Susan Douglass

Susan Douglass received the PhD in history from George Mason University, and M.A. in Arab Studies from the Georgetown University Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, where she is currently K-14 Education Outreach Director together with the Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. She served in the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations initiative, and as Affiliated Scholar with the Council on Islamic Education, reviewing commercial textbooks in development and state academic standards. She conducted the study Teaching About Religion in National and State Social Studies Standards (2000) and has continued to monitor developments in U.S. academic standards. Publications include World Eras: Rise and Spread of Islam, 622-1500 (Thompson/Gale, 2002), the children’s book Ramadan (Carolrhoda Books, 2002), and various chapters and articles on education issues. She has contributed to teaching resources for Unity Productions Foundation films, the National Center for History in the Schools, Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art teaching guide Arts of Islam, and the online curriculum World History for Us All, as well as The Indian Ocean in World History website, and the NEH/ALA project Bridging Cultures Bookshelf/Muslim Journeys. She also teaches and develops curriculum for world history and other social science courses at Legacy International Online High School and teaches in the Bayan Islamic Graduate School.

The barrier to my heart is a lonely place where I sometimes can’t surrender to spiritual connection. It can manifest in taking time but lacking presence in the five daily prayers. It can manifest in trying to connect in a zikr circle over Zoom during the time of the COVID pandemic.

Another manifestation was when I had the chance to make a brief stop in Makkah for ‘umra for the first time ever. At some other times, places, and circumstances—often when I least expected it—the barrier fell, to my surprise and happiness. Here is the account of those journeys.

Landing in Jeddah on a requested re-routing for another trip, I was picked up at the airport by a family who had befriended us upon our return from Egypt to the United States in the 1980s. I was alone on this trip, and made myself a garment as I imagined would be appropriate. I had tried to study what to do during ‘umrah, but couldn’t really absorb or memorize from a text. My hosts had agreed to meet me, but I didn’t know the setting or circumstances of our ‘umra.

My first sight of the Ka’aba came unexpectedly. After riding jetlagged from the airport through highways that could have been laid out anywhere in the world, we approached the city of Makkah. From the outskirts, it looked like a non-descript 21st century city like many others in Arab lands. We then drove into an underground labyrinth of bypass roads. No cityscape or landscape was visible, just unadorned tunnel walls marked by highway signs. We finally halted at an underground scene that looked like any airport baggage and passenger pick-up.

From there, a member of my host’s family led me inside. They had access to a hotel room because of their involvement as

architectural engineers in the Haram project through Umm al-Qura’ University. I followed my host through corridors to an elevator, through hallways of hotel doors, until we stopped and knocked at a door. The sister who would generously host me opened it a crack. The first view past my friends took me aback so sharply that I gasped and caught my breath. Visible in the room was a chair, a side table, and a hotel window. Through the window was—the Ka’aba. It was as if all the history and momentous spiritual weight and wonder of the place had been put into a jar with a lid sealed on it—alienated from itself and from me.

At about 2am, we descended to the Masjid al-Haram when the crowds had lessened somewhat. Before that, we had prayed isha’ in a room set up for women’s prayers, with a view of the Kaa’ba through a wider window, but closed off and contained. Accompanied by my host and her daughter, who had made hajj and ‘umra many times, they directed me toward the goal.

We entered the sharply lit, white marble plaza through the gates. Inside, the masjid is open to the sky, but it was so dark that it felt like a closed building. Her daughter led our little human triangle, she and I holding onto her abaya to stay together in the crush of others making tawaf. As I held her hand tightly through the press of people, I could barely keep the pace, hear, or grasp what I was to say; I felt totally inadequate to the experience. They managed to maneuver us into the semicircle of Hijr Isma’il, a coveted place for prayers. All were making sujud, but I couldn’t descend to the floor due to a knee injury. There was no spot to sit on so I crouched and submitted my dua’ for my family and their salvation the best I could. May Allah accept our feeble efforts.

We then moved through the massive complex of the modern Haram, linked by escalators, elevators, huge hallways, ZamZam water stations, toward the sa’i between the “hills” of Safa and Marwa where Hajar ran back and forth in search of water for her baby Isma’il. The huge passageway was like an airport concourse, with green electric carts carrying those who chose not to walk. I was one of them, completely in awe, but disoriented, struggling to connect with the enormous spiritual movement of humanity I was part of in that moment.

In all my decades as a Muslim, I have imagined that place as it was long ago, reading descriptions from Ibn Jubayr in the twelfth century, from Ibn Battuta in the fourteenth century, and from Muhammad Asad in the twentieth century. I’ve seen artworks and old photographs. These created an imaginary that the reality of my appearance smacked up hard against. I can hope that a future visit will—if not be different—allow me to reach beyond the barrier of its current shape and feeling.

I have visited other masajid in the world that seemed to ease my connection to the spirituality of the place. In Jerusalem, visiting the Dome of the Rock, al-Qubat al-Sakhra, the place enfolds a visitor under the golden dome and its mosaic interior, face to face with the stone from which Muhammad ascended to the heavens.

Another was the Beiturrahman Masjid in Aceh, Indonesia, a beautiful, cool white marble building with black domes. It was rebuilt by the Dutch colonizers in 1881 because of their fierce resistance after the Dutch burned the one that had stood since the 17th century. It survived the tsunami of 2004, like many other masajid there. I felt a strong sense of belonging to the Ummah—the Muslim community—there. The Blue Mosque in Istanbul is another such place. Though it is a tourist destination, and women are shunted to a small space in which to pray on the side, Sinan’s architecture opens the soul to connection with Allah.

There was one time—of all of them—when when the barrier to spiritual union melted away and a place came forth to meet me. I was on a trip to Palestine, invited by a dear friend and mentor whose father had left her a small inheritance dedicated to bringing an educator to Palestine. The impact of that journey was one shock after another—the view from Bethlehem overlooking hilltops in every direction, capped with featureless, fortress-like Israeli settlements, checkpoints around the old city’s entrance to the Dome of the Rock, meetings with scholars working to retain recorded memory of the place before the Nakba. We visited Hebron

one day, and met with members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, learning of the misery inflicted upon its inhabitants. The group allowed me time to enter Masjid-e-Ebrahim. I ascended the platform of the masjid with the intention to pray there. As an  American, I ran the gauntlet of the checkpoints manned by Israeli soldiers, and felt their astonishment at my being a white American convert.

I passed into the space of the masjid that is shared between Muslims and Jews in a choreographed schedule since the massacre of 1994. There were few people inside, and I began my prayer of greeting for the masjid. As I finished, a boy of about 11 years old approached me and spoke in Arabic, then motioned me to follow him to a stone and brass frame in the floor, which he told me leads to the cave where Ibrahim and Sarah are buried. He told me to hold my face over the brass vent. I felt a stream of air rising from the vent.

It was cool and had an aroma whose sweetness I cannot describe, that went throughout my whole body and mind. It swept away the barrier to spiritual connection with the patriarch of our faith, Ibrahim, ‘alaihi salaam, and made me in that moment part of the journey to Allah that he set out upon, bringing us all along through the ages. I want to hold onto that breath of air from the essence of Prophet Ibrahim all my life long. Alhamdulillah, and may Allah guide and protect that young boy whom Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala sent to me in that place and time to answer my need.