Upon entering the Masjid, I went up to the second floor to escape the bustle of the crowd and find a calm spot with an unobstructed view of the Kaaba, which I had circumambulated several hours earlier as part of the Umrah. Praised be to Allah, the Umrah had been completed, but the rediscovery was, God willing, just beginning.

It was still approximately an hour before Fajr and many people were still performing their Umrah. Others, like myself, were using this opportunity for reading of the Qur�an or Tahajjud. On the journey towards Makkah I had been reflecting on the blessing of any prayer in the Haram for as Rasulallah (peace be upon him)has said a prayer in the Haram, provided it is accepted, is worth the reward of 100,000 prayers in any other masjid. I thought of all the deficiencies in my obligatory prayers over the years. One of the ways, out of Allah�s mercy, that we may make up for our deficiencies in mandatory ibadah is by doing supererogatory ibadah. I approximated the number of prayers I had performed in my entire lifetime and realized that if they were accepted, only two prayers in the Haram would supercede all of those prayers. Subhanallah. May Allah accept the prayers of the Muslims which are offered in His House!

After several prayers, I proceeded to drink the water of Zamzam, which constituted the Suhoor for the upcoming fast. To partake of the greatest of all food or water, in the greatest of places, during the most blessed of months, as preparation for the fast, the only action in this world done by the children of Adam which is not for them but solely for their Creator as is reported in a Hadith Qudsi, is something which cannot be adequately put into words.

Shaykh Al-Hudhaifi, one of the Imams of the Prophet�s Mosque in Madina, has said that �Ramadan is like a rainy season and the human being is like fertile soil, and every kind of flower will bloom with the rainfall�. Fasting in the Haram brings this to an even higher level, and it complements the Umrah and Hajj. For while Ramadan may bring the rain which allows the flowers to bloom, it is the pilgrimage, in the form of the Hajj or Umrah, that prepares the soil and plants the seeds before they can grow and bloom. If Ramadan is the cultivator then a visit to Allah�s House is the tillage, loosening the soil of sins which constrict and burden the seed of the heart, killing the weeds of spiritual disease within the heart, and improving the circulation and transmission of the water and air of divine guidance to the seed of the heart, allowing it to open and grow.

As we prepared for the coming of dawn and the beginning of a new fast, I looked at the white thawb I was wearing. Just hours earlier I was in the white Ihram, two simple sheets wrapped around the body. Yet the Ihram is beyond the simple dress, it has deeper roots that mold the spirit and character. �Let there be no obscenity nor wickedness nor wrangling in the pilgrimage.� (al-Baqarah 2:197) . It is making an agreement with Allah and His creation to refrain from committing sins which make him deviate from the path of obedience and, among other things, to refrain from disputing or fighting with people.

Fasting, too, has a deeper spiritual meaning. It is not simply the abstinence from food and drink but the higher fast is to refrain from sin, be it from the tongue, the hand, the eye, the ear or anything else. When I had been in Ihram, I had been fasting for part of it, and I thought of how similar its restrictions and its motivations to higher moral behavior were to those of the fast. It seemed so natural to be fasting and to be in the state of Ihram, as if they complemented and supported one another. I believe I always appreciated the pilgrimage and the Ihram, but perhaps I truly did not appreciate and recognize the bounty and grace of fasting given to us by Allah. Indeed, fasting is a shield, and after making the Umrah in Ramadan, one realizes that fasting is the Ihram of the heart, which can be put on at the Meeqat of dawn in any place in the world.