Arafat and ihram

MECCA. Arafat is the essence of the Hajj. The Hajj is Arafat.

The wuquf stood at Arafat, the stance displayed there, the representation that millions of people display in their ihram, like shrouds, under that scorching sun, is an event without equal in the world. Moreover, this representation is not put forth in order to be an event without equal. Volumes of philosophy, tons of literature and heaps of scholarly analysis could be produced on the representation displayed, without any aim of show or display, by the millions who come running every year to the invitation they have received. If it were done in order to obtain such an image, no one could bring so many people from all over the world to such a place, taking on that hardship, that difficulty, and stage that scene, those scenes. This event, which began with Hz. Ibrahim, has been staged, at least since the Conquest of Mecca, without interruption every year with the same rites, the same excitement and lines, with extraordinary naturalness.

On this stage every person has two seemingly opposite roles: to be the lead actor of the representation and, at the same time, to strip away his whole self, even passing beyond his body, and realize that he is nothing. Here everyone is addressed in the first degree by God, the Creator, the Most High. Everyone is first class. Everyone is God's vicegerent. Each individual enters into a covenant directly as "one" with God, the Lord of the worlds, even if no one else were left, to be "the first of those who submit" to Him. Each individual feels in his own individual being the whole weight of the covenant with God. The individual quality imposed by being addressed directly, without any intermediary, by God rises to the highest level.

Here everyone is important enough to be seated at the center of the world, important enough to be a responsible party with a will in the covenant with God. Each single human being bears the whole responsibility of the covenant alone. There is no possibility here of some people stepping in between, presenting themselves as closer to God and acting as commission agents to His servants. Here everything is out in the open. Tawhid is presented in all its clarity to every individual's conscience, mind, identity and personality. In this environment there is no need for anyone to act as an intermediary for anyone.

God is already closer to us than our jugular vein; we knew this. At Arafat we also reach the awareness that we, as human beings, are very close to God, to that Exalted Being who created us and knows us far better than we know ourselves. When we want to pray, we will ask from Him, but only from Him. No one is closer to us than He is, no one more merciful to us than He is, no one more compassionate, no one more familiar.

On the other hand, another dimension of this role we represent, fully displayed by the ihram, is our nothingness before God as a party. The Hajj is Arafat, and the ihram is Arafat's indispensable costume. In that costume the actor, who is important enough to be a party to God and aware of his responsibility as an individual, strips away his whole self. The ihram is not merely a garment made obligatory to provide a uniform dress for everyone as a matter of discipline. In itself it is not even a garment. It is a level that removes all the individual differences we have acquired in this world. We all came from God, equal to one another like the teeth of a comb.

When we are born as a baby, we have no attribute with us that distinguishes us from others. But in time we have placed between us, as a difference, our races, our classes, our tribes, our ages, our gender, our geographical and historical origins, our lineages and clans, the cultures we acquired while in the world, our languages, our sects, our professions. As these differences have distanced and severed us from one another, they have distanced us from God who created us to the same extent. At Arafat, we both come to know and recognize God anew, and also rediscover those He created along with us and draw near to them too, in such a way as to abolish all distances.

The ihram is the most ideal and magnificent costume of this drawing near, that is, of this sacrifice. The ihram is not only a costume, but also a state of alertness that makes obligatory a series of modes of behavior. While in ihram you must feel a distinct compassion, selflessness and closeness toward the other people whom God has created equal to us. You will never say a bad word to other people and will not behave badly. Even if you encounter a bad word or behavior, you will not say a bad word, and you are very likely to encounter it, because on this plain, during the journey in the valley of Aqaba, the devils do not stand idle in order to turn you back from your path, lead you astray, and render this representation void. You will control your anger. While in ihram you will not shed blood, will not harm animals, will not harm even insects, will not even pull up dry grass. Moreover, you will not harm even your own hair, let alone another's hair.

The part about "not harming your own hair" is in fact one of the matters that best represents the deep philosophy underlying the ihram. Through our behavior toward others, God Almighty, who reestablishes the consciousness in us, repeats it again and again in accordance with the purpose of creation, restores it, and thereby grants us a new page, a spotless page, a festival (iyd), teaches us on this occasion, in a tremendous role, that our body too does not belong to us.

He says, in summary: This body is not yours, so you cannot dispose of it as you wish. On this stage, where life and the places of you, your Lord and all other creatures within this life are recalled anew, you cannot pull out even your own hair, cannot cut your nails, and only when you have successfully performed these scenes do you earn the right to cut your hair.

Thus Arafat becomes the place where we see and know anew our position between the individual state that reaches its peak in being God's vicegerent and the state of being nothing before God.

This place is where God intended to see us in our normal lives. We often lose this place amid the troubles of life. By His mercy, God the Most High arranges this place for us anew each year and returns to us, spotless, that place we had squandered. That is why the bayram is a restoration, a renewal, an iyd.

Blessed be your bayram.