the return

In spite of its puritanical vision of Islam, Saudi Arabia was occasionally beautiful in its simplicity. At each call to prayer everything would close and everyone would make their way to the masjid to pray. Perhaps when something extraordinary is repeated so often it becomes ordinary, habitual, but for us pilgrims, hujjaj, it accentuated the incredible distance between the west and Islam, between the secular world and the traditional practicing religious world of the Islamic east. All of us who've returned yearn to hear the call to prayer here in the USA to be reminded 5 times each day of where we've been, but being back it is all to easy to fall back into the auto-pilot mode of existence, with masjids so far and soul darkening outlets of TV and Internet so close to daily life. In the world full of choices that we inhabit what will we, the returning hujjaj, choose? Will we choose the path of guidance and Paradise, or the path of desires, distraction, and Hell. Oh Allah, do not leave us under the influence of our lower selves even for a twinkling of an eye, astaghfirullah al adheem wa atubu ilay wa la hawla wa la quwwatta ila billah ya arhama rahimin.