Khalid Latif – Essentials of Ramadan #1
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of preparing for the upcoming year of Brahem, including the use of water, hand washing, and going through the do's and don'ts of the year. They emphasize the importance of time management, forgiveness, and mercy in the church, and the importance of understanding one's own success and learning from it. The speakers also emphasize the importance of self management, fasting, and self-reflection in achieving positive habit transformation. They stress the importance of understanding one's actions and setting healthy boundaries, bringing attention to one's words, and bringing intentions to expiration. They also emphasize the importance of bringing one's strengths and intentions to their expiration.
AI: Summary ©
And everything in between.
So we're gonna try to
engage
in
some ways that we've done in the past
that really help people to get ready and
prepare for it.
Is this on? Yeah. This one. Yeah. Great.
Okay.
So what we're gonna go through between now
and March 10th, which is gonna be the
1st night of Ramadan,
in the Islamic calendar, which is a lunar
calendar
in relation to the Gregorian calendar, which is
the calendar that we
kinda go by day to day here.
The months comparatively start about 11 days earlier
every year.
So this year,
March 10th will be the 1st night of
Ramadan,
and the
months
are structured also in a way in our
calendar where
the night precedes the day.
So night 1
precedes day 1,
and night 2 precedes day 2. Does that
make sense?
So today is January 29th.
So So we essentially have
about,
5 weeks give or take,
a little bit more until
Ramadan comes.
And what we wanna be able to do
is be ready for it. And the anticipation
of being ready for it is within the
recognition
of
it's a very just unique
time of the year.
The more difficult
kind of preparations come not necessarily for people
who have never done it before, but more
so for people who have done it for
a long period of time
and are in a place where year to
year, it now
somehow
doesn't have the potential impact that it could
have. Because our preparation for it isn't necessarily
what it could be. We're gonna go through
the do's and don'ts of Ramadan.
You know, what's called the fiqh,
the legalistic
aspects of it. You know, what breaks a
fast?
What does the fast entail?
Its start time, its stop time, but with
a little bit more detail than just a
list of do's and don'ts. So people can
extrapolate
and try to understand,
like, why we would do that.
So, for example,
like, a good number of you know how
to pray
as Muslims.
Right? A lot of us just prayed,
and many of you know
how to then
wash up for prayer.
If you can understand fic
in detail, not in a way that's complicated,
but just knowing,
like, what are the obligatory aspects of something,
the recommended aspects of something, you know, the
extra things that you could do what are
prohibited.
It allows for you to be able to
navigate
situations a little different. Do you know? Someone's
so excited about think about that. Look at
that.
Did you just woo that lap? No. It
was you. Why are you lying? It was
you.
It was him?
Did she it was her. Right?
Alright. We heard her. Don't worry. We know
it was you. Yeah.
So, you know, example I like to use,
like, when you wash up for prayer,
typically what most of us do,
wash our hands, we rinse out our mouth,
our nose,
wash our face,
both arms,
head,
neck, etcetera, and then feet.
The order we follow is that one. We
do each thing 3 times other than the
head.
Right? Does it sound familiar? Does anybody know
what I'm talking about? Oh, yeah. Great.
There's 7 types of water you can make
will do with.
And, like, rainwater, you can make will do
with, for example. So some of you have
seen
our brothers and sisters in Gaza making will
do with the rain. You know? And, well,
grant them ease and end the occupations taking
place there.
So you can also make
will do with snow.
I had students
who were sledding in Central Park
and Maghrib, which is our 4th prayer of
the day,
that has a very short window of time.
Right? It's at sunset.
It's the one we pray right before the
one we just prayed.
They're in Central Park sledding in the snow,
and the time for mugrib is finishing, and
they gotta make wudu.
They
said, can we use the snow to make
will do?
The answer is yes, you can. Right?
But
if you don't know
what
the actual
obligatory
parts of wudu are, and the recommended parts
of wudu, etcetera,
making wudu with the snow can be very
painful.
You know what I mean?
So
rinsing your mouth and your nose,
these are sunnah parts of wudu. They're not
from the.
The number of times
and the order
also
are not obligations.
Why is that important?
If I wanted to mess with these kids,
I'd be like, yeah, gargle with the snow.
Like, shove it up your nostrils.
Right? What are they gonna
do? And then they take the snow. Are
they gonna rub it on their face multiple
times? Do you know what I mean? They
get sick. Makes no sense.
If they don't know
what they have capacity to know,
that's gonna be a hard situation.
And then some of them will make a
difficult decision
that they shouldn't be making. Maybe I'll just
pray when I get home, or this is
too tough.
But you're making it tougher because
the do's and don'ts, you haven't learned systematically.
And somebody else has taught it to you
in a way that is important because everybody
has to be able to access everything.
The guy who drives his cab 16 hours
a day into the late hour of the
night, he just needs to know the how
to's so he can put food on the
table for his kids. Do you know what
I mean?
But many of you in this room have
more time
to be able to understand a little bit
differently.
So the do's and the don'ts
don't become
kind of confining
or anxiety inducing,
but it actually then becomes a spiritual exercise.
That when you follow the mechanics,
you can recognize
that these are time tested processes
through which one can illuminate their inside,
render more consciousness and awareness,
and it's a means to something, not an
ends.
Right? What does reading the Quran in Ramadan
bring you to? What does fasting in Ramadan
bring you to? What do extra night prayers
in Ramadan bring you to? Right? So we're
gonna have some, that's the do's and the
don'ts,
but with a little bit more of a
nuance explanation. Does that make sense?
We're gonna talk about other things that become
relevant.
How do you function within the routine or
a schedule of Ramadan
that has you because the night precedes the
day,
where
we engage on the 1st night of Ramadan,
which is March 10th in the evening.
