Kamal El-Mekki – Jummah Khutbah 26-04-2024
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of worship as a solution to problems and the historical precedent of the day before the time of the night. They emphasize the difficulty of praying at night and the importance of praying for forgiveness and solutions. The speakers also emphasize the importance of praying for forgiveness and finding one's own way to achieve success. It is important to work hard and find one's own way to achieve success.
AI: Summary ©
Brothers and sisters in Islam, today, we're gonna
be speaking about
a very important act of worship,
a solution
to any problem that we might have in
our lives.
All of us are familiar with its virtues.
It was the way of the righteous before
us.
Few of us do it, and few of
us
know people who do it regularly.
And we're all aware of how great it
is, but few of us know people in
our lives that do this act of worship
regularly.
And it was also one of the great
lessons
and one of the lessons
and habits we were supposed to pick up
during the month of Ramadan.
Our Khutba today is about
qiyamul lay,
also known as
at Tajjud.
From Hujud, which means to leave or to
stop. And in this case, it means you're
leaving your bed for the sake of worshiping
Allah
at night.
And the purpose behind this Khutba is that
it was a lesson we were supposed to
learn in Ramadan,
and even though we know it, it is
a very rare act of worship, yeah, to
find someone who does it on a regular
basis.
But what is also amazing
is that we know and we've we've had
family members,
grandparents
who used to do it regularly,
and we wouldn't consider them today to be
like Imams or students of knowledge or
masha'ikh or huffad of the Quran, but it
was a regular part of their day. Like,
how is it that so many people remember
their grandparents
being regularly making,
and then in our generation, it's, like, almost
disappeared. We can barely think of someone who
can do it, who does it regularly.
When Allah
mentions the praiseworthy
characteristics of the believers in the Quran, he
almost always mentions their qiyam, their night
prayer. In Surat al Sajdah, Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala says,
That
their sides, their Junub, their sides, they forsake
their beds.
And
they're calling
upon their Lord out of hope,
fear and hope. Hope from
Out of fear and hope, and they give
from what we or they spend from what
we provided for them. In Surat Al Furqan,
Allah Azzur says, from describing
the righteous acts and the the good descriptions
of the believers,
And those who spend their night for their
lord, how?
In
prostration,
in standing.
So that means they're in night prayer. Insurah
dariyat,
They used to sleep little in the night,
and in the early morning, you find them
still making istaghfar, making asking Allah Subhaata'ala's forgiveness.
Even though they spent the night asking forgiveness,
in the morning you still find them asking
Allah Subhaata'ala's forgiveness.
And the prophet
said in Sahih Muslim, he said,
The best prayer after the 5 obligatory prayers,
the Faridah prayers, the Faridah prayers, the Farid
prayers,
would be the night prayer.
And
as a tirmidi narrated, Nabi salallahu alaihi wasallam
made it sound so easy, and this hadith
is amazing.
Nabi sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, he said,
O people.
Spread the salaam.
Greet one another. That's all it means. Greet
one another.
And
feed one another. And it doesn't mean just
feed the poor. Just feed each other. The
poor, the wealthy take each other out to
eat, and invite each other over for food.
Just that simple act.
And then pray at night
while most of the people, most of the
creation is asleep.
You enter a jannah in peace.
You enter a jannah easily with no difficulty.
So
this hadith is interesting,
because
Qiyamulayl
is not easy. We will look at the
examples of the righteous. They used to struggle
for kayamulill.
The great scholar at Hasan al Basri, he
used to say, we don't know anything in
Islam that is more difficult than
We don't know anything in Islam that's more
difficult than struggling against the night. He means
night prayer
and spending of wealth. These are the 2
most difficult things he's saying.
So the but the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam,
he put this very difficult thing
with 2 incredibly
easy things,
giving salah, who is not capable of that,
and feeding one another.
So why mix 2 easy things with something
difficult?
And it's as if to say, it's possible,
it's attainable.
Just like you can give salaam easily,
and just like you can feed each other
easily, you can also do this last one.
So I'm not putting an impossible thing with
2 possible things. They're all doable. They're all
attainable.
And the other thing is, like, it's saying
it's for everybody. Just like any Muslim,
religious, not student of knowledge or not, half
of the Quran or not, they give salaam
to each other, they feed one another. It's
also for everybody. It's open to anyone.
That's also another thing in people's minds that
qiyam is just for this certain level of
people. Qiyam is for everybody.
So it is doable, and the righteous before
us used to do it. That was their
way.
And not only that, but
even children used to do it.
One of the eyewitnesses said,
is anywhere from 9 to 11 years old.
