Abdal Hakim Murad – Silence in Fasting
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Sunita here Rahmanir Rahim SallAllahu ala Sayyidina Muhammad
in seydel in Vietnam Marcelino Allah earlier he was here at Mount
Sinai
moving on through the
austere, but deep days of the month of Ramadan
considering the culmination,
hoping that the day's past have not been idly and uselessly spent,
we consider
how the entire moral life of the believer is tied up with spiritual
discipline that Ramadan represents Ramadan is a kind of matawa or
more tested a kind of scrutinizing figure that watches us carefully
and makes us aware of the divine awareness. In sha Allah, we don't
look at the Haram in this month. In sha Allah, we don't consume or
eat the Haram in sha Allah, we don't miss our prayers in sha
Allah, we're just better. We're in a state of St. Karma a little bit
more in this month. And one of the gifts that Ramadan has is that we
realize, first of all that actually we can do it. So many
people who are unfortunate enough not to say their prayers outside
the month of Ramadan, realize in the month of Ramadan, that
actually they can do it. And they don't have an excuse, and they are
able to maintain the practice after the month is done. It's a
step up. For so many people. It's really all fair. It's all good.
It's all blessing. It's a divine gift.
One of the things also that our heightened sensibility during the
month
alerts us to is the importance not just of restraining what goes into
the mouth. But what comes out of the mouth by way of
love. Well, Hadith. idle talk, futile talk, forbidden talk.
In sha Allah we remember in this month the importance of treating
the mouth as a kind of cage and making sure that the teeth shut in
anything that is inappropriate.
The hadith says and it's a sound Hadith
manlam Yada al Khatib watercolors or whoever does not renounce lying
and bearing false witness. Allah has no need of Him. And yet I Tama
who was a robber of him, leaving aside his food and his drink. So
this suggests that this is really important.
We need to engage in kufr Listen, keeping back the tongue
is an ancient wisdom and it's an eternal wisdom because what
Ramadan teaches us is fundamental aspects of being human and of
being sacred. There's nothing out of date or specifically MIDI, it's
all about, we know these are the immediate problems that we have
all of our individual internal problems
are related directly to the solutions that Ramadan is
offering.
So we have this principle of slumped silence, which doesn't
necessarily mean taking a vow of silence. Like how's Meriam but not
saying so much. And perhaps when the blood sugar level is low, and
we're feeling less ebullient and defiant. We're not so inclined to
chatter away this level will Hadith
level Hadith talking about things that don't really matter in Sharia
is not haram.
But it's considered technically to be Terkel Allah. In other words,
renouncing what would be better. You could say something that
people will benefit from.
There's an embarrassing pause in the conversation, you want to fill
it with something you've got guessed, you can talk about
Chelsea's chances. Now that Abramovich is no more Well, fine.
Nobody's going to say that's an Islamic but you could also say I
read a hadith recently that I'd never heard of before. And this is
it does anybody know have you ended up to legitimate way of
filling that time?
So watching more aka the things that we say in this month.
And
one aspect of this also, it seems to me is that ALS is an age of
communication, mass communication, excessive communication, everybody
up to their eyeballs in messages.
Some images and messages shot at us bombarded at us by mega
corporations that are competing with each other for our attention.
And we are so jaded that they have to use more and more exciting and
extreme images and messaging. And nobody knows when that will stop.
But it's become quite, quite crude and quite extreme. And it's often
designed by psychologists and neurologists in order to make the
brain light up. When we see some image or whatever it might be.
There's not good for us, particularly in the month of
Ramadan, which would be a time of stillness and contemplation. So
that we are actually present in our prayers.
Just as it's hard to concentrate on a piece of serious work on
reciting the Quran, or even hard to go to sleep, if if the few
minutes beforehand, you've been bombarded with 50 new text
messages sending you this or worrying you about that it's the
human brain can't just be switched on and off when it's lit up by
this messaging. So in the month of Ramadan, we need to be switching
off from those messages.
And psychologists have done many studies of young people in
particular, and that overdosing on social media, and texting, and
notifications, and the endless bombardment.
And they come up with all kinds of new acronyms. One of them is FOMO.
Fear Of Missing Out, young people really don't want to miss the
latest video about who is doing what. And so they watch it. And
you can see them on trains, and they're plugged in. And they're
just scrolling and scrolling and looking at whatever is new, so
that when they text their friends back, or when they talk to them
physically, which still sometimes happens, then they're in the loop.
And the status anxiety that comes from not having seen the latest
video is eliminated. And this is really very unhealthy because the
brain is really designed for a very simple lifestyle, a hunter
gatherer lifestyle when there aren't millions of stimulations,
and people are sitting back and looking at the clouds, and
wondering when the wind will change so that perhaps the herd of
bison will come their way. That's really what we're for.
We're not designed for this overload of messaging.
Still less for this overload of really trivial messaging.
And so it seems to me that one of the things we can do to get more
out of the fasting month is just to switch the devices off.
So many people go through their lives with the latest mobile
phones, checking them every two minutes.
That's never really useful. Maybe if you're in a certain line of
work, you're a journalist or something, you have a deadline you
have to catch the late maybe most of us are not like that. Most of
us can check their messages, maybe five times a day Max
and not right before going to sleep because you're really going
to do something about it when you're about to go to sleep. And
in Ramadan, we really need to watch our sleep and to make sure
that we get that proper sleep.
That REM sleep.
