Khalid Latif – First Steps Essentials of Islam #03
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AI: Transcript ©
For those who are here,
and those who are not, just to recap,
we started to introduce kinda a little bit
more insight onto
theological understandings
of God
within
Islamic doctrine.
And if you remember
2 weeks ago, when we had met, we'd
said there was 3
foundational theologies that make one Muslim.
There's a belief in 1 God. Right? A
very pure monotheism.
And there is a belief in an afterlife,
and a belief in the finality of the
Prophet hood and the prophet Muhammad, peace be
upon him.
And in that first class, we also talked
about a short chapter in the Quran that's
called Surat Al Ikhlas,
chapter
titled Sincerity.
And within it, there was essentially a breakdown
of
how you can
understand
the essential
kinda understandings of the divine within Islamic tradition.
Right? Because quite often,
we get into a place where it says,
well, there's other monotheistic
religions.
What makes God different in Islam from
the way God is conceptualized in other faith
communities?
Knowledge of God within Islam is a negative
knowledge.
Right? That
who we understand
God to be in Islam is by understanding
what he is not. There's a verse in
the Quran that says, There's
not anything that's like a likeness to him.
So whatever we understand God to be, we
know that he is other than that.
And in that chapter, one of the ways
that
God is identified
is,
by
the quality of being ahad.
Right? Can anybody tell me what were some
of the descriptions of ahad that we talked
about
last week or the week before?
Or even if you don't, if you aren't
here, if you have any ideas.
Like, it it translates as, like, 1 or
the only one, but what does that mean?
Any any one remember you gotta go ahead.
Indivisible
is the word. Indivisible. Right? So, ahed
denotes the idea that you can't
break down into parts.
Right? The way we can
remove the camera from the tripod,
and the tripod is made up of various
pieces and bolts,
plastics, metals, etcetera.
Ahad
denotes
indivisibility.
Right? What else from Ahad?
Anything? Yeah. Like absolute.
Absolute,
right, meaning unique, and it's absolute. Right?
That
that idea that God is the one is
the only one, you know, in uniqueness.
Right? And when that is now
put in a complimentary understanding of the rest
of these divine names we talk about, you
know, Rahman, we talked about last time, compassionate,
Raheem, merciful.
But understanding that through
this prism of
uniqueness,
absoluteness,
and they're not seen separately, but kind of
all together,
so to speak. Anything else from ahad
people remember?
You can't, like, pluralize
ahad.
Right? Ahad isn't something that has, like, this
idea of multiplicity
to it. Right? It's very unique oneness
in Islam as a tradition. So very pure
monotheism.
There's no anthropomorphism
in Islam.
Right.
The idea is that
God being Ahad, Allah being Ahad,
and then it relates now to a second
divine quality that we talked about of samad
that gets translated quite often as, like,
a source of
eternal refuge.
But what did we say? Anything that came
to mind, the relationship between Ahed and Samad.
Do People remember
it. So one of the things the Quran
does stylistically It's okay. I know I talk
a lot, so it's better to just kind
of
recap.
Quite often, what you'll find in the Quran
is when there's 2 divine names
of Allah mentioned.
The first usually is giving an understanding of
an essential quality of God. Right? This is
who God is. He is Ahl.
And then the second is how he relates
to his creation. He is Samad.
Right? So he is unique and he is
Samad, the source of eternal refuge.
Because you wanna turn to the one
that is unique in his absoluteness.
Right? That
the divine is not
like anything in creation.
And so when you have need, you are
in a place of tribulation.
You are in a place where you're trying
to find comfort and solace,
you
ultimately
are in a place where you turn to
as Samad,
he's a source of refuge,
right, because
as an entity, we understand the divine to
be
without any flaws,
any kind of limitations
the way we understand
kind of human,
limitations to be. Then the last verse, that,
he is not begotten nor does he beget.
Right? Introduces, again, like a recognition of what
does oneness mean here, you know?
And how do we understand that as many
of us come from different faith communities, perhaps,
or families of different faith traditions,
near your lineage. Right? It's very interesting
because
in the beginning of Islam,
everyone was a convert,
and then there was very few who were
born into it in that first generation.
Right?
Because nobody was Muslim until they became Muslim
in the beginning. Everyone converted into it. And
yet, the default norm was like, everyone's a
convert, and then it was like, oh, you
had a baby, right? So you're now born
into a Muslim family
and now you kinda have the opposite, so
to speak, but there's still, like, so many
converts to Islam everyday,
including many of you or those of you
who are exploring or thinking about it, as
well as those of you who are born
into it, but you're trying to reconnect at
some level.
Here,
the idea
is just very clear. An Islamic understanding
of the divine
does not anthropomorphize
God in any capacity.
So, many religious traditions and this chapter
was, in specific,
kind of in conversation with individuals who were
comparing
their understanding of God to what the prophet
Muhammad was now teaching them
and giving answers
where they said, our God has daughters.
And in Islam, God does not have any
children, Right?
And the idea that a God would have
children also then assumes that the children having
divine qualities were birthed.
But in Islam,
the ultimate source
of kind of causation
is Allah.
That everything has a necessary
action to which there is reaction to it.
There's a cause to everything that comes into
existence,
but there's an initial point of origin
that
is now the first
that is what we understand a lot to
be. That there has to be
something that put it all into motion by
principles of logic, that there can't just be
something from nothing, so to speak,
That there needs to be now
a logical
understanding that all of it
had to have a
beginning point and that beginning point
could not have
also a cause that
began it. Does that make sense? Right?
There's nothing that's kufu to him like an
equivalent.
Right? God is absolute as you said.
This is important because we wanna think about
this as we build like a real understanding
that's not just abstract,
but the whole idea with religion
is that it's meant to be acted upon
and should be a source of comfort,
not a source of like walking on eggshells.
Right? It's not that you're like being tested,
you know, like, oh, you're trying to be
Muslim. Right? Tell me all of these 5,
600,000,000
things about things. You're like, bro, I converted
it 5 minutes ago. Like, how am I
supposed to know this? Right? You know,
you know at a pace and you have
that intimate relationship
with God
because
he is unique,
he is ahad,
and so his compassionate
mercy, his love, his gentleness
is not like any gentleness you've ever experienced.
His love for you is not like any
love you've ever experienced.
Just looking
to
embrace
and not just watching, but watching over.
One of the things that I asked you
all to do
was between last week and this week,
to think about a few different things. 1,
like where did you see mercy in the
world? Right? We talked about Rahmah,
Ar Rahman, Ar Raheem, and for those who
missed it, the most merciful, the most compassionate.
This is how
God introduces himself to the reader of the
Quran. Right? The way we had you all
introduce yourselves to one another,
and you told people your names and you
said something about yourself.
Right? This is who I am. This is
what I do. You know? Right? What did
you say when you introduced yourself, any of
you, to anybody?
What did you How did you introduce yourself?
We just checked in and I was like,
we talked about the week. I was like,
yeah, I'm a teacher. This is my day
when teaching it. Great. Right? And you guys
already knew each other names?
From before. Right? Yeah. Yeah. How about you
2? Did you Start up names.
Oh my god. Yeah. It's pretty it's like
straightforward stuff. This is what Allah does in
the Quran.
Right? Bismillah Ar Rahman Ar Rahim, in the
name of Allah.
Ar Rahman Ar Rahim, the most merciful, the
most compassionate.
The way you introduce yourself and give an
understanding of this is who I
am, the very first thing Allah is telling
you when you open the Quran is, I'm
the most merciful, I'm the most compassionate. But
Rahma is I'm the most merciful, I'm the
most compassionate.
But rahma is rooted
in not just mercy the way we understand
in systems of justice,
law, etcetera.
But Rahmah
denotes compassion,
softness.
It has its own unique love as well
as mercy.
So what I ask people to do last
week was a couple of things. Because you
wanna think about how these things actualize around
you. Right?