I hope these work.
They work?
Yeah.
So March 10th
at night,
which is a Sunday,
we're gonna start what's called our first
prayer.
This is a
recommended prayer. It's not obligatory.
Then when you go from here,
is a unique prayer in the month of
Ramadan. We're gonna talk about in more detail.
The next Ramadan thing that happens
is your suhoor.
This is the pre fajr
or rather pre dawn
meal that's recommended to be taken,
then you have fudger.
Then in here, if you pray a shock,
you have that. This is like a extra
optional prayer. We'll talk about it. Don't worry
if you don't know what it is.
You have Dzuhr prayers,
Asar prayer,
Maghrib,
Isha,
and then you start
again after Isha, Taraweeh,
and it just loops.
So in the midst of this, when do
I work? When do I study? When do
I sleep?
What do I eat? When do I socialize?
When do I exercise?
We're gonna talk about all of these things.
Right?
Because a lot of this is gonna be
about
utilizing the opportunity
to gain in a sense of self, and
a big part of self management is time
management.
To not get to a place where we
just have it be very routine and mechanical,
the physicality of it you'll get used to
after a little bit of time.
We'll talk about what do you do if
you can't fast, right? Because a lot of
people can't fast. With people in our community
who are diabetic, people who have wellness conditions
and necessitate medication,
people who are nursing, people who are pregnant,
you know, all kinds of situations. Right? What
can we do in Ramadan in that sense?
We're gonna talk about habits,
which is a really important thing that you
can cultivate
a deeper sense of positive habit transformation.
Why we do the things that we do
in the ways that we do them.
And why we're gonna talk about that is
because the verse in the Quran
that is about fasting,
it says,
that, oh, people of faith. This is a
construct in the Quran that when it prefaces
a verse, it's usually gonna talk about something
legalistic
or ritualistic,
and it's pertinent now to people who practice
Islam.
Fasting has been written for you.
This word
when it says this written for you, it's
also a way when people draw meaning from
the text that that wording
indicates that this is an obligation.
So
is a word for fasting in Arabic. So
fasting has been written for you.
As it was written for those who came
before you.
So that potentially,
you
might obtain
this thing of taqwa,
which is consciousness,
awareness, wakefulness.
Right? We have ideas of repentance
in our tradition
as a spiritual act.
So if we conceptualize
toba, which is spiritual repentance,
as the vehicle that gets you out of
the hole when you fell in the hole.
Does it make sense?
Like, I slipped and fell.
Repentance in our tradition is not an act
of, like, remorseful guilt that's unhealthy, but it's
I'm going back to God.
That no matter what I do, I can
always go back to god.
So
that's the vehicle that gets you
out of the hole when you fall in
the hole.
Taqwa,
which is what you potentially get from fasting,
that's the thing inside of you that tells
you the hole is coming.
Don't fall into it.
That's like the consciousness. You get what I
mean? Hey, you're about to be racist.
Hey, you're about to lie.
Hey, you're about to gossip.
So that wakefulness, that consciousness,
Why we talk about habits
is because
habits are not consciously performed,
but they can be consciously broken down
and consciously,
like, formulated.
Right?
And Ramadan is a great time to do
this, because the Quran also, when it defines
within its pages,
like, what it is.
This is a book in it there's no
doubt, a guidance for people of Taqwa, consciousness,
wakefulness, awareness.
We're gonna talk about forgiveness and mercy
because that's what this month is a lot
about also.
But in the prisms of how to
seek, how to give
both to others
as well as how do I forgive myself.
Because
what we're taught
is that sometimes the punishment for the sin
is the sin in and of itself
because you know everything that you've done,
and you carry that with you. And that
can be really heavy,
especially
if you never thought about who God is
to you.
And so in our preparation, we're gonna also
talk about who is God to us.
How do we understand
the role of the divine in our lives?
Because we're not engaged in ritual
just again in pursuit of something
that has no objective or gain,
but these are all mechanisms that are meant
to draw us closer to the divine.
Does that make sense?
So what I like for you all to
do, just so we get to know who
we're spending the next 5, 6 weeks with
in preparation of what is a really beautiful
month. Right? The month of Ramadan.
We turn to the persons next to you.
What's bringing you here today?
What are you hoping to get from this?
How are you feeling about the coming month
of Ramadan?
Like, are you excited? Are you anxious?
Do you have any thoughts about it? Do
you know what I mean?
The space in and of itself is gonna
be one where
we're gonna have to abide by certain things
because the room has people who have fasted
for a while. I'm 41 years old. Right?
I don't know if I look 41.
Don't know if I look 51. I get
different answers from different people.
Some kids in this school when they move
in I live in a NYU building. Some
of you have been in my building.
You know? And then they see I have,
like, children with me,
and
they're, like, you know,
cited semester start or whatever.
And then I have a 8 year old
and 11 year old. And he's like, who
are these people? And he's like, these are
my kids. And they're like, you live here
with your kids? And I'm like, yeah. And
they're like, you have kids? I'm like, yeah.
I do. And I have to explain to
them, I'm not a sophomore like you.
I am a grown man, and this is
my family. You know?
But they just can't comprehend for a little
bit of time. Right?
So, you know, I started fasting consistently
when I was
probably,
like, 11 years old.
My daughter is 11. She's been fasting on
her own volition for, like, a couple years.
My son is 8. He tries to do
it sometimes. Last year, he did more than
the year before. We don't force him. Right?
Like, children are still developing,
and it's not something you should, like, compel
or force a child to do. In our
tradition, there's, like, a rich,
like,
depth written about things in the prism of
reality.
