A House Without Walls
We tend to think of home as four walls and a door that locks. The Muslim tradition has always imagined something larger. An essay on belonging, hospitality, and the house we are trying to build.
There is a moment many Muslims know well. You are somewhere unfamiliar: an airport, a car park, the edge of a field. The time for prayer comes in. You look for the qibla, lay down a jacket or a mat, and for a few minutes, in the middle of all that noise, you are home.
No walls, no roof, no door. And yet you are more at home than you are in most rooms. That feeling is the subject of this essay.
I. The whole earth, a place of prayer
"The earth has been made for me (and for my followers) a place for praying," the Prophet ﷺ said, "therefore anyone of my followers can pray wherever the time of a prayer is due" (Sahih al-Bukhari 335).
It is one of the quietly radical ideas of our faith. Worship does not wait for a building. The masjid is beloved, but it is not a boundary. A Muslim is never truly without a place to stand before Allah, whether in a village in Sylhet or a flat in East London, on a mountain or on a ship. The walls we build are a convenience. The home was already there.
II. The shade at the back of the masjid
At the rear of the Prophet's Mosque in Madinah there was a raised platform, sheltered from the sun by a covering of palm leaves. It was called the Suffah, "the shade". The people who lived there had come to Madinah with nothing. Abu Hurayrah (RA), who was one of them, described them as "the guests of Islam who had no families, nor money, nor anybody to depend upon" (Sahih al-Bukhari 6452).
He also left us one of the tenderest stories in the Sunnah. A bowl of milk was given to the Prophet ﷺ as a gift. Instead of drinking it, he asked Abu Hurayrah to take it to the people of the Suffah and pass it round, one by one, until every one of them had drunk his fill. Only then did Abu Hurayrah drink, and last of all, the Prophet ﷺ himself.
The first community of Islam had, at its very centre, a home for people who had no home. The most honoured house in Madinah kept a corner with no walls at all.
III. The open tent
Long before Madinah, there was Ibrahim (AS). The Qur'an tells of strangers arriving at his door. He did not know them. "Then he went to his family and came with a fat [roasted] calf, and placed it near them; he said, 'Will you not eat?'" (Adh-Dhariyat 51:26–27).
Hospitality in Islam is not a mood; it has a shape. "Whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day, should serve his guest generously," the Prophet ﷺ taught, and he set out its measure: a day and a night of special generosity, three days of hospitality, and anything beyond that is charity (Sahih al-Bukhari 6135).
A house with that kind of door is always a little bigger than its floor plan. Its walls move outward every time someone new sits down to eat.
IV. One body, many addresses
"The similitude of believers in regard to mutual love, affection, fellow-feeling is that of one body; when any limb of it aches, the whole body aches" (Sahih Muslim 2586).
For so many of our families, spread between Dhaka and London, this is not a metaphor. It is Tuesday. It is a mother on a video call at dawn, cousins meeting properly only at weddings, a parcel of pickles and prayer mats crossing continents to arrive in time for Eid. Our homes have become households of many addresses, held together by phone calls and parcels and du'as.
And underneath it all is the reminder the Prophet ﷺ gave to Abdullah ibn Umar (RA): "Be in this world as if you were a stranger or a traveler" (Sahih al-Bukhari 6416). No house here was ever meant to be the final one. Knowing that does not make us love our homes less. It makes us hold them more lightly, and open them more easily.
V. The house we are trying to build
We call The Sunnah Store a gifting house, and we have thought a great deal about what that word house should mean.
A shop has walls. It has opening hours and a counter between you and whoever is behind it. A house, in the sense we have been describing, is different. Its real rooms are other people's homes: a frame on a wall in Dhaka, a prayer mat in a student flat in London, a tasbeeh in a grandfather's pocket, a box of attar opened on Eid morning in a city we have never visited.
That is where we would like our work to live: not on a shelf, but in the ordinary rooms where people pray, eat, argue, forgive and begin again. If what we make helps someone feel at home a little more often, in more places, then the house has done its job.
A last word
The Suffah had no walls. Ibrahim's tent had an open door. The earth itself was made a place of prayer. Perhaps the question to ask of any home is not how large it is, but how many people it has room for.
Words by Rashid Shahriar, Founder & Head of Designs
Enjoyed this? From the Journal publishes every Monday and Thursday. Join our email list at the bottom of this page and we'll send each new piece straight to you.
Read next: The Mezban: What Chittagong Knows About Feeding a Crowd · 15 Ways to Bring Barakah Into Your Home · The Manners of Giving