So for anybody who did it, can you
share with us
anything that you saw of that kind of
mercy in the world in the last week?
And I think the other part that asked
was
how you yourself might introduce it into the
world. Right? Was something that we said. Does
anybody wanna share?
Anybody see anything?
Yeah. I I often go to a cafe
regularly and last week, I thought about it.
There's this old elderly couple that comes, they
come quite often too. I guess they live
nearby.
And,
the lady, the wife, she seems, I guess,
she has some, I don't know,
Alzheimer's or something, and she she's not totally,
you know, present, and she seems,
very helpless. And her husband, he is also
very old. And
they come in very slowly, and it really
it it touches my heart how much the
husband cares for her.
And I saw her. He would,
make her sit down and help her and
he could clear clean the table for her.
Her. And then so he could barely move
his own hand. It was fumbling, but he
cleaned the table for her. And just
there was so much love in his actions.
The way he talked to her. And even
though I felt that she couldn't really connect
with him, she couldn't really understand
them.
Go ahead.
So
are you okay?
No. I'm sorry. No. It wasn't you. I
was more
never mind. That's okay. Go ahead. Yeah. So
that that really touches me, whenever I see
them. There's this old man, he can barely
take care of himself, but he is constantly
looking out for his wife. Yeah. And do
you see how that's rahma? Yeah. I think
you might have asked last time, right, about
how mercy is just related to justice.
But do you see how mercy can have
nothing to do with justice?
Do you see what I mean? That's why
you have to, like, pay attention to the
things around you. Right? Not in a creepy
way where you're, like, just staring at people,
you know, but in a way where you're
able to cast meaning
from the world around you. This is what
spirituality
is in Islam.
It's rooted in vision
and it's about being able to take comprehension
from the environment that you're situated in. Right?
And that's a beautiful example of rachma, mercy.
Yeah. Go ahead.
Can mercy inhibit justice?
Can it inhibit justice?
I think it depends on
where and how it's being called into action.
I work with a lot of survivors of
abuse, for example,
and I think the unfortunate reality is that
quite often,
where
forgiveness is a right and not a responsibility,
people will manipulate religion
and say that it's more important for you
to be merciful.
And essentially what they're saying is, you gotta
put up with people's nonsense that no person
should.
And this is where it's a challenge, where
quite
often
we work in places where
we make people go away from what is
most innate and what is really best for
them under the guise of religion. Right?
And I would say that's a skewed understanding
of what mercy actually means. You know?
Does that make sense? So I think, in
certain instances, rhetoric
can create,
very kind of paralyzing understandings of religion that
become devoid of realities,
and devoid of empathy, unfortunately,
you know. Yeah.
Justice in Islam also, and we'll talk about
this in a few weeks, when we talk
about divine name that is al Adal.
Right? That Allah is most just.
But justice in Islam is about restoring balance.
And a theological
standpoint in Islam and afterlife
incorporates within it a belief in a day
of judgment,
that is a day where everything is made
balance,
that all the questions of why are answered.
You know? And a lot of this world
doesn't make any sense
without this kind of understanding of something that
comes thereafter.
When you have this kinda
understanding that this finite existence is it, it's
very easy to then adopt an attitude that's
nihilistic,
you know? What's the point of all of
this? But what the Quran teaches us is
that the goat that has no horns
will have recompense
in relation to the goat that had horns.
Right? Like, everything in creation
is going to have balance restored on that
day. That's why there's kinda mindfulness
and recognition,
you know, in those ways. Right? And people
are gonna be taken into account in front
of God. And we talk today, we're gonna
talk about,
the divine names Al Malik and Al Malik,
which if you know the first chapter of
the Quran,
Surah Fatiha,
after God identifies himself as Ar Rahman al
Rahim,
he says, Maliki omidine,
the,
owner of the day of judgment. Right? In
a different recitation,
it says, Maliki Omidin. Right? The king of
the day of judgement.
But
the divine
will, on the day of judgement,
proclaim, like, where is everybody who said they
had dominion over others?
Those who said they had power over others.
And let them come and stand in front
of me,
and
essentially challenging the notion that anyone in this
world
actually can exert that kind of authority over
someone else. Right? That's why there's delicacy and
and a need to recognize
accountability,
which didn't exist in the Meccan society.
Meccan society didn't believe in an afterlife.
They had a theology that said this world
is
it. And when you don't think there's any
consequence to behavior,
it's a lot easier to be racist,
to be xenophobic,
to be sexist,
to mistreat people,
to do all kinds of things because you're
like, well, I have power, I have wealth,
I have affluence, I have privilege,
nobody can do anything to me, and at
the end of all of this, there's nothing.
But what Islam says is no, like, there's
an entire eternity after this.
And it gets attached now to these notions
of some of the things that we're talking
about. Does that make sense? Yeah. Any other
examples of rachma, mercy, you saw? Yeah.
One of the things, you know, that might
not be the first, second, or third thing
to think of sometimes is the mercy that
you
showed or supposed to or, the opportunity for
it with aging parents. Mhmm. And so the
idea is and that youth is a privilege.
Mhmm.
And, you know, however much gratitude we try
to exercise or
feel, it's it's never enough. And one of
the tests of that or the examples is
when you see your aging parents, and that's,
you know, when you're midlife and you've got
your aging parents where they may seem or
appear as if they have capacity, they
are mobile,
they're functioning,
but things are not the same. And it's
a slow
progression,
or downward, I guess, you know, kind of
direction
where things are slowly diminishing. It's everything it's
not always, you know, of on and off
button, but it's it's the one of the
greatest sets of mercy that we have to
exercise towards raising parents who may say things
that,
are not the nicest from making decisions that
aren't real sensible,
but you have to really tap into your
deepest Yeah. Sense of mercy
Amazing. To have patience and When we talk
about wudu today
and washing up,
it will make, like, real difficult sense
if you are trying to now figure out
why do I need to rinse my feet
in this way.
If there's not an understanding
of the fundamental
divine being
that you are seeking to connect through through
these spiritual practices and exercises.
Then it just becomes burdensome obligation
and ritual.
And then people who struggle with it,
because they're not thinking about Arrahman and Ar
Raheem, they either become dejected. I'm not good
for this or it's not good for me.
People weaponize and like, you suck at
this. Right? Or you get to a place
where
it just over time, you're like, you know,
it's not that big a deal.
These externals,
they're not important.
It's because the importance haven't been attached to
what is the foundation, it's the internal. It's
not about just the outward, the outward is
about what's going on inside. Right?
And I'm saying this to you just so
you could think.
If you smiled because of this child,
that means your heart is like wakeful.
You know? And that's good.
Right? If you're in this place where, like,
your head moves here and there when the
child is running around you, it's because it's
good to be distracted by beauty. You see
what I mean?
And all I'm saying is, in between,
go and find like beauty and mercy in
the world.
Because how nice. You weren't even there when
the kid did this thing. Right? But how
many of you said when you heard the
story,
right?
That's what beauty does.
You can hear it second hand and it's
still something that creates energy. Does that make
sense?
Okay. I want you to try between this
week and next week again.
Right? Because for me,
I'm not going to approach this the way
you might find in other places. I'm just
going to give you a laundry list of
things and then you go and memorize it.
That's not going to work. You know? You
have to understand fundamentally
what the religion is trying to do. It's
trying to connect you to the creator of
all creation.
That's what Islam is doing. And that's not
just abstract rote memorization.
That's to be experiential. It has to be
lived.
We'll go back at the end if we
have time
to talk about
al Malik, al Malik, al Malik.
These are divine names that have this root,
malaka,
which denotes like ownership,
dominion,
things like that,
if we have time. But we wanna talk
now about, like, we'll do,
which is the washing that we do before
we pray. How many people are familiar with
this as a practice? Like, you've heard about
it before, the ritual washing that we have
before we pray. Great. How many people know
how to do it or think they know
how to do it?
