 As-salaamu Alaykum, greetings of peace. Good morning or almost good afternoon to everybody. How was everybody doing? Still morning. How was everybody doing? Wonderful. Welcome. It's wonderful to see this conference room filled with wonderful faces and smiles and typically here teaching a women's class on Friday evenings. It is also filled almost every Friday evening of Muslim women but it's wonderful to see all different types of people here today and I really welcome you. Thank you so much for being here and I'm honored to be addressing you today. The topic I was given was on the spiritual transformation and healing of the hedge. And with that I wanted to share just a few thoughts in the short time that we have and really speak to you about the process that Muslim takes getting themselves ready to go to this hedge because even in the prerequisites of how you even make the decision of when in your lifetime to go to the hedge because it's mandatory once in a lifetime, if possible, even coming to that decision and figuring out the prerequisites isn't itself a journey, a curative and even healing journey. So if we think about the hedge, right, the spulverage to visiting the house of God, many people consider the hedge to be the peak of a person's spiritual life. That after you come back from the hedge you've been transformed in many ways and we have some countless accounts of people who have been truly transformed and later today we'll be hearing the story of Malcolm X and his transformation that the hedge did for him. But this story is repeated many times and for so many people and if we think about what it does in terms of nations and large numbers of people beyond just the individual there is also a transformative process amongst people as well. Because in order to go to hedge you literally have to shed aside everything that identifies you or makes you unique. Your culture, your language, your social status, your education, everything that you identify yourself with is shed. The prerequisites to go to hedge require you to figure out who you might have angered and make that right. Before people go to hedge they literally send out messages and I receive plenty of these from friends and family before they go to hedge that say please forgive me if I have done anything. And often I'll receive these messages and say I haven't done anything. But I forgive you nonetheless because a person going off to hedge wants to make sure that there is nothing that will be a barrier moving them back from really experiencing the divide. Also if you have any debt so that you sort they must be repaid or at least forgiven or put on some sort of payment for when you come back. That too is a huge prerequisite. And you also have to figure out if it is the right time and place to travel. I thought about this personally many times as young children. And is it the right time for me to break away for a couple of weeks and leave my children behind with whom are they safe and will they be okay and so on. Yet at the same time you want to be healthy and able to really take on the journey of hedge. So waiting until you're much older may not be the right decision either. You also have to be financially stable. But the requirement is that you're just barely financially stable. So you don't have to be wealthy. You don't have to be have the lots of expendable wealth. But rather that you have met some basic stable requirements for yourself and your family and beyond that you should know. So the timing is actually very interesting. And the sitting with yourself to figure out is it the right time is really a curative process to figure out whether you've angered anyone or owe anything to anyone or whether this is the right time in your life to take on this journey. Just the sitting with yourself helps you tune into the past and the divine. And from there going to keep on going so maybe we've decided we've reached that point in our life. Now it's this process of going to the hedge. And what happens at the point of hedge and many Muslims will call hedge the utopian state of humans on earth. It is the place where all are equal. Where you literally have to be where you learn to shed everything that makes you unique as we said before. And that might mean that you're going to make sure that you are shoulder to shoulder with the next person and you don't know what their original journey was. You don't know if they're wealthier than you or educated than you have a higher social status than you or lower or higher or equal to you. But rather you are all their shoulder to shoulder equal in the sight of God. That in itself for human beings and being somebody who studies psychology right for the psychology of a human and humans right that is really truly curative. Because if we're able to try and set the differences between us then we're really able to figure out as nations and tribes how we're going to actually go along. And so as we go forward in this process we realize that to be able to cleanse ourselves before going to hedge means shedding all the pettiness all the worldly matters that constrict our hearts and our minds. Because if we're really going to really understand hedge and we probably should understand it in the context of the five pillars in the sign. And I'll just very quickly and briefly go through them that the oneness of God or the belief in the oneness of God in the shahada is where it's fundamental and is where one person starts in their 30th song. The prayers regulates a believer's relationship with God. It is the daily connection