Khalid Latif – First Steps Essentials of Islam #04
AI: Summary ©
The importance of wixing in Islam is emphasized, including the use of words to describe actions and the need for mindfulness. The act is designed to remove fat from the body and is designed to be done at a minimum. Pr practicing and avoiding frills is also emphasized, including avoiding spitting out the water at the same time and not being in a situation where one is trying to be the other. respect for people is also discussed, including avoiding slapping one's feet and not being in a situation where one is trying to be the other.
AI: Summary ©
So,
we didn't meet last week.
I'm sorry about that. I was out of
the country.
But where we left off 2 weeks ago,
we
were having a conversation
on,
Wudu.
Does anybody remember the verse from the Quran?
Which one it was that we looked at?
That talked about wudu?
Was
it
Sirmida
verse
5?
Was it Sirmida
verse 5?
Yeah. Close. Really good. Versa. Yeah. It was
verse 6. If you would wanna pull that
up, if you have it on your phone
or if you have, like, a copy
and a translation, it's fine. We'll work with
a translation.
Yeah. Can you read it out loud?
Do you who believe when you're about to
pray, wash your faces and your hands and
your arms up to your elbows, wipe your
heads, wash your feet to your ankles, and
if required, wash your whole body.
That's
fine.
So this was the verse that became the
base of the performance of Wudu
and what we're hoping to do today is
just go through an actual process,
like water in front of me, through a
bucket.
I'm like super jet lag, just so you
know, and,
I'm gonna ask somebody to volunteer.
I'm not gonna like wash you, you will
like do yourself,
essentially.
But just so we could go through it
step by step
and we can understand the actual process that's
there.
What you want to understand about this as
a practice
is that it's its own ritual in Islam.
Right? So a couple of weeks ago, we
introduced two terms.
We talked about ebadah,
which is worship,
right? And that there's 2 broader categories
that we study when you're studying
like legal rulings in Islam.
You study what are called Ibadat,
the worship,
you know, your prayer and fasting and charity,
etcetera.
And then you have Muhamalat,
which are like kind of your interactions
with the people around you, so to speak.
In the early part of Islam,
before
anything was mandated,
We have in our tradition narration that the
angel Gabriel, peace be upon him,
comes to the prophet Muhammad,
peace and blessings be upon him, while he
is in Mecca
and he teaches him
how to pray,
like our ritual prayer.
And probably in like a week or 2,
we'll start talking about the ritual prayer.
But in this instance,
before the angel Gabriel shows the prophet how
to pray, he teaches him how to make
wudu first.
Right? So the very first
ritual practice
that the prophet Muhammad is taught and that
he performs
is arguably the act of wudu.
At that time,
wudu and prayer are not
mandated
in the ways that
we see them mandated in Medina.
So if you remember, we talked some weeks
ago
that
the
actual community is established
in Medina
that allows now for certain things to happen
that couldn't happen in Mecca,
where they didn't have a base, they were
persecuted.
And so in Mecca, when the prophet is
taught how to pray,
both for himself but for others at that
time, because there's verses in the Quran
that talk about prayer that were revealed in
Mecca,
these are, like, recommended
prayers. They're, like, extra prayers. They're not obligatory
prayers. Right? So you wanna start to piece
together
the words that we've been talking about. Right?
Obligation,
the word farad.
Right,
something that is recommended, mustahab,
an established prophetic practice,
sunnah muakada,
something that is disliked, makru,
something that is
impermissible,
strictly prohibited religiously, haram.
So the prayers that the people were praying
in Mecca in the very beginning,
they weren't obligatory prayers.
These were just extra prayers that they were
doing, but the angel Gabriel came and taught
the prophet Muhammad
how to
perform the prayer
and before that he showed him how to
make wudu,
how to wash up for the prayer.
Because a prerequisite
for the validity of the prayer
is that you have
a state of ritual purity which is wudu.
So if I didn't have wudu,
I just used the restroom,
you know, I was asleep for the night
and I woke up and I said, I'm
just gonna pray without making wudu.
Somebody could say to me, well, that doesn't
count. It's not valid.
Its validity
necessitates
the prerequisite
state of will do.
These aren't things to kind of be
mechanical about alone, but the mechanics are important
to it.
There was one
anecdote that we discussed that came from the
prophetic tradition
that involved the 2 grandsons of the prophet
Muhammad,
peace be upon them all, Hassan and Hussain,
where they see an older companion
who is making mistakes in wudu.
