Khalid Latif – Essentials of Ramadan #4
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The speakers emphasize the importance of gratitude and balancing behavior with partner. Prayer and understanding the source of one's prayer is emphasized. The community will hold ceasefire conferences, joint events, and a grassroots movement to demand the removal of slavery, community dinner, and a welcome crisis drink.
AI: Summary ©
Hope everyone's doing well.
So I'm gonna try to talk about a
bunch of different things tonight,
just because
next Monday,
I'm not gonna be here, as I mentioned
in the last halika we just finished. I'm
gonna be flying out to Turkey on Monday,
for a relief project we're doing
with children who,
evacuated from Gaza, grant the knees, and then
the occupation is taking place there.
That we're gonna be assisting during Ramadan
as one of our charity projects.
People who are in medical
need from Gaza who are in Turkey.
I don't know if we're gonna have somebody
who will cover this part
of, like, the Monday night thing, but we'll
try to get somebody to do that. Because
one of the people I was hoping to
have come in were to cover 2 topics.
One was just around nutrition,
to have a nutritionist come in
and somebody to talk about
the fiqh of zakat,
because I know a lot of people give
their zakat in Ramadan,
which isn't a requirement. Like, you don't have
to give your zakat in Ramadan. You have
to give your zakat when it's due in
the year.
But we'll see. So if you can keep
a eye out
on the
email list, it'll kinda give us you know,
give the insight on that.
So
there was 3 things I wanna talk about
today. We're actually
a few different things, but we'll see as
much as we can get through.
The first one I wanted to start out
with was just
talking about dua,
because Ramadan is a big
part of Ramadan is we're just making duas.
And the duas in and of itself is
like a very subjective
act. But to give an overview,
there's different hadith
that really emphasize, like, the nature of Dua's
importance. There's a hadith where the prophet
he says,
the du'a is worship.
You know?
Similar to the hadith we were just looking
at in the
that religion is sincerity. Right?
The
Hajj is Arafa. You know, it's giving, like,
a big
sense of emphasis.
So worship is a lot more than dua,
but the prophet is saying it's like a
big part of
what worship is, what makes up.
Another hadith says,
the dua is the essence of worship. But
in Arabic, the word,
doesn't mean, like, essence and the way we
understand essence to be, but
is like your kind of skeletal system, your
nervous, you know, system.
And so what the hadith is saying is,
like, Dua is a very cerebral act.
It's not meant to be something that's just
mechanical or rote. You know? And we'll talk
about really tonight a bunch of different things
relevant to this, this act of prayer supplicating
to the divine.
But it's meant to be in your own
words, in your own language
so that there's that much more of a
sense of presence, like, within it.
So there's a verse in Surat Al Ghaffir.
It's the 40th chapter of the Quran.
It's 60th verse. Can people pull that up?
40.
So 40 60. Does anybody have it?
You read the English, the Arabic?
Chapter 40 verse 60.
You can read the English if you can't
read the Arabic, but somebody reads some of
it.
I'm so sick of hearing myself talk. No.
Not because of that. I've been sitting in
this room since 4 o'clock. We did, like,
a undergrad helika and then the last one,
and I'm just, like, annoyed at hearing my
voice at this point.
Yeah. Are you also? Were you nodding your
head in agreement? No. No. It's okay. You
can't I don't mind. I'll just send you
back. Yeah.
Does anybody have it? For
60? 4060. Yeah.
Yeah. Look at that.
Friendship
forever.
And your lord says,
call on me.
I will answer your answer your prayer.
Those who are too arrogant to serve me
will surely find themselves
on.
So this verse,
it's, like, very expansive
in this kinda understanding of dua. And you
wanna start to know, like, where the Quran
says what things,
so you're building a relationship with the Quran.
Right? Then you read, like, the entirety of
the chapter.
So we'll call
it
a and your
says call upon me, make dua to me.
I will respond to you. It's a divine
promise.
Do you know? And you'd wanna be able
to recognize,
like, the language here is really important.
In Arabic, if you were to look it
up,
in a dictionary,
like, its definition, the word
is not like lord the way that we
translate it as. But the word if you
were to pull it up, it would say,
you know, means
like the one who is the owner of
something.
Like
the one who makes the decisions about it.
Because you can own something,
but you might not decide
how it's used. Right? Like, the IC owns
these chairs,
but you're deciding where they're placed and how
they're sat on. Right? I own my television
in my house, but my kids decide what
we watch. Do you get what I mean?
Right? So you can own it. It doesn't
mean you get to decide how it's used.
So Rab means Malik, Al Malik, and Sayed.
Rab means
that he's the giver of the nahma, the
giver of blessings.
Rab is.
Right? The way in the Quran, it says
that,
they say be merciful,
to them, like meaning your parents,
as they did nurture me when I was
younger. Right? So
right? That they cultivated. They took care of
me. So
is like your caretaker, your nurturer,
the one who provides care to you.
Is is the one that holds everything together.
The
is the healer, the mender of all things.
Right? So
your
is saying call upon me, meaning Allah wants
you to make dua to him. And then
he's not
leaving anything
out of place,
I will respond.
Divine promises are always true.
So there's no kind of mincing words here.
So if one was to ask, well, what's
the point of dua?
One,
God wants you to make Dua to him,
to call upon him. And 2, he's telling
you he will respond to it.
My reflection upon the divine comes a lot
through various experiences I just have in the
course of my day.
So for example,
when we go for Umrah every year to
Mecca and Medina, you all should come and
join us. And if you've gone before, you
should come again.
And I'm standing on the roof of the
Haram in Mecca,
at the Masjid, and the Kaaba is in
front of me. There's, like, millions of people
there. You know?
And it's very easy to feel very small
in that moment.
That in a sea of millions of people,
how is it that my prayer is being
heard?
When I've taken my kids to New York
City playgrounds I don't know how many of
you have children in your life. You just
saw this little baby that was here before.
Right?
Whoever is the mother of that child
can tell you that she can hear her
kid anywhere.
So when I take Kareem and Medina to,
like, the busiest of New York City parks,
where kids are making, like, all kinds of
noises, you know, and I don't know if
you ever been to New York City parks
before. And all their kids running around, and
people are, like, doing stuff. There's always guys,
like, weightlifting in the, you know, the playground,
like like you know? And people are like,
I mean, it's strange, New York City. Right?
So there's a lot of different noises. But
if I'm on this end of the park,
I got 2 kids. They never want to
do the same thing ever. Do you know?
