MUHSEN Umrah: “A dream come true”

Photo courtesy of MUHSEN

MUHSEN Umrah supports families with a member who has a disability to experience the pilgrimage fully.

“It’s a dream come true,” said Rusul Alsaker of Franklin about her upcoming Umrah trip with her son Ahmed Ibraheem, 15. 

“He is a kid who loves Islam,” Alsaker said in an interview last week with Wisconsin Muslim Journal. “I’ve been wanting to take him for a very long time. It’s been my life.”

Alsaker and Ibraheem will make their pilgrimage April 17-27 with MUHSEN, which stands for “Muslims Understanding and Helping Special Education Needs.”

MUHSEN is a nonprofit organization serving families and individuals with intellectual, mental and physical disabilities. 

Photo courtesy of Rusul Alsaker

Ahmed Ibraheem, 15, and his mother Rusul Alsaker “eagerly await” their Umrah pilgrimage to Mekkah in April.

MUHSEN Umrah, established in 2017 in partnership with Dar El Salam Travel, became the first Umrah pilgrimage organizer to create a travel package serving Muslims with special needs who want to make this spiritual journey. 

Since 2017, MUHSEN Umrah has completed eight Umrah trips. This year it will add two more, in April and November, said MUHSEN’s travel coordinator Feryaal Tahir in a recent interview with WMJ. April’s Umrah is full and registration is closed. Registration for the November Umrah will open by early May, Tahir said.

The nonprofit organization is now working toward also offering a Hajj pilgrimage, the mandatory pilgrimage all Muslims must carry out at least once in their lifetime if they are physically and financially capable. A pilot Hajj trip is being planned for 2026, Tahir said.

How it works

A MUHSEN Umrah trip typically takes 100 to 120 people, including individuals with special needs, their family members, trained volunteers who provide one-to-one assistance and spiritual guides who instruct each group on the rituals and requirements of Umrah and explain their significance.

“A lot of other groups who go to Umrah and Hajj say the group is not meant for individuals who are elderly or have a disability,” Tahir said. “Due to the nature (of the pilgrimage), it is tiring and difficult. But MUHSEN feels that’s not a reason to stop individuals going. If we are making our places of worship here in North America more accommodating for people with various disabilities, why not make the holiest places also accessible?”

MUHSEN works with Dar El Salam Travel, “one of the most well-known agencies in North America,” Tahir said. “It supports us in the visa process, hotel and flight blocks and a lot of the on-the-ground logistics and transportation. We provide all the disability services. We do a very detailed review with families to understand exactly what support they need, including equipment and accommodations. Then we see which of our aides would be best for them.

“Every single individual requesting our services receives a one-to-one aide,” she continued. “This is perhaps the biggest part of our program. The aides we have work year-round with people with various needs. They are knowledgeable and well-equipped to support our brothers and sisters with disabilities. Many of them are professionals from medical or special education fields.” 

MUHSEN can accommodate a wide range of needs, including physical and cognitive disabilities, impaired sight or hearing, “practically any form of disability,” she said. When a group includes people with impaired hearing, MUHSEN hires sign language interpreters. Muhsen also offers support for the elderly.

“We now pay to use the only accessible vans in Saudi Arabia,” Tahir said. The Kingdom brought the vans to Saudi “so our wheelchair participants could have dignity, rather than having to be lifted into cars and buses. We continue working to secure other supplies like sensory equipment for children who have autism, Down’s Syndrome and cognitive disabilities, or shower chairs and wheelchairs for people with physical disabilities.”

MUHSEN executive director Joohi Tahir, who co-founded MUHSEN with Shaykh Omar Suleiman, was motivated to create the Umrah experience for other parents of children with disabilities by her own experience. She took her daughter who has autism on Umrah herself. She shared her inspiring story and the history of MUHSEN in 2018 with AltM.

Individuals join MUHSEN Umrah trips from across the United States and Canada, and several families from the United Kingdom and South Africa. “We now have interest from several other countries including Kenya, Pakistan and Australia,” Tahir said. “As long as we can work out the visa situation, we’d like to expand this opportunity to those countries as well.”

Rusul’s dream

Rusul Alsaker, a Franklin mother of three, has long wished she could take her oldest child, Ahmed, on an Umrah trip. She knew it would mean a lot to him because of his deep love for Islam. When Ahmed lost his vision due to an illness at 10 years old, her dream for them seemed farther away. 

MUHSEN volunteer Hanan Kaloti of Brookfield told Alsaker about MUHSEN’s Umrah trip last year. When Alsaker contacted MUHSEN, she learned the last 2024 trip was completely booked. “They told me I could apply to go next year.” 

About a month ago, Tahir called. “She asked me, ‘Are you still interested in going to Umrah? I’m going to send you a form. Just fill it in,” Alsaker recalled. She filled the form and sent it in, along with their passports. Soon she heard they were accepted. A dear family friend also contributed to their trip. “He said, ‘This is a gift for you for your patience and for Ahmed to make him happy.’ We are very grateful to him. 

“I was so happy I was jumping up and down. I couldn’t believe it!” Alsaker said. 