And so they seek to
teach him, but with some etiquette. This is
their elder. So one says to the other,
let's
pretend like we're having a competition,
ask him to judge who makes wudu the
best, and in the course of that, one
of them makes the mistake,
They start to go back and forth on
it and at the end, the elder companion,
he is grateful to them that they have
taught him something
without necessarily taking away some of his dignity.
Right? There's a certain wisdom to giving counsel
that's there.
But
one of the things that was there was
that this is also
a person who lived during the time of
the prophet
and was making mistake in the performance of
the wudu.
There's another narration
where
there is a man who is making wudu
and he's got his foot leaning against the
ground as the water is pouring. Right? They
didn't have running water the way that we're
blessed to have running water when we make
wudu.
And so they would make wudu and they
literally had like a wudu pot. Right? Like
a woodoo. It didn't look like this. So,
it wasn't like this plastic
neon, like, whatever color this is. Right? But
there was
a vessel that held the water
and you want to conceptualize.
If you've ever done this for yourself, washed
up for prayer and you're washing limbs, think
about what you would do if you didn't
have running water
and you were doing this and there was
like a cup, so to speak,
that you were pouring the water out of.
And so this person
is making will do and has got his
foot on the ground as he is washing
his foot. Right? Because we wash our feet
when we make wudu.
And, you know, we're gonna go through the
steps. And as the water is pouring on
his foot,
it doesn't get on the back of his
ankle.
And the prophet sees this and he has
the water go on the top part of
his foot. It doesn't
go towards the back of his ankle.
And the prophet says to him
essentially
like that you gotta protect your ankles from
the nod, from like the fire. Right? You
can't be careless or lax in this practice.
Every single piece of the limbs that have
to be washed or wiped
have to be washed and wiped in full.
It's not that you just go through it
kinda
carelessly
or mechanically,
it's a spiritual act.
The prophetic tradition mentions a lot about
wudu
in and of itself. Right? And we're just
gonna call it wudu
because you wanna familiarize yourself with some of
the Arabic terminology.
1, because the English translations are just words
we don't use. If you go in the
hallway,
the nice people who built us these wudu
rooms call them ablution rooms. Right? I have
never said to anybody
that, hey, what are you doing? And my
response is, I'm abluting right now. Right? It's
not like a term that we utilize. Do
you know what I mean?
There are certain words that can carry over
and should into multiple languages.
Woldhu is one of those words.
Right? So just want to get familiar with
it. I'm gonna I'm making my wudu. Right?
I'm performing wudu. It's a spiritual act.
The mechanics of it are attached to a
spiritual element.
In Islam as a tradition, everything falls into
these categories that we talked about. If you
remember, when we discussed them, they're called the
akham of sharia.
Right?
What's on this end?
Haram.
Right? This is what does it mean?
Yeah. Strictly prohibited.
What's over here?
Fard.
Fard. Some people will say wajib.
This means obligatory.
What's in the middle?
The
clothes?
No.
What's that?
These are neutral acts.
Most acts fall into this category.
What's to the left of it?
Makuru. Makuru is gonna be over here.
These are disliked.
And you must have
these are recommended. Sorry. My English is off.
And then you can have, like, a branch
here that is the Sunnam Waqidah.
These are like confirmed practices of the prophet.
Right? There's some nuance to this.
All of this
theoretically is what's permissible.
On this side is what is not permissible.
So there's a category that's haram, it's prohibited.
The spiritual
benefit of making will do,
what the prophetic tradition teaches us,
is that as you wash each limb,
you are essentially washing away
the Haram committed by those limbs.
And you go in in a state of
mindfulness, not in a state of anxiety. In
a state where you have awareness and consciousness
that the things that your hands have done
that they should not have done.
You're washing up to your limbs,
your elbows, your face, what the eye see.
Literally, you want the water to hit every
part because it's a spiritual cleansing
of the things that your ears have heard.
Right? Do you get what I'm saying?
There's narrations in our tradition
that at the end of today, we didn't
talk about Malik and Malik and Malik.
We're talking about the names of God
and we're trying to do is go through
the first chapter of the Quran, Surah Fateha,
that many of you are gonna, like, build
a relationship with and memorize.
So we talked about Rahman and Rahim.
Right? We talked about the word Rub. And
if you were not here for those sessions,
you can look at the recordings or I
could talk to you and we can meet
later. So one of the next verses in
that chapter says, Madakhi Omid Din, the master
of the Day of Judgment.
The Day of Judgment
is a theological
kinda
belief that we have. Remember in day 1,
we said there's 3 things that you believe
in theologically
that make you Muslim.
