows me would know, I’m generally not a feel-first person anyway. I need to think through something and then I get some feelings on the side. So I started thinking. Why am I here? What am I supposed to take back from here? The Kabah didn’t give me much automatically, and I mean, it wasn’t even this Kabah at the time of the Prophet (PBUH). It was much smaller, and at the time Ibrahim (AS) made it, it was barely a building at all. Why am I circling this thing? Why are people crawling and fighting each other to touch it? I had questions, and I’ve spent the past week reading and thinking, so here are some thoughts.
Makkah makes no sense, it sits in a valley of barren rock, hemmed in by mountains that offer no shade, no river, no natural reason for a city to exist. There is no fertile plain, no strategic harbor, no ancient crossroads of trade that would explain why millions upon millions of human beings have been drawn here for over four thousand years. By every measure of geography and logic, this place should have been forgotten. And yet it is the most visited place on earth. The answer is not in the land. It is in a prayer. When Ibrahim (peace be upon him) left Hajar and his infant son Isma’il here, there was nothing. No water, no shelter, no people. He left because Allah commanded it. Hajar asked him one question: ‘Did Allah command you to do this?’ He said yes. She said: ‘Then He will not abandon us.’ That’s it. That’s the sentence this whole place was built on.
Hajar didn’t just sit and wait. She ran between Safa and Marwa seven times looking for water. She exhausted every option available to her while trusting in something she couldn’t see yet. And then Zamzam came up from under her son’s feet, and it hasn’t stopped since. That water is still here. We’re all drinking from it. I’m going to run where she ran, not as a tourist, but as someone hoping that whatever is buried beneath the surface of my own life might also find a way out.
Later, Ibrahim (AS) came back and was given the hardest thing any father has ever been asked to do: sacrifice his son. We’ve heard that all of our lives, but you don’t really understand till you have a kid and then get attached to it. You don’t really know HOW hard that is. As a father of 2 little boys, I can’t imagine trying to put myself in Ibrahim’s (AS) shoes. I know he was a prophet, but it’s unfair to say that just because he was a prophet it would be easy for him. He was also human. I mean he tied a cloth around his eyes, didn’t he? To sacrifice your son. Not symbolically. The actual boy he had prayed for his whole life. And Isma’il (AS), when his father told him, didn’t run. He said: ‘Do as you are commanded. You will find me, if Allah wills, of the steadfast.’ They walked toward it together. The knife was at his throat. And only then did the ransom come from heaven. It was never about the blood. It was about whether you’re willing. Every animal sacrificed during Eid al-Adha points back to that moment, not to death, but to the declaration that nothing I have is more important than submitting to Allah.
Together, Ibrahim and Isma’il built the Kabah and made a dua that still means something today: ‘Our Lord, accept this from us. Indeed, You are the Hearing, the Knowing.’ They were building the holiest structure on earth and still worried it might not be accepted. Almost every thing the man did, almost all of his major life decisions were centered around pleasing Allah or answering Allah’s call to rise to the occasion. He built the Kabah as a symbol of sacrifice and worship to Allah alone. Ibrahim (AS) then called humanity to come for pilgrimage, and Allah promised people would answer from every distant corner. And here we are.
Hajj takes everything away. The ihram is two pieces of unstitched white cloth and that’s the whole point. You can’t tell who flew first class and who saved for twenty years. You can’t tell the CEO from anyone else. Before Allah, the only thing that matters is taqwa, your consciousness of Him, your awareness that you’re being watched, your hope of being found worthy.
Tawaf, circling the Kabah seven times, isn’t about the Kabah. It’s just stone. It can’t hear you or help you. The circling is about asking yourself what your life actually orbits. In those seven rounds, the answer is supposed to be Allah alone. Tawheed made physical. Every circle is a chance to strip away a distraction and refocus, which is also what you see Ibrahim (AS) doing across his whole life: sacrificing his community, his family, his comfort, whenever Allah called on him to do so.
Standing at Arafat is the Hajj itself. The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: ‘Hajj is Arafat.’ There’s no ritual to perform there, just standing, praying, and asking. It’s the closest thing this life has to the Day of Judgment: millions of people in white, under the open sky, with nowhere to hide and nothing to offer except your deeds and your repentance. The sun is brutal. The crowd is overwhelming. And somehow, in the middle of all of it, you end up completely alone with Allah. That’s the whole thing.
This is why Makkah exists. Not because the geography makes sense, but because Ibrahim made a dua that asked Allah to turn this barren valley into a place where hearts would come, where provision would flow, where pure monotheism would be preserved. Allah answered that prayer. The barrenness is the evidence. Nothing about this place sustains life on its own. Every drop of Zamzam, every pilgrim who arrives, every prayer answered here is proof that the dua of one man, made in full sincerity thousands of years ago, is still being fulfilled.
I didn’t come here for a vacation or photos. I came because Ibrahim walked this ground and submitted, because Hajar ran this path and trusted, because Isma’il lay down and surrendered. Because the Prophet (peace be upon him) stood at Arafat with tears on his face and said: ‘O Allah, You hear my words, You see my position, You know my secrets and my open acts. Nothing of my affairs is hidden from You.’ I came to stand where they stood and ask myself honestly: what am I still holding onto? What idols have I built in my own heart, not of stone but of ego, comfort, ambition, distraction, that need to come down? And I came because the Quran promised that whoever answers this call will find something here that can’t be found anywhere else, something that only the desert, the heat, the crowd, and the raw exposure of standing before your Creator can produce.
Labbayk Allahumma labbayk. Labbayka la shareeka laka labbayk. Innal-hamda wan-ni’mata laka wal-mulk. La shareeka lak.
Here I am, O Allah, here I am. Here I am, You have no partner, here I am. Indeed all praise, favor, and sovereignty belong to You. You have no partner.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
May Allah accept this effort and journey from all of us, Insha’Allah. If any of my thoughts helped you place yours, please remember me in your prayers. Jazakumullahu Khairan.