Ihram – Cloaked in Nothingness

Ihram – Cloaked in Nothingness

When the time comes,
you lay down the burdens of the world from your back.
And you undress...
But not just from clothes;

You strip away ego, titles, identity.
You wrap yourself in two white cloths—
like a shroud...
Yet it signals a birth, not an end.

Ihram is the state of abandoning “SELF”
and arriving at “NOTHINGNESS.”

In that moment, all are equal:
The rich and the poor, the learned and the commoner,
women and men...
All wrapped in the same fabric,
all dissolved in the same nothingness.

The ego is silenced with Ihram.
Animals are not hunted,
trees are not torn,
not even an ant is harmed.

Because at that moment,
you are not only in the presence of your Lord,
but a guest in the gaze of all existence.

Everything that cloaks the pride of the self falls away,
and you become only a servant.
Perhaps for the first time, this bare,
perhaps for the first time, this close...

This is the beginning of a path.
And that path
leads through the self,
and opens to the Most Merciful.

Dr. Özer Akpınar
Researcher – Historian