that we have with God as Muslims. One of my spiritual teachers called kind of referred to prayer as the merry-go-round. Life is kind of like the merry-go-round, round and round and round and round and round and dizzying the effect of your everyday life and prayer is like putting that merry-go-round on pause and suddenly everything shifts back into focus for a short while and you connect back into what really matters and then you jump back onto the merry-go-round and you do this five times a day to connect deeply with God and to really remember what is important. But life goes on. So it regulates a believer's relationship with God and I can probably study entire times speaking just on prayer but we'll move on. Then we have the zakat which regulates a person's relationship with society. Then you have fasting which regulates and helps self-control and discipline and many many other things. But then we reach hedge as the final pillar of Islam and here we realize that as one nation, which often we will call an Islamic terminology the unna, right the one nation, that here we understand that the high principles and values that Islam really hopes to shape individuals and nations. This is what the hedge's main function will be. But then let's talk about it in a more individualistic version. I'll talk about the four functions of hedge as psychological, spiritual, moral, behavioral, self-control, and social functions. So we'll go through those one by one briefly. So if we look at the psychological and spiritual function of the hedge, we find that it is the exercise of the believer to really figure out on a day-to-day level and push away their day-to-day preoccupations and to really go on to a spiritual journey in their connection with God. And you start to understand this really deep and symbolic journey when you understand what why people dress the way they dress on hedge. I referred to this earlier when he said it is for the men they wear to, unzoned white garments. The same garments who otherwise would wear and only would wear a tiger burial. What is put in that context, you suddenly understand that everything that makes you unique no longer matters in this journey. And you dress this way and you think about it. Why are each of us dressed the way you're dressed? Sometimes it's cultural, cultural art. Sometimes it's a symbol of our education, of our wealth, of our status. A business suit signifies certain things, does it not? It shows a person's status, it shows maybe their position in a place. A warrior's t-shirt signifies something too, does it not? Hobbies and the luxury to have the time to even have a hobby. True. When I wear my white coat with the Stanford emblem on it, it signifies something, does it not? Or even my fleece that says Stanford, it shows my education and shows my even prestige. True. Even this room, right, for the men and women of the cloth, robes of piety or robes of royalty, they too signify something. All of that has to be shared, all of it. So does that matter where exactly you come from? What matters is the point at which you are right now and where you're headed in this journey to visit God's Holy House and to go on this transformation that the hedge is meant to bring about. But it cannot happen if you have these barriers in place of worldly matters, wealth, prestige, status, and so on. Secondly, we realize that in order to go onto the hedge, you really have to, you're going into a spiritual, we call this in Arabic, the hudam, a spiritual sanctuary in which all things that otherwise are permitted are now not permitted in the state of the hudam. Things that otherwise are permitted that are fine, like whatever it is that you want to wear, or typical actions that seem like that are everyday actions where you're restricted in actually taking them on so that you can focus on tuning into the divine. And that is in itself a difficult journey for some. And we won't go into the specifications of Islamic law of what's limited and what's not limited in this particular discussion, but just know that all these things that are typically normal are now going to be put aside momentarily so that you can focus on the hedge. And in this way, we find that you're psychologically training yourself to really get something out of the hedge and transform. Secondly, if we look at the moral and behavioral function of the hedge, we see that where the hedge of the Muslims, our pilgrims, are meant to come from every distant corner of the earth in congregating one place. And here they are at the sacred house of Allah, with mutually unintelligible languages. I can't tell you the number of times where I have been and literally we're just sort of motioning to each other because we can't understand each other. But what you can see is real love and desire. In Medina, the next city, which is over for Mecca, where the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, is buried and people visit there as well when they take this journey. Sitting at the gates waiting to enter for the women, all of us, together waiting to enter for our visitation to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, woman of every background in every language. And we cannot understand each other, but what is mutually intelligible are the tears. And in Arabic we say shafaqah, this kind of real desire and hope to meet the Prophet, peace be upon him, and to visit him. And although we can't understand each other, we're just motioning to each other, what does translate over is that desire and that hope and that love. And that is