Right? Pure monotheism,
there's one God. The finality of Prophet Hinn,
the Prophet Muhammad,
and an afterlife. Right? And things that stem
from these things.
So one of the spiritual
consequences
of wudu
is that on the day of judgment,
the people who perform wudu,
they are going to have their limbs like
glistening and shining.
They're going to stand bright on the day
of judgment
amongst
the companions and the the ummah of the
prophet Muhammad
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam that it literally,
like, becomes a source of light.
And this is derived from
our prophetic tradition.
And you have then mentioned in the hadith
as well like Arabic is really beautiful as
a language.
English is also really beautiful like if we
spoke it in a beautiful way. Right?
In Arabic
when you have
like descriptions of the people on the day
of judgment,
one of the ways the prophet sallallahu alaihi
wasallam
describes
the people
who make their wudu on the day of
judgment,
he calls them aluhur.
And then he follows that with
Al Muhajaloon.
The word in Arabic refers to a horse
that
if any do any of you ride horses
or have familiarity with horses? We're from New
York City.
Has anybody seen a horse before? You know
what a horse is? Yeah. Yeah. Great.
Only a few people are nodding their heads.
So a horse is an animal
that
essentially the
is a specific type of horse
that it's not one color,
but going down the front of its face
is this kind of light streak
that breaks apart the rest of the color
and it's noted amongst horses is just having
this distinct beauty to it. Right? It creates
like this
regalness to it. If you've ever seen a
horse that's like this
and
are
then
referring to other streaks
that are going across the horse's body
that add to its majesticness and its beauty.
And this is what the people on the
day of judgment are being described as who
make wudu.
That in reference to their limbs, their faces,
the way that there's a certain striking nature
of luminosity
that comes from the wudu and its performance,
the spiritual consequence is that there's just gonna
be light
emanating from every limb of the persons who
perform their wudu
with a certain
level of accuracy
and treated it as it was actually a
spiritual act.
And why these 2 hadith are important that
we talked about, is you don't want to
get to a place
where
you
are
mindless in an act that necessitates mindfulness
for spiritual gain.
Some of us could go and sit in
a bathroom,
any type of sink,
and even those of you who are just
familiarizing yourself with the practice,
you're gonna get to a point where it's
gonna just come like this.
You can perform your wudu in seconds.
The whole idea is to be in a
state of self control that says, I don't
want to perform it in seconds.
Those of you who are learning how to
perform wudu for the first time
and the certain care that you have and
kind of the
sense of, I'm gonna pull out my notes
and go through it, You wanna have that
same endearment
every time you perform will do.
And get to a place where it actually
is not seen only in connection to your
prayer because it's so much more than that.
It's its own
spiritual act. It's its own
practice. Its own ritual. Does that make sense?
So we talk about the different elements now
to we'll do before we do a walk
through.
There's gonna be certain ones that fit into
the category of what is obligatory.
So there's gonna be obligatory.
We're gonna have what is,
confirmed
sunnah.
Right? This is what the prophet alaihi sallam
did.
And then you're gonna have another breakdown of
what is recommended.
And then things that are disliked.
Okay. Does anybody remember what we said was
from the fart
last time?
Just straight out the verse
that we looked at. Yeah. Ankles.
Your ankles.
Great.
So let's put ankles down here.
You're gonna wash your feet
up to the ankles.
What else?
Washing your face?
You're gonna wash your face?
Anything else?
I can't hear you. I'm sorry.
Hands. Hands?
Yeah. So, the hands are gonna go in
this category.
But we're looking at what's obligatory,
like, from
just from that verse, the 6th
verse of the 5th chapter. Your head.
Your
head.
I guess you can include the hands and
the arms because it's a part of your
hands. So sorry about that. Yeah. Hands, arms,
these are what's gonna be, like, obligatory.
You have to do this.
This is the minimum.
We don't want to aspire
towards the minimum.
You want to be in a place though,
where as you learn this, you learn its
components
because there will be times where
you have to adapt
and you can't
forego it as a practice
because it's necessary to perform your prayer.
Right?
So you want to know what are the
base minimums of
the performance of this so you can get
through it. So the obligatory aspects of it,
you're gonna wash the whole face.
Remember last time I said like we're trying
to what the people would do when they
read these verses, they would try to define
what does these words mean,
right? So the face in our tradition
goes from your forelock, the top of your
forehead
to the bottom of your chin.
And it's going to go to where your
ears begin.
A lot of people when they make wudu,
they miss this part of their face.