And I have to be able to keep
an eye on both of them. Right? Like,
this kid does not wanna be here clearly.
Do you know what I mean? So my
kids, one wants to be over here, and
one wants to be over here.
And I'm seated now in a place where
I can only keep my eyes as best
as I can on them back and forth.
But the minute I hear one of my
kids cry,
I can hear them through the entirety of
the playground,
just like most any other parent can do
that as well.
You might sometimes get faulted a bit,
like, was that my kid? But when it
is yours, you know it.
If I can hear my children in a
crowded playground,
Allah can definitely hear me
amongst the many voices that are calling upon
him. And when I stood at the top
of the Haram
looking at the
Kaaba, thinking how small I am,
also in being able to recognize in that
moment instantaneously
just how
grand my god is.
That it's not how is it that
Allah
could possibly hear my prayer in the midst
of all of this,
but
taking away what my insecurity and anxiety define
and taking what the Quran says is being
true,
in the midst of all of this, Allah
is hearing not only mine, but every prayer
that's being prayed. Do you see what I
mean?
In that regard, you wanna be in a
place where you start to think out for
yourself
like du'a in this nature. Allah wants you
to make du'a.
So I'd like you to do for a
couple of minutes right now, whatever you have,
a notebook. If you didn't bring a notebook,
you can pull out a phone. What are
the duas that you make?
Because embedded in your is gonna be an
understanding of what's important to you but also
who you know god to be.
Because when you ask, you don't want to
ask just for, like, Jannah. You wanna ask
for Jannah.
You're asking of god.
Right?
Like, don't ask for, like, the bare minimum.
Ask with a sense of the majesty of
the divine that you were asking of.
But in order to get to that place,
you gotta first think out, well, what are
the duas that I actually make?
So if you take a few minutes, just
write those down to yourself, pull out a
notebook at the top, what are my dua?
Not the ones that I should be making,
but the ones that I do. And if
you don't make any du'a, like, you'd wanna
think, like, well, why is that also the
case? Do you know?
But we'll take 2 minutes. What are the
duas that you make?
And then we'll come back just like 2
or 3. We'll start that list, and then
when you go home, you should build upon
it.
Okay.
What is that like so far for people?
You don't have to say what you're making
for.
But just to kinda
engage in that reflection,
the things that I make Dua for.
Like, what does it tell me about me
or who I know the one that I'm
asking of? Like, what is that I'm putting
there? Any thoughts or things that come up
for anybody?
Yeah.
Free free Palestine.
Free Palestine? Yeah. I mean,
Yeah. And so that's a part of it.
Right? Like,
if you want the rain to fall from
the sky,
why would you not ask the creator of
the rains?
Right? That's what it goes down to. So
when you get to this place where you're
asking for these types of things, it gives
an indication
of who you know you're god to be.
If you make dua for others
as well as for yourself,
why do people make so much dua for
people in Palestine, in Sudan?
Right? Why do they make duas for people
who are oppressed or held down? There's a
sense of love that's there. Do you know?
You have to love yourself enough to make
the duas that you need to make for
yourself, not the ones you just want to.
Does that make sense?
Like, you have to love yourself enough
amongst everything that you love
to pray for the things that you need,
not just the things that you want.
You wanna be audacious in your duas, like
bold
to be able to understand and recognize again
who it is that you're making dua for.
So we're gonna go through a couple of
things like the how to's of dua because
there's mechanics to it. The same way there's
mechanics to your prayer. Right? You stand and
bow and prostrate.
You don't start by prostrating and then stand.
We just yield to the form because these
are time tested practices
that go into,
like, the
highest potential of spiritual
kind of ascension. Do you know?
So
one of the things that we're taught is
that when you begin your duas,
like, you praise God for it. Right? The
prophet alaihis salam heard a man supplicating during
prayer. He did not glorify Allah nor did
he invoke blessings on the prophet. The prophet
said he has been hasty. Then he called
the man and said either to him or
to someone else, when any one of you
prays, he should begin by glorifying and praising
his lord, and then he should invoke blessings
on the prophet, peace be upon him. And
after that, he should supplicate Allah for anything
he wishes. There's a hadith that says,
that any affair that does not begin in
the name of Allah,
then it's cut off.
In another variation of that hadith, the word
is replaced with the word
In another
narrations, the word
is replaced with
When you have the words Abdar and Akhtar,
the difference between it is if you visualize
it, one is talking about being cut off
from like the front and one is being
cut off from the back. But what is
being cut off from is barakah. You're taking
away like blessing from it. So part of
the formulaic nature is that you are going
to start Bismillah or something
just as simple as that.
You're rendering consciousness because you know who it
is that you're making du'a to fundamentally.
And I said this in the last session,
if people were here, we're talking about sincerity
to Allah's book.
Sincerity to the book of Allah necessitates
knowing Allah
through his book,
not like the way we sometimes conceptualize God
to be unconsciously.
So when you are invoking Allah, you're invoking
Allah for who he tells you he is,
and you have to build that relationship in
such a way that ba and bismillah
has, like, so many different utilizations grammatically.
One of the meanings of ba and bismillah
is, istayana,
that you're seeking assistance,
help from the divine. And Istiana
is a certain kind of help that, like,
you've done what you can do.
It's like, I can't do it without you.
You know?
It's I need you
to do this.
The ba also denotes that everything is from
Allah. So when I sit down to eat
a meal, I think about how remarkable it
is that the egg that's in front of
me, what did it have to go through
in order to get to my plate?
It didn't just pop up out of nowhere,
but I recognize everything that had to be
put into motion for me to have this
cup of water, to have anything of what
I just ate. There's a lot that goes.
It's all in the ba in Bismillah.
And then you send blessings on the prophet,
alayhi salaam. This is the second kind of
grouping that goes into it.
So in Surat Al Azaab,
it's the 33rd
chapter of the Quran
verse 56. Can people pull that up?
So 3356.
So I go
does anybody have it?
Oh, man. Somebody's having fun outside.
Do you have it?
Can you read it?
Give me the translation.
Yeah. Indeed, Allah converts blessings upon the prophet
and his angels.
Oh, you who have believed, ask Allah to
convert blessings upon the prophet and ask Allah
to grant him peace.
So it's a sunnah of the divine to
send peace and blessings upon the prophet.
What's really interesting
is there's a hadith,
ibn Umar radiallahu anhu,
he narrates that the prophet
says
that indeed Allah and his angels
send blessings upon those who eat before
fasting.