Some people would say it's a form of
abuse to force a child to fast at
a young age when it's not in their
capacity to do it. You know? And these
are like like people who engage in just
extrapolating legal rulings. Do you know what I
mean?
Because it's not obligatory to you to fast
until you're post pubescent.
That's when you're considered to be,
what's called
in our tradition. Like, you're accountable.
Do you know?
And so
here,
we want to recognize that. Like, I've been
fasting
and experiencing Ramadan in that mode,
for more than 30 years.
And there's some people in this room where
they're still trying to decide whether Islam makes
sense for them or not. You know? They
come from different walks of life. There's some
people who come in and out. Literally, we
had 4 people take their this week in
our community.
You know? This young man came in my
apartment yesterday.
There's 2 people who came to Jomah.
There was somebody on Wednesday last week. Right?
They've been Muslim for 10 minutes.
You know? So where and how we can
learn
and have something to learn from even those
people
and all of us is when we're gonna
be comfortable talking to each other and discussing
with one another. Because Ramadan is about kinda
wakefulness and consciousness,
not being kinda entrenched or stuck
in just our feelings and experiences in a
way that is overbearing,
but learning through them and understanding them. And
so if I see something in a certain
way
that,
you know, you can see a little bit
differently.
Me hearing from you will help me to
see it.
Right? Like, you see this and I see
it,
but none of us sees it the same
way. And all of you seated here all
see it differently from everyone else.
But it's not seen through a prism of
better or worse.
It's just different vantage points, and it can
be seen on 360
degrees of perspective
on an infinite number of planes. Do you
know?
And so we will benefit and broaden in
our vantage points by being able to hear
from one another and understand from one another.
So why is that important?
Come with a notebook so you reflect and
write things down. Maybe for next week,
we'll face the class that way so I
can use the PowerPoint
and have things a little bit, like, more
prepped
and can flow a little bit better,
and then engage in, like, the exercises.
Do you know? There's a reason why
thousands of self help books are written every
single year,
and they sell millions of copies.
Because there's only dozens of people who act
upon the content of what's written in the
book. Do you know what I mean?
So if you don't do something with it,
then it can't do anything for you. Right?
And what's the point in knowing something and
then not acting on what you know, especially
it's something that's beneficial? Like, if you know
something stupid, then don't be stupid. Do you
know what I mean? That's not what the
goal is. Right? But if you know something
is good, why would you not do it?
So if you were here at Maghrib time
and I was telling everybody who's praying, why
would you not fast right now if you
can fast?
Why would you wait for the 1st day
of Ramadan
to figure out, like, how tiresome it is
to fast for the first time if you
haven't fasted for a year ever in your
life?
Why would you wait
to have, like, when it's, like, go time,
be the time that you're trying to learn
about yourself in relation to the physicality of
it. I'm a say it because I love
you. Unless you have a physical health condition
or, like, something that really prevents you, you're
traveling, running around, you know, flying around the
world, etcetera, right?
It doesn't make any sense.
There's nothing that prevents you or tells you
it's wrong too fast before Ramadan starts.
If anything, it's recommended and praiseworthy.
So that's where you have to bring thoughtfulness
to it. Why would you not be doing
it?
And the fact that it's hard,
it's all the more reason to start doing
it now gradually
so you become accustomed to it. Because
what's crazy
is, like, when this happens,
it's also right when Daylight Savings Times happens.
Right? So you're gonna go
from,
like, Maghrib
being at 6 PM,
March 9th or whatever,
and then it's gonna be at 7 PM,
the first day you're fasting.
So you got an extra hour and you
haven't, you know, fudgers than an hour later
too,
because then you can eat a little bit
Earl like, later
into the day instead of getting up to,
like, 3 in the morning. Now you have
another hour to get up. Do you know?
So it works on both ends of it.
But why would you wait to see how
your body responds,
your mind responds,
like your being responds to it? Do you
know?
Does that make
sense? And this is where whether you're a
convert
or you're born into Islam, your Islam is
your own.
So regardless of what somebody gave to you
growing up, if in your home you fasted
during Ramadan, that's amazing.
Or if your friends or people who taught
you about it, taught you about in Ramadan,
that's great.
But you want to be able to
know about you
and then also think
where and how you're getting ready for what
it is. And this is gonna be a
big part of it, similar to, like, sleep
schedules,
like coffee detoxes. I don't know how many
of you drink coffee a lot. Right?
You drink a lot of coffee?
No. Yeah. No, man. You're like 10 years
old, bro. What? No.
He doesn't drink coffee. He doesn't drink coffee?
I don't drink coffee. I Coffee. Coffee drink.
You drink a lot of coffee? All the
time. I drink Red Bull. Red Bull? See,
it works.
Yeah.
So think think about this.
You know? I missed when I was 12
years old, and I used to I stopped
drinking caffeine when I was 12.
Because
when I was training to be an athlete,
I got injured in my senior year, so
I couldn't play sports in college anymore.
This is, you know, hard, but, alhamdulillah,
I probably wouldn't have been Muslim if I
went down that route instead.
But I cut it out when I was
12. And I remember when I was, like,
10 and 11 or 12 or a teenager,
I could be drinking Coke for breakfast. It
didn't make a difference. If I did that
now, it has, like, massive spike and then
just crash heavy,
and life would be miserable.
But, yeah,
welcome to getting older. So in understanding
for yourself, like,
why would you wait till that first day,
You know?
To then have the added headaches that can
only be experienced at that time.
Reorienting a sleep schedule and eating schedule.
Right? Build a relationship with consuming water now.
Think about things that you're gonna be doing.
Do you know what I mean? We're gonna
talk about all of this,
but you have to make a firm commitment
to say, how do I act upon what
I know?