Yeah. Good. Okay. So we're gonna go through
it anyway.
One of the etiquettes of learning in Islam
is revision is really important.
Right? If you remember last week, I gave
you an example
where the grandchildren of the prophet of God
saw an older companion of the prophet
who was learning Islam from the prophet,
and they saw that he was making a
mistake in his wudu. So
if that person
could make a mistake, it's okay that we
make mistakes. We learn from them.
And likely, sometimes when we get to a
place
where ritual
has the danger of becoming just overtly ritualized.
It's like too mechanical.
You just become innate and it just keeps
happening again and again, and that inner presence
doesn't happen.
If you can pull up on your phone,
the 5th chapter of the Quran
is called Al Maidah
and the 6th verse
is what we're gonna look at tonight.
You can just Google Quran 5 colon 6.
Do
people have it?
And if you have the translation, that's fine.
If you have the Arabic, the transliteration,
whatever you have is good. Anybody who has
a translation, can you read it out loud?
56.
Yeah. Go ahead.
Oh, you who have believed when you rise
to perform prayer, wash your faces and your
forearms to the elbows
and wipe over your heads and wash your
feet to the ankles.
And if you are in a state of
Janava,
then purify yourselves. But if you are ill
or on a journey or one of you
comes from the place of relieving himself
or you have contacted women and do not
find water, then seek clean earth and wipe
over
your faces and hands with it.
Allah does not intend to make difficulty for
you, but he intends to purify you and
complete his favor upon you that you may
be grateful.
Great.
So one of the things as you read
the Quran and you build a relationship with
the Quran,
the verses
sometimes, stylistically, will give you indication
as to what it is that they're primarily
kinda
based upon or their purpose
is.
So you have this construct in many verses,
the Arabic says,
Oh people of iman, people of faith. Right?
The word iman we talked about means faith
in Arabic.
And this
construct at the beginning of a verse, quite
often, is
indicating
that the content of the verse is in
specific,
mentioning something that's relevant
to people who are Muslims,
and is going to likely
incorporate something that Muslims are supposed to do.
What is this verse telling you
that a Muslim is supposed to do?
It's not a trick question. Pure
Yeah, but what is it literally saying?
Wash
your
hands.
No. No. Just what does it You can
repeat what it says. Wipe your head. Wipe
your Yeah. It's telling you like wash your
face, do this, do that. Right?
So one of the things you wanna think
when you're reading the Quran,
you're gonna come across these verses,
and you wanna start to be able to
build a relationship with just the style of
the Quran, what it's doing.
Verses that start like this or talk about
concepts like this,
they
are
pretty much
all revealed
after
the
Muslims
move to the city of Medina.
So in Mecca,
they're there for 13 years and they're living
under persecution.
They don't have like an established community.
And you get to a place now where
the last decade
of the prophet Muhammad's life,
he has this city that's now called Medina,
then it was called Yathrib,
and
they
migrate to Medina, They can establish a community.
The first mosque is built there.
Practices are given.
Ritual is given.
This one now
is something that you want to think out.
And, briefly, what I want to do is
give you some insight.
That when somebody was trying to
extrapolate from the Quran,
what they would do, and why when you
read it, you have a relationship with it,
but you understand that there's more nuance when
we're trying to draw practice from it. So
when you read this verse and it says
to you, in Arabic it says,
that
you wash your faces.
Right?
If I asked every one of you,
what makes your face your face?
Like what part of your face
is your face?
Right? It's not a trick question.
And I said write it down so we
didn't hear everyone's answers.
Some of you would say something different.
Right?
What do you think is your face?
Forehead to my chin. Forehead to your chin.
Are my ears on my face?
They're not on my face?
What are they on? They're on my head.
They're on my head? Yeah?
Is this part of
my face?
My face?
Is this part of my head my face?
Yeah?
It is?
Listen, but wait right here. See this?
Neck. Neck. Neck area? It's under here. There
was your beams down here. How long
so what part of like the edges, the
perimeter
does the face extend? Where does it stop?
What do you think?
Over here, where the Adam's apple stops. The
face stops at the Adam's apple? No, man.
That's a good question.
Oh, about that. Jawline.
Jawline? Yeah. Yeah. What do you think? It's
not a trick question. Just what are your
answers?
Your mouth. Your mouth? Your face stops at
your mouth? No. Because we Where does it
start then if it stops it? Your forehead.
Your forehead to your mouth. Oh, to your
chin. To your chin. To your chin. But
what about going this way?
Little things here. Right here? Yeah. Where? I'll
check that at the little holes. Thing.
This is what people did
when they were looking at the Quran
and they were trying to determine what to
do.
This is why, like, a literalist
understanding of Quran is a challenge at times
because
we're working through translations
that even in English
when we're saying what is actually the face,
you're like, when has anybody even cared about
this?
Right?
But for the person
who is now telling you how to worship
God,
they're taking it seriously in a different way.
Because for them,
the mechanics
are part of a spiritual
exercise
that when performed
with
efficiency
and proximity
as best as possible to what we understand
God wants from us,
it directly relates to the highest level of
spiritual ascension.
Right?
Meaning, if in your spiritual journey, anybody ever
tells you it's not really that big a
deal, the mechanics,
they're wrong.
They shouldn't make you feel bad if you're
struggling with it and learning it.
But if they tell you that's not really
that serious, that's not that big a deal.
On the other end of it, it's not
something to become,
like,
hyper
kinda scrutinizing
to a point where you're self deprecating.
But it's just like any exercise. Right? If
I stand
and
I
try to lift weights and my form is
wrong,
I'm not gonna yield the same capacity as
if my form was correct.
In the same way a trainer is gonna
tell you, like that's completely off.
You know?
If you have never gone to a physical
therapist and you go to a physical therapist,
they will like say to you things like,
you don't even know how to walk right.
You know?
You like are so terrible at walking on
your feet. People are like, what you mean,
man? I'm a 40 year old man. I've
been walking. They're like, you know that pain
you have in your back?
It's because you don't know how to walk
on your toes.
And then they try to teach you how
to walk on your toes,
And they're telling you things about your body
that you never even thought about, like, that's
how you're supposed to walk, that's what this
means, that's what the jurists are doing. They
want to ensure
that
the way you do it
actually yields
what it's intended to yield.
And so they'll sit and they'll look at
a verse like this and they'll say, okay.
Like, what do we understand the face to
be?
Is it something that is only like what
is immediately visible?
Does it extend to the outer rims of
one's earlobes?
Does it stop where the ear starts?
Does it go
like under the chin or is it just
you know, to the tip of the chin?
You would say, well, why did they do
this?
Because they're trying to honor a trust between
them and God,
saying that
we're responsible for the way these people practice
this religion.
And Islam as a religion
is unique in that it claims
that nothing in its text has actually changed
since it was revealed,
and there's no human contribution to the text.
Academics will tell you that the text exists
in its original form and there's nothing that
has been added to it. Whether you believe
it's divine in its base or not, that's
a subjective
conviction,
but across the board, people who are not
Muslim will tell you the book exists in
its original form. And the idea is that
these are time tested practices
that are given now, Muslims believe,
from God to creation
in ways that
create an opportunity to worship that are transformational
of the self.
And so they want to get it right.
What else we draw from this is if
you remember,
we talked about a few different things
in one of the first classes
that were like categories that all acts can
get put into
in Islam.
And there's 2 broader terms we wanna introduce
to you now.
There's a word in Islam that's called Ibadah.
This means worship,
like, generic worship.
The 1st week, we talked about the word
abd.
It's got the same root. The word abd
means servant, but essentially, an abd
is
something that relies on something else to exist.
So everything in creation is considered an obd
because nothing in creation is self sufficient.
And god uniquely
is rub,
like our lord,
because he is self sufficient. He does not
rely on anything for his existence.
