Allah, I Need You

I STOOD WITH my hands open to the sky and said the truest thing I have ever said in my life.

Allah, I need You.

This was Arafah. The ninth of Dhul Hijjah. And for months, this is what I and the two million other pilgrims standing on that plain had been waiting and preparing for.

Arafah is Hajj.

Let me tell you what Arafah is before I tell you what it felt like.

Consider the name of this place itself. ʿArafah. From the root ع رف, to know. To recognise. To become aware.

The scholars mention several beautiful layers to this. It is said that Adam (as) and Hawwa, separated after their descent from Jannah, wandering different parts of the earth, found each other again on this plain. They recognised one another here ʿarafaha, he knew her; ʿarafathu, she knew him. The first human reunion on earth happened at the Place of Recognition.

It is also said that when Jibril (as) brought Ibrahim (as) here, teaching him the rites of Hajj, he would ask at each station: a’arafta? Do you know now? Do you recognise what this is? And Ibrahim would reply: ʿaraftu. I know. I recognise it.

The name is an instruction. Arafah is the place where you are called to know, to recognise Allah again, to recognise your sins honestly, to recognise the temporary nature of this life and your absolute dependence on the One who holds it.

On this very plain, during his farewell pilgrimage, the Prophet ﷺ stood before the largest gathering of his life and received the final seal on everything he had sacrificed for:

وَلَيَوْمَ أَكْمَلْتُ لَكُمْ دِينَكُمْ وَأَتْمَمْتُ عَلَيْكُمْ نِعْمَتِي وَرَضِيتُ لَكُمُ الْإِسْلَامَ دِينًا

This day I have perfected your religion for you, completed My favour upon you, and chosen Islam as your religion. (al-Māʾidah 3)

Allah ﷻ, on this day, on this ground, declared the deen complete. Out here in the open. Amid the dust and the heat and the mass of humanity. The religion of Ibrahim (as), the long unbroken thread of prophethood, arrived at its conclusion right here, and Allah said: done. Perfect. This is what I chose for you.

The companions who heard it wept. They would learn later what we understand now: that this was also, subtly, a farewell. The Prophet ﷺ had little time left. The completion of the deen and the approaching departure of its carrier, both announced on the same afternoon, in the same place, to people who did not yet fully know what they were witnessing.

There is weight in standing on this ground as you realise that the divine completion of the deen was announced on the very day when human incompleteness is most nakedly on display. Millions of people, stripped of every marker of status and success, standing in white, with nothing to offer except their need. The greatest gift Allah ever gave, a perfected, complete way of life, was delivered precisely at the moment when His servants were most openly admitting they could not manage without Him.

Arafah says: the deen is complete. You are not. And that gap, between His perfection and your need, is exactly where the duʿāʾ goes.

You prepare for Arafah the way you prepare for something you know matters enormously and might not come again. I had a framework, things to praise, names to invoke, gratitude to articulate, tawbah to make, people to carry in my duʿāʾ. The Ummah. My parents. My children. And then my own record, open, nothing hidden.

But before any of that, before the first word of duʿāʾ, I had to settle something in my chest. And it wasn’t easy to settle.

I knew what I had come carrying. The years do not leave a person clean. There were things I had done and things I had left undone, and standing on that plain with nothing to hide behind, they were present. All of them. I could feel the weight of them in a way that ordinary life, with its movement, its noise, its endless forward motion, usually makes possible to avoid. Arafah removes the noise. It leaves you with yourself. And that is not always comfortable.

But I had not come this far to fail.

Think about what it takes to arrive at Arafah. The years of longing, the cost, the preparation, the weeks of pilgrimage building to this point. Allah ﷻ does not invite a servant to His house, bring him through tawāf and saʿī and Minā, and then abandon him at the moment that matters most. That is not who Allah is.

And yet Shayṭān works hardest precisely on this day, in this place, on this very question. His greatest weapon at Arafah is not distraction. It is not the heat or the crowd or the fatigue. It is this whisper: you don’t deserve it. You know what you’ve done. Don’t bother asking.

But wait, even that whisper exposes itself. You know what you’ve done. Yes. That is precisely the point. That is ʿarafah. To know. To recognise. Shayṭān takes the act of recognition that Arafah demands, honest awareness of your sins, and tries to turn it into paralysis rather than repentance. He wants you to arrive at the Place of Knowing without doing anything with what you know.

Sufyān ibn Thawrī said it: the greatest loser on the Day of Arafah is the one who gives up hope of being forgiven.

That is the trap. But Allah already tells us:

قُلْ يَا عِبَادِيَ الَّذِينَ أَسْرَفُوا عَلَىٰ أَنفُسِهِمْ لَا تَقْنَطُوا مِن رَّحْمَةِ اللَّهِ ۚ إِنَّ اللَّهَ يَغْفِرُ الذُّنُوبَ جَمِيعًا

“Say: O My servants who have transgressed against themselves, do not despair of the mercy of Allah. Indeed, Allah forgives all sins.” (az-Zumar 53)

All sins. Not most. Not the manageable ones. All. I held onto that.

And then it was time. Arms raised. Everything I had been building toward, poured out. Tears I didn’t know were waiting. The heart doing what it cannot do in ordinary life: cracking open, admitting everything, asking for everything. For myself and for the people I love and for an Ummah. There is no pretence at Arafah. There is no image to maintain. It is just you and your Lord, in the open, with nothing between you.

And then, it rained.

On the Day of Arafah. The sky, which had been pressing down with heat all afternoon, opened. It rained and it rained and it rained. Everyone was drenched. No one moved. No one cared. It was as if the heavens had been listening and decided to answer in a language beyond words. The heat broke. The dust settled. And it felt, I am not speaking metaphorically, it felt like the sins were being washed away. Literally. Physically. From my skin.

I have never forgotten that rain.

I have been to Arafah twice. Once as a young man, full of energy and zeal, certain I was ready and only half understanding what I was walking into. Once in middle age, slower, carrying more, knowing better what the plain was about to ask of me. Two different times. Two different men. The same raised hands.

Both times the walk to Muzdalifah felt lighter than anything. Both times I left as a man who had been reminded, at the deepest level, of who and what he actually is.

Seven years on from the last time, I sit with the memories and ask myself the honest question: have I lived up to what I asked for on that plain?

The answer is incomplete. It will always be incomplete.

But that, I think, is also what Arafah taught me. It did not give me a certificate of completion. It gave me a reminder of what I actually am: needy, dependent, unable without His help to maintain even the things I most want to maintain. The deen He perfected is not a burden He gave me to carry alone. It is a mercy He completed so I would always have something solid to return to.

I ask Allah ﷻ that He keeps me on this deen and in appreciation of it. That He does not let the years between invitations become years of forgetting. That the memory of that plain, those raised hands, that rain, stays close.

Allah, I need You.

I did then. I do now. I always will.