I don't wanna spend, like, Ramadan just being
hangry the whole time. Do you know what
I mean? And what the first 10 days
brings to me, that's gonna be something that
I have to be conscious of, I have
to be aware of,
that I can just circumvent a lot of
it by getting the physicality out of the
way at this moment.
Then you build community. Right? All of this
stuff doesn't mean you have to do it
alone. But on a weekend, you grab a
buddy that you meet here and say, hey.
Like, you wanna break fast with me this
weekend?
You wanna come over my place, and we'll
have, like, a meal together before Fudger?
Do you know what I mean? You're building,
like, relationships with people. You're building, like, friendships
with people. You know? And that's a beautiful
bond to have. It's not based off of,
like, gossip.
It's not based off of, like, shared class
or shared race alone or any of these
things. It's buried off of, like, a practice
that that's the person that I break fast
with. Do you know what I mean? That's
the person that kinda helps me get centered
in these ways. Does that make sense?
We'll talk about different things from a spiritual
standpoint.
You know, how do we understand, like, the
relationship of metaphysical elements
that get in the way when there's limited
amounts of time? Like, some of you went
on Umrah with us
couple of weeks ago, pilgrimage to Mecca. And
I said to people leading into it,
one of the things that's gonna happen is
shaitan,
the devil,
is gonna get you where you're most vulnerable
leading into it,
and then also when you come back. Right?
Ramadan is the same way
because in our tradition,
we're taught that,
when Ramadan comes, the prophetic hadith that says,
that the gates of heaven are open,
and the gates of * are closed.
And
the,
the devils, they're chained.
So they have no exertion over you the
ways they do it other times a year.
So we're gonna talk about what are, like,
adversaries
that also on a spiritual level will keep
us from kind of our growth,
and a bunch of other things over the
course of the next 5 or 6 weeks.
So bring a notebook and be ready to
talk. So what I'd like for us to
do
is if you turn to the person's next
to you, what's like bringing you to this
space?
How are you feeling about Ramadan right now?
What is it that you've kinda done so
far?
What are you hoping to get out of
these conversations?
And then we'll come back and discuss and
move forward from there. But go ahead.
If you don't know the names of the
people around you, then share some names. You
know?
Okay.
So let's come back.
So what are some of the things that
we're discussing?
Who wants to start?
What are we hoping to take from this?
Where are we at right now in relation
to the coming month of Ramadan?
Yeah.
Proteins and how important your diet is. That's
right.
Proteins and how important your diet is.
All of you is connected to the rest
of you.
So we'll have
some opportunity to talk about physical wellness during
the course of this.
There's also the relationship of the physical to
the metaphysical.
So when we talk about scheduling and we
look at suhoor,
which is the predawn meal,
the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,
he recommends to even just have a sip
of water if you can
before the time Fajr comes in.
He says there's, like, there's blessing in this.
There's barakah in this.
Right? You wanna have a notebook so you
can just write down terms so you know
what the words mean.
Barakah,
blessing,
more so accurately means the ability to do
more with less.
And when you have blessing
in what you're consuming,
you don't need as much to kinda, you
know, get it going. But if you're eating
less, you wanna make sure you're eating what
your body needs as fuel.
Right? And we'll talk about this in more
detail,
but leading into it, you gotta start detoxing
from some of the garbage you put into
your bodies, do you know?
And get to a place too
where you're mindful of what you break your
fast on. It's not just about the quantity,
but the quality of what you're putting in.
What's easier is not better necessarily.
Right? And that's why we're gonna talk about
time management and self management and scheduling and
structuring
so that you can make conscious decisions.
If I have to forego
going to the masjid every night to pray
so
that one of the days
I am just meal prepping for the week,
so that I'm not
in between classes
just grabbing the quickest thing, and suddenly for
a month, I just ate more pizza than
I ever eat in my
life, or I've eaten more chicken and rice
than I've ever eaten in my life. How
are you gonna pray in the late hours
of night? 1, you're gonna be farting all
over the place. Right? And 2, that's a
problem some of us already have, you know.
And 2, you're gonna get to a place
where you're gonna be miserable
because
you're consuming what
is literally just gonna make you lethargic
and just not present. You're gonna feel gross.
You know? It doesn't mean you shouldn't, like,
eat things that you enjoy to eat, but
both the quantity as well as the quality.
Do you know? And so
proteins, what you're putting in your body, having
a mindfulness of it that this is fueling
and nourishing me,
and all of me is connected to the
rest of me. You know?
And our spiritual tradition
has a paradox of many paradoxes.
One of the spiritual paradoxes that we have
is that a hard heart
in our tradition is a weak heart, and
a soft heart is a strong heart. Right?
So what's soft is strong and what's hard
is weak.
But from the physicality of it,
if you eat foods that make your physical
heart hard,
it's likely gonna make your spiritual being hard
too. Right?
All kinds of stuff. My family
is from Kashmir.
You know, they grew up Pakistan.
I don't know how many of you are
Pakistani
also. Right?
Yeah. All kinds of oils and greases in
these foods. Do you know what I mean?
I literally went to Hundi on Lexington. Has
anybody ever been to Hundi? Yeah. Yeah? You
like Haundy?
Yep. Yeah? Haundy is one of those things
that, like, it tastes great. You're gonna just
regret it after.
You're lucky if when you go home, like,
your stomach isn't destroyed at the end of
it.
Okay. I went to Hundi,
and the guy who was serving the food,
you know, he, like, took a cup to
remove the oil from the top of the
thing, which is fine. Right? Andy's good. I'm
not hating on Andy.
But the crazy thing wasn't that he did
that,
then he drank it.
You know?
And I was looking at him, like, man,
your stomach must be like a rock. Because
if I did that, I'd be destroyed
for the next week or 2. You know?