And so the abd does the ibadah,
like the servant
engages in servitude.
And there's acts of worship. This is like
one genre
of how Muslims
engage
kind of day to day interactions.
And then there is another category
that in Arabic is called Muamalat,
And this is like everything else.
Right?
So
you're not, like, praying all the time. Right?
You're not always doing pilgrimage. You're not always
engaged
in, like, fasting.
You know, there's so much else that you
do, how you interact with the world, how
you interact with people around you. And these
categories, to recap,
that these things fit into
are at a base level
5
Does anybody remember any of them?
Haram.
Everybody knows the word Haram.
Amazing. Wajid.
Wajid. Wajid. Well, let's start with Haram. Who
said Haram?
Yeah. What does haram mean?
Not permissible.
Yeah. Right? So strictly
prohibited.
In Arabic,
haram.
And this is really hard for a lot
of people when you're born into Islam or
you're a convert
because
everybody's just like haram haram haram haram.
Right?
And you just sometimes you just gotta learn
to smile and nod at people
And, you know,
like, let them be. You know what I
mean?
For something to be strictly prohibited,
we said that
the
evidence for it, like what the Quran says
or what the prophet said or the different
sources of things that we'll reiterate in the
coming weeks.
But the text
has to be
decisive,
Concrete.
And the meaning
also has to be
concise.
Can't be probabilistic.
So don't eat pork
is strictly prohibited
because the Quran says
don't
eat pork.
That's it.
The text is definitive
and the meaning is definitive.
See what I mean?
Make sense?
What's on the other end over here?
People remember? Wajib.
Yeah. So you have the words wajib
and far.
People use these interchangeably
and this means
obligatory.
This verse
is going to give us things that are
obligatory
and is also the evidence
of the act of wudu being obligatory.
So somebody says,
how do you know
that
Muslims are supposed to wash up before they
go to pray?
What did that verse just tell you
that you just read and I just read?
Right?
And it tells you now
that this is what you do when you
go to pray and other conditions that we'll
talk about in the coming weeks. Not gonna
go in a marathon.
In the middle,
you have acts
that are neutral
and just permissible.
In Arabic, this is called muba.
Here you have things that are disliked.
Very good. It's called Macruh.
And here, you have things that are recommended.
This is called
Mustahub.
And then we have another category that are
prophetic recommendations,
and that's called sunnah mu'akda.
Right? And we'll come to that.
So when you look at this chapter's
verse,
somebody read it again.
What does it say?
Chapter 5 verse 6.
Yeah, go for it. You who believe,
when you're about to pray, wash your faces
and your hands Okay. Your arms at your
elbows. Yeah. So stop piece by piece. So
wash your faces.
Right? It's the first thing that it says.
Right?
So
when people are now determining
what goes into wudu
and you read a book that is a
thick text, it's gonna say,
these are the obligations
of the practice.
These are the recommendations.
These are things that are disliked. These are
things that are impermissible.
Potentially.
There's not, like, so much in will do
because, you know
but
we're gonna see through this verse,
like, why it's important to know these things.
And I'm gonna give you some practical examples.
And if we have time, we'll actually, like,
go through, like, the washing in and of
itself.
So it tells you, like,
parts to this now.
It doesn't only become the evidence
that wudu is an obligation,
but it tells you the parts that are
obligatory
as well.
Yeah? So before we do that,
just to run through it really quickly,
if I erase this, is that okay? Yeah.
Are people with me? Any questions?
You have a question? No. Nothing to do
with the picture. You're gonna take a picture?
I wanted to if I could. So
let's find that right funny.
Thank you. Hey, man. There's no shame in
learning.
Thank you. You should always be proud of
doing what you need to do.
I forgot this book that I was gonna
bring today
that is
my sons and my daughters from when they
were little. It's called My First Wudu Book.
It's
like
a book that, like, you can get wet.
You know, it's like a little kid's book.
But it's got pictures of all your body
parts that you wash and these things. Yeah.
This might be a third impression.
Oh, man.
Something is Magru
if
the text
or
the meaning is probabilistic
and the other
in that scenario is definitive.
Right? So you can't say definitively that both
are,
like,
what we call
That in this, there's no doubt as a
book?
Well, let's talk about that. I don't wanna
throw people off in terms of will do,
but we'll come back to it. It's okay.
It's a good question. Right?
So here,
where we have now different parts to wudu,
how do you do wudu for people who
know?
Yeah. You start with your intention.
You make an intention.
Great.
And then what do you do?
You
Sorry. You wash your hands. Your right hand
first.
Okay.
Can people see the orange? Yeah. No.
No?
Okay.
Hands and then what?
Oh, your mouth.
Hands and mouth.
Anybody else wanna keep going? Keep watching. After
Just mouth and nose.
So hands,
mouth, nose,
face,
face,
arms up to the elbow,
including hands too. Right?
Wipe the head.
Ears. Wipe the ears.
Shouldn't there be an intention between the nose
and the face?
I'm just gonna write down whatever you say.
So between the nose and the face, another
intention?
Hang up. I guess the the
with the first obligatory act, the intention should
be there. Right?
Okay. Anything else we wanna add on to
here before we start to break it down?
Yeah.
Okay. You go out here.
Great.
So
I'm gonna clean this up a bit, just
so it's, like, the the parts to it.
Parts of the Quran. Okay? That we can
see in the Quran.
So
what do we take from the verse? Like,
what do you see from here in that
verse?
Face.
And,
you see face?
Let's see. Let's do this. I'll put a
x next to it.
Forearms to elbow? Yeah.
Head. Head.
Feet of ankles.
And the hands are default because you're washing
with your hands. Right?
What does this not say?
Mouth and nose. Doesn't say mouth and nose.
Attention. What else of what you said is
not in that verse?
Intentions.
Intention.
Anything else? Like, when you make wudu, what
are the things you do in wudu?
For those who know.
Brush your teeth.
You can wipe out your teeth. Yeah.
What else?
Ears.
Ears.
But what what like,
the
How many times do you watch things? Oh,
3 times. 3 times. Does it say that
in the verse? No. No. Right?
When you are looking at this now, what
they would base this on,
you have different acts
that are considered to be farr.
So, your face,
your arms
to the elbow,
your
feet,
your head.
Go head first.
But the order is not the word I'm
just writing them down. Oh. These are like
the obligatory
things.
Right? What falls now into the recommended
are the order,
the number of times,
the mouth,
and the nose.
And then you have these other add ons
like intention and these kinds of things. You
see what I mean?
You wanna do all of it and we're
gonna teach you how to do all of
it,
but sometimes it's gonna be necessary to understand
what goes into it
piecemeal
because not every situation is gonna be that
you can go
and wash up in a room
that is dedicated to making wudu.
You know, most of you don't have wudu
rooms in the places that you frequent quite
often. Right?
And most of the places you go, if
somebody saw you washing your feet up to
the ankles, look what's this person doing? You
see what I mean? I'm supposed to go
to Turkey on Monday
to do some relief work.
And when I land,
I am gonna take a flight
from Istanbul to the more deeply impacted areas
where it's snowing.
There's rubble.
There's a lot of like just kinda devastation,
I still have to be able to wash
up for prayer
in that situation.
And I have to have a familiarity
that is not something
that
understands
things
just at a surface level.
For those of you who don't have a
relationship with this,
you don't want to
over exert yourself in the onset.
But the idea is to not make things
unnecessarily
easy for the sake of ease. You do
it how it's supposed to be done,
but you understand
that there's different ways of doing it sometimes.
Right? The example
I like to give, and we'll talk about
this in the coming weeks in more detail,
but I just want you to familiarize yourself
with the base of it. There's different types
of water you can make will do with.
Right? Water
is considered to be
through 2 elements and we'll talk about in
more detail, but just get the words in
your head. Right?
The water has to be pure
as well as purifying
for you to make will do.