You're gonna do the whole part of your
face,
Right? And you're washing
the face. You take water in your hands
and you're going to have the water
wash over your face, which is different from
wiping.
We'll contrast it because you wipe the head,
but you wash the face.
Does it make
sense? We sure?
Yes? Yeah? Great.
So this whole thing is your face,
Right? This is my face.
If I have a beard, you see my
beard is kind of I don't know how
long this is. Right?
But,
if you have a beard,
you're gonna also need to get into like
the bottom of the beard, so to speak.
Right?
But we're talking about the base elements that
are obligatory.
So the face in its entirety.
The top of your forehead to the bottom
of your chin
to where the ears start, your earlobes. Does
it make sense?
Okay.
Then from there, you're gonna wash the arms
up to your elbows. This is a second
obligatory
part
of the wudu.
So from
finger
to elbow
and washing
is a specific thing that has to be
defined.
Washing isn't you take water and you rub
it on your arm, but the water is
flowing over your arm.
And we're gonna talk about the rubbing aspect
to this
when we get to,
like, what goes into the recommended and confirmed,
but the water has to flow over it
in its entirety.
And you're gonna go from the tip of
your finger
to up to and including your elbow.
There's a narration where a companion of the
prophet, his name is Abu Huraira
Right? He's called Abu Huraira
because he had a love for cats
and it's embedded in his name, Huraira.
Abu Horeiah,
he heard the hadith that we talked about
that your limbs would be
light,
They would be illuminated on the day of
judgment.
So
one day a person saw him and when
he was wiping his arm,
he would wash his arm
and go all the way up to his
armpits.
And the person said like, what are you
doing?
He was like, I didn't know you could
see me. Had I known you could see
me, I would have just stopped at my
elbow.
But he said, I heard the prophet say
that
you're gonna be
like essentially
illuminated,
your body parts on the day of judgement
based off of how you wash them and
I wanted more of me to be lit
up.
This isn't like what our practice is. Do
you know what I mean? He's doing his
own what's called ichtehad,
but that's not what is the norm. But
like he took it that seriously.
Do you get what I'm saying? Right?
So when you're engaged now with your hands,
what you want to do is ensure that
each part of it is being washed
and everything that can be a block on
your arms
is also being removed. Right? I cannot do
a washing of my arm over the sleeve
of my shirt.
Right? So I'm gonna have to expose my
arm for it.
The rings that I'm wearing, they're super tight
on my fingers. Right? I got some fat
Somebody told me today, while I was in
the elevator,
they were like, you know, they're like, how
is Turkey? And I said, oh, you know,
it was very hard, it was very difficult,
and we were talking, and well, I'll make
things easy for the people of Turkey and
Syria.
And somewhere along the lines in the conversation,
it got to like my rest and my
eating
and she said, well, you look like you're
very well fed. Right? I was like, she
sound fat. What are you talking about? I
was like, yeah, I know I'm fat. It's
okay. So I got fat fingers. Right? Because
the rest of me is fat, so my
hands are fat.
So my rings
are not gonna have the water go through
them.
So when I'm washing it Are you laughing
at me? Yes?
Stuff for the sister.
I'll have to give you.
You take off your rings.
You're gonna take off
anything else.
It's not it's not meant to be like
a game. Right?
You don't want to have laziness in it.
It's a spiritual act.
So the best thing,
just take off this stuff.
Don't let it prevent water from hitting
any part of it. It's validity
necessitates
that even if you're doing the minimum,
the water has to hit those parts in
full.
You get what I mean? Does that make
sense? Does anybody have any questions on that?
So when you're going now through the arm
up to and including the elbow,
If you don't know where your elbow is,
right? Where it starts and where it stops,
just go above it a little bit. You
know what I mean? Abu Herrera went all
the way up to his armpit.
You don't have to do that and you
shouldn't do that. And he was specific in
telling
his companion,
this is not from the sunnah.
I'm just doing it for this reason.
Meaning, like, you don't need to do this.
That's not how we do it. But just
to illustrate the point, the idea isn't to
just go halfway up, like go up in
full and make sure the whole thing is
getting washed. When we do this, we're gonna
show you in a little bit, but you're
gonna pour it over your arm and then
have the arm, like your hand is gonna
rub over it. So that the water is
going where it needs to go. Yeah?
The obligatory
part of the head
in the Hanafi school, which is what we're
basing this off of, is a quarter of
the head at a minimum. We're talking about
the minimum.
1 fourth of the head. Right?
So your head is not the largest thing
in the world. You know what I mean?