Right? That the hadith says literally,
that Allah and his angels send blessings on
the people who take suhoor.
Right? Which is you know, that could be
any one of us. Right? May Allah make
us from amongst them. So it adds to
the barakah of it. So here,
like, the idea with this
is that duas that are made praising God
and sending peace and blessings on the prophet
are always accepted.
So formulaically,
you start in the name of God, send
praise upon God, send peace and blessings on
the prophet. You make dua for the thing
you wanna make for. Right?
Then you send peace and blessings on the
prophet again, and then you praise God at
the end of it.
So what you've done is you've sandwiched your
dua in between duas that are accepted,
guaranteed,
increasing the likelihood that if what starts and
ends the dua is accepted, then what's in
between is also accepted.
Does that make sense? It's part of the
how to's, the etiquette of dua.
When you're making the du'a, you wanna be
firm in the du'a.
The hadith says the prophet says,
when you are making du'a, do not say,
oh, Allah, forgive me if you wish. Oh,
Allah, forgive me if you wish. You should
be firm in your asking for there is
no compelling him.
You say, you Allah, forgive me.
Right?
The dua that Aisha radiAllahu ta'ala An has
taught in anticipation of
That, oh, Allah, you are the forgiving. You
love to forgive, so forgive me. It doesn't
say, like, if you want to.
Right? It says just forgive me. Do you
know? So you have a sense of, like,
concreteness in the Dua.
You know who it is that you are
asking of. You be firm in the dua,
then there's focus in the dua. The prophet
alayhi salaam says make dua and be assured
of it being answered
and know that Allah does not answer a
dua from a careless heart which is not
concentrating.
There was scholars of the past who said,
kushurah, focus
was a necessary part of prayer, that if
you didn't have kushurah, your prayer was invalid.
That wasn't the majority of people, but that
was some people's perspective.
So dealing with distractions
is
important because
du'a
comes from the heart, not just from the
tongue.
Right?
So you want to deal with distractions
as best as they can.
This is gonna be what really catches people.
When you sit down to pray,
what is it that's going to make your
prayer a little bit more all over the
place?
And how do you anticipate that? Right? Like,
my kids are not this young anymore,
but they're still, like,
crazy kids. They're 8 and 11. When my
son
was, like, from
3 till 6 or 7, and we stand
to pray.
Kids, follow us in our prayer.
Have you ever seen my son, Karim, even
now when he's 8, like,
moving. I don't even know what he's thinking
during the salah. But when he was, like,
3 or 4
and
a little older,
we'd be praying. He wakes up super early
in the morning. So fudger
till, like, the time he's in bed, he's
standing next to me. Sometimes, he's, like, shaking
his butt back and forth. He's slapping me
on, like, my backside.
You know, he, like, one point I'm not
even joking. One time, I was prostrating,
and he leaned over and kissed me on
my cheek. And I'm like, dude, what are
you doing? Like, you can't do it. And
he's super cute. Right?
That's not a distraction. That's my child.
I'm not gonna, at the end of it,
yell at my kid and be like, you're
ruining my prayer. What's wrong with you? No.
I just have to understand
that it's a different aspect of focus and
spirituality.
Focus is not that there's complete silence.
When we're taught to be the imam,
we're taught the prophet would shorten prayers when
he heard the cry of a child because
he didn't want distress
to come to the mother.
How can he do that if you can't
hear the cries?
If you make a mistake in the prayer,
somebody
corrects you from behind.
You can't do that if you can't hear
them.
You go from
standing
to, like, bowing and prostrating,
but when you were supposed to stay kneeling,
you got up, someone's gonna say,
you have to hear them say it. Right?
Does that make sense?
So focus in and of itself
is gonna necessitate understanding
that the causes of distraction
have a definition.
1, there's a lack of ability to pay
attention.
What's causing the lack of ability
for me to pay attention
in my dua?
Because you're not praying at that time. You
don't need wudu to make dua. You don't
need to be sitting in congregation to make
dua.
You can make dua pretty much anywhere.
So what's creating the lack of ability to
pay attention? Right?
Well, before I got married,
I had,
like, tons of guys that just lived in
my apartment with me. You know, you all
have been some of you to our place,
the lounge, if you've been to our actual
apartment.
I used to live
in
a place where, like, literally, like, for a
while, when my son, Karim, it's his bedroom
now where these other guys used to live,
we'd go places and all kinds of random
men would say to my son, you know,
I used to sleep in your room. And
my son had no idea. He was like,
baba, like, what? How many men lived with
you? I was like, a lot, Kareem. I
don't know what to tell you.
One of my friends who used to live
with me,
it was literally like mugger time, short window
of time, and we had to pray. And
it was during the NBA finals,
and in my apartment, the TV,
like, faces the kibla. Like, when you're facing
the kibla, the TV is in front of
you. So I'm like, hey, man. It's Maggrib
time. He's like, okay. We stood up, and
I was like, you gotta turn the game
off. And then he just muted it. Right?
And I was like, we can't, like, have
it play. He's like, no. It's fine. I'm
like, no. It's not fine. You know?
You deal with the distraction.
Right? This is why the hadith says
there's, like, no prayer when food has been
served. It doesn't mean you don't pray, but
your mind is gonna be thinking about the
pot that's on the stove. Right? This is
why it's
silly, you know, then and some of you
do this because you don't wanna make wudu
again. So you sit and you clench up
your whole body
hoping like nothing comes out and you break
your wudu. So the entirety of your prayer,
you're more focused on, man, I better not
fart, man. I better not fart. Like, that's
what you're making
the focus of your attention then. Do you
get what I mean? Right?
This is silly when you say it out
loud.
Wudu is its own spiritual exercise.
You don't make wudu just to pray. You
wanna be in wudu as much as you
can all the time. It's an elevated state
of being.
But the lack of the ability to pay
attention
is sometimes caused by these things outward to
us. I gotta run back. My phone is,
like, vibrating. Who texted me? Who's calling me?
You know, who's sending me a notification?
I gotta go look at all the messages.
Did anybody respond to my message in this
group that I'm in or on this post
that I put up?
A second part to distraction
is the lack of interest in the object
of attention.
Like, you're not gonna make Dua if it's
not important to you.
If you don't think you need to do
it, then you're not gonna do it.
And 3rd, the attractiveness of something other than
the object of attention.
Most of the thoughts that pop up in
our head when we're praying are usually not
unimportant things.