Two characteristics.
Water that has already been used for wudu
for example is still pure
but you can't reuse it to make wudu.
It's no longer purifying.
Does that make sense?
So
there's different types of water that one can
make will do with
and that water
can, for example, be like from snow.
So I had students
who were sledding in Central Park.
We have a prayer that comes in at
sunset and the window is very small.
Sometimes in the calendar year, especially in the
winter time when it's snowing, it's that much
shorter because the days are so much shorter.
Right?
And they're in the middle of Central Park
surrounded by snow
and they have to figure out how they're
going to make will do. So they called
me and they're like, hey, man. Like, what
do we do? Use the snow. So they
use the snow.
But how do they use snow to make
wudu?
And if somebody teaches you to make wudu
where they say you have to do all
of this
and you have to include all of this,
and
they don't give you an understanding of how
it works,
And these poor kids are gonna be sitting
in Central Park
and what are they gonna be doing? Like
rubbing snow all up and down their body?
They're gonna be taking clumps of snow and
sticking it in their mouth and their nose.
And then
after doing it once, they're like, man, I
gotta do this 3 times?
Right?
Or you're like, no.
This is
the exception.
You want to do this when the capacity
is there and the ease is there. It's
still a spiritual exercise.
But they are going to just do each
thing once, and then we'll talk about also
other ways strategically
that they can make wudu
that doesn't necessitate them having to shove snow
down their socks in, like, sub zero weather.
Right?
Because when I'm going to Turkey,
I'm gonna be in a place where I'm
gonna be
in the middle of, like,
a lot of snowfall, and it's gonna be
cold.
It'd be very easy for somebody to be
like, you you just gotta do it this
way. But if you know
what the rules are,
you're not finding workarounds,
you're understanding
how they apply in different situations
when necessary. Does that make sense?
Does it? Are we sure? Everybody with me?
Yeah? What were you gonna say? I wanted
to say, like, about, like, the turkey stuff.
Like, my mom was, like, telling us, like,
what happened, and she said that, like, she
wanted to, like, go to Turkey. Like, *.
And, like, she actually, like, she wanted to,
like, go with you. And then she's like
she, like, tried to, like, mom,
you, like, emailed me. Right?
She texted me. Yeah. And I told her.
No. But there's a lot of people that
that asked. Right? And that's a beautiful thing.
You should want to go to help people
in their time of need. And one of
the reasons why I'm going is so that
as a community that I serve, I have
to show the people that I serve that
it's important to go and be with people
in their struggle.
Right? To not just kinda be in a
place where if we have the means, it
doesn't mean all of us can go, but
I go on behalf of all of you,
right? I carry your love, I carry everything
that comes,
and it's sometimes necessary to recognize that. Do
you see what I mean?
Right now,
they can't take just generic volunteers. We've never
been in, like, a conflict zone or in
the aftermath of natural disaster.
They're literally in real time right now building
out all of the systems.
You know, there's still aftershocks on the ground
that are bringing down buildings. A lot make
things easy for the people there.
And there's so much more that's going on.
So every person
that kind of responded back to me being
like, can I come with you? Can I
like, that's beautiful? You should want that desire
to come.
Right? That means that, like, you really have
a connection
and that love that's there that's so integral
to faith in Islam.
But they're gonna be in a place where
there's liability concerns, there's other things. They're just
not ready right now to have kinda just
generic volunteers.
But down the line, there's gonna be a
necessity for skill sets, like, other things. And
people forget. Right? It's really easy in the
aftermath of crisis to be like, yeah, I'm
gonna do what I can. But, like, 4
months from now, when those people are still
trying to figure out how to rebuild stuff,
that's when, like, you're gonna really see where,
like, love has continuity to it. Do you
know what I mean? You were gonna say
something else?
I just wanted to say, like, it's probably,
like, common, but, like, I would, like, keep
it in, like, your duas,
like, I've heard in Turkey just because, like,
it's like like that could happen, like, to
us. And it could happen at any time.
You never, like, you never, like, control it.
Yeah. And it's a big part of Islamic
theology.
When you have
an uncertainty of who God is
and you have a discomfort
with an uncertainty of what tomorrow could be,
the 2 unfamiliarities,
they just create chaos inside.
I need to always have control. I need
to always be the one that is in
control.
But when you can now yield to a
divine entity
that you build familiarity
with, and then you recognize that I'm not
the one that's in control. You know?
A friend of mine was in a plane
that, like, dropped substantially in turbulence.
And he said, I, like, freaked out and
I grabbed the, like, armrests.
And then he said, it was crazy that
I was trying to find comfort
in the thing that was making me uncomfortable
in the first place. Right?
So the plane was messing with him and
he was trying to have the plane holding
on to it also bring him ease. Right?
He said that the distress was just, like,
complete,
utter absence of control.
You know? And that really was something he
struggled with. You see what I mean?
Okay.
So, what we wanna do over the next
week or 2 is talk about wudu as
a practice
more concretely.
It's spiritual meanings. Right? This falls under that
category of Ibadah.
It is a prerequisite
to our daily prayer,
but it's still its own act of worship.
So it's not only
a condition for prayer. You see what I
mean? Right? You don't wanna think about it
in a way
that is
kinda more mechanical
and that it's in this list of prerequisites,
but on its own,
it serves a spiritual purpose.
And it isn't something that is only engaged
in prayer,
but it's a necessity
in prayer, but still things you want to
build a relationship with outside of prayer.
We're gonna do
a
quick kinda rundown
of how this functions.
I
got a question. Yeah. What's your question? So,
5¢.
Thinking this question through as I say it
out loud.
But in terms of I think, like, speaking
with myself, right, a lot of it, I've
kind of learned my religion in Islam, especially
as someone who's born into it, as a
very, like, black and white. Right? Like, you
do this, and often times people don't explain
it. You just do it, like, perfect it,
move on. Right? And, like, you're saying the
mechanics of it. Right?
But
it I besides
you have some kind of foundation, obviously, that
even though it's the very black and white
kind of view of it. Right?
But then there's so much more nuance in
it, like you just pointed out. Right? And,
like, you know,
in, like, you talk about, like, disaster zones
and stuff like that, when they you do
have limited
options of, like, how to make lagu and
stuff like that. Right?
And, like, the people in Signal Park. Right?
If we don't have an imamkhale to call
up and say, hey. Like, what do we
do with this? You can call me whenever
you want.
I'm just sitting around. How do people find
those answers? Don't text me. I don't respond
to texting.
If you call me, I'll pick up the
phone. Yeah. Same. But,
how do you find those answers? Just try
your best in certain situations. Right? But you
have to have an ongoing process of learning.
When you have text that teach you practice,
the way, like, when you were younger, somebody
had to teach you, like, 2 +2 equals
4,
wrotely,
perhaps even before they taught it to conceptually.
Right? So I know 2 +2 equals 4,
doesn't mean I understand 2+2
equals 4.
Right? But pedagogically,
you're given certain skills
building up towards something.
So if you have a book that's teaching
you how to pray,
it's because Islam is for everybody
and not everybody's gonna have the opportunity
to engage in something,
especially in particular stages of their life.
But you'll have a text that's like a
primer text,
And it'll just give you a list, this
is what you do.
It'll break it down the way we did,
right, and even more. You know, these are
things that are disliked. These are things that
are, like, more recommended, etcetera.
But the idea won't be to, like, walk
through it step by step to
say this, like, is what that means tangibly
or practically
for you necessarily.
Right?
I don't want that to be the case
for you
Because I sit down with people,
like,
every week,
many people take their shahada here, masha'Allah.
And there's so many more people who are
born into Islam
where like they don't know,
like, how to distill in certain ways. Right?
Do you see what I'm saying? Mhmm. And
we wanna do that differently because we wanna
learn and some of that's gonna be unlearning
as we learn. You know.
Does that make sense?
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yes.