He said, Ahmed ibn Hanbal used to pray
the night prayer, Wahez zukulam.
9 year old, a 10 year old, it's
possible.
1 of the righteous Muslims, his name was
Adhassen al bin Salih, and he had a
jariyah, and again jariyah would be a young
girl, and he sold her off to a
family.
And when it was the last start of
the night, she woke up,
and she started to wake everybody up. This
is her first night with this family. She
said,
So they got up confused. They said,
Is it Fajr already?
This little girl was shocked at them.
She said,
you only pray
the obligatory prayers, and this little girl was
shocked that this family only prays Fajr
Only praised Fajr. That was shocking to her.
So she went back to him the next
day. She said,
You told me to a people that only
sell the obligatory prayers,
for she said,
She take me back, and I took her
back.
So the point is to say that it
is doable.
Children would do it regularly.
Okay. It's not impossible for us to be
able to do it.
It just requires
effort,
and Nabi sallallahu alaihi wasallam said
in Sahih Muslim
that
that indeed in the night is an hour.
That there is not a Muslim man, and
of course, in this case, it means a
woman as well, who coincides
this hour, this
point in time, and they're asking Allah from
the good of this world or the next
except that Allah will give it to them.
Hani
knowing something like this, and there is not
one of us except we have problems, we
have a list of issues and affairs. We
need solutions from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. In
Surah Bukhari Muslim,
al Nabi salaam explains how Allah Subhanahu Wa
Ta'ala in his greatness and in his magnificence
descends to the lower to the worldly heavens.
And he asked 3 questions.
And is there anyone who is asking so
that I may give them?
And
Is there any anyone asking?
So the first is anyone making any request?
Is there anyone supplicating so that I may
respond to him?
Is there anyone asking for repentance so that
I may forgive him?
But what's interesting is this happens every night
in the last 3rd of the night,
and people, we have problems, we have calamities
in our lives, and then we stay up
at night thinking, who whom can we go
to to help us with this problem? And
then we sleep through these questions,
and then wake up in the morning and
go to human being to help us with
the problem.
The way of the righteous is that they
had this special time with Allah
where they would speak to Allah Azawajal, where
they would ask for forgiveness, where they would
complain about their problems and ask for solutions.
Aisha says in Sahih Bukhar in Muslim, she
mentions that the prophet, salallahu alaihi wa sallam,
would pray until his feet would become swollen.
So she asked him, why do you do
that and Allah has forgiven your past and
your future sins?
Why do you still pray hours like that?
And his answer was,
If that's the case then, would I not
be a thankful servant? If this is the
one whose past and future sins are forgiven,
and he prays this much until his feet
become swollen,
then what should we be doing, and what's
stopping us from praying?
Aisha said
that the prophet, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, would
begin the night prayer with 4 raka'at. She
said,
She said, don't even ask about how excellent
they were and how long they were.
Alta' ibn Abi Rabah,
he was one of the great scholars from
the Tabi'in.
Alta
asked Ayesha. He said, I asked Ayesha,
tell me the most awe inspiring thing you've
seen from the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
But look before she goes into the story.
The first thing she said, and what of
the Prophet
was not awe inspiring?
Yeah. And everything he did was amazing.
She said, 1 night, I was in my
bed, and then the prophet came
in the same cover under the same cover
with me. Then after a little bit he
said,
He said, let me go and worship my
Lord. And I told him that I love
that when you're close to me, but I
also love what makes you happy. So Yaani,
go and pray. She said the prophet got
up and made wudu,
and then he said Allahu Akbar and started
praying, and then he recited
and prayed and cried
and tune until the tears wet his beard,
and then the tears wet his chest. Then
he went into ruku and he cried. Then
he went into sujud and he cried. Then
he sat back from sujud and he cried,
and he continued upon that until Bilal made
the adhan for fajr prayer.
This was the case of the prophet sallallahu
alaihi sallam.
What is stopping us?
What is
what is in our life that is preventing
us from making the qiyam regularly, even though
we're in dire need of it?
One of the interesting things is that in
these examples, the prayer was long, but the
scholars mentioned
that it does not need to be long.
Aisha once spent the the night
reciting 1 verse of the Quran. The same
verse repeating it over and over and over
for the for most of the night.
Also, in Sahih Muslim,
Abu Hurayyih narrates that the prophet in this
narration mentioned that when you begin, you start
with 2 light raka'ah. They don't have to
all be incredibly
long. If you don't memorize, you can hold
the mus'af and recite from it.
It can be just half an hour. It
can be 15 minutes, 20 minutes before Fajr.
