- Nadiya Hussain has made the Umrah pilgrimage to Makkah with her husband and three children.
- The heat and physical exertion left her feeling bewildered at times, but it was a special experience.
Fulfilling her pilgrimage to Makkah, Nadiya Hussain, the former Great British Bake Off winner, says her journey to the holy city has made her realize her strength as a Muslim woman.
Hussain made the trip with her husband Abdal and three children, Musa, 17, Dawud, 16, and Maryam, 12.
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“We were doing 40,000 steps a day for 10 days, and it was 49 degrees,” she said, Asian Image reported.
“It’s really empowering to realize that you can do something that you didn’t think you could do in the first place. It was pretty special for me as a woman to go out there and to realize my own strength.”
Umrah is called the minor or lesser pilgrimage because, unlike Hajj, it’s not compulsory. Although they share common rites, Umrah can be performed in a few hours and involves fewer rituals.
“We walk around that seven times, and then you do lots of prayers, and then you run between two iconic mountains where a mother ran across because she was looking for water for her child,” Hussain explains.
The heat and physical exertion left the Luton-born chef feeling “bewildered” at times: “But I suppose that is the purpose of a pilgrimage, to be dusty and disheveled and feel close to God, and I think that is something we definitely felt.”
After completing the ritual, her teenage sons performed a significant act of shaving their heads.“Watching them make such a big sacrifice was a really proud moment for me because they struggled, but they did it,” says Hussain, 38, who was awarded an MBE in 2020 for services to broadcasting and the culinary arts.
Muslims from around the world pour into Makkah every year to perform Hajj and Umrah.
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The post “Pilgrimage to Makkah Made Me Realize My Strength”: Former Great British Bake Off winner appeared first on About Islam.
source https://aboutislam.net/muslim-issues/europe/pilgrimage-to-makkah-made-me-realize-my-strength-former-great-british-bake-off-winner/
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