I'm not sitting in my prayer
thinking about, you know, la la la, what's
for TV dinners tonight, and this and that.
I'm thinking about the fight I'm having with
my brother.
I'm thinking about how, you know, I'm stressed
by this thing or that thing.
What's crazy is how many of those thoughts
stop when you go into sajda.
You should just experience that and think about
when you're standing versus you're prostrating
when the thoughts just disappear.
But, also, in understanding,
how much of your time is spent
unfocused?
Like my kids,
it takes them not so much now, but
when they were a little younger,
it would take them, like, 45 minutes to
eat 1 bowl of cereal.
Like, I couldn't understand. I'm just eating it.
It tastes gross after 10 minutes. It's all
soggy and, like, why would you wanna wait
that long?
So I'd be like, guys, just focus. Just
focus. And they'd be like, yes, baba. Yes,
baba.
And after, like, a week or so of
this continuing to happen with different kinds of
meals,
And I was like, just focus, and they
said yes. And I said to them, like,
do you know what it means to focus?
They're like, no, papa.
Right?
I was like, well, whose fault is this?
It's not theirs. They're innocent.
You wanna think about how you have consciously
learned
to be focused
versus how much of your life has existed
unconsciously
being unfocused.
The gross majority of most of us
is in this state where we don't have
focus in what we're doing.
And you can train yourself to be focused,
to be in a place where you have
that kind of mental strength and mental edge.
If you've ever played sports, for example,
that's like what they teach us. Right? I
was supposed to play sports in college.
Most of my, like,
high school career, it stopped. I had multiple
concussions when I was a senior in high
school, but I'm not a large human being.
Do you know what I mean?
So I had to be in a place
where a lot of
it required, like, knowing, like, the mental aspect
with I could still be mentally stronger than
them and be able to engage at that
level. Do you get what I mean?
If the majority of our time is spent
being unfocused,
it doesn't mean thoughts stop.
Do you know?
And most of our thoughts exist just automated.
You think 12,000 to 70,000
thoughts in a day.
96%
of them are repeat, meaning they're on autopilot.
4%
are done consciously.
So that's what's gonna get you here.
What's gonna create distractions?
What's more attractive to me elsewhere?
What are the things that are gonna get
in the way?
So I want you to do is take
a minute now and reflect to yourself.
What are some of the things that I
know create these distractions for me
that disrupt the focus of my heart?
It doesn't allow for my heart to be
present,
sounds from the street, the spaces that I'm
in. Right?
You gotta pray your prayers
whenever you're like, the window comes in.
But if you're not strategically
planning and then you get stuck, it's one
thing to say the bus got delayed, the
train was delayed. How am I gonna pray
Maghrib in 5 minutes in the train? Well,
like, you just do your best. You know?
But that's not because of you.
But the importance of it, the lack of
interest in it in relation to something else,
You know you're gonna leave your home.
You know that these prayers are gonna come.
You know that there's certain times that Dua
is more accepted.
So why didn't you plan a better place
to pray
where you could be in a place where
you're not, like, worried or you're looking for,
like, just a place to kinda bang out
some kind of physical movements. Do you get
what I mean?
What's gonna disrupt your focus?
So think about it for a minute, and
then I'm gonna ask you to turn to
the persons next to you to talk this
out. What disrupts focus and what enhances focus?
For you particularly,
so that we can kind of benefit from
each other on this. This is what's gonna
make and break, like, our dua, the presence
of our heart. So what's causing something else
to get in the way? So let's take
a minute to just reflect for ourselves.
Okay. If you could take 2 minutes and
just turn to the persons next to you,
if you don't know their names, share some
names. What is it that disrupts focus for
you, and what are things that would enhance
focus for you? Right? What allows for you
to be attentive,
and what kinda takes it away? We just
talk for a few minutes, and then we'll
come back and discuss,
but
go ahead.
Okay. So what are what are some of
the things we're talking about?
What are some of the things that create
distraction? What are some of the things
that enhance attentiveness?
What do we discuss?
And think of what we would have done
in a different way so that we get
the result that we want
or being also be acquired by the future
or something that we want, and we are
thinking how to do it.
But it's it's,
ironic because
as, she said that if you're purified by
the future and then we can make it
happen, we are actually praying. We're not making
duets. So we could just, like, send the
ascot
to manifest it in our life, like, to
bring it to our future.
We hope us do. But we will distract
the focusing on how can we do
it. Things that would help us to, to
focus will be,
like, transfer process and leave in God's hand
and be sure that it's gonna be fine.
And we don't need to do that much
because God can take care of it.
And we can also use the guidance that
to help to ask God to help us
make better lives.
But we can pray to have a better
prayer.
So this one.
Great.
Other thoughts?
What gets in the way or what can
be helpful? Yeah. Something that was said
that I don't know. I think, like, a
lot
of people probably feel this, and I think
in the past, I thought also it was,
like,
this idea of kind of, like, futility of,
like, if it was, like,
going to happen, like, Allah would have provided
it already or,
if it's, like, predestined,
then it's gonna happen anyway. So, like, almost
like stopping ourselves from making the for it.
Great.
Other thoughts? Yeah. To,
clear your
working space
no matter where you are in order to
focus and have better mental clarity
and also
Great. Yeah. Anything else? Other thoughts?
Hey. Smiling. Do you wanna say something? Just
the same time.
No.
No? I like your face.
I'm not sure.
That's so nice. Thank you.
I can share it now. Yeah. Go ahead,
man.
Is that one of those things you do?
You just kinda smile
because you want us to call on you,
but you're just not saying you're welcome. Very
thoughtful. Yeah. I don't wanna distract
the
Welcome. And the group share about how I'm
thinking about things that occurred with us before,
whether it's previous conversations
or just our schedule and calendar.
Yeah. So you wanna think. Right? What are
the elements
that want to keep me from being distracted
from God,
and how are they built?
Dunya, the materialistic world,
of shaitan,
Hawa, desire.
Right? The nafs, the lower self.
These things
exist in a frame where they're real
and they're gonna be vying for your attention.
So
even
where you
can be, like, pulled towards something
that is futile or pointless or detrimental,
you can also be pulled towards something that's
of lesser benefit
in comparison to something of greater benefit.
Do you know? So if I'm feeding people
to break their fast in Ramadan,
that's really good.
But what if in the midst of that,
I'm also the preventative
obstacle
from them praying in the nights in Ramadan?
Do you know?
Like, do you get what I mean?
