I MEET PEOPLE who speak lovingly about Hajj, who feel its pull, who fully intend to go, yet continue to delay year after year.
Some reasons are entirely understandable. Hajj is expensive. Quotas are limited. Health is not always on our side. There are dependents.
But beyond those genuine barriers lies a different conversation altogether.
Many people delay Hajj not because they cannot go, but because of what going would demand of them.
Hajj confronts a person with themselves.
It strips away distractions and exposes what lies underneath. What do we truly rely upon? What are we afraid of losing? What controls us? What do we love most?
And the reasons people hesitate vary.
Some say: I am not religious enough yet.
Others say: I need to improve myself first.
Some fear returning changed and then failing to sustain it, as though it is safer never to be transformed than to be transformed and stumble.
Others, though few will admit this plainly, see Hajj as a means to repent later in life, after the dunya has been sufficiently enjoyed.
And then there are those who carry a fear they do not openly speak about. They know, somewhere beneath the surface, that you cannot stand on ‘Arafah and weep before Allah ﷻ, then return home unchanged without the weight of that contradiction pressing against you. They know Hajj demands sincerity. And sincerity demands sacrifice.
But perhaps the most honest reason of all, and probably the most common, is simply that many Muslims have never truly thought about it deeply enough.
Hajj has become the fifth pillar they will eventually get to. Fully intended. Sincerely meant. But filed under one day while life continues to fill the space around it.
These are all worth examining.
The idea that one must first become righteous enough to deserve Hajj is a misunderstanding of what Hajj actually is. Hajj is not a reward for already being good. It is one of the means by which Allah ﷻ purifies a person so that he becomes good. If perfection were the prerequisite, nobody would ever go.
Similarly there is a particular danger in the ‘one day’ intention. It assumes control over time that was never ours. Every year that passes with the intention still deferred is another year spent assuming that death will wait for a more convenient moment. That there will always be another Dhul Hijjah. Another opportunity. Another season of repentance.
There will not always be.
I remember my first Hajj. I was young, single and free. I got a visa, hopped on a plane and turned up in Makkah. Hotels were cheap and cheerful and near the Haram, unlike today when only the most expensive buildings crowd the Sanctuary. I was younger and stronger. I had just enough money and just enough time off work. Nothing was holding me back.
Life changes a person.
The second time I went, I was married. I had children. I had responsibilities and things I had accumulated. A career of sorts. Ageing parents. People whose days were shaped around mine. Going for Hajj was no longer simply a matter of going.
And with that came a fear I was surprised to find in myself.
Hajj is physically demanding. People still die at Hajj. I remember the Jamarat on my first hajj all those years ago. It was different to what we have now. Millions of people coming to a single pillar at the same time. The crush was intense. It was the one day in my life I genuinely thought I might not survive. But the fear that came the second time was more subtle than that. It was not about the crowds. It was about what I was leaving behind.
What if something happened? Who would look after the children? How would everyone manage?
The thoughts were not irrational. The love behind them was real. But as I pondered, I began to notice something underneath that was more revealing than the fears themselves.
The illusion that I was the one holding everything together.
That my presence, my planning and my management of things were what kept the world of my family in its proper order. It was a flattering thought. And it was false.
I returned to the words of Allah ﷻ:
وَٱعْلَمُوٓا۟ أَنَّمَآ أَمْوَٰلُكُمْ وَأَوْلَـٰدُكُمْ فِتْنَةٌۭ وَأَنَّ ٱللَّهَ عِندَهُۥٓ أَجْرٌ عَظِيمٌۭ
And know that your possessions and your children are but a trial and that surely, with Allah is a mighty reward. (al-Anfāl 28)
The word fitnah here is not a condemnation of the love we carry for our children. It is an explanation. The love is right and good. The question is only what that love leads us to place our trust in.
And then I remembered Hajar. Ibrahim (as) had brought her and the infant Ismail (as) to a waterless valley and turned to walk away. She called after him. When she understood that this was the command of Allah ﷻ, she said simply: “Then He will not neglect us.”
She did not say she would manage. She did not speak about plans or arrangements. She said: He will not neglect us. As though that was simply the end of the matter.
As though entrusting her child to Allah ﷻ was not resignation but the clearest and most certain thing she could possibly do.
I was about to say labbayk. I was about to answer the very call that Ibrahim (as) had proclaimed to humanity. And yet part of me feared that Allah ﷻ might not look after what I left behind while I answered it.
When I saw that clearly, I realised something.
Tawakkul is not a topic to be discussed. It is a reckoning that comes when Allah ﷻ places you in a situation where you must either trust Him or admit that you do not.
That is when you discover what you actually believe, rather than what you assumed you believed.
Sacrifice, likewise, does not arise from conversations about sacrifice. It becomes real when obedience costs you something. When you must place Allah ﷻ before the thing you most fear losing.
Ibrahim (as) knew this not as a principle but as a lived reality. The test was not theological. It passed through the deepest place in a father’s heart.
Every believer carries a version of that test.
There is always something so beloved that it could, without us even noticing, sit just a little higher in the heart than it should. For some it is wealth. For others it is career, reputation, comfort or control. And often, this is what makes the struggle genuinely difficult, it is not sinful things that hold people back. It is beloved things.
The dunya does not always pull us away from Allah ﷻ through obvious temptation. More often it pulls us quietly, through attachment. Through things that are entirely good and entirely legitimate, arranged in the heart in a way we have simply never stopped to look at.
I found myself turning to the Qur’an for steadiness, the way one reaches for something solid in the dark. And out of everything I know and have read, Allah ﷻ opened my heart to this:
ٱللَّهُ وَلِىُّ ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ يُخْرِجُهُم مِّنَ ٱلظُّلُمَـٰتِ إِلَى ٱلنُّورِ
Allah is the Protector of those who believe. He brings them out from darkness into light. (al-Baqarah 257)
Something settled inside me. Not because the fears disappeared. But because they were no longer in charge.
Help also came in reminders from the good people around us.
Before we left, a close friend said simply: “Just turn off your phone for a few days. Your children will be fine without you.”
My brother, as we departed at the airport, said: “It is all in Allah’s hands now.”
Both said it lightly, almost casually, and that lightness helped more than a longer conversation might have.
At Mina I found that many carried the same weight. A man from my camp quietly showed me a detailed will he and his wife had prepared before leaving, specific instructions for their children carefully written down.
I looked at it and felt a strange comfort.
We all carry this.
The fear is not weakness. The love behind it is not wrong. In fact, it is precisely what makes the surrender meaningful.
وَٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوٓا۟ أَشَدُّ حُبًّۭا لِّلَّهِ
But those who believe are stronger in their love for Allah. (al-Baqarah 165)
This is not a love that diminishes our children. It is an ordering of love. An understanding that when Allah ﷻ is first, everything else is held in better hands than our own.
Ibrahim (as) did not love Ismail (as) less because of what he was prepared to do. He loved him through his trust in Allah ﷻ. And perhaps that is the deepest thing a father can give his child. Not the illusion of his own protection, but the reality of Allah’s protection.
Hajj forces an encounter with all of this.
It confronts the believer with how little can actually be secured, however carefully life is planned. The future. The health. The wealth. The children. Even the next breath.
At some point, every believer must entrust these things to Allah ﷻ and move forward anyway.
Hajj simply forces that reckoning into the open.
Perhaps this is what so many are really delaying.
Not Hajj itself.
But the moment of honestly answering His call. The moment of loosening the grip on the illusion of control, stepping forward despite the fear, and discovering that He ﷻ was holding everything all along.
Labbayk Allahumma labbayk.
Here I am, O Allah. Here I am.
