Faraz Rabbani – The Rawha #179 Guidance for Seekers Presence in Prayer
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In our look at
the treatise for seekers of guidance
by Imam Al Muhasibir Rahimahullah,
We we've looked at
a lot of central
advice about how we rectify
our turning to Allah
And something very noteworthy
is
that while
our
religion
calls us
to do certain things.
It obligates us
to to do certain things
and encourages us to do others.
Our
our religion,
our lord also calls us
to be
a certain way.
And just as we are commanded to do
those things that we must do,
we must also be
the way we are commanded
to be.
So hope in Allah is just as obligatory
as
praying and fasting.
The love of Allah is no less an
obligation
than giving in charity.
Right? And both
must be given their due.
So we stopped last week at
his council that don't complain
to creation,
that don't complain about the one more merciful
to
you than any other,
to those who are not truly merciful
to you.
Right. As one of the great poets of
the 20th century, Sheikh Ahmed
said, Don't be don't take other than Allah
as the object of your love. For everything
besides him is a mere mirage.
You think it'll amount to something,
but more likely than not, it's just gonna
disappear.
Likewise, with your complaints,
raise them to the one who can deal
with them.
Right. And he says,
rely upon Allah
and you'll be of his
chosen servants.
And then he quotes the words
of Sayyidina Ubaidib
ibn Samit
who advised his son,
have
complete
lack of hope.
Right? Have completely no hope
in what is in the hands of others.
Because that
is true wealth.
And beware
of being avid
for worldly matters.
And beware
of seeking to fulfill your needs from people
because that
is poverty.
Right?
That is poverty.
And this is inward poverty,
meaning that the believer is one
who
has hope,
they seek good outcomes
in their deen above all, but also in
their dunya,
but then they take the means
that are pleasing to Allah
in fulfilling that.
They seek
from Allah.
Likewise,
we pursue the means,
but
we we feel need only to Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala.
The prophet
told Saidna
Abdullah ibn Abbas
If you ask, ask Allah.
If and if you seek assistance, seek Allah's
assistance. Meaning that before you ask creation,
ask Allah.
Before you seek the help
of creation,
seek the help of Allah
and you will be safe.
And then he says,
And if you pray, pray the prayer of
1
departing.
Right. If you pray,
pray the prayer
of 1
departing.
And one of the things the early Muslims
used to do,
if they saw someone
young
who started to teach, they would ask him
about their about his prayer.
Why?
Because there are
several things in our religion that are a
barometer
of where you're at
as a believer. Right?
One is
your prayer.
How much presence of heart do you have
in your prayer?
Your relationship with Allah is to the extent
of how present you truly are with Allah
in your prayer.
The second
is how are you
in your most critical
worldly relationships? How are you with your parents?
How are you with your spouse?
How are you with your children?
And, of course, there's wider circles too.
That's the second
barometer.
A third barometer
that they mention of one's faith
is
how are you
when
things go wrong?
How are you when things go wrong?
Do you turn immediately to Allah
or you
suddenly
look to
do it yourself?
Or you turn in need to another.
Right? The true
servant of Allah
is the one who turns immediately
to Allah.
So those are 3 of the barometers that
the Ulema mentioned. How are you in your
prayer? And pray
the prayer of 1 departing.
Right. Pray the prayer. This is the last
prayer you're going to perform.
Right. And the early Muslims, of course, have
incredible.
There's incredible story. There's some of the Salaf
got amputated in their prayer.
They had, you know, because it used to
you know, in extreme cold, they got gangrene
for example, they had to chop off their
leg. They say, oh,
let him begin his prayer,
and then we will chop his leg.
1 of the early Muslims, he was praying
and his house collapsed, and he didn't notice.
Then afterwards he said, What happened? He said,
Your house just collapsed.
When I lived in Syria, I lived in
the fundamental what Imam Zaid Shekhar used to
call the fundamentalist heartland
of Damascus,
Midan.
And the people of Midan
were very intense about their Midan ness.
They used to say, Alhamdulillah
Aladeen il Islam.
That all praise is due to Allah
for the religion of Islam
and for living in a sham.
Right?
Because
there is no outside Mecca and Madinah, there
is there are there is no place on
earth
as praised
in revelation in the Quran itself
and extensively in the sunnah of the prophet
as much as
Sham.
Right? Actually the
if they're asked what where do you advise
me to live? They'd say, go to Shem.