And I've realized, like,
I'm from
United States. I was born in New Jersey.
My wife, she was born in Chennai in
South India and grew up in Oman. She's
got, like, a
ironclad stomach. You know? She eats, like, street
vendor food when we're in different parts of
the world. If I, like, take a bite
of it, I'm, like, just
destroyed. You know? But you wanna be smart.
This nourishes you. This consumes you. When people
think about hadith, let's say, the consumption of
haram and its relation to prayers, duas being
accepted,
and they're not for 40 days, it doesn't
mean you stop praying.
But the physicality of it, that food stays
in your system
longer than just when you eat it. So
if you literally have haram in your body,
it doesn't go away after a day. It's
with you for, like, many days, many weeks.
So you're carrying
Haram in you, you know. And if you're,
like, overwhelmed
with all of this in the sense of
you just eat and eat and eat, the
hadith is clear. 1 third food, 1 third
air, 1 third water means you don't eat
till you're full, but you're supposed to be
drinking as much water as you're eating food.
Right?
So in these modes prior to and then
at the, like, actual month, what else what
else did we discuss?
What are you thinking? How are you approaching
it right now? What brings you here? What
are you hoping to get from these conversations?
Yeah.
We spoke about it from the perspective of,
those of us who have been fasting for
most of our lives and
how
we're trying to approach this Ramadan
and differentiate between
the monotonous
ritualistic,
versus the spiritualistic,
which is what we're all trying to strive
for.
Anyone who's fasted for as many decades as
some of us have,
like you said, this becomes
kind of routine.
It becomes something that you go through the
motions without actually fully understanding
why it is you're doing what you're doing,
some of the the behind it, some of
the blessings behind it.
And especially, you know, we we talked about
what you're reading.
You you don't even understand what you're reading,
and so we could see you that the
let's see you behind it.
So for me personally,
having
come back from from nerve recently and
being on that spiritual
high still,
still, how I'm able to leverage that
moving forward into
another period of spiritual
spirituality.
Amazing. And this is what we wanna do.
We wanna tap into Ramadan
in terms of, like, the multiple dimensions that
go within Islam as a religion.
Right? So when you have Islam,
which is the name of the religion,
in case people didn't know. Right?
You also then have, like, dimensions to it.
That's not only the do's and don'ts. And
some of you have heard me say this,
part of the etiquette of learning in our
tradition is revision. So you wanna be able
to apply, how do I not have a
monotonous
experience?
Well, the whole idea is that, one, you
recognize
there's gotta be something there
that God brings us to it with regularity.
Right?
Like, you read Fatihah
every day,
multiple times in a day, 17 times in
a day. It's gotta have so much in
it. I
growing up, didn't know so much about my
family
and my dad reads a lot, Masha'Allah, like
extended family.
And I went down to his library
once when I was a little older
and he showed me a book that was
just an explanation, a commentary on Surah Fateha,
the first chapter of the Quran that we
read in the first like set of every
cycle of our prayer, right?
Seven verses,
and
I have an uncle who wrote 7 volumes
on these 7 verses.
Do you know? And aside from the fact,
I was like, who is this uncle? Like,
why don't we hang out with him? Right?
How does somebody extrapolate that much meaning?
But the idea is that its relevance is
not just in
kind of its direct translation
but, like, meaning. What does it mean? When
I come back to it again and again,
how does it inform
what I'm doing in the course of my
day? There's gotta be reason I keep coming
back. It's not so that it just becomes
flat and I become bored with things. Right?
And this is where reality
happens because there is hadith where the prophet
tells his companions,
like, don't make the Quran boring for people.
Do you know?
You need to have different things you do
in the course of your team, your schedule,
but the framework through which we're gonna engage
this is gonna be around
the different dimensions that exist within Islam as
a religion.
So we break these down
into
dimensions.
Islam,
which is the name of the religion,
also gets rooted in principles of practice.
And
iman
is faith,
theology,
and Ihsan often gets
translated as spirituality.
When you think about this
in a prism of multiple dimensions,
another way we can categorize this, there's a
narration
that we looked at already in the 40
Hadith class.
That's the second
one in the book. It's called the tradition
of Gabriel, the Hadith Jibril,
where he comes and he asked, what is
Islam? What is Iman? What is Ihsan? And
he says, tell me of the hour. Right?
So
time also gets factored into this.
But what essentially,
you know, tell me of Islam,
the prophet says the 5 pillars,
so the religion gives you something to do.
What is iman? Like, tell me about faith,
It gives you something to believe in.
What is Ihsan? On top of
Allah? You worship god as if you can
see him. Right? You can look up the
Hadid. In the interest of time, we won't
delve into it too much today. But the
religion gives you something to embody.
And then the angel asks,
like, what about the last day, the hour?
Right? The prophet says the one asking knows
as much as the one being asked, and
he's asked about signs,
but it gives you something to get ready
for.
All of Ramadan
has aspects of these four things.
Right? But this religion gives you something to
do, something to believe in, something to embody,
and something to get ready for. And now
when we understand this, I know my handwriting
is atrocious.
Sorry. From a dimensional standpoint,
what most of us get is just this,
and that's what we have.
And it can be monotonous because
fasting is a passive act. You don't do
anything.
You just keep yourself from doing stuff. You
don't eat, you don't drink, there's no, like,
physical intimacy,
right? If you smoke, you can't smoke, like,
no consumptions of things. Do you know?
If all you have, right, the example that
we use often
is one dimension of something, regardless of what
you look at it's gonna look like a
straight line. It's simplistic.
If that's what you have of Ramadan and
you don't even know why you have that,
like it's just gonna look like this.