Right? So it's not an either or. It
can be a both end, but to think
preemptively.
Right? We're gonna gather in our home.
I want you to make Dua in my
house.
It adds to the Barakah in my home.
I want us to all pray together.
I buy into the whole thing.
What's creating distractions?
Anxiety,
unease.
We've never done this before. People come over,
we eat, we stay up till the middle
of the night, but we talk to each
other. We don't talk to Allah.
It's gonna only be awkward once or twice,
and then it'll be over it. And it'll
create a deeper bond amongst you and the
people you're breaking fast with than you could
have imagined ever before because now you're connecting
in a lot of different ways simultaneously
that have benefit to them.
There's a social experiment that I like to
utilize as an example
of this element of distraction,
with a man by the name of Joshua
Bell. Joshua Bell was put on the DC
Metro subway
early 1 morning during rush hour, and he's
playing the violin.
And tons of people are passing him by
during this rush hour traffic,
and he said nobody's really paying attention to
him. Joshua Bell stays there for multiple hours,
and he says when children stop in front
of him, they just don't move. They're fixated
on him, and the adults that are with
them have to pull them away and he
can see them looking over their shoulder and
they can't see anymore. He said one old
man stopped for a little bit and then
moved on. And in the time he was
there for hours,
he collected maybe 10 or $20.
What makes it crazy is that this man,
Joshua Bell, is considered one of the foremost
practitioners of the violin in the world.
The violin he was playing that day was
valued at $2,000,000.
And he had sold out concert hall after
concert hall
in the area of the DMV
where tickets started for 100 of dollars a
piece. And all of these people could've watched
him for free,
but none of them took it in because
they were distracted by something else.
Something else was pulling them away from it.
The companions
are told at the end of a prayer
to just
recite 10 times each. Not the, like, 33
times that we know, but just 10 times.
It says, alay salaam, you do it 10
times each over 5 prayers. It'll be written
for you
like tenfold over. So 30 times 5, a
150,
is 1500
good deeds on your account. And then he
tells the companions, a time will come where
people won't do it. They said, why? Like,
it's so simple. You could say these words
on your fingertips
in seconds.
The prophet says, because their hearts are gonna
be pulled by something else.
You have to figure out what pulls your
heart.
It can even be something that's good.
I work down the hall from this prayer
room.
I'm not saying this to you. I have
to say to me,
what fundamental
reason could I possibly have to not pray
all of my sunnah and nafil prayers?
What reason would I have to not be
able to pray
every prayer in congregation
while I'm in this building. Do you get
what I mean?
And I could sit there. 1 of you
could come and say, life is tough. That's
great.
It doesn't have to be an either or.
It's a both and. What's going to take
me away
from what it is that I need for
my own spiritual benefit how many of you
did the gratitude letter that we talked about
a few weeks ago? Like, how many of
you did the gratitude letter that we talked
about a few weeks ago?
How many of you did the gratitude letter
that we talked about a few weeks ago?
You did it?
Yeah? How was that for you?
It was good? Why why is it good?
Does your face mask not allow for you
to use words?
So think about it as an exercise. Right?
You did it. I know that Nadia did
it. Like, did anybody else do it?
Yeah. Okay. Did anybody have a terrible experience
doing it? No. Right? It was nice.
When you did it go ahead. Yeah. No.
I was just gonna say that you can
also create a journal. That's what I have.
I brought you to
journal.
Gratitude
journal. Amazing. Gratitude journal. What's happening in the
exercise,
content aside,
is you are focused
also
for the portion of time that you're writing
this thing. Do you get what I mean?
That's why notebooks are so important. You come
and you sit and you just absorb like
a sponge. You're not a sponge.
There's all these other things vying for your
attention. The minute you can have something that
becomes a focal point of your attention,
it allows for you to be that much
more present in the exercise.
And as you're building gratitude through the gratitude
letter, you're simultaneously building mental strength because you're
engaged in an exercise
that requires focus and attentiveness.
Do you get what I mean?
Okay. I wanna read through a few other
things in relation to dua. So good times
to make dua, these are just hadith of
the prophet alayhi salaam.
The prophet says, in the last third of
every night, our rub descends to the lower
most heaven
and says, who is calling me so that
I may answer him? Who is asking me
so that I may grant him? Who is
seeking forgiveness from me so that I may
forgive him? The last third of every night.
The prophet says the closest any worshiper can
be to his lord is during the last
part of the night. So if you can
be amongst those who remember Allah at that
time, then do so.
Allah's messenger was asked, oh, messenger of God,
which supplication is heard by Allah? He said,
the end of the night and at the
end of the obligatory
prayer.
So
you can't gain it without
kinda the preceding act. So you you wanna
make the at the end of the night,
you gotta be up at that time.
You wanna make the at the end of
obligatory prayer, you gotta pray your obligatory prayer.
The prophet said, 2 will not be rejected.
Supplication
when the Adhan, the call of prayer is
being called and at the time
of rain.
These are moments of barakah, a blessing.
So when the adhan is being called, you
wanna be in the places the adhan is
being called.
You could do this in your house.
Right? If you can't get to a masjid,
you can't get to a masala, call the
adhan in your home.
If somebody says, why are you calling the
adhan in your you're the only one in
your house, still call the adhan.
If not for any other reason so that
you can then make the dua
at the end of the adhan being called.
Do you get what I'm saying?
You don't have to overthink it to a
place that creates obstacles.
Am I gonna get to, like, you know,
the Masjid
5 times a day? Oh, man. Just call
it wherever you're at. Do you
know?
3 people's duas never rejected, the prophet says.
The fasting person
until he breaks his fast, and in another
narration,
when he breaks his fast.
The just ruler and the one who is
oppressed.
In another hadith, the prophet says, 3 duas
are surely answered. The
prophet
Prophet said, there is no believing servant who
supplicates
for his brother or sister in their absence
where the angels do not say the same
be for you.
So, good times to make dua,
other hadith between
the adhan and the akama.
Like, this is a good time to make
dua.
An hour
on Friday, they say, is a hidden hour
on the day of Jomah that you make
dua.
When you're in Sajda, this is the closest
you are to the divine, you make dua.
Drinking zamzam,
it's the time you make dua.
May Allah enable us to seek it out,
witness, and benefit from it. It's a night
you wanna make du'a.
Some of the etiquettes of du'a, you wanna
try to be in a state of wudu.