Right? If this is your face,
your head is going to start where your
face stops.
Right?
So now, you're thinking about this because we
had this as a conversation
the last couple of weeks ago. Right? Like,
you know, I cover my head, but I
don't wear a hijab
the way a woman wears a hijab.
And you're all like
kind of, you know, and you're in a
bathroom, people are looking at you.
When you are understanding now that there's a
minimum that's there
in certain settings,
the default is that you should do
what is going to be incorporated
in the second and third column that we're
gonna get to in a bit.
But where you have a valid reason
as to why you are going to only
do what is the minimum requirement,
then the minimum requirement still
renders validity.
You get what I mean?
You don't want to get stuck in this
mess where somebody says to you, well, this
doesn't count. It counts.
You have to understand that. In other legal
schools,
it's even less than a quarter of a
head. Right? In the Hanafi school, it's a
fourth of your head that you're wiping now.
This is not washing.
The washing is the flow of the water.
The wiping is you're going to take just
like fingers from your hands. Three fingers.
You're going to take the water on it,
and it's going to just wipe over the
head till the back.
Some people would say then you take the
index fingers of your hands, you put them
in your ears, you take your thumb and
wash over
wipe over your head.
The back of your fingers. Right? Because you
use the front of them when going over.
The back of them you put on your
neck,
and that constitutes it in the second and
third column which we'll reiterate in a bit.
But at a minimum,
you're just wiping
over a fourth of your head. Now take
some water, I got water in my hand,
just
palm my head, then you're done. So you
got a scarf on your head and you're
stuck in a place that is not built
for wudu.
Right?
Then you can just very easily, the back
of your head, in the front of your
head,
it still renders validity.
Does that make sense?
Yes?
And then you're going to wash the feet,
all the way up to your ankles.
Right?
If you don't have familiarity
with the parts of your body
that set now the boundaries,
You wanna spend some time, like, thinking about
these things. Do you know what I mean?
Like, if you've never looked at your feet
before, look at your foot
and see where does the ankle start.
Where does the ankle stop?
The front end of your foot is not
that hard to deduce
because you're got some toes on your feet.
You know where it it starts. You just
got to make sure that you're getting to
the end point which is
the top of your ankle. It's entirety.
You get what I mean? Does that make
sense?
Right?
It's a part of the practice.
If you ask me why,
I don't I don't know.
You know?
I couldn't tell you why, like, the practice
is about
washing
these parts of your body and not washing
other parts of your body.
Fundamentally,
it's the same as why do we pray
3 rakahs at Maghrib and not like 14
at? I don't
know. You know what I mean? This is
how the act was designed.
This is how Allah
created for us this gift of wudu
that is a very unique practice that
its execution
renders now that spiritual gain
by performing it in the way that it
was intended to be performed.
Does that make sense?
So these four parts
are not just
water on my face, I'm gonna rub it
down. Your face is from what part of
your
head to what part of your head? What
constitutes your face?
From the hairline on your chin. Yep.
Great. And where does it what about in
the other direction?
Start with Wudu. Earlobe to earlobe.
Right? Pay it when you go make Wudu
at any point in the near future, just
pay attention to it. You know? Because when
you get stuck in this and it's just
mechanical,
you're gonna notice probably
sometimes you're not going all the way that
it needs to go
and at that point, it's validity
is not complete.
Right? It needs to go to its entire
kind of extension. Does that make sense?
The arms, what do we do with the
arms?
Yep. Great.
And when we do the head, what do
we do?
And the last one, the ankles.
Great. Any questions on this?
These are what are obligatory.
Now we're gonna get to
what goes into the confirmed
aspects of this.
So before you're even washing anything now,
one of the things that are a confirmed
practice is that you maintain the order
that is here.
Meaning,
you do it
sequentially.
Yeah. I'm sorry. I just have a question.
Yeah. Go for it. When it comes to
the arms,
I don't know if you can choose it
3 times yet, but I've seen people where
they also incorporate a incorporate a washing of
your hand
3 times as they wash the arm.
Can you just speak to that? The number
of times is
not an obligation. Okay. And the order in
the Hanafi school is not an obligation.
Okay. So if you do it once,
like these things,
it's complete.
The minimum is one time.
You can't get away with doing it less
than one time.
Right? If you don't do it fully
and you do it not at all,
these things,
then it doesn't count.
You see? Does that make sense?
Right?
When you're taught how to do it, you're
gonna do it this way,
including the 3 times and everything else that
like someone is, if they've ever explained it
to you, because
this
is the way the prophet did it.