This is why the world is like a
very myopic
kind of reductive place. It's very racist because
you can't see someone bigger than the color
of their skin. It's very sexist. You can't
see someone bigger than their gender, right? It's
one dimensional
understanding.
So we can put that at a horizontal,
that's one dimension.
Our religion adds a second sphere
that is theology
and you go from 1 dimensional understandings
to 2 dimensional.
So the line now becomes a rectangle, it's
a diamond.
Does this mean
more or less than this?
Like, if I said, describe this
versus this,
this clearly
has more opportunity
to draw meaning. Right?
Then what happens
is you get, on a third dimension, what
is called
Ihsan,
and that's what
adds now at a three-dimensional level,
like volume.
It gives you depth.
This is where beauty comes in.
You can see things
actually
having depth.
You get what I
mean? Right?
We can approach
our practice, our ritual, our theology, our prayer,
our fasting, our Quran with an understanding
that the experience is multidimensional,
has more than one facet. It's not just
a list of do's and don'ts. The do's
and don'ts have to bring you to something,
right? So the abstainement from food
enhances
now not an empty stomach but a full
heart,
right? It allows for you to be more
present in your prayer because you're not like
running on just grogginess from, man, I just
down like 3 chicken and rice bowls, right?
And I'm gonna try to pray.
But there's something else that's fueling me. There's
consciousness
that's only elicited
from wakefulness
that can help me think, like, what do
I actually believe in?
Who is the one that I'm praying to?
Do you know? And then you can't deny
what's experiential.
Do you know what I mean?
You might want to and after Ramadan,
everything's gonna make you want to forget it.
Right? Just the same way how many of
you were in New York during COVID?
Right? Didn't it suck in New York during
COVID? A lot make it easy. You know,
people lost loved ones. Everything was shut down.
We had everything virtual.
You know? You could go to the outer
bros. There was still, like, some movement, but
still a lot of things were very virtual.
Right?
Most people learned
in COVID that they don't need a lot
of stuff.
You're here right now.
There's a reason why
Allah did not take you during COVID.
There's a reason why you've lasted.
You didn't last
so that you would forget what you learned
about yourself during COVID.
That you survived without
going spending tons of money that you don't
have to buy things that you don't need.
Because all the stores were closed. You weren't
going there.
You weren't racking up large bills, eating at
restaurants where people could care less about you.
There's no butter in the food cause it's
not made with hands that love you. It's
made by hands that just see you as
a dollar figure.
Right?
What happened after COVID,
everybody forgot.
You know why they forgot?
Because the bombardment
of marketing, media,
it brings you to a place
where there's no more consciousness
in what you're doing.
It's just the physicality.
It's just the externals, one dimension.
Satisfaction is not coming from the inside out.
It's just about the novelty of things that
I need this. I need this. I need
this. But don't really need it. You just
want it, and your wants sometimes conflict with
your needs. You see? So how do we
break the monotony of what it is that
is a challenge when you have a religion
that is deeply ritualistic
and ritual has this danger of becoming overtly
ritualized?
Well, you gotta realize that it's an entire
system that fits in together.
And you bring yourself to a place of
recognizing
how do these things all come. Islam is
not a religion that says religion is here,
and spirituality
is here, and faith is here, and ethics
is here, but it's all brought together under
one banner. The way time relates to this
is time is what engulfs all of it.
You don't know if you're gonna make it
to Ramadan.
You have no idea.
Do you?
How would you know?
Tell me honestly.
How do you have any
direct
idea
that it's written that you will experience this
in Ramadan?
Do you know what I'm saying? I said
this to some people in the last few
hours. I don't remember when. I've been talking
a lot since time.
But those of you who went on with
us, you know,
where we landed,
and I gave the example.
Our flight was from New York to Cairo,
Cairo to Medina.
I came out at the end
of the group to make sure no one
was, like, lost, straggling, whatever,
and I passed
a huddle of people
near a chair in the airport,
and then I found out when I got
a little bit away from them that they
were huddled around an elder woman that got
on the plane at Cairo with the rest
of us,
and when she got out of the plane,
she sat down on this chair in the
airport and then she died.
Her son had invited her who lived in
Medina. I found out later
from still on the airport, but just from
people that was now talking
to, it's fine. What's going on? Right? Because
I'm responsible for a 100 people.
They came off the plane, and the first
thing they saw was a woman who passed
away.
There's got to be a sense of recognition,
like, what am I, like, prepping my people
for in just relation to this? Four doctors
in our group
immediately off of a plane
from New York to Cairo to Medina
sitting in Egypt air, which is not, like,
it's miserable.
Right? And they've been sitting up and
tired from this journey,
and now they're trying to revive a woman
who has passed away. The airport had no
defibrillator,
like, no equipment whatsoever.
You can imagine the toll it takes on
people. Right?
And then they said, like, her son had
gotten her this package.
She was coming. He hadn't seen her in
a long time. And I'm thinking, like, man,
this kid's waiting outside the airport
with joy thinking his mom is coming. They're
gonna perform umrah, and somebody's about to tell
him that his mom just passed away.
You know?
It's
crazy. Right?
That's why things can't be seen just as
one dimensional.
Do you know what I mean? There's, like,
a lot of feelings involved here. You know?
That's why Ramadan is not just about empty
stomachs. It's about so much more.
But time becomes the variable that surrounds it
because
you have allocated time.
You don't want to say, well, when I'm
older and I'm retired, I'll do this.
You wanna say, I'm just gonna do what
I can do right now because I don't
know if I'm gonna have time to get
it done any differently later. Do you know
what I mean?
Right?
And so then it's not like, man, should
I be waking up for suhoor? It's like,
yeah. I gotta wake up for suhoor
because
what if I don't have another suhoor?