It doesn't mean you have to be, but
if you're in a state of wudu, it's
like a heightened state of being. And you
wanna challenge yourself. Right? Try to be in
wudu as much as you can, as often
as you can. A lot of people think
wudu
is just the entry point to salah. It
is. You gotta be in wudu to make
your salah,
But you can also just be in wudu
to be in wudu.
You face the giblah.
This is a way that you can make
dua.
So the direction of the Kaaba, you're facing
towards it.
You raise your hands. The prophet would sometimes
make du'a with his hands raised like this.
Sometimes he raised his hands and you could
see, like, kind of his underarms.
Sometimes he would just raise one finger when
he was making dua, and sometimes he didn't
raise his hands at all. Do you know?
But when you conceptualize,
like, I'm raising my hands, right, who does
this? Do you know? If you've ever been
to a place where someone on the street
is asking of you,
they're giving you an insight that, like, I
need something from you. Do you know what
I mean? So I'm not just mechanically doing
this, but I'm understanding.
I'm asking the creator of everything for something.
I am an Abd.
Allah is Rab. Doesn't matter. Our prayer is
beautiful because everybody
is next to everybody.
It's not the rich people stand here and
the poor people stand here. Our prayer,
everybody is with everybody.
Etiquettes of dua, you can't ask for haram
things.
You'd have to know what's haram
in order to do that. If you don't
know,
But if you know something's haram, you can't
be asking for it in your dua. It's
against, like, the etiquette of the dua.
Don't ask for haram things.
Some of the etiquettes
why are you smiling like that?
What are you praying for, Solo?
Part of the etiquette of dua, you asked
by a deed you have done. Right? There's
a hadith
where the prophet and this isn't like, overtly
emphasized thing.
But for example, there's a hadith where 3
men get trapped in a cave. A boulder
comes to the mouth of the cave,
and they say, let's make dua to Allah
by an action that we undertook for saying
if we did this for your sake, then
move the rock out of the way. Right?
And the rock moves after each one. You
can look up the hadith. That's, like, another
way to make du'a.
Use language you are comfortable with.
Right? Our prayers are done in Arabic,
like our salah,
but your dua should be done in whatever
language you're most, like, fluent in
so that there's sincerity in your words. You
know?
People ask me, how did you learn how
to speak like this? I said, I don't
know. And I tried to think about it.
I studied Latin for, like, 6 or 8
years in other languages.
My father is a doctor, but he loved
to read. He wrote a lot of poetry,
you know, when we were growing up. I'm
sure I was, like, impacted by some of
these different things.
But, like,
I've
been asked to give talks in other languages,
and it's atrocious. Like, it's terrible.
You know?
I cannot speak
in Urdu or Punjabi
or
Spanish or Latin or Arabic or any of
these languages the way I talk in English.
So I'm making most of my duas in
English
because that's just the language that I feel
most comfortable in. You know? So make these
DAWs in the language that you're comfortable in.
And if it works for you, like, write
them out before so it helps you to
be focused.
I can't tell you the number of people
that we fly
to Mecca. They're standing in front of the
Kaaba
and they're moved,
but there's always people who look at me
and they're like, what am I supposed to
pray for?
Like, what do you mean, man?
You came all the way here
and you didn't think about this?
You know?
Life is about moments
in our tradition.
Allah forgives
the woman who's a prostitute
for giving water to a thirsty animal. She's
given Jannah its moments.
What distracted
the mind and the heart from being prepared?
Ramadan is coming. Why we're talking about this?
Like, make du'a
to god this Ramadan.
Don't get stuck in the mechanics of it.
Get to a place where you're actually praying
to your creator.
And what are you gonna ask of him?
You wanna mention the Ishmael Husna, like the
divine names of the god of god that
we've been taught? So
call upon Allah. You Rahman,
increase me in my mercy and compassion.
You Rahim,
bestow your mercy upon me. Do you know?
Yeah Latif, be gentle with me, be kind.
Part of the etiquettes of duas is to
repeat, like, the du'a a few different times.
Like, the prophet sometimes would repeat things 3
times.
A big part of the etiquette of du'a
is you're not impatient with the acceptance of
dua,
and this gets really hard for a lot
of us.
Your god is not a birthday cake that
you are making a wish upon,
nor is he a genie in a lamp
that is there to do your bidding.
You don't have to believe it for it
to be true, but a law is in
control of everything.
So where trust comes in is that you
make the Dua
and you know that god wants what's best
for you.
So you're gonna either get what you're asking
for. You're gonna get something better than it.
You're gonna get something in the hereafter
rather than the here and now.
Allah knows best.
So it's not based off of,
like and you can keep asking. Right? My
son, every 10, 20 minutes. Baba, can I
watch this now? Baba, can I do this
now? Can I do this now? He's a
kid. What am I gonna do? Get annoyed
with him? So you too can keep asking
and keep asking,
but you want to be able to understand
divine timing
is in the hands of the divine.
And sometimes things don't work out, and we
don't get it.
I got married when I was about to
turn 29.
My wife was 32.
I'm now 41 years old.
I don't know if I'm the oldest person
in the room or not, but I'm probably
one of the elders in the room, which
is crazy because I always used to be
the youngest person in the room.
And I would be foolish to assume at
32
that I was the first person my wife
ever thought of getting married to.
And I know for a fact she didn't
think that she was the first person I
thought I was gonna get married to.
When those things didn't work out, it really
did not feel good, and it's okay to
say that.
But I also can't imagine being married to
anybody other than the woman I'm married to.
Do you get what I mean?
I made those duas, but
Allah,
like, knows best.
You get what I'm saying?
And so we just have to be in
a place where we recognize who it is
that we're praise,
praying to. And then you wanna say, I
mean,
like, to your duas. Right? You know? So
they're
say I mean. Right? The brother said, like,
free Palestine.
Say, I mean.
You know what I mean? Right? So you're
in a place where
you have that kind of interaction and engagement
with it.
Okay. That took a lot longer than I
thought it was going to. So the other
things I wanna get to, we're not gonna
get to tonight.
But what I like for you to do
is 2 things.
Spend some time, like, regularly
reflecting on who you think god is through
the duas that you're making to god.
Do you know what I mean?
And really, like, sit down. And if you
need, like, this
moment of being like, why am I praying
for this?
You know?
What is it that I'm really asking for?
Something that's gonna distract me from my family
even more,
something that's gonna have me stuck in an
office for even more time,
something that's gonna create more stress,
more kinda confusion.
Like, what am I really asking for in
this?
