Honey from Paradise

Here is a picture of the Garden promised to the pious: rivers of water forever pure, rivers of milk forever fresh, rivers of wine, a delight for those who drink, rivers of honey clarified and pure, [all] flow in it; there they will find fruit of every kind; and they will find forgiveness from their Lord. (Quran 47:15)

It’s been a week now since I’ve returned home from my Umrah trip to Mecca and Medina. Just before I left for my trip, I posted some pre-Umrah reflections, which you can read here. (For the uninitiated, ‘Umrah’ denotes the nonmandatory lesser pilgrimage made by Muslims to Mecca, which may be performed at any time of the year. It is different from the Hajj, which is more involved.)

I’ve never been on Umrah before. I’ve never been to Mecca or Medina. Or Saudi Arabia. Nor have I travelled much anywhere else, other than in Moscow and Russia in 2013. So, I really had no expectations on this trip. I was open to whatever the Lord willed for me. Radically open, in fact. Like a blank slate, in a way.

I did, however, make specific intentions before leaving for Umrah. I prayed — I asked — I made dua — to Allah that I might draw closer to ‘rasul-Allah’. The ‘Messenger of God’. The Prophet.

As a former priest and monk, my entire life was Christ. Day in and day out. Every minute and every second of the day. My waking and my sleeping. And not simply Christ as Isa, the prophet. But Christ as GOD. The King of the Universe. Him in whom we live, move and have our being.

Though I don’t feel, in a deeper sense, that I have lost this in any real way in embracing Islam, there is a difficulty, I have found, in transferring some of this centrality away from the person of Christ and to the Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ). The Prophet — who has been so absolutely maligned through most people around me for the entirety of my life. The Prophet — the one whom I am still learning to understand and to know. I felt that I can understand aspects of the Faith intellectually. I could read all the books and ascent to these truths — intellectually. But to have this faith and these truths to descend into the heart… this is another matter. This takes time. And the blessings and grace of God. This is a common phenomenon for many Christians who become Muslim, incidentally. And this was especially an issue for me given the totality of the Christian life that I lived and practiced for so many years.

So, in going to Mecca and Medina, and in visiting the tomb of the Prophet (ﷺ), I made a special intention to draw closer to the Messenger of God. I asked, in my prayers, that this be so. I made it my overriding intention of my trip.

When you usually make a prayer or ask the Lord for a request, you don’t expect the response to be immediate. Nor do you often expect the response to be so literal. When you pray, for instance, that you be drawn closer to the Messenger of God (ﷺ), you often have in mind something more figurative. “O Lord, please draw me closer to You… figuratively.” That’s usually the working assumption.

What I didn’t expect during my Umrah was just how unbelievably literal my prayers would be answered. On the first morning of my Umrah pilgrimage, we went to the tomb of the Prophet (ﷺ) to give greetings to him in ‘his city’ of Medina. Being that it was the end of Ramadan, there were millions of people in Medina on pilgrimage. And all of them were crowding the small hallway which passes the tomb of the Prophet (ﷺ). I was among them in the crowd, repeating my intentions and praying: “O rasul-Allah — Prophet of God — bring me to you. Draw me closer to you.” I repeated this prayer over and over again that morning. My deepest desire was to draw closer to him. And by extension, to draw closer to Allah.

This was the morning of the first day. We had been up all night travelling, so as the mid-day sun rose over Medina, we decided to go back to the cool of our Airbnb and to rest for a bit before breaking the Ramadan fast that evening.

It would not take very long, however, before the strange phone calls started. At first I thought that the calls were from various people we were collaborating with in working out the practical matters of our trip. But then I began to realize that something else was going on. All the phone numbers showing on my phone were from various unknown Saudi numbers. And when I would answer, it was always a man in broken English asking me where my hotel was. “Where are you staying? Where is your hotel?” Who were these people? And the calls became more and more frequent. I simply quit answering them. “Who do you think this could be?” I asked some of my Saudi friends. Was it some sort of scam? I wasn’t sure.

We arrived in Medina just at daybreak on that first day of our visit. And now, after a whole day of activity, I returned back to our Airbnb at about 2am for a little rest before heading to Fajr. It was then that we heard a banging on our front door. My friend opened the door, and there were two well-dressed Saudi man asking to take us to the Rawdha. The Rawdha is a place right next to the tomb of the Prophet, and the Prophet (ﷺ) refers to this place when he said: “Between my house and my minbar (pulpit) there is a garden from the gardens of Paradise.” This is a special place in which our prayers are especially heard, our duas are answered, and which is considered paradise on earth. It is a place where, normally — if one is lucky — can only be visited once a year for 15 minutes, as it is such a sought-after place to pray.

Not knowing who these two men were, I kindly informed them that I had already reserved a ticket for my time to pray in the Rawdha, and their services weren’t needed, thank you very much. And I shut the door in their faces.

Becoming increasingly paranoid at this point — the strange phone calls, the strange men at my door at 2am. I returned upstairs to my cot pondering these strange events and tried to get a couple of hours of troubled sleep. Then, a little later at about 3:30am, one of my teachers traveling with us woke up to get ready to head to the main masjid for Fajr. I listen to him from my room as he walks down the stairs of our Airbnb and opens up the front door. Then, I hear a conversation ensue with two men. And they ask for me by name. I peek out of the shutters of my bedroom window, but I can’t see anything. “Don’t tell them I’m here!” I keep repeating in my mind in my growing paranoia. But then, I hear my teacher come back inside, and he calls up the stairs: “SA’ID! Are you here?” ‘Oh no!’ I thought. ‘I’ve been ratted out!’ “SA’ID! SA’ID! Come down!”