Alayzib bin Abdi Salam wrote a book
on it being sunnah to migrate to Shem.
Likewise. So
in Midan,
which you meant Zaid would call the fundamentalist
heart of Midan. They used to say, all
praise is due to Allah for the religion
of Islam and living in Sham and residing
in Midan.
There
my local Masjid
was a bit strange
because
Jamel Mansur in Midan Mansur,
the masjid was all one color except the
front wall.
It was all, you know,
stone. It was sort of like a
a dull gray stone,
except the front was slightly pinkish.
It was
gray stone, but light tinge,
and not all of it.
Just very strange.
So I asked and a few people were
scared. They said,
you know, they changed the topic.
Then I went to my local
grocery store owner, Abu Ali, I said
said, you didn't hear?
Said that in 1980,
81,
when
the previous
attack
on took place,
People were praying in the Masjid and the
security forces bombed the Masjid.
And that's how the wall got demolished.
And according and I
I was young at the time. I went
around asking everyone I could in the neighborhood
secretly because it was very sensitive information.
And I corroborated it through multiple narrations,
said
and no one broke the prayer.
No one broke the prayer,
not not the imam
and not the followers, except one person. The
stationery store owner who was very young at
the time said,
I broke my prayer.
Said like in mastiff and she said, but
I didn't benefit anything. So why? Because there's
only one entrance to the masjid. So I
broke the prayer but then had nowhere to
run.
So I said, did you pray again?
So what do you do?
He said, if I could have slapped myself,
I could have
anyways.
So,
you know, this is
the nature of a believer that they are
so focused on the prayer, and this is
not somewhere far out. This is 1980. The
Masjid's getting bombed and it the the qiblah
was behind their backs,
and they finished the dulhul prayer.
So I went and asked the imam,
Sheikh Abdul Halima Bushar, who in the late
nineties was banned from teaching.
Like he couldn't even give,
like, a little reminder after the prayer.
So
I used to go and study with him
after a lot of going
in circles to get there.
And
ask Sheikh Abdul Halib about that. How come
you didn't break the prayer?
I was busy.
Yeah.
I was busy meeting. I'm praying. Like, what
else matters?
May Allah protect
these people.
So pray the prayer of one who is
departing.
Right?
And
the the Sahaba, when they're asked to describe
the worship of the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam,
Saydha Aisha was asked
to describe how was the night prayer
on
of the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. She said,
let us
and
you know about the rakas he prayed,
she said, let us The because
is female.
Said don't ask me about
how beautiful they were
nor about how long they were. It was
his worship was undescribably
beautiful.
But I can just describe you some of
what he did.
Likewise, when Sayna Ali bin Nabi Talib
was asked about the day worship of the
prophet
Because haba used to have these exercises together.
For a while they're all discussing, what is
what's up with the night worship of the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam? So many of
them in the same period were asking these
questions. So okay, we've
learned about his night worship. What about his
day worship? What does he do during the
day?
And he said,
Which of you can pray like that? But
I'll tell you
when he prayed and how many rakas he
prayed.
Right. How how much he prayed
and when he prayed
The key to praying the prayer of one
departing is to turn to Allah inwardly
before you say Allahu Akbar.
Okay. To turn to Allah
inwardly
before you say Allahu Akbar.
Right.
And Allah is merciful.
Right. Allah is merciful.
Right.
Imagine
if we conducted job interviews
and someone came,
and the case they made
for why
they should be hired
is like the case we make
when we
pray.
I know me I would not wait till
they finished the argument, I said get out
of here. Right?
It's like you begin, you say Allahu Akbar.
Allah is greater than anything else.
But you're lost in thought of everything besides
Allah.
Right. But of course Allah is merciful.
K. Allah is merciful.
So
but to have a true prayer, turn to
Allah inwardly
before saying Allahu Akbar.
The second thing
that
the scholars mentioned about
the prayer of one departing
is
that everything you say in the prayer,
mean it before you say it.
Mean it before you say it.
Because you don't tell the one you love,
I love you. And they say, you know
what? I actually do.
Right? No. You feel you know, the meanings
are found within first and then they're expressed
by words.
Right?
You don't say, I want to buy this
cup, actually I do. No. You feel the
meaning, I want to buy this cup, then
you say, I want to buy it.
Right? In our day to day, you mean
it, then you say it.
And that's critical.
So before you say
bring the meaning to heart and then say
it.
And that's why the prophet used to pause,
say the Aisha.