And if you just do it the way
that you were taught,
it's still fine.
Right? Yes. But also, like, you're right. I
think, like, obviously, like I said, there's some
kind of foundation and some kind of understanding
there, right? But you get to a place
which is
where Well then the primer text grows into,
like, an intermediate text.
The intermediate text goes into an advanced text.
Right? So there's, like, a Hanafi text. The
Hanafi school is a legal school of thought
in Sunni Islam.
It's called Danim ul Haqq.
Right? It's like a primer text in Hanafi
fiqh.
It's just gonna be a list of, like,
stuff.
Then you go, there's a text called Nurul
Hidah.
Right? There's a text that's translated into
English,
ascent to felicity.
Right?
And
you then have like an advanced text is
called the Hidiah.
And when you read it, it assumes that
you read those other books and understood them.
You know what I mean?
But when you get to a place where
like,
it's just by a certain age, I learned
certain things, and then the kinda
heaviness and busyness of the world
tells me there's not more room to engage
in it. Well then that's, like, gonna be
part of the problem. You see what I
mean? Yeah. Go ahead.
For me, it's usually, like, if I'm stressed
or something, is actually the hardest part. It's,
like, just getting up and doing that. I'm
like, if I don't have to do, I
could pray
ironically in my head. But, yeah, this is
a difficult,
like, hurdle to get over it.
Yeah. It's it's tough. Sometimes, like, getting off
and, like, hanging off or not and just
putting on, like,
Sometimes, like, getting off and,
like, putting off the hot and just putting
on my prayer dress and, like, I just
want You just what? I just wanna, like,
lay in bed and, like, like, can I
just be Christian?
Pray however you want and like, I could
just pray in my room and my bed.
Now, there's kind of like a system like
that.
And this is hard,
right, for anyone who's in the room who
is a convert
and can relate in these ways. Right? I'm
not a convert,
you know? I've sat down with thousands of
people who've converted, my wife's a convert.
Despite having a deep intimate relationship with someone
who's a convert and sitting with people at
this pivotal decision in their life, I still
couldn't tell you what it's like to actually
do it. I think the advantage of being
in a room like this, where there's others,
who if they want to, like, share personally
or give insight, you know, it could be
helpful in that way. Right? Yeah. I was
gonna say I'm not a convert. I was
born into it, and, I think it's a
great challenge. It's legitimate.
It's valid. Dare I say, god, forgive me
for not saying anything wrong. It's we're just
talking about how we feel. Right? I think
what brother Khalid said is, there's just zudu
I think it's just like a lot of
other things where there's a preliminary understanding, there's
challenge, and you evolve, and you grow, and
you're not the same all the time in
different parts of your life. I can tell
you for me, I was gonna ask that
for
the same thing. You know, how do you
kinda balance? So there's more of the we're
trying we're talking about a balance here of,
like, the literalist
kind of perspective where
on on one hand, there is no two
ways. Right? If the Quran says it, like
we just read, it's very powerful. Right? Straight
text from the Quran,
it describes wudu.
So it's kinda one of those things where
it's black and white. Not everything is, but
that is. So So in that way, we
can't really dispute it or question
it. But at the same time, we acknowledge
that sometimes
the only thing between you and your prayer
is a buddhu. Well, it always is, I
guess, the pudu, but that can be a
deterrent. And I I feel guilty even saying
this out loud, but, like, for my kids
even here, they're like, they we don't have
to do it. We can just pray. Right?
That's right. But even for adults, they're not
like, oh, this is cute. So I think
okay. Not these kids, but this is a
journey. It's a journey. And it's really difficult,
but I think that it changes along the
path, but to whatever extent it has any
value, it's not just a convert issue at
all. Like, this is all, we've seen in
our family,
and it's hard. And it and sometimes it's
not hard for a long time, and then
it gets a little hard, and then it's
not hard again. You know? The acclimation process
is going to be rooted in your humanness.
Right?
Like, look at the way this country
enacts prohibition
or emancipation
of slaves. Right? Slavery is a pre modern
concept also.
And what you find in the Quran, as
well as in the prophetic tradition, is that
when somebody made a mistake,
they were told to emancipate
a slave,
you know.
And in this country,
when emancipation was proclaimed,
not only did it not stop, but an
economy was built so much on it that
people literally went to war because of
it. You see, prohibition is enacted
and people didn't stop. They were now bootlegging
and creating, like, more challenges.
All over the Muslim community, when it's being
revealed Islam,
everybody is setting people free, emancipating them because
everybody kept making mistakes.
Right? And God is the creator of his
creation, understanding how we develop humanly,
is in a place where he is now
attaching to a mistake,
still a noble and necessary act,
that fundamentally is breaking down something that's unjust,
but giving us an example
that like certain things are gonna be hard
and you're gonna struggle and you're gonna make
mistakes with them. If you go from a
place where you have religion
that doesn't have the same structure to religion
that does,
you're gonna
need to be
willing to understand the love of God and
how it applies to, like, self love and
self forgiveness.
Not be, like, hard and difficult.
Why people really relish in reading stories of
the companions of the prophet.
My brother-in-law is a convert to Islam.
And he said he connected very deeply to
the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. But
he said reading the stories of the companions
as a convert
was so helpful to him
because he saw people who in their sheer
vulnerability,
they were not perfect.
They were making mistakes. They were struggling with
things and that's just a part of it.
Do you see what I mean?
I would love to build opportunity for us
to also have individualized
conversation,
where we can look at the specifics that
go into your days and your
routines and think out how those become applicable
here. You were gonna say something? I was
just thinking around all this like just shame.
Right? How much is shame just like
generally,
grafted into society.
You know, in so many spaces we inhabit.
And,
you know, part of this you were you
were talking about last week,
2 weeks ago.
Yeah.
Just how much so so much of that
is, like, learned. Right? And
from what I'm I'm I'm gathering, what I'm
learning, like, Allah does not want me to
feel shame. Right? Or it like that that
would not be
a
that's where I'm gathering. Like an unhealthy shame.
Yeah. Yeah. Do you know what I mean?
And that's a beautiful thing. Right? If there's
literally, like,
psychologically
cycles of shame
that we just live in constantly,
you know? And if you have this cycle
of shame
that is pushing people
into
different
modes of experience,
like, when somebody is in a place of
shame,
they can do a bunch of things. They
can, like, blame,
they can avoid,
Right? They can be in a place where
they,
I'm trying to think of words. Right? Like,
if if you and I, if you borrowed
my car, right? Or I borrowed your car,
and I drove it down the street, and
I came back, and there was a dent
in it. You know, my cycle of shame
could have me in a place where like,
I just give you the keys, I don't
say anything.
You know.
And I just go sit in a room
and that's it.
My cycle of shame could have me like
fight with you.
And I could say, well, why'd you give
me the car in the first place? You
know. Or like, it's your fault. You should
have driven me. Right?
I could be in a place where I
exist in like these different modes. It's escaping
my head now what the other groupings are.
But you know what I'm talking about. If
you ever argue with someone or how to
fight with somebody or somebody blames you with
something, we live in these cycles of shame,
but what breaks a cycle of shame is
going to be
like empathy
and love.
And this is why this can't be like
a fluffy thing. This is why Islam talks
about it so much. Right? You break cycles
of shame through this.
All of this has to be connected back
to God at the end of the day.
Right? And if Islam becomes something that many
converts experience this, Everything is about God, then
you become Muslim,
then nobody talks about God anymore.
It's just about the do's and the don'ts
and the mechanics of things. Right? People bring,
like, all kinds of people to me. They're
like, there's this problem and that problem. My
family member this, my kid this, you know,
this and that. Right? It's like all you
gave to them was just the black and
white. That's a part of it, but there's
so much more to it. You see what
I mean?
Does that make sense? Yeah. The thing the
thing that was in my head was when
you were talking about 2 weeks ago about
when it goes from,
you know, happenstance
or, you know, slip ups to consistency.