Why would I miss the opportunity of the
that comes just from sipping water? And then
the physicality of it, you get your metabolism
going in the morning, you know, everything kind
of gets jump started a little bit. There's
wisdom to this, right? There's wisdom that we
break our fast on dates and water because
dates are like a very healthy thing to
eat, but it's also gonna inject some glucose
into your body, and that's gonna send all
kinds of things that your brain needs that
it hasn't had during the course of the
day. Right?
If I know these things and this is
not my expertise,
there's no reason why you shouldn't know them.
And having an awareness of how all of
you functions. Do you get what I mean?
What are some other things that we talked
about? We're taking away, we're anticipating.
I I promise I won't talk so much
now.
What else did we discuss?
Guidance for people who are not practicing the
religion and who are supporting
all the people in their family.
I have no idea of the different aspects
of it. So last year, we did it,
but we were kinda like,
you know, all over the place. Yeah. And
this is more like, oh, okay. I see
why. Oh, this makes sense. Now it's more
like
a deep understanding.
Yeah. And that's why we wanna break it
down. You should bring your friends, your family
members who also are not Muslim,
right, To be able to be in the
space, to think out how they can better
support you as well.
And we'll delineate things as best as we
can so that there's an understanding,
you know, as to why. Because people are
gonna think from their own paradigms. Right?
And our religion doesn't consider certain things the
same way as other religions do. So when
you talk about fasting in Islam,
there's not many religions that fast the way
we fast.
Do you know? When you talk about, like,
a prophet, the concept and the role of
a prophet differs
from one religion to the next. The essential
understanding of who god is differs from one
religion to the next. You know? So and
being able to break that down
where there's more information.
Other things that are bringing people here,
like, what are you thinking in terms of
Ramadan coming up?
Yep.
Yeah. And we're gonna do a deep dive
into that. Right? Because a part of this
is fundamental to one's relationship to the divine.
Knowing oneself
is a key variable in knowing who God
is. Do you know?
And we are not fully aware of
what makes us the way that we are.
You know, why do I do some of
the things that I do in the ways
that I do? I used to have
a doctoral candidate who
worked for me at the Islamic Center.
It's brilliant psychologist,
And she
said that when she would make a lamb
shank, right, like a leg of lamb,
she noticed that, like, they'd always cut
the leg of the lamb
at, like, a place where there was still
prime meat on it. You know?
And somebody said to her, why do you
do this?
And she was like, I don't know. Like,
what? I don't know why I do it.
And so she asked her mom.
She said, mom, why do we cut the
leg of the lamb
where there's not just bone, but there's still
meat on the leg? Right? Like, if this
is the leg, they're, like, cutting it here.
And she said, I don't know. Like, we
gotta ask your grandmother.
And so they went and asked the grandmother,
and the grandmother said, when we immigrated to
this country,
we were very poor, and
the oven we could afford
was very small.
So we had to cut the leg of
the lamb
so that it would fit in the oven.
And then it just passed on for generations
with that way. Do you get what I
mean? The oven got bigger, but they were
still cutting it down. None of them knew
why they were doing what they were doing.
They were just doing it. Right?
That's what we do a lot.
We're gonna dig deep into this
so that you're fully present in the action.
Do you know what I
mean? And then when you're willfully following,
which has benefit to it, you're following
also consciously,
not unconsciously.
There's still presence
in the following. Do you get what I
mean? Does that make sense?
Any other thoughts before we take a pause?
What's bringing people yeah. So retaining
what you've gained through Ramadan, if you
managed to get
somewhere
to keep it going beyond.
Yeah. Every night in Ramadan before iftar, there's
gonna be a halakh of some kind. So
when you get out of class, you get
out of work, you're gonna have something that
you can come and join us in. It's
a learning opportunity.
We do Monday Thursday iftar is here. After
Ramadan, we'll do, like, iftar is for the
month of Shawwal.
Right? You should come and be in those
things, and we'll give ideas and strategies on
how you stay connected to some of these
practices
that you
are able to do
communally. Right? So continue to be with us
on Mondays.
We'll go from, like, 7:15
with and
7:30 will start. We'll go to, like, 8:30,
9 o'clock or so. If you come at
6, great. If you come earlier, if you're
able to, mugrib's getting later. We do a
star here on Monday's potluck. You should all
come and join us if you can,
so that we're getting to have it a
breaking fast also and fasting during the day.
If you can't fast, you still come and
eat with us. Do you know what I
mean?
But what's gonna be great about our group
being together
is that when you come here for a
iftar,
how many of you have ever been here
to break fast before?
Like, during Ramadan?
It's a lot of people. Right? Do you
know what I mean? And that can be
overwhelming in and of itself. So you wanna
talk to each other so you have familiar
faces,
people you can look out for, you know,
people that you've kinda journeyed with on preparations.
And then in between,
you set up times that you actualize some
of this stuff. Right? So
we set up times for if tar is
here, if you're trying to fast. If you
can't fast during the day or if it's
too tough for you, like, right now, and
on a weekend, it's a little easier to
practice. You can say to me, like, hey,
Khaled,
We're gonna, like, get together for Ithar on
Saturday in Brooklyn if anybody wants to join
us. Do you know? An open invite or
something. Do you get what I mean? Does
that make sense?
Right? The religion is not something that's
done individually,
like, unless you voluntarily do that, but it's
not, like, better to just do everything on
your own. If anything, leaning on people and
having support. The prophet had companions.
Do you know what I mean? And when
he was struggling,
there was people who helped him to, like,
get where he needed to be. He thinks
he's lost his mind when he gets the
first revelation.