a beautiful moment, probably for me one of the most transformative moments of my visitation. And in this blessed land, you're also told that you have to have a special spiritual journey, that you have to really understand equality and brotherhood and sisterhood, the way it was meant to be understood by God. And in chapter 22 of the Quran, God says, and proclaim among men the pilgrimage. It shall come to you at foot and upon every lean beast. It shall come from every deeper line. Here the Hajj required is a very special gathering where people come from all areas and witness something that is unavailable in their homeland. Recently, just last weekend my family and I traveled for vacation and my children finally had the opportunity to experience Universal Studios. And it was a very, you know, they have these little sections where they recreate certain towns and certain areas and certain movie sets and all the rest. And when you've walked through what would have been San Francisco, my little son said, Mom, Mom, it's Monterey. And I thought it was so interesting that he connected, this little high girl kind of connected the fact that we have walked through what looks like the Wharf in Monterey. And he felt momentarily that he was somehow home. And it dawned on me how as much as they tried to recreate home, you literally had to leave home to really appreciate and understand what home was and be in this surreal kind of place and Universal Studios is pretty surreal, in this surreal place. It is not the perfect example, but it touches on the essence of what it means when you're somewhere where you literally have to uproot from the everyday and what you can to recreate a Hajj here. Even though every Islamic school that I know of in Hajj season will build a mock Kaaba and will have the kids wear the Hajj clothing and will do a mock pilgrimage so that they teach the children the rights of the Hajj, holidays that you actually do this ritual worship and help them really understand and connect with something that seems very, very far away. But nonetheless, you literally have to uproot and leave everything that you know behind to really experience the Hajj. And in that will say that there is a real behavioral transformation that happens, right, exercising a very strict self-discipline to really understand what is sacred and what is important. And you realize that the rules about Hajj say that even the plants and the birds have rights that you can not harm or touch anything. Where otherwise you could pick a fruit off a tree and eat, but in Hajj everything is a safety and everything is not to be, none of the rights should be violated anyway, right? So again, you're putting yourself in a completely different function than what your everyday life would otherwise dictate. The Hajj also has a very rigorous training and self-control. And not true is a transformation. In chapter two of the Qur'an it says, the pilgrimage is in the well-known months. He that undertakes the duty of pilgrimage during them must abstain from ungodliness and from dispute. And whatever good you do, Allah is aware of it. Take provision for yourselves, for the best provision is piety. This idea of taking provision, the scholars have talked about at length, what does that actually mean to take provision? And they said that this really shows the extent of conduct that Muslims need to undertake. That afterwards they should be able to come back from the Hajj and mirror the same transformation and keep on the same transformation that they felt when they went to the Hajj. That this idea of piety being the best provision means that you should come back from Hajj more pious and keep that in place. I have to say that one time I had a lady at a young lady who owned a hair salon. And what I had heard was post-Hajj but I heard from her that the reason she made her hair salon all women's only was so that she could service the woman who wore hijab because otherwise you can't go into a hair salon. So it has to be an all-woman space. And she herself, after she went to Hajj, decided to put on the hijab which apparently for her from the family and background and what she came from was a really big deal. And for her career as someone in the beauty field, was also a very big deal. Somebody who was very very concerned with the outward at all times. And here was a spiritual transformation and she says every time my business kind of starts to take a nose dive and people say to me you should open it up again for both men and women to serve, to have more people come through so your business does better. She says but I have a Hajj. Her personal transformation was to make a decision that she really wanted to service that she herself wanted to take on this next stage of the commandments of God which is for the woman to cover. And although that was difficult for her, it was a decision she made after her Hajj. She came back with that piety and wanted to continue with it. It didn't make sense. She said it did not make sense for me to go to Hajj and to Don all of the scar and then to come back and leave it. So a transformation that takes place in this case affected even her career and her daily life. The Hajj also has a social function, a social transformation and this I'm going to spend a few more minutes on because I think it's very powerful. Here we find that the Quran says and proclaim among men the pilgrimage and they should come from every deep, every deep ravine. Here we see that this discussion that the social gathering of people in the Hajj and what does that mean