There's no reason to not do it this
way
unless there's an actual reason to only do
it like this. Right? So like the example
I gave to you, I have students that
call me from Central Park, They're sledding in
the snow.
Mother of time is upon them.
They have to, like, make will do. What
are they gonna do? Right?
Are they gonna like do the minimums? Are
they gonna do what's full? They're gonna be
gargling with snow in their mouth and shoving
snow in their nostrils, and blowing No. Like,
you're not gonna do that, right? But if
you don't know that you don't know how
to do that, you're gonna sit there in
the snow and be like, what am I
supposed to do? And you're gonna shove snow
in your face.
Does it that doesn't make sense, right?
This is where knowing thick
is not just like a boring science,
but it teaches you to be more
cerebral about your practice.
To be able to bring your brain
as well as your spiritual heart into it,
so that you know how to adapt in
certain circumstances and situations.
Do you get what I mean? When I'm
trying to make wudu
in Turkey,
in what looks like a war zone,
there's no water anywhere. What am I supposed
to do?
And we're handing out
bottles of water to people. We're gonna tell
them you gotta use that to make wudu
and if they did use it, are they
gonna do this? There's guys man, subhanAllah,
that were under the rubble
of these buildings
And people have found them
and the prayer times came. They're still praying
as they're stuck under the rubble and as
people are trying to bring them out, they're
helping them and they're saying bring me water
for wudu. And other people are saying, you're
stuck under a building dude. Just make tayammon.
We'll talk about tayammon
in another session, where if you don't have
water, there's other restrictions.
You can use like earth or dirt. Right?
They're saying just do that. And they're like,
no.
I'm gonna pray like the way I'm supposed
to pray. Right? I mean, it's crazy,
the level of commitment they have and the
just state of iman that these people have.
May Allah increase them just to see it
and experience that. And I was at Tandon
yesterday doing a halukkah, and they asked me
to talk a little bit about this. And
I said to them, I was like, with
real love,
these people are doing this in that situation.
How does it make sense that you can't
tell a professor that you have to get
up to go and pray?
You know?
You can't tell your boss that you gotta
go to Jummah.
And it's subjective.
It definitely is.
But
the root of this is where we started
in the beginning,
all of it has to go back to
God.
And you have to know who God is
to you and build a relationship with God
and then understand that this is an act
of worship
that is meant to bring you closer to
God and to find strength then through that
intentionality.
Does that make sense?
Okay.
Other things that are gonna happen as you
go through this as a process,
you don't want to have
like excessive pause
in between each of these things. Right? So
it's not like, hey, you know, I washed
my face this morning
then I had some cornflakes
and then I just went and washed my
arms and everything else. That's not how it
works. Right? Like you gotta do everything
with
like, kinda,
a sequential, like it's
in entirety,
like a practice.
You see what I mean? It's not like
I watch this part and then 30 minutes
later I watch this.
If there's not a reason as to why
you would separate certain things, then you don't
separate them. And reasons that there would be
separation.
Like you ran out of water. Do you
know what I mean? If I have a
woo do bucket and my Wudu bucket ran
out of water, you know? Khaled and I
are making Wudu at the same Wudu bucket.
Not doing it at the same time necessarily,
but we're sharing. We're friends. And I made
wudu
and then he made it after and I
didn't leave enough water for him. And he
got now to the place where he wiped
over his head, and he looks in here.
He's like, there's no water for my feet.
Then he goes and walks and gets some
more water, and that process takes him some
time,
then that's a valid reason to pause.
Right?
Meaning, when you're sitting in the wudu room
and somebody walks in that you ain't see
for the last like
10 minutes of your life,
you don't submit you don't interrupt your wudu
and have like a full blown conversation then
go back to your wudu.
It's similar to if you were in your
prayer
and then you just jumped out of prayer
because somehow you walked in and then you
just jumped back in your prayer. You don't
do that. Right?
You gotta treat will do the same way.
So when you're in your will do, there's
no pause.
There's
just
a washing
successively of all the limbs.
And then one of the other things that
you maintain throughout it is that you're rubbing
the limbs
that are being washed.
Right? And washing again is different from wiping.
Right? So the wiping, you're not like rubbing
your head because it's a wiping.
But the ones that are being washed, you're
going to rub those.
So here now,
you're going to
make an intention
that is going to be rooted in the
act in and of itself.
That you're performing will do. This is a
mechanism
to
take you out of a state of ritual
impurity into a state of ritual purity. It's
an act of worship. It's an act of
ribada.