And then think about what's absent from the
duas that you're making.
You can make dua for dunya y things.
Right?
That, oh Allah, give to me in the
dunya hasana, things of goodness, things of beauty.
But you also have
in the hereafter, I want things of beauty.
And protect me from, like, the pits of
chastisement.
Embedded in these duas
are expansive understandings
of potential scenarios.
That dua in the Quran
is juxtaposed
to people making a dua that is Rabbanahat
in a fitunyah, and that's it.
And both of these groupings of people are
people who are on pilgrimage.
I've gone to Mecca
numerous times. I've literally
stood with people
as they're
holding on to the cloak of the Kaaba,
and all they're asking for is dunya.
If you seek out in
Ramadan,
don't let it be something that all you're
asking for is a portion of some part
of this world
or relief from the fear
of maybe you might lose some part of
it for doing something moral or just,
but be in a place where you really,
like, think,
what is it that I need, man?
What is it that I'm really trying to
pursue and chase after?
And then how am I ready to accept
what it is that comes along with it?
If you made dua,
you allah, make me someone who memorizes the
whole Quran, you're probably not gonna wake up
tomorrow morning and suddenly you're like, I know
the whole Quran. That's not how it works.
The steps that are needed to get to
the place where you memorize it will be
open and facilitated.
You have to choose to take the openings.
So if you ask for a spouse that's
of a certain type of categorization,
then you gotta be ready to be the
person who God is gonna put that person
in their in your life. You want a
job and you're asking simultaneously
for protection from hellfire.
The 2 things have to go hand in
hand. Do you get what I mean?
They can't have
contradictory
coexistence.
It's not possible that you want jannah and
protection from jahannam, but then you also want
the job that's gonna give you the pathway
to Jahannam.
Do you get you get what I'm saying?
Does that make sense?
So you spend some time with the duas
and reflect upon them, and you think, how
are they answered? Do you know? Because the
number of people that sit in my office
and they're like, I've been praying for this
thing, and I don't know what's going on,
and maybe God hates me, which is Shaitan's
biggest tool. At the end of every single
thing,
I think God doesn't like me. What? Why
would God make you
if he didn't like you?
Do you know?
Do you think god made a mistake in
making you? Is that, like, who do you
think your god is?
Do you know what I mean?
But this is what Shaitan wants.
Every single juncture, I made a mistake. Allah
must hate me. I'm the worst Muslim. I
did haram. I'm the worst thing. I'm going
to *. Like, I made this dua. It's
probably I'm not getting it because I'm a
bad person.
No. Like, what what do you mean?
Where does the notion come from? You gotta
break it down because it's now
creating misconstrued
ideas
twofold.
1,
you don't understand who god is then, and
2, you don't understand who you are also.
And the combination of those things is gonna
be just a lot of inward chaos.
So bring your mind into your dua.
Why are you asking for what you're asking?
And the number of people who sit with
me in my office, they're like, I made
Dua offer these things.
And then we get to the end of
the conversation as they've let it all out,
and I'm like,
do you see how what's happening is actually
the answer to your duas?
Like, you asked for God to bring this
person to you
and to give you clarity.
So now you have to confront the idea
that the elders in your life, they're not
god.
They don't know what they're talking about.
What other ways do you want it to
be evident?
When you're in a place where you're seeking,
like, certain things. Y'all,
if he's not good for me, then, like,
take him away from me. And then the
next day, you know, he told me he
doesn't wanna talk to me anymore. Like, I
don't get what got well, you made the
Dua, man. That if he's not good for
you, then take him away, and he got
taken away. So what what's the, like, hard
thing to understand? I don't say it to
people like that because it's not it's not
gonna be nice to them in that kind
of moment. Right?
But it's like, that's what you asked for.
You you see what I mean?
And if you ask for certain things to
come and they came, like, what is it
then that's, like, the missing piece to this?
What's helpful sometimes is when you have somebody
to talk to about it. So you're not
in your own head
kinda thinking out. Right? So as obnoxious as
I sound right now, that's not how we
would talk in my office.
You can let it out.
We can decipher some of it, say back
to you a lot of what you said
to me so you could hear it differently.
So you're not
with, like, your
and
all this other stuff.
And then it's not getting you to a
concluding point that says, I'm not right for
this religion or this religion is not right
for me. Do you get what I mean?
Ramadan is a time you want to make
du'a.
So make, like, specific
times. If you gotta be in an office,
just 5 minutes of your day, just sit
and raise your hands. The etiquettes of what
we talked about, they're not farad. They're not
obligations.
You can make dua without udu. You can
make dua without facing the Qibla.
You don't have to raise your hands so
you're not sitting in your office like this,
and people are like, what are you doing
in there? Right? You just make your dua.
That's it.
Any reason you have not to do it
doesn't make any sense.
You can do it literally
anywhere that you are. Just don't do it
in the bathroom and everywhere else you're good.
Do do you get what I mean? Right?
So
30 days 30 nights
in this month, and you have time. Like,
go through it. The times that we mentioned,
there's a lot more.
It'll be something that you feel, like, kind
of the the experience of. Okay. So I
wanna take a pause. If everyone can just
turn to the persons next to them really
quick, what are some of the things we're
taking away from tonight,
and then we'll wrap up, but go ahead.
Yeah. We can close it off. That's it.
Yeah. They're just, like, talking about takeaways, and
then we're gonna wrap up in 2 minutes.
You have what?
Do you have bags?
Oh,
Do you have bags? Yeah. Oh, do you
have them here? Yeah. I have them.
Okay. I'll tell them.
What?
Okay. She can do that. Is she here?
Okay.
Okay. What are some of the things we're
taking away from today?
Any takeaways?
Why is this person?
Yeah. Go ahead.
Okay. I guess.
You, like, remind me what part in the
Quran it says, like, Allah will provide for
you where you do not expect or, like,
from sources where you do not
It sounds like you're doing pretty good.
Okay. Well,
I I have to, like, remind myself. Sorry.
I
No. Go ahead, please. Sorry. Not to interrupt
you.
I need to remind myself sometimes when I
don't get something that I want or, like,
I'm working really hard hard for, like, in
my dua, I, like, remind myself of that
passage in the Quran,
and not even, like, a couple, like,
don't even know if I'm gonna get a
little bit more of a
for it or, like, I've asked somebody who
I thought would be, like, the best choice
for, like, getting the opportunity, and then it
got shut down. And then, like, a little
while later, I would get that same opportunity
that I wanted, but, like, from a different
way. And so, like, intertwining that passage of
the Quran with, like, the saying where it's,
like,
what's what's for you is for you even
if it's, like, beneath 2 mountains, and then
what's not for you is not gonna reach
you even if it's between your lips. And
so I have to, like, tell myself that,
like, even if I don't get what I
want, like, it's not for me. And then
in my door, I'm like, Allah, wow me.