Abdul Abner Al Khattab,
he narrates himself. He says that when he
was
a young man, he said, I was young,
I was unmarried, and I was poor, and
he would often sleep in the Masjid of
the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam. He said one
day he saw a dream, and the dream
was where 2 angels came and they took
him and then he saw the hellfire and
it was built up like a well. And
he said, and I saw people in it,
and I recognized them, and I became scared,
and I said,
And then the angels told him that you
will not be caused to to to experience
fear.
And then I woke up. He said, I
went to the masjid of the prophet salallahu
alaihi wa sallam, and after Fajr, he would
explain, interpret dreams for people, but being young
he didn't find a way to ask. He
wasn't able. He said, so I went to
the house of Hafsa.
That's his sister
and the wife of the Prophet salallahu alaihi
wa sallam. He said, I
told her this dream,
and I said, when the Prophet comes, get
the explanation from him.
So when the Prophet came and Hafsa told
him the dream,
the Prophet answered it by just saying 8
words or something like that.
He said,
He said, what an excellent man Abdullah would
be
if he just prayed from the night.
But look at the impact of these 8
words.
Abdullah ibn Umar was 14 years old,
and he started praying the night from age
14,
and he died at age 100.
Nafaa ad Daylami, who is the freed slave
of Abdul Labnu Amar, one of the great
scholars of the Ta'ba'in. Abdul Labnu Amar died
at age 100,
and he said he became blind and weak
towards the end of his life. And he
would pray 2 raka'at, and then he would
have some water next to him, and he
would wet his face. He would energize himself,
and he would keep going.
He never quit. Eight words from age 14
until age 100.
The point
of this Khutba is to say, it is
possible. It is doable. It has happened. We're
in need of it.
We just need to put effort. We just
need to struggle.
Ask Allah for his forgiveness. Indeed, those who
ask for His forgiveness shall prosper.
So we just wanna look at past two
possible reasons why someone would be prevented from
the night prayer.
The first thing is
that we need to really struggle,
really work hard to become from the people
of Qiam.
This is one of the early Muslims, Thabit
al Bunaneer
He said, I struggled for 20 years
to become from the people of Qiyam.
Yeah. Like, first, this is before alarm clocks.
So you have to fall asleep and sense
and figure out the last 3rd and wake
up by yourself without an alarm clock, without
anything else. He said for 20 years,
what a hero.
20 years, he struggled.
Look at the sincerity.
Look at the tenacity.
And if someone tries today for 1 week,
sir, I'm not from the people of Qiam.
Qiam. There's fasting
and I'll move on to some other field.
This man, 20 years, but 2 years, he
didn't quit. 7 years, he didn't quit. 12
years, he haven't quit. 17 years, you haven't
quit. 20
years 20 years, he kept trying every single
night without an Alarqa to wake up for
qiyam, and he never quit.
And then he says,
then,
and then after that, for 20 years, I
was able to enjoy it.
It's like to appreciate and enjoy it like
that for 20 years, but it takes struggling.
Families would work together on this. A man
said, I spent 7 nights with Abu Hurayrah,
He said he would wake and play pray
1 third, then his wife would wake up
and pray another third, then the servant would
wake up and pray another third. That whole
family finished the Quran every night just like
that in group in thirds.
And part of struggling is assisting one another.
That's why we have that famous hadith where
the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam said, barakallahu firojulin.
Allah blesses a man who gets up in
the night and prays, and then he wakes
up his wife. And if she refuses to
wake up, he sprinkles a little bit of
water on her face.
And Allah blesses a woman who gets up
in the night and prays, and then she
wakes up her husband, and if he refuses,
she sprinkles water on his face. Yani, people
are working together to try to make this
possible.
Families working together until it becomes a habit.
Some of the scholars mentioned that
speaking to Allah in the last day of
the night, this is a great privilege,
and that if you have too many sins,
you can be prevented
from this privilege. Foulayl ibn A'yad, he used
to say,
Well, he's saying,
He's saying that if you're not able to
to spend the night in Qiam and then
fast during the day, that means Allah prevented
you from something. And it's a privilege, and
Allah is not giving it to you because
there are sins that are too many. And
there are other similar statements from Kata'a and
Hasan al Basri and others.
The point is that it is
it takes struggling, it takes effort until it
becomes
possible.
But if it's not if you're not regularly
one of the people of Qiam, then it
doesn't have to be all or nothing. Some
people just do it on the weekends if
they're capable. Some people do it on their
days off. Some people on specific nights. Whatever
you're able to do. With that, we ask
Allah, Azzuja, to make us of those who
recognize the truth as clear truth and follow
the best of it, and to make us
of those who recognize falsehood as clear falsehood
and abstain from it.