After sunrise had come and gone, I left my perch at the railing of the second floor of the masjid and walked around the enormous masjid. In doing so I saw an amazing sight, thousands of people sleeping, their heads resting in a variety of ways, on rolled up carpets, their hands, their shoes. And their colors and cultures were just as diverse, and Allah had brought them all together and given them the n�imah of sleep. Over fourteen hundred years ago, in this very month of Ramadan, Allah had blessed the believers with the mercy of sleep just before the battle of Badr, giving them calmness and sakeena in their hearts, making their planned sacrifice of their very lives easy for them. Allah always makes the sacrifices of the believer easy for him or her after they have committed to it.

There was a tremendous peace in all their faces as they slept quietly. Ibn Hazm wrote that when a man is asleep he leaves behind the world and forgets all its joys and sorrows. If he kept his spirit in the same state upon waking, he would know perfect happiness.

This peaceful happiness was evident in all of them in their sleep, and it is in sleep that the souls are taken away temporarily and only returned to the body if Allah wills that body to live another day. Sleep can be a frightening thing to the one who does not reflect, the one who disbelieves, for in lying down to sleep one abandons their will, and delivers it to the unknown. But for the Muslims, they are committing their will to their Lord and henceforth sleep in serenity and happiness, in hopes of one day finding rest in the divine presence in the Aakhirah.

I prayed for all those sleeping and wished that I may be like one of them as I had not slept in almost two days of traveling and the Umrah. And praise to Allah, sleep arrived quicker than I would have ever imagined. Glory be to Allah who has given us the n�imah of sleep, in which He takes our souls temporarily from our body, where the body and mind are replenished and rejuvenated, and where we are given a window into our very own soul to help us identify the state of our heart!