Right? And that intention and self awareness,
and and how that would play into our
shamed flow and and maybe not,
filling sort of these guidelines,
lines,
right, with our great outlook for us. And
it's so much easier to find the drive
to do when there's, like, positivity
behind it. You know? And that intention becomes
deep. We'll talk about this more,
next week. I'm sorry. I know every time
there's things that I say we're gonna do
and we kinda are going slow, but I
think it's important. Right? We wanna build kind
of a concrete foundation,
and then you have things and things will
come up. Because you don't have to jump
to name them right away.
You let yourself sit on it for a
couple of days
and then,
you know, pay attention back. Like, why did
this rise up for me? Between this week
and next week, you can just look up
how to make will do. Right? And then
we'll start going through the steps here,
and kinda walking through it. I'm not gonna
be here next Wednesday,
but,
Khaled and Angie and Solomon who run our
converts group, they're gonna together, like, kinda
create what is gonna happen here next Wednesday.
So definitely come. And when you're thinking about,
like, your wudu, just try to practice it
so that when you're coming, you can think
like, okay, what are some of the challenges?
And if not next week, 2 weeks from
now, we can think about that on a
scenario level. Right? Where you wanna say like,
okay, it's not that simply here. This is
what it says. How do I function as
a Muslim like this in a world that
is not Muslim,
right? Nobody in my firm is Muslim.
Nobody in my department is Muslim.
Nobody in my place of work is Muslim.
They don't do these things, but the structures
are not built for them. Right? The sink
in my company bathroom
is not something I can literally lift my
foot into. You know? We used to have
bathrooms here before they made these wudu rooms.
Right? Where the sinks literally kept breaking and
crashing.
Because all these Muslim people are sticking their
foot in it and they're putting all their
weight on it. Nobody built a sink thinking
that some human being was gonna do that.
Right? And it's just you think. You've ever
been here for Jumab before, you know, you
think about, it's like 700, 800 people
every week. Every day, how many people? They're
just putting all their body weight. This thing
just keeps crashing and crashing. I'm like, hey,
man. Just build some wudu rooms. Right? Because
we're gonna keep doing it. What do you
want us to do? You know? But when
you're in your office place now, you're not
an 18 year old kid who is super
entitled and thinks like, well, they should just
build another thing for me anyway, right? You
know, like, yeah, that's how the world works.
You know?
In your in your place of work, and
it's, like, what will these people think of
me?
You know, how do I do this here?
Right? We wanna talk about those things in
specific. But if you come with the specifics,
it'll help us to kinda navigate it with
more nuance. Does that make
sense? Any questions before we wrap up?
I wanna make sure we end before 9.
Yeah. I just phoned about, like, the those
things that are more nuanced that weren't actually
in the thing that Quran that we read.
Is that, like, hadith or is it, like
Those come from the hadith. Right? And they're
emphasized practices of the prophet.
So the default is you wanna always do
every part. You wanna follow the order. In
Arabic, what we call tardib.
Right? There's a order to it. There's a
reason there's a order to it. The number
of times,
the inclusion of the mouth and the nose.
These are all, like, sunnah practices,
but they are things that, like, the prophet
would do with regularity.
The only reasons
where we are seeing that he doesn't do
them is to establish that they're not,
like, at the level of obligation.
Do you know? And there's gonna be instances,
right, that there are gonna be certain things
that come into play.
And it's not just like you're going into
a natural disaster zone, right?
If you're in your place of work,
we can help you build strategy
as to how you can do this with
comfort and it starts to create ease for
you
and you're not doing anything that's watered down
like it's in our religious tradition. You don't
have to feel, like, guilty or bad about
it. There's certain things that come. Right? When
you wash your head, for example, you know,
in the Hanafi school,
you have a minimum of washing, like, a
fourth of your head, is the,
in other schools, we won't get into them.
It's even less than that. Right? So if
you're somebody who wears a scarf in public,
for example, I don't know if if you
do or not, but if you do, you
know, and you're in this place that's, like,
new and you're trying to figure out, how
do I do this, like, in this bathroom?
I gotta, like,
unravel everything and then, like, rattle it up
again. It's like, no. Right? Where there are
these mechanisms,
you kind of can do things in places
that are still fulfilling, like, the requirements of
it, and they
diminish the anxiety,
which is like a tool of shaytan. He
wants you to be stressed when you come
to prayer, but, like, prayer is supposed to
bring you, like, relief, not anxiety. Do you
see what I mean? And so we wanna
workshop these things so we're all on the
same page as to how we can do
them. Do you get what I'm saying? Does
that make sense? Right? So the idea is
like, yeah, in a normal routine, you come
to this center, there's a wudu room right
there, right, and just get it done. You
know? Do the whole thing, the order it's
supposed to be done, the number of times
it's supposed to be done,
and that's a blessing. And it'll be that
much better to do it here when you
realize, like, how difficult it is in these
other places. You know? But we don't want
you to be in a place where the
struggle is something that doesn't have to be
necessary
because we can also give you tools and
techniques on how you can do that when
you're in these places that weren't built necessarily
with an understanding of, like, what we do.
And a lot of people are nice. Right?
People will be like, you could pray in
this room, but they can't convert a sink
into, like, a foot bath. You know? How
would they do that? Yeah.
I have a question in regards
to what they mean by a wash in
particular. Like like this
does that involve, like like, scrubbing or can
it be padding? Something that I've noticed that
I've done and sometimes that I feel, like,
so bad about it is that whenever I
have
like, whenever I put in a lot of
effort in my makeup, I realize that when
I do my face for the wudu, I
just do I tap. But, otherwise, I don't
Yeah. So I was wondering if that's actually
getting nice.
We're gonna go through it in detail.
The idea with the Wudu as principle
is that every one of these parts that
we listed,
water has to touch them in full. Right?
You don't wanna miss parts.
So the challenge isn't with makeup in and
of itself,
but anything that's a potential barrier
to any part
of one of these parts that we talked
about
of the the obligatory
parts. Right? So say, for example,
somebody is wearing Invisalign.
Does anybody wear Invisalign?
Nobody wears Invisalign? Great. Let's pretend I wear
Invisalign. I don't. I got a really crooked
tooth. Right? But let's say I wore Invisalign.
I
can theoretically
rinse out my mouth
and still keep the Invisalign in
because the mouth is not from the obligatory
parts to it. Do you know?
And it wouldn't invalidate
the wudu if I did that.
Do you see what I mean?
But
if I am now
trying to wash my arm
that is explicitly mentioned, like the arm in
its entirety.
What happens a lot, you know, if we're
looking at our arms,
is when people make wudu,
they're like bringing their arm like this. Right?
A lot of times, you know, I like
put my arm under the sink and my
arm is like this. Sometimes maybe like this.
When you're doing it like this,
quite often,
people miss this part because it's folded up.
Right?
The whole arm also has to have water
flow over it
and in its entirety.
So if I'm wearing my beads or a
watch,
there's a chance that that's gonna prevent water
from hitting this part. Do you see what
I mean? So the challenge isn't with the
makeup per se,
but the challenge is with the barrier that's
preventing the water from hitting the part that
it needs to. Do you get what I
mean? Does that make sense? Right? I don't
wear makeup on my face.
I used to do a lot more media.
Was on TV a lot more. Right? Now
nobody wants to talk to me, so it
doesn't happen as much. But I used to
have, like, a lot of, like, makeup put
on my face in different times.
And
it was weird because I had my Koofy
on, and
they were, like, try to powder in different
ways, and they didn't know, like, you know,
powder would get on the Koofy, and it'd
be like, what do we do? Like, it
was very,
totally off topic.
But, like, you know, when they would pull
this stuff off,
they give me these wet wipes. I'm like,
man, how much stuff did you put on
my face? Like, what? Do I look that
bad that you had to put all of
this stuff on my face?