Because Fajr is still early, Tara is still late. Most of us have to
work. bosses don't like it if you take a chi Lulu and nap in the
early afternoon. And towards the end of Ramadan, there can be real
fatigue setting in which can diminish what we get out of the
out of the fast.
So yeah, switch it off. Before going to sleep, there should be a
good Ramadan practice. I would suggest no blue light screening
between Witter a prayer and going to sleep. That blue light from the
screen is something that replicates aspects of the spectrum
that daylight uses and therefore the brain is programmed to, to
wake up when it sees that kind of light. Keep it off at night.
I have students who report that they've even found that they have
texted while asleep. Sleep texting is a phenomenon now, apparently,
this can't be good. In some universities, surveys indicate
that students send 3000 texts a month. This is not good. What
percentage of them is really useful to their moral or their
spiritual law, their academic lives. Maybe five of those
messages might be so this Islamic virtue of subject of silence of
recognizing the value of contemplation of avoiding useless
talk has to be extended into the digital realm nowadays, and it's
very unfortunate in some of the mosques, it's annoying when
somebody's embarrassing ringtone goes off in the middle of the 17th
Raqqa. And everybody at
1000 People are wondering, is he going to switch it off? How long
is it going on for? Is it going to, that's really bad 1000 people
have that I've added disrupted.
That we should really generally as a routine, keep our phones off
during the month of Ramadan, on during working hours if that's
necessary for your work. Switch it on if you need a lift back home.
But otherwise, keep it off. And don't scroll during hoppers and be
hands and look at the latest nonsense. Don't tell people where
you are. Don't take selfies. Don't record the tearaway, all of that
stuff. And if you're doing an ombre during Ramadan, don't say
love bake, bake while you're holding up your phones so the anti
so and so can see what's going on as if she doesn't know what
happens during the ombre. Don't do that. That's become a kind of
pestilential thing in the harem. Unfortunately, it's out of
control. So
these are
beautiful aspects of the Sunnah. And another aspect of it which
also applies to the digital realm as well as to our normal
conversation is
Judea, Allah argumentation.
Raising Voices in the mosque. This is the Sunnah. This is not the
Sunnah. Please keep your baby quiet. My baby is getting baraka
from the mosque. All of that argumentation. If it has to
happen, take it outside, because other people don't want to hear
and it's very bad for your inner state. Because the soul really
needs to be in a particular contemplative, receptive, tender
state. If the the miracle of the Quran is really going to work, its
enchantment upon the soul. Any kind of agitation is a veil, and
gets in the way of that Imam Malik used to say a mirror or your
syllable lobe.
argumentation hardens the heart.
That's a subtle thing. What does it mean for the heart to be
hard? Well, we know it intuitively.
cardiogram isn't good to show it. It's an inner thing. The hardness
of the heart really means an obstruction against everything
that is beneficial to us. Because it is the heart that conscience
the inner nature of ourselves that perceives the subtlety in the
world, which is the basis of faith that really understands other
people that it receives beauty in nature that receives the miracle
of the the poor and we don't want that to be obstructed. We already
thought that in Imam Malik says and it causes rancor amongst human
beings that is exactly not what Ramadan is about Ramadan is a time
for forgiveness for atonement for support of the poor for certain
broken heartedness that makes us more human. And this is vital
membahas Ali says Leia yen Zhu Min shatteringly Cerny in German chi
yada, who Billy jam is sharp,
which means Nobody escapes from the evil that the tongue does,
without reining it with the bridle of the shadier.
In other words, Revelation, what Revelation has said about good
speech, and the warnings that it makes about evil speech, about
lying, about bearing false witness about backbiting, about raising
suspiciousness about people about a hostile glance, anything that
interrupts the natural benign flow of human fraternity in a religious
community and introduces the demonic principle of the of the
ego that has to be held back.
One of the early Muslims said, Lisa, and he settled on
in ourselves to a colony. My tongue is like a wild, a wild cat
or a lion. If I let it go, it attacks me.
What does he mean by that? It means that because it's following
the egotist egotistic desire to criticize this person, or persons
not praying long enough. That person's job isn't long enough,
that sisters hijab, whatever it might be that's distracting us
from the real reason why we should be in the mosque, and is usually
the result of our own insecurity because we'd like to feel better
than others. That's usually why we criticize them. That we're the
ones who are the victims, we get bitten by that lion. They may not
know that we're looking down on them may not affect them at all,
but it does affect us. Always. And we don't want this to destroy
Ramadan, this little squishy thing in the mouth. Keep it locked up.
Watch what you say. Make sure that whatever you say is fraternal in
the correct Islamic spirit of Iveta
Aloha.
So we ask Allah subhanaw taala in this month that we might be people
of beautiful speech, that we might be people of sober, that we might
be people who spread the wings of kindness and mercy to the
believers who might have patience with each other, and that the
mosques can be places perfumed only with good speech in sha
Allah, and that our fasting is not vitiated, or corrupted or made
mediocre or even intrinsically violated and broken by lazy
discourse. If we have the discipline not to eat and drink,
we should be able to summon the discipline to restrain what comes
out of the mouth as well. Insha Allah may Allah give us tofield on
this and accept our fasting and accept rpm and accept our tearaway
and accept our fraternity and accept our support for family ties
in sha Allah in this blessing blessing month, to Chapala
normalcy Emma Komaki EMERCOM was salam aleikum wa rahmatullah wa
barakato.