Useful Extra Information for Pilgrimage

Some important issues before leaving

• To ask permission from one's debitors who's debt is due is a duty.
• To be generous in providing for one's dependents before leaving.
• To reduce unnecessary talk to the minimum.
• To avoid getting najis filth on one's body and clothes as much as one can.
• To remain in the state of ritual purity (having wudu' and ghusl.)
• To pray two subsets in one's regular masjid before leaving.
• To give some charity to the poor before leaving.
• To ask those muslims whom one has wronged for forgiveness.
• To say goodbye to people one knows, and ask for peoples supplication.

Before showering for Ihram it is good to:

• Cut one's nails.
• Trim one's mustage.
• Removing pubic hair and armpit hair.
• Have intimacy with one's partner if possible.

Take to avoid the following common sins:

• Arguing with others (however, one must still order people to do their obligations, if they are slacking, and to avoid sins)
• Talking about sex or flirting with the opposite sex, even one's wife.
• Take care to avoid backbiting, which is to say something about an absent muslim that he wouldn't like to be said.
• To avoid namiimah, which is to spread rumours among muslims that result in hatred between them, even if it is true.

Important matters of the heart

• One should keep constantly in mind that everything happens by the Will of Allah, and avoid both despair and overconfidence. One should ask Allah for help in everything, even if it is just in the heart.
• One should take particular care to not spend a moment on anything but worship in Mount Arafah.
• One should cry over one's sins and sincerely repent as much as one can. If one can't cry, or is not aware of any sins, then one should cry over that, as this is among the greates of calamities.
• One should fill one's heart with love and thankfulness to Allah by remembering all the good things one has experienced.
• One should fill one's heart with fear of Allah and His awesome punishment, without complete despair of being forgiven. One should should remember one's own inevitable death and accountability to invoke these feelings.
• One should fill one's heart with love to the Prophet (may Allah raise his rank), as we have been ordered, for he is the means by which we can hope for salvation through his teachings and intercession: "... they shall ask help from Adam, then from Musa, then from Muhammad - who will intercede..." (Al-Bukhaariyy).
• One should fill one's heart with true monotheism. Monotheism is to believe that Allah is the only Creator, and that everything else is dependent upon Him, therefore only He deserves to be worshipped. He is eternal without a beginning and so are all His attributes, including His attributes of action - such as creating and shaping things. He does not resemble anything. He is the Creator of time, place, light and darkness and thus cannot be imagined.