Describe the recitation
of the prophet
And she said he didn't pray like you
guys do.
Right? His prayer was his recitation was unhurried.
He used to pronounce everything
steadily.
He used to pause, but he didn't pause
to think about what he just said.
It's to gather
to teach us to gather our heart
before you say what you're going to say
next.
Right. So that's the second thing. The first
turn to Allah inwardly
before saying Allahu Akbar, and don't say anything
in the prayer
until you mean it,
before you say it.
And then finally,
the third thing
is
that
your consciousness
of Allah
within the prayer
is a reflection
of how conscious of Allah you are outside
the prayer.
K.
If you're heedless of Allah
in your day to day,
what's going to happen in the prayer?
Right. If you're 95%
heedless outside the prayer,
then maybe your heedlessness may shrink a little
bit. You may be
70%
heedless
in the prayer. That's an improvement,
but not much.
Which is why
how conscious of Allah you'll be in the
prayer will reflect how conscious of Allah you
are outside the prayer, which is why the
prophetic council is
keep your tongue moist
with the remembrance of Allah.
Right. Keep your tongue moist with the remembrance
of Allah.
Said that the messenger of Allah would be
in remembrance of Allah in all his states.
That he would not take a step
nor be still, she said, except in remembrance
of Allah.
Right? Because if you are conscious of Allah
outside the prayer, if you're conscious of Allah,
50%,
60%,
70% of the time outside the prayer,
what's going to happen within the prayer?
The prayer will raise your level of consciousness
of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. But strive to
begin from a state of consciousness.
That's the third. And the key to do
that, Imam al Ghazali said, is you gotta
let go a little bit of duniya.
Right? You gotta let go a little bit.
The prophet
gave a beautiful expression of that
in talking about how one pursues the dunya.
He said,
And that and you could spend all day
all night and I don't wanna scare you
guys
explaining this prophetic counsel.
Because
which is
right?
Seek with restraint.
Seek with restraint.
Meaning
that don't go overboard
with the duniya.
Don't go overboard with the duniya. Don't embrace
it as if it's your beloved.
It's gonna let you down.
But also Ijmaal
the the ulama explain also is from
pursue it beautifully
because beauty
arises from balance and restraint.
Right? So that's
a key. Right? So the three things
to pray with consciousness. Turn to Allah before
the prayer.
In the prayer,
mean it before you say it. And 3rd,
strive to remember Allah
outside the prayer
because your consciousness of Allah inside the prayer
will reflect how conscious of you of Allah
you are outside the prayer. And the key
to that is to inculcate some degree of
restraint
in worldly matters.
Right? To have some degree of zuhud.
Don't become over attached to anything worldly.
We ask Allah
for facilitation
and success.
Next week, we're going to look at
how one nurtures through,
how one nurtures true faith
by nurturing
certitude in Allah and certitude in the reality
of
of divine
decree and destiny.
Because without
having
acceptance of destiny,
one will not experience
the taste of true faith.
As the author tells us, we ask Allah
that he grant us the prayer
of those close to him
and the conduct of those beloved to him
and the concern
of his most beloved messenger
whose
concern
was for everything
of Allah's creation.
As one of the Sahaba said,
The least
of his resolve
was
vaster than time itself.
We ask you, oh Allah, that you grant
us
the prophetic
silence
where we reflect on our relationship with you
and how to make it
good.
And we reflect
on our relating to your creation and how
we can make our relating to your creation
good.
That we reflect
on the on the needs of your creation,
spiritual
and worldly,
and how we can direct
the gift of time
and the gift of what you have blessed
us with
towards the good in our relating to you
and in our relating
to your creation. We ask you that we
be of those
who are of the and first, the people
of breaths,
That every breath
be expended
in states,
beloved to Allah, of the of the people
who can truly be described
as the people of the moment.
That every moment
is spent
in ways beloved to Allah, of the people
of remembrance, of the people of Quran, of
the people of service,
of those in whose
concern is manifest, the prophetic
promise.
That Allah is in the aid of his
servant
as long as his servant is in the
aid of others.
We ask you, oh, Allah, to make us
of those servants
described by your beloved messenger
that Allah has amongst his servants. Those are
Those who are keys to all that is
good. Locks
against all that is evil.
And the prophet
said,
Those
have been granted complete
freedom from the fire.
Why? Because everything they have
is for the sake of Allah and for
the sake of Allah's servants. We ask you
that you realize us in in those realities.
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