I had no choice. I couldn’t hide. I made my way downstairs not knowing what to expect. Bracing myself for whatever strange thing was about to happen. How is it that, on my first night in Saudi Arabia, strange men are coming to our Airbnb at 3am asking for me by name? What is going on??

I descend the stairs, were there, to my bewildered surprise, were the same two Saudi men from before, standing there in the entrance room of our house. The see me approach them with wide, deer-in-the-headlights eyes as they reach out their arm to shake my hand. “Sa’id, these men are with the Prince of Medina. They want to take us to the Rawdha. The Prince of Medina is inviting you to be his personal guest!” I still look on, blankly, in stunned disbelief. “What is this? Some sort of joke?” my face seems to say, as my teacher (who speaks perfect Arabic) continues to calm my paranoid confusion. “No, they are legit! There’s no need to worry. Get your things. They are putting us in the best hotel in Medina.” Somehow, this just added to my bewildered confusion. The Prince of Medina? Get my things? What??

But as it turned out… It was true. Somehow, the Prince of Medina knew that I was in Medina. Somehow, the Prince of Medina cared that I was in Medina. And somehow… he found me in Medina. Within 24 hours of my arrive in that beautiful city. And somehow… we were being taken to pray as his personal guest at the Rawdha — a place that is as close to the Prophet (ﷺ) as you can possibly get.

And this is the point of my story. Just earlier that day — less than 24 hours before — I prayed at the tomb of the Prophet: “O rasul-Allah — Prophet of God (ﷺ) — bring me to you. Draw me closer to you!” And here rasul-Allah sent a car for us to bring us directly to him. A full police escort and everything! It was unbelievable. And sure enough, we prayed twice that day in the Rawdha, right next to the tomb of the Prophet in the very first row. Out of millions of people visiting that day, we were given the most sought-after seat in all of Medina. Totally unexpectedly. It was clear to me that my prayers had been heard — and they had been answered far beyond my wildest imagination. We were personal guests of the Prophet (ﷺ) in his garden of the Rawdha — in this paradise on earth.

On later reflection, the Prince of Medina could have sent to us and offered us anything. A nice hotel. Money. Gifts. Anything. But what did they very specifically offer us from the very beginning? The said: “We want to take you to the Rawdha.” And that was it. It was clear that this was an invitation to visit the blessed Rawdha of the Prophet (ﷺ) in response to my prayers. Everybody on our trip attested to this. There are some things that might be considered coincidence, or perhaps wishful thinking. But the evidence here was so clear and irrefutable… to believe anything else about it would seem simply absurd.

Returning to America, I was asked to speak a few words on my experiences in Mecca and Medina on Umrah. It was an impromptu recollection before a group of people praying the Thursday night mawlid at Al-Maqasid Seminary in Pennsyvania, where I currently reside and study. I spoke for twenty minutes, but that amount of time couldn’t possibly suffice to recall everything that had happened to us during our recent Umrah. And I mentioned this in my talk. I could only provide a glimpse and a miniscule taste of the great blessings and graces that we experienced during our trip. To recall it all would take days. Indeed, our one week in Mecca and Medina, spiritually, seemed like two lifetimes.

And I said: “There is something about faith and about religion which is experiential. You can read about honey — and study it — all your life. But you don’t actually know honey until you taste it. And then you know. It was this way for me in Medina. I had studied Islam all of my life, but in Medina and in Mecca I tasted it. In Medina, we were given honey — honey from Paradise.”

I had been planning on writing a book for some time now, but the concept was never quite clear. Another ‘conversion story’ book? A ‘tell-all’? A book of spiritual annecdotes, of sorts? I wasn’t quite sure. But with this trip to Mecca and Medina, it became clear. There was so much that happened it one week, it truly felt like two lifetimes. I intend to write about this experience in greater length in my book, Honey from Paradise, and perhaps include some more information about my own embrace of Islam along the way. To this end, I have also started a new website, www.honeyfromparadise.com, to initiate the project and to act as a hub for my future writing moving forward.

Since my ‘coming out’ as a Muslim in February of last year, I have more or less kept away from being very public for various reasons. However, I have noticed in my absence that a number of people have taken it upon themselves to step up and very publicly speak on my behalf. So, consider the initiation of this project as a reclamation of my own public voice. But more than that, I wish to share my own experiences in my embrace of Islam. As I have written previously, I am still a baby in the faith. I have much to learn, and I am still studying. It seems to me imprudent to speak as some authority of the deep faith of Islam and of Tasawwuf which I am still learning. But I can speak of my experiences in this Faith.

And hence the name Honey from Paradise. The knowing of the honey is in its tasting. Taste and see that the Lord is good, it says in the Psalms. God is exceedingly good beyond our understanding. All good things come from Him, and all good things flow towards Him.

Inshallah, I will write more about this in the coming months, but please follow me at my new website here.

It may seem that times are difficult these days, but all things are in the hands of God. I am excited to see what Allah has in store for us in the days to come.

Glory to God for all things.