If it's not porous
and it doesn't allow for the water to
touch what needs to be touched,
then the wudu is not considered to be
complete.
You know? And this is why I said
to you before in the beginning,
if somebody tells you it's not that big
a deal,
this is where they're wrong.
Right?
Because it's not based off of just I
think, I feel, it's a God centric religion
and it's
done in the way that it's said to
be done.
So for, you know, men who have thick
beards, beards that are long, beards that extend,
it's not just a simple washing over their
face. You gotta, like, stick your hands into
your beard, get the water into there. Right?
Because
getting this wet
doesn't mean that I got, like, the skin
wet. You see what I mean? Does that
make sense?
And that's where, like, the thoroughness of it
is. Right? So if we were to go
through it, like you're washing your hands, you
wanna interlock your fingers.
Right? So that water is getting in between,
like, each of the digits. I have to
take my rings off when I make will
do. You don't wanna leave it to chance.
This is a spiritual act. Right?
You want to remove, like, everything that has
to be done. You're gonna
interlock
our hands. Right?
And as you're walking through things, you think.
Right? This is what you wanna conceptualize when
you go home between this week and next
week.
When I'm, like, washing different parts. Right? When
I said to Khalid earlier today, like, a
lot of people when they wash their face
and they go like this,
they forget, like, this part of their face
right here.
You know? The part that, you know, for
me, for example, is between my sideburn and
my ear. This is like a part of
my face. You know what I mean? But
if I'm going like this, you can see
I didn't touch that part of my face.
Right?
That's mindfulness,
like, requires, like, an understanding. Like, okay. You
know? You're doing your feet what we're taught
in the same way. You take your left
hand and you're gonna put them between each
digit
of your feet so the water is reaching
it. When it says, like, up to the
elbows, it means, like, up to your elbows.
Do you know? When it says up to
your ankles, you, like, go up to your
ankles. You see what I mean? Does that
make sense?
Right? And the presence in it is important.
You know?
Do you get does that does that make
sense? Does that answer your question?
Yeah?
Yeah. Oh, I know we're short on pride,
but, like, I just recently started when I
did the job, and I found, like
so I this is based on what, like,
the
clip of your head. Can you, like, elaborate
on that? Because, like, I found, like, a
new challenge, like, what I'm trying to, like,
do do in public. And I'm just, like,
like you said, like, unwrapping and, like, the
under cap off, and I'm like, oh, then
you have to put it all Yeah. Back
on. Like, you you said, 1 fourth? Like,
can you In the Hanafi school, the base,
like, requirement of your head is a quarter
of the head.
Right? And so you could take, like, these
4 fingers and literally, like, wipe them over
a 4th of your head, and the Hanafi
school, that suffices. In other schools,
there are also, like, some that it's, like,
even less than that. Do you know?
It doesn't mean that that's, like, the default.
You know what I'm saying?
I can never know what it's like to
wear hijab, right, as a woman. Do you
know what I mean? I wear a kufi
and, you know, it's not the same. Right?
It's it's just not. I make hoodoo and
there's like the number of times I, like,
see guys staring at me and I'm like,
what are you doing, bro? They're like, I've
never seen you without a Kufy on before.
We didn't know what your head looked like.
I was like, this is it's just what
are you talking about? You know what I
mean? It's still not the same. Do you
know what I mean? We as religious minorities
are had
to
I had to spend like years of my
life being the only Muslim in many rooms
and a ton of people looking for a
reason to say why I don't belong.
So I couldn't dress improperly.
I had to be the most eloquent because
everybody was scrutinizing
every word. Right? When you put on a
scarf,
it essentially is in a place where it
draws, like, more attention to you when you're
walking down the street. And people have different
expectations to you that I can't imagine, like,
what that's like. And they'll all make it
easy. Then you're in a place where you're
like, man, I gotta, like, keep doing this
and keep doing that. And other people would
tell you, like, yeah. This is your job.
You gotta do no, man. You're trying to
pray to God. You know what I'm saying?
Right?
You don't have to, like, be the burden
of representing every Muslim all the time for
your whole world. That's why we wanna, like,
go through it in these ways So I'm
not just giving you a list and then
tell you go figure it out on your
own, but we can bring, like, that aspect
now that says, let's learn from each other's
experiences
and how in certain settings we're able to
engage in what we need to and still
speak to, like, some of the realities that
we're facing. Do you see what I mean?
Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead.
Probably just
an awkward question.
Is it possible to complete wudio in the
shower if you have your intention? Or Yeah.
So you need intention. Right?
That's that's what it is, and that's where
we'll talk about intention.
Intention is what is a big part of
Islam.
When you pray, for example,
our morning prayer,
there's 2 sets
of 2 cycles of prayer.
Right? And they are prayed exactly the same.
One categorically
is recommended. The other is obligatory.
The only thing that makes them different is
the intention that's made when you pray them.
Right?
You can jump in the shower and wash
everything because all of that can be done,
but you need the express intention.
Otherwise, it's just a shower. Do you see
what I mean? Right? It's important to add
that element into it fundamentally.
Does that make sense? Right? Like because it's
still a spiritual act. Do you know? There's
different people who would tell
you, like, if the intention's not there,
the, like,
wudu is still valid in that way because
you still essentially washed everything
and the intention wasn't from the expressed obligations
of it. You see what I mean? But
you wanna be in a habit where, like,
wherever you are, you're making the intention. Right?
And that intention can have multiple facets. This
wudu is an act of worship. Right? I'm
intending
through this to, like, worship God. Right? This
is a way for me to get, you
know, to emulate the actions of the prophet
Muhammad, peace be upon him. So I'm intending
to follow the sunnah of the prophet. Right?
Practicing a sunnah of the prophet is an
act of worship in and of itself. Right?
There's so many more that we can kinda
bring to it in that way. Yeah.
Yeah. Go ahead. Just wanna say, just another,
you know, in in tapping into Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala's mercy and compassion, you can sometimes
fall down a rabbit hole where it's like,
you know what? An imperfect wudu is not
gonna invalidate my prayer because my attention is
good. I'm trying to say my prayer just
like kind of a if we had to
hire you know, you kind of you can't
help but make a hierarchy. You know, prayer
is the most important. Wado might not be
perfect, but at least I'm trying to pray.
And it's not quite that simple. Right? Like
you said, it's an act of worship in
itself. In fact, it's important. You gotta get
it right. But another way that I've tried
when I struggle to try to think of
it is you're presenting yourself before God. Sure.
So, you know, you go to an interview
or you go to a wedding or you
go, you know, how much effort we put
into our presentation
or our, you know, kind of whole
readiness.
So
that we've got connection and that love,
you know, between
the creator and yourself that can kinda motivate
you also to kind of go forward in
your best form,
you know. Yeah. That's another way to And
if you find that, like, you're making a
mistake, you just remedy the mistake. Okay. I'm
gonna stop because I said we'd stop before
9 and it's like 858.
We'll still do something next week, and it
might build off of this, but come back
next week and try to practice some of
these things in between. Right?
The wudu is a spiritual state. There's a
benefit to just trying to be in wudu
as much as you can. You know, we'll
talk about what breaks your wudu, why you
have to remake it. You don't have to
keep doing it before every prayer. You can
maintain, like, one state of wudu for the
entirety of a day. You know, and we'll
talk about some of this, right? Like, how
our eating habits impact some of these things,
our sleeping habits impact some of these things,
and where and how we wanna see how
all of us connects to the rest of
us.
But come with, like, also just things like
what you just said. Right? And I appreciate
your vulnerability because it'll help us to map
out, you know, scenarios
that we can then kinda anticipate.
And as people are kinda getting deeper in
their connection to this, it'll help them think
out things that they might not be thinking
of. Right?
Okay. Alright. Salaam Alaikum. We'll see everyone.