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Captioning provided by MUHSEN (www.muhsen.org)
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you know, the thing that I remember most,
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well, there's an event or a strange sort of series of events
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that happened on my first Hajj
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--> 00:00:17,171 (wind whistling gently)
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AsSalaam Alaikum Warahmatullahi Wa Barakatuhu.
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I was asked to tell about some of my experiences on Hajj.
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I went for Hajj twice, the first time by myself,
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And we traveled from Qatar to Mekka,
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--> 00:00:47,430 it was a pretty short trip
Alhamdulillah.
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you know, the thing that I remember most,
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well, there's an event or a strange sort of series of events
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that happened on my first Hajj that I always think about.
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And of course I remember that was very excited
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to see the mosque and the Kaaba for the first time.
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But when we came across the hill
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or came over a sort of rise, and there's an empty space,
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as soon as we could see the mosque,
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were a large number of African children spread out
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Many of them having some kind of deformities or injuries.
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I remember one holding out a sort of mangled hand,
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and they have buckets hanging around their heads,
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and they're all kneeling on the ground.
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And there was a large woman, and covered in niqab
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kind of standing to the side, watching them.
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So that was almost kinda like a horror movie.
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I mean, we were just ready to see the sacred mosque
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It was the first experience and quite shocking,
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And specifically I saw one young girl,
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or one very small girl with apparently like no arms
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or like her arms are severed or missing from here.
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And she's holding them out and waiting for people
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So yeah, the first thing that crossed my mind was, you know,
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well, how can this place, which is a sacred city,
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how can it be allowed that, you know,
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children and people are treated like this in this place?
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You know, how can the authorities of this country
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who are supposed to be the custodians of this place,
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for example, allow this, you know?
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the first sort of trip to the mosque you start with
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in the Hajj, when we came back to our residence, you know,
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"there are people who take these children
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so they think or they claimed that this girl's arms
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were cut off by the people who want to use her
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And then somebody else said, that she really has arms,
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but were hiding them behind her garment like this.
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So, yeah.
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In general, it kind of went with the whole experience
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whereby we were here at a place
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where you go inside the mosque and everything is,
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But outside the, you know, you feel that it's surrounded by,
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I guess, humanity, human society, right?
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between what we need from God and what God gives us
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and you know, what He expects from us
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and what the world is actually like outside, you know?
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The world is not like a paradise, it's not a utopia.
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But anyhow, these things are always going through my mind.
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But, and the reason is because I kept seeing, well,
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I don't know, the reason this went along
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And in particular, during our trips to stone the pillars,
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she was always there because these kids are always,
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And so I saw her a couple of more times,
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--> 00:05:35,650 And in between there,
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I went to encourage anybody who InshaAllah,
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from Arafat to Mina and walk through Muzdalifah.
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And I was lucky that a couple of friends of mine
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that I made there told me they were gonna walk
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and leave the group and not stay on the bus
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because the experience of walking was much better
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than sitting on the bus for hours and hours, actually.
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at least in terms of the subjective experiences of the Hajj,
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the actual walk, was really one of the main things.
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But during this time of going to stone the pillars,
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I saw the same girl a few more times.
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And so finally, on the way back from the pillars,
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I really needed to know whether she had arms.
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And so I came and, you know, when I passed her,
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as the person said, she had her hands like this.
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And so she did have arms, and so I was really happy
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and that somebody didn't cut her arms off, (chuckles)
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And there was a West African brother walking beside me.
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I mean, I didn't know him, but he asked me,
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and I was telling him, "She has arms, she has arms!" right?
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And maybe he thought that I was saying that
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because I was angry that she was trying to fool people
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or something, but it was in fact the opposite.
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I was really happy, but he said, "She has arms?"
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And he said, "Well, let it be that."
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And then he has in his hands a bag of chips,
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So I'm walking back, I was crying all the way back to Mina.
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And it crossed my mind that actually Shaitan would like you,
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that seems like that's just sort of strategy or tactic
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to overwhelm us with the image of the evil in the world.
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even though it may appear that the evil outweighs the good.
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So it was very uplifting.
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I don't know if Allah has a plan.
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and coordinates everything.
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among many things that happened during the Hajj
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to be something that I'm supposed to learn from.
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And so the closing of it was humbling,
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and the last time that I made, went to stone the pillars
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there she was again with her arms
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obviously somebody has put her arms back there.
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And so she can't really use them.
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And she's sitting there in the very hot sun,
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and this is difficult for us Hajjis just to walk,
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and I can drink from the water when I want to.
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But, you know, here's this girl, she's made to sit there,
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you know, for who knows how long under the hot sun.
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So the only thing that I had an unopened bottle of water.
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but I thought she might be probably thirsty, obviously.
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and came and poured some water down her mouth.
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I was thinking she might be afraid of me, but no,
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And so I was happy at least
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to make up for having probably scared her before. (laughs)
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and I guess the take home from that is, right,
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there does seem to be a lot of evil in the world,
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would like you to think otherwise, but it's not true.
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Thank you for listening to my little story.
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AsSalaam Alaikum Warahmatullahi Wa Barakatuhu.