Salaam friends,

Jazāk’Allāh Khayr for your engagement with our polls over the last month.

Last week’s poll results were wonderfully diplomatic: an almost perfect three-way split between weeks 1, 2, and 4. Something for everyone, clearly.

(And as for barakah drainers… perhaps we all preferred not to be confronted quite so directly 😆).

As of two days ago, we entered Dhū al-Qaʿdah, the first of the sacred months that usher us toward Dhū al-Ḥijjah and the season of Ḥajj.

As we’ve already been learning, in the Islamic calendar, time is not neutral; certain periods are marked out, carrying a different weight, a different ethical and spiritual texture.

Dhū al-Qaʿdah is one of the ashhur al-ḥurum or the sacred months in which, as the Qurʾān reminds us, wrongdoing is more serious and restraint more urgent.

Historically, this month was associated with the cessation of conflict, creating the conditions for safe passage toward pilgrimage. But beyond its historical function, it signals a slowing down and a preparation before the intensity of Dhū al-Ḥijjah arrives.

It is, in many ways, a threshold month - not yet the days of Ḥajj - but already shaped by their approach.

For us, even at a distance, entering Dhū al-Qaʿdah is not simply a change in date but an invitation to begin adjusting inwardly. Before the movement of bodies toward Makkah comes the challenging work of readiness and of recognising that we are approaching a season in which calls will be made, and responses will be asked of us.

Because before the call to Ḥajj reaches some of us only once, remember, the call to respond is already present…

Each year, as the days of Ḥajj approach, the ummah orients itself - visibly and invisibly -towards Makkah. Millions prepare to answer a call that traces back to the moment when Prophet Ibrahim (peace be upon him) was commanded to proclaim the pilgrimage to humanity.

That call was not bound to its moment; it continues to reverberate across time, reaching those who will one day stand on the plains of ʿArafah, as well as those who, for now, remain where they are.

But there is another call, one that does not arrive once in a lifetime but five times a day.

It does not require travel, nor the ability that Ḥajj demands. It reaches us in the midst of our routines, interrupting the flow of ordinary time with a simple, repeated summons:

حي على الصلاة

Come to prayer.

Both Ḥajj and ṣalāh are preceded by a call, but they also share a deeper structure. In both, the initiative does not begin with us. We are addressed first, and only then do we respond.

The pilgrim who labours to reach the Kaʿbah and the worshipper who turns towards it in prayer are both, in essence, answering an invitation.

Over the coming weeks, as we move through the days of Ḥajj, this series will explore those parallels more closely, not necessarily as abstract comparisons, but as a way of seeing how the extraordinary journey of pilgrimage is already reflected in the ordinary, repeated act of ṣalāh.

If Ḥajj is the great return, then ṣalāh may be its daily rehearsal. And if the call to pilgrimage feels distant for many of us, the call to prayer remains immediate, insistent, and of course, always open.

We wanted to share a short haiku (japanese poem form) we wrote in Ramaḍān:

These words have been returning to us as we approach the season of Ḥajj. There is something striking about the sheer scale of humanity - billions moving across the earth - yet within that vastness, a smaller number are drawn into acts of worship that bring them into direct contact with it.

Ḥajj makes this visible: bodies gathering, moving, standing, prostrating together.

But it has also made us think more carefully about ṣalāh. That same act - placing one’s forehead on the ground - is not reserved for a distant journey. It is given to us, repeatedly, as part of our daily lives.

There are countless people in the world, but not all are given īmān, and not all are given this form of closeness. To be able to lower oneself in sujūd, to have one’s forehead meet the ground in worship is a gift.

One that, perhaps, we only begin to recognise when we see it reflected at the scale of Ḥajj.

Allāh truly is Al-Wahhāb: The Bestower of gifts.

Our du’ā for us all this week: O Allāh, invite us to Your sacred lands, and grant us the honour of answering Your call - wherever we may be, wherever we traverse - with sincerity and acceptance.

Āmīn.

Love and du’ās,

The Minara Team