Right? You're going to make an explicit intention
attached to the performance of the act itself.
And then here
is where
you wash the hands
up to the wrists.
As Angie was saying, like how does that
factor into this?
And when you're doing that,
the practice that we have when it comes
to our our hands and our feet
is that you're going to
reinforce
that water went through each part of them
by
having your digits
go in between
like the opposite hand's fingers. Do you know
what I mean?
Right? So that we know that water is
getting into each of these parts.
Right?
Anything that's a block
is going to prevent the water. Right? Like,
I think Chrissy asked this 2 weeks ago
about
kinda wearing makeup.
The idea isn't that the makeup in and
of itself is problematic,
but if you have something that's a barrier
of any kind. Right? I'm wearing my ring
and the water does not go
through
under the ring, then the wudu is not
complete. So if you got nail polish on
your fingers and the water is not going
through it, then the water doesn't go through
it.
And that's just what it is.
Do you see?
You're going to after you do
your hands,
you're gonna
rinse your
mouth 3 times
and this goes
to the back of your throat.
My hand is running so bad.
I don't even know what I wrote here,
man.
Back of throat.
Meaning you're gonna gargle
because you're rinsing out the full mouth,
and this is where the recommendation is. Like
it's sunnah to use what's called the miswak.
Anybody know what a miswak is? A
toothpick. It's a toothpick. It's a wooden toothbrush.
It's a it's a piece of wood
that you soak it and you see sometimes
people will, like, clean their teeth with it.
Are you going to get one?
Yeah?
He just ran out.
What's going on?
If you can't use, like, a Miss Walk,
you'll put your finger in your mouth and
kinda rub on your teeth. Right? You could
use, like, a toothbrush.
Yeah.
Sorry. So miss Watkins part of the Buddha?
It's one of the confirmed Sunnis.
Okay. So it's not the obligations,
right, we moved past the obligation
and now we're talking about confirmed sunnahs. The
prophet, alayhis salaam, would use miswak
a lot
and he actually has a hadith where he
says that
if
I didn't think it would be difficult for
you,
I,
you know,
because he didn't want people to think it
was an obligation, right, that every time they
were in this place Yes. This is Miss
Walk. You wanna show people?
You wanna pass it around? It's clean.
Let's try.
Okay.
Okay. If you use them as black as
far as your review,
how do you,
has since
you're gonna be making the molten tub today,
how do you make sure that
it dries out enough for it to remain
sanitary?
Well, so when you soak a Miss Wok,
right, like, you can't just stick the the
stick in your mouth. Right? We're passing it
around, but you see it's hard?
You gotta like, like, loosen it up and
soak it up. You can put it in
a cup of water
and then it's gonna, like, peel,
and the bristles of it are what you're
gonna use to clean your mouth. Right?
And just as it starts to get utilized,
it's a stick, like it's a twig, so
you can cut it down.
You know? And And then you use the
next part to it, the next part. And
you can get, like,
all kinds of Miss Walks these days. I
have big ones. Yeah. Huge ones. They got
like flavored missed walk, you know.
But the idea is that you're cleaning your
mouth.
Right? This is the norm that's gonna happen.
This is done other than, for example,
when you are fasting
and you are still making wudu,
but when we walk through it, right, you're
gonna gargle,
you know, and kinda gargle in the back
of your throat. When you're fasting,
you would leave out the gargling so as
to not take a chance to swallow the
water. Do you know what I mean? You
can still rinse out your mouth,
but you don't go all the way to
the back so that there's
a caution that you don't swallow any of
it. Does that make sense?
Then after that,
you're gonna
do
you're gonna rinse your nose 3 times.
All of this
so far
hasn't started any of this yet.
Does that make sense?
So everything that we've listed so far falls
into
like the sunnah mu'akidah,
the confirmed prophetic
practices
around wudu.
This is what you want to do,
but if there's a reason as to why
you keep it at a minimum, then you
would keep it at a minimum. Do you
have a question?
Yes. Concerning the use of the mislaw,
I've heard that it's sunnah to use it
before you pray,
like before your prayer begins.
Is it also a sunnah to do it
as part of your wudu, like as you're
going through wudu? Yeah. Like when you're rinsing
out your mouth. You have to do it
then? Yeah. You would do it at that
point in time. Right? If you don't have
Miss Wok, you don't, you know, use use
it or know how to use it, use
your finger, right, to, like, kind of clean.
You have a toothbrush at home. Right? Just
clean out your toothbrush. If you don't have
it, like, you don't you don't have to
use it. You know, you still do is
rinse out your mouth. Right? Yeah. So if
you vigorously squish the water around
gargle, is it still valid?