Me. Like you know? And then, like, even
sometimes later, like, there have been moments where
I'll just, like, open my email. It's like,
you have been accepted into it. I just,
like, burst out into
tears, in public. But,
it has happened where I'm like, I did
not even think that this was gonna happen
to
me. So you always gotta ask Allah to
wow you because he delivers.
That's amazing.
Any other thoughts before we wrap up?
Yeah. I think that's a good place for
us to take a pause.
Someone wanted to make an announcement, I was
told.
Do you wanna come?
You say, oh, no? He's a Cool.
From everyone. My name is Simon.
I'm just making a request. There is a
24 hour vigil
starting Wednesday at 10 AM in front of
city hall until 10 AM Thursday.
It's to urge our city council members to
support a ceasefire resolution in New York City.
You've probably seen there's been ceasefire resolutions passed
in big cities like San Francisco, Chicago, but
they've passed because there's been a ton of
community pressure
and we've sort of not done that really
well here because our our city council members,
folks that we would normally think would say
something, have said either nothing or they've taken
neutral stances. So we're doing need to put
pressure on our city council members. So there's
going to be a press conference at 10
AM until about 11:30 at city hall. We're
gonna walk over to the plaza. We're gonna
pray,
and then we are going to have various
organizations start reading names of the 30,000
Palestinians that have been murdered. We won't have
the entire list because, unfortunately, we don't have
all the names, but we're gonna try.
We'll be praying all 5 salah in Jannah.
So please, even if you're working in the
area, you can just stop by to pray
salah. Salah. Please do that. We'll also be
praying salah to the most likely after
and then we will be doing qiyam. So
about 2 or 3 hours before Fajr salah
out in the park, we're gonna do qiyam.
We're gonna do dua of the oppressed. For
folks that want to fast on Thursday, we'll
have
We'll pray fajr, and then we'll end around
10 AM. We're just really asking folks to
share this on their social media. Come up
for whatever portion you can, please. It's n
y c, the number 4, c spire on
Instagram.
This is an interfaith,
ensure everything
effort,
it's a grassroots movement and there will be
faith leaders from various
I think we have 40 or more orgs
that are endorsing this action, so please come
out, please tell your friends, Try to come
out, show support, and please make dua that
it doesn't ring at night.
Exactly.
Tomorrow
is when is Tuesday.
So we're having, like, all of our regular
halakas
on Wednesday
for the Sierra Halakah that I normally do.
We're gonna also have because it's the last
one we're gonna do for a while because
Ramadan is gonna come, and I'm gonna be
away in Turkey next week, so we won't
have it that Wednesday.
We're gonna get, like, tea and, like, other
stuff. So if anybody wants to bring anything
or bake anything, if you come on Wednesday,
we get
more people than this on Wednesday nights usually.
So just try to come out for that.
It'd be nice. And I think post Ramadan,
what we're gonna try to do on Wednesdays
or even for this is add, like, more
of an element of just, Suhba
where people can kinda be in community with
each other, really build, like, some connections with
one another
as well.
I really enjoyed the Iftar we did in
my place last Monday. I think that was
something that people could really
get a lot out of also. And we
used to do a lot more of that
before COVID, so I'm hoping we can get
back
into that as well.
On
Saturday, we have a women's summit that's taking
place here that's almost sold out.
It's for women only.
We're doing it in conjunction with Madhika,
and they have a great lineup of speakers
that'll be there
on Sunday.
We're having our monthly convert brunch. It's gonna
be at Solo's Place. So if you have
questions, you could ask him. It's for people
who are exploring Islam,
people who converted to Islam after being not
Muslim,
in a non Muslim family,
as well as people who are family members
of people in those categories. So we limit
it just to those groupings of people
as we do with certain other spaces that
we have. Next Wednesday,
night, we're gonna do a joint event
between our Latino Muslim group and our converts
group,
that everyone's,
like, welcome to attend also.
And on Friday,
on on Thursday next week, I don't know
if it's open to everybody
because we're not hosting it, but, or if
it's NYU only.
But the
wait. Actually, I don't know if I can
say this yet because then it'll be public.
And then I'm not sure if I'm allowed
to say it. Yeah. We'll keep it secret.
You're gonna keep it secret?
Yeah? Yeah. Maybe after I turn the camera
off, we can tell.
And then on on Friday,
we're gonna do, like, a welcome Ramadan event,
myself, Sheikh Fawaz, mothers. We'll have a dinner.
It's like a community dinner. So March 8th,
we'll be doing that.
And I'll probably share either Jummah on Friday
next week
or at that event, like, some of the
images
of the children we're gonna be visiting in
Gaza,
from Gaza in Turkey,
and their families that we're gonna be trying
to raise funds for in in Ramadan.
So it'd be really great. People just make
dua that these projects are successful also.
Because a lot of these people literally have
nothing. We've been trying as best as we
can, helping to get people,
like, who are stuck in Sudan, out of
Sudan
to places of safety, helping with people who
are in Gaza to get out.
But then they also need to exist, like,
where they live. Right? And so that's where
we come in.
Your risk isn't like what you possess.
Your risk, your livelihood is what you end
up utilizing.
You know? So just because you have a
bunch of stuff sitting in a bank account,
that's not actually your livelihood.
You could be the means through which somebody
else gets their sustenance and livelihood.
And this Ramadan is probably one where you'd
wanna try to, like, continue
to keep consumption in check after Ramadan
because the less you're spending on your stomach
or anything else, the more you'll have to
give to other people. Right? And it seems
like it's just gonna be a lot more
people,
for quite some time that are gonna need
our help, Inshallah. So make sure as you
think of your duas that you're thinking also
about those that the world has forgotten. But
come to these different programs and events. And
if you could help volunteer during Ramadan, we'd
appreciate it as well,
because we just need a lot of people
to help out with everything.
We'll send out more info on that,
in the coming
days.
Okay.
So, hopefully, we'll see everybody
at different things this week and next week.
And, otherwise, see you guys in Ramadan. If
I don't see you,
other than tonight till then.
Yeah.