Khadija
is there for him. When he goes on
the night journey, the Israan Mirage, right, for
those not familiar, our tradition says the prophet
goes to Jerusalem,
and he prays with every prophet in an
amazing,
like, moment of just solidarity
and collegiality
amongst all of the prophets of God. And
then he's taken into the heavens
very vividly described. Then he also comes back
home all in the same day. People start
to doubt him and, like, mock him. You
know, this journey that takes us a long
time, you did in a night and you
also went into the heavens and came back.
The prophet's friend, Abu Bakr, when they say,
do you know what your friend wants us
to believe? He wants us to believe he
did this thing in 1 night. He says
without hesitation,
if my friend has said it, then it
must be true. And then he goes where
the prophet's sitting,
and every time he says something, he says,
he's spoken the truth. He's spoken the truth.
He's spoken the truth. He's spoken the truth.
He gives affirmation.
Right?
Being alone is not like
a bad thing. Solitude is helpful,
but it's different than just being lonely. You
know? So, like, lean on each other, be
each other's sisters and brothers. Like, invite one
another, help one another. Do you know what
I mean? We're in this together.
The last thing that I'll say before we
take a pause, I don't wanna go past
9,
is
we're gonna talk about, like, intentions and objectives
next week. So I'd like for you to
formulate some of that in your mind. Bring
a notebook if you can.
A part of it for each of us
this year,
it has to be about
much more than just us.
There's a lot of people hurting in the
world right now.
There's a lot of people going through conflict,
difficulty.
You see what's happening in Palestine.
You should know what's happening in Sudan,
what's happening to people, the Uighurs in China,
Rohingya and Myanmar,
what's happening in the Congo,
what's happening
in Kashmir,
Afghanistan,
Iraq, Iran,
Lebanon,
across the board. What's happening in this country?
Right?
School shootings have not stopped
even though headlines are focused on other things.
Children are still, like, detained at borders.
Healthcare still makes no sense. Right?
If wakefulness comes through the realities of atrocities
that we should not let be in vain
the oppression that our brothers and sisters face
who share not just faith but humanity with
us,
A part of your intention for this in
Ramadan
has to be how you bring the best
version of yourself to it so that your
engagement of it also brings them the best
version of yourself when you're standing for the
sake of those that the world has forgotten.
And power in our tradition
is not equated
to political power alone.
But in our tradition, God is the source
of all power,
and spiritual power is a key source of
power.
It'll make it a lot easier to do
a bunch of these things in preparation for
Ramadan
when your intentionality
is rooted in knowing why you're doing it
and who you do it for.
And I could tell you, if I try
to get up and run the way I
run around every day just for me, I
feel like sleeping most of the day.
But I love my babies. I love my
wife. I love my family.
I love each of you. I love the
community I serve.
It gives me an energy that I didn't
know I had until I was willing to
embrace it.
And when you can make it bigger than
the self,
that's not
beyond including the self. Right?
I can love fully
because I also love me.
It becomes hard to love others when you
don't love yourself.
Not in a egotistical way, right?
But in a way that recognizes
that it's okay to, like, love yourself,
all of you. Even the stuff that you
don't like about yourself, you can still love
yourself. You know what I mean?
But you attach
intentionality
that isn't just about
I want this and I want that,
but sees how you fit into something that's
much bigger. This is where the spiritual aspect
comes. We'll revisit this perhaps as an example,
but there's a sheikh who tells his students,
do you wanna see the difference between a
student of fiqh, a student of externals,
and a student of the heart, a student
of internals?
And students say, yes.
So he tells the students, they're sitting in
a gathering like we're sitting, when your classmate
comes in and gives you salams,
don't return the salams.
And so in our tradition,
one of the times, a sunnah, a recommended
act,
outweighs
in benefit
of fard, an obligatory act is the giving
of salaams.
So you're not obligated to give salaams,
but you're obligated to respond to the salaam.
Somebody has to respond to that salaam. Right?
So the student comes and says salaams. Nobody
says anything because the teacher said don't. And
then a second time, he gives salaams, and
no one says anything. And then a third
time again, assalamu alaikum. He's met with silence,
and now he's angry. Don't you know it's
obligatory
on you to return my salaams?
Now the second student,
student of the heart, the shaykh says, do
the same thing.
He enters, gives salaams, no one responds.
The second time, again, silence, and the third
time, he's met with silence
distinct from his classmate
who got enraged,
don't you know it's far to return my
salaams?
The student of the heart says to his
peers,
did I do something to offend you that
you're not returning my greeting?
But he finds himself
as part of the situation. Do you get
what I mean?
Spirituality
at its pinnacle
sees how we are connected
to what happens over there.
Does that make sense?
And Ramadan
is the month
where we said the hadith.
The gates of heaven are open.
The gates of Jahannam are closed.
They're chained.
Just barakah, blessing,
increase,
mercy, compassion, forgiveness.
So these are all spiritual exercises that we
had written here before from Taraweeh,
suhoor,
all your prayers.
They are what transforms your inward that
brings you
to just moments,
and that's what it is.
God creates moments for us that are moving.
The moment I held my daughter when my
wife delivered her, I will never forget it.
Some of you will never forget
when you stood in front of the Kaaba
for the first time and made dua. You're
not gonna forget what it felt like to
feel the breezes of Medina against your face.
They're moments, but your heart had to be
ready to receive the moment.
Right? That's what we're doing. We're consciously
creating moments
that what I'm saying in the intention
is also about
how does it then impact what other people
are going through. Does that make sense?
So let's take a pause here. Next week,
bring
a
a book, a notebook,
with you so we can reflect in it.
We'll start if you can come at 6,
great. If you can come in Maghreb, break
fast with us.
Otherwise, we'll see everyone
around 7:15,
7:30 next Monday. Alright.