“This is going to be my first Umrah; my first time to see the Ka’aba. I need someone who will be a guide for Ahmed since he can’t see. I know my son will become a friend with that person and I am so happy about it. And, spiritually, this trip is very meaningful for us.

“My husband is so happy for me because he knows how I struggled and tried hard to be able to go,” she added. He and their daughters, 8 and 10, will celebrate with them when they return.

The Tahir family’s Umrah

Saira and Arman Tahir of Menomonee Falls, and their sons, Zubair and Ameer, were on MUHSEN’s first Umrah trip. Ameer, then 12, has a rare condition that affects him in multiple ways, including putting him at risk of respiratory illnesses. “MUHSEN co-founder Joohi Tahir is my husband’s sister-in-law,” Tahir explained. “When MUHSEN began planning its first Umrah trip, she reached out to us since my son has a disability and we had never gone to Umrah.”

Photo courtesy of the Tahir family

Ameer Tahir, now 19, keeps a memory board in his room that features his family’s 2018 Umrah trip. In the center photo, from left to right, Ameer, Saira, Zubair and Arman Tahir visit the Ka’aba in Mekkah.

“We thought maybe we’d never be able to do it but when we heard about how they were planning it, we thought it would be possible. We learned that volunteers would be there to help us when we wanted extra time to pray.

“It worked out beautifully,” she said. “I’m so glad we went.

“At the time we went on Umrah, we were just learning what challenges we would be facing. We knew we would need respite care and also medical care if he did get sick because he had some upper respiratory problems.

“We had nurses in our group and one nurse actually attended to him because he did get sick. That was really helpful. Also, he couldn’t stand up too long and they had wheelchairs for him to go to different places and do different things.

“If we didn’t have all this help, how could we do it? They gave us the opportunity to complete our Umrah.”

MUHSEN offered lots of sightseeing and educational opportunities over the two-week trip, Tahir said. “There were meetings and lectures you could attend in addition to the requirements of Umrah. Ameer was able to attend everything we did.” 

Ameer was as eager to go on Umrah as his parents were, Tahir said. “He was very young, but he really wanted it. I believe he prayed for it and it actually happened.

“It was amazing for him. He had been talking about it and thinking about it for a long time. He learned a song about it that he would sing all the time. And it happened! I never thought this was possible! It was really meant to be!”

She appreciates MUHSEN’s thoroughness, she said. “They prepare you for basically everything. When you are there, they give you enough help and they have enough volunteers to attend well to everyone.” They even worked with Saudi Arabia to develop some special lines for families with someone with a disability. “Sometimes it is harder for them to wait,” she explained.

Since the trip, Tahir receives information in a WhatsApp group about any MUHSEN events coming up, she said. “They are very helpful.”

Ameer still keeps a board in his room highlighting his Umrah experience, Tahir said. He also shared his experience with the Muslim community at ISM-West, Masjid Al-Noor in Brookfield.

A Mother-Daughter Umrah

Farah Ahmed of Menomonee Falls wanted to take her 80-year-old mother to Umrah in 2022 “but I wasn’t sure I could handle everything,” she said in a recent interview with WMJ. Then she heard about MUHSEN from a friend. “I heard they would provide someone to help push the wheelchair so I would be able to do the prayers,” she said. “It was important to me to have some spiritual time in the holy city.”

When Ahmed and her mother landed in Saudi Arabia, they met Meryam Syed from New York who would help them throughout the trip. “It was definitely an experience where I felt I had the support I needed,” she recalled.

Farah Ahmed of Menomonee Falls (right) took her mother to Umrah with the support of MUHSEN aide Meryam Syed.

Nishat and Kashif’s story 

As the single mother of a developmentally disabled son, Nishat Iqbal of Oak Creek had not imagined it would be possible to go to Mekkah for Umrah. 

“We are six siblings, four girls and two boys,” she said. “All my siblings had performed Umrah except me. How could I go? My ex-husband and I have been divorced a very long time. How could I take my son Kashif (Mansoor) by myself? He is totally dependent and cannot do anything by himself. He cannot eat; he is on a pureed diet. He cannot feed himself. He cannot bathe. He cannot walk, anything.”

In 2018, during the second year of MUHSEN Umrah trips, Iqbal’s niece’s son who came to the U.S. for college saw an ad for MUHSEN’s Umrah pilgrimage. He shared it with her.

“I was busy feeding my son at the time so I asked him to check into the requirements for me. He said there was no information about requirements or cost. The ad only said to send them an email about your situation. So I sent an email.”

She didn’t hear anything for a while and forgot all about it. “Then they got back to me,” she said. “I only needed to pay for the flight and hotel. The assistant and everything else my son would need would be on them,” she said. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!”

Iqbal and Mansoor made the Umrah trip in December of 2018. The assistance from MUHSEN made everything possible, she said.

She is eagerly awaiting news about the Hajj pilgrimage MUHSEN is planning. “I’m 70 years old now. To be able to go to Hajj would be phenomenal. To be honest, for God, nothing is impossible.”