because the ayah or the verse continues to say and they shall witness things that benefit them and mention the name of Allah. The benefits, the word benefit in this verse, what is that for pilgrims to derive the experience of Hajj for themselves and for our countries and for humans, the human condition that the Hajj could really be good planning actually guarantee that humans later can live effectively without discord. If the lessons taught in the Hajj could really be transformed on a social level thereafter, outside of Hajj, the benefits are in your verse, perennial and they're capable to really increase and even be tailored to different individuals. Every person that has gone to Hajj has come back with a different story of how it's affected them. Every pilgrimage is different for every person but what is true of everybody is that they're actually are transformed when they come back. But in a social, we've talked about the social situation here, when you look at groups and organizations, systems and governments and countries, think about all of these coming in and congregating in one space. Think about what happens when you bring, think about it almost like a conference or a convention in which the time and the venue has been set by God and that the invitation is open to anybody and everybody who is Muslim and no one has the power to bar anyone and any attempt to debar a Muslim from coming in would be to do what God calls one of the most heinous crimes, to be able to say you can't come in even though a person claims a man is a Muslim. So here we find that the verse that says that Hajj is a sanctuary for humankind really is the case. And here every Muslim is guaranteed safety and freedom as long as they don't violate their safety. And the Quran says in chapter three that whoever enters it is safe. And now you have this conference or convention conference of people almost like a mini Muslim nation that in that little nation you have a very unique situation, a really unique opportunity for global unity because you have all people of all backgrounds of all languages, all ethnicities and of all social economic levels. Yet they're there all seeking the same thing, that connection with God and they're all taken away from anything that's considered to be unique about them or individualistic about them is shed. And the decision makers and rulers that otherwise sit in their ivory towers are called down to be with the masses. And even they are shoulder to shoulder with the lay people. And you can't distinguish one from the other. When this happens, when the people from the towers of authority mingle with the ordinary folk and complete the quality in front of God, you have the ability of real social transformation. You have the ability to really understand what the people on the ground are dealing with. And the people on the ground have ability to finally understand to what people in places of decision making that are often that's often very complicated and convoluted, so are going through. And together, you can start having a dialogue of a sort of a unique sort that doesn't happen anywhere else. And here in this tremendous assembly that hedge is, you find the great benefit that God is social in this case benefit that God is referring to in the verse. And this unity could really be seen as what we call what we said in the earlier verse, the provision that's being asked of us to take back with us. This provision then is what we'll take back from visiting the house of God. And that their unity is really the starting you can say can be the starting and the finishing point for their journey that they've taken and a real benefit for having visited the house of God and being shoulder to shoulder with all the rest of humanity. And that piety that they come back with and we hope that we keep perfect ongoing really can be transformative in all the different levels that I've only spoken for today. But really, if we talk about it, there's so many different facets of transformation, but we are almost out of time. And so we'll kind of stay to those four facets and say that there is a beautiful, really the beautiful journey of Hajj that causes a perfect recap quickly what we said earlier that really causes a person to sit down with themselves and figure out where they need to be, where they're lacking, where they may have angered people, what debts they may owe. And is this the right time? Are there any dependents whether they be small children or elderly parents? And financially, if they are truly stable enough, financially stable enough to take on this journey. And if all the checks, if you check off every box, then you must go. And that is where you find the Muslim feeling, I need to go, I need to get there, I need to get there. And this real desire that after person goes once and they want to return, because you think after an arduous journey, would you ever go back? And almost always, a Muslim will say, I really want to go back. And this time I even want to intend my pilgrimage for my mother who didn't go or my father who's now deceased. You even intend it for other people. You'll take on the journey, this arduous journey, even for the sake of others, because you wish they could have thought about you. So it's a beautiful and very transformative process that, like God speaks to us here and says, it must be these benefits and provisions in time, must be retained even after a return. And in that, we'll find both individual and societal transformation. Thank you all very much. It was a pleasure to speak to you today.