Yeah. Because this is all from the validity
is based off of this.
Right? None of this that we've written so
far is listed here.
Right? So for it to be valid, this
is the minimum
that's there.
One time, and we've spelled it out a
little bit, what your actual face is,
to what extent you're going up to your
elbows,
You're gonna wipe, you know, at least a
quarter of your head
and feet up to the ankles.
Right? So we're adding all of these things
now. Right? These are confirmed sunnades.
What you're gonna do, I'm gonna write here
now.
Okay? Just so we're getting out of space.
Everybody's good with this on the obligatory side?
Yeah? Let's take a picture. Yeah. Do you
take a picture? Yeah. Go ahead. What do
you do if you're wearing socks and you're
at work and there's no baseball or anything?
We're gonna talk about that and,
yeah. You got it? Yes. Thank you. It's
also all in this video that's being recorded.
Yeah.
For the order, do we do everything in
the, confirm senate column before? Yeah. All of
this happens
before you get to here. Okay?
So
this is just now a continuity of here,
and we're gonna talk about what you do
with the face.
So
now, you're gonna do the face.
You're gonna wash it 3 times.
Right? And it's the same thing.
Forelock,
bottom of the chin, earlobe to earlobe.
This constitutes the face.
Right? A lot of people, especially guys,
they miss this part right here if you
have facial hair because for some reason, you
just And you can't, you're not supposed to
like slap your face. We'll talk about that
when we do
what's makru, right, meaning like, you're not taking
the water and then it's like going like
this, right. You know, you're like washing your
face. You see the difference?
Right? You take water and you just smack
it in your face. That doesn't that doesn't
count. Right? My son, Kareem,
Michelle,
he's got like this little water
resistant book that says my first wudu book.
My daughter uses it, Kareem uses it, and,
you know, he'll take he'll he'll it's And
each page
is a giant picture of your body part
and then it's got the, like it says
face in big letters in case you couldn't
tell.
And then he's got the water running, he's
looking at it, you know, masha'Allah, seriously. Then
he takes the water. He's like, smacks his
face. I'm like, dude, you're gonna hurt yourself,
man. He punches yourself in the nose, man.
And he's like, he's like, Baba, I'm making
wudu. Don't talk when you make wudu. I'm
sorry.
Sorry.
So,
you're gonna also
if you have facial hair,
you're gonna take wet fingers
and pass it through your beard.
One time is obligatory.
So now we're talking about I just I
took these Let's remove this. This is just
continued here because we have this written.
So this step
follows this.
This is supposed to be an arrow.
So we're moving from here to here now.
So after I rinse my nose three times,
I'm going to wash my face
3 times.
And if I have facial hair, I'm gonna
take wet fingers and rub it through my
beard
so that it's getting to like the root
of my skin.
With your arms,
you're going to also do this 3 times.
Starting from the tips of your fingers to
the top of your elbow.
When you get to your head,
right, what did we say was the minimum
for the head when it was obligatory?
A quarter. A quarter. Right? So here, you're
gonna do the whole head
but this is a wiping.
So you're gonna take the water and you're
gonna wipe over the head in its entirety
with no new water,
right, you're gonna go, I just got a
marker all over the back of my head.
You're gonna take water, you're gonna
go over your head in its entirety
and with the same water, you're gonna go
in the inner part of your ear,
the earlobe, and then the back of your
neck, and that you're doing just once.
Does
it make sense?
And then for your feet,
you're going to wash
3 times
and you're going to have water
go through the toes.
How do you do that? Well, the way
we did it with our hands was that
we put the fingers in between,
like, you know, the hands respectively.
With your feet, what you're going to do
is I'm so old, guys. I can't even
get my feet up.
So starting with your right foot, you're gonna
take your little finger and you're gonna put
it in between
each of
your toes.
Right? So the water gets into
each
between each of your toes. Does that make
sense?
Yeah?
And you're gonna go all the way up
to your ankles.
These are all like confirmed
sunnah practices.
This is the way the prophet alaihis salam
made his wudu.
This is how you would make your wudu.
There's gonna be some nuanced differences
in different legal schools of thought.
All of them have their evidences.
All of them have a basis. Right? This
is according to the Hanafi school.
According to the Hanafi school,
you should make your wudu like this
unless there's a reason as to why you
can't do that.
Being lazy is not a good reason.
Right? You are going to deprive yourself
of the increase that comes from spiritual
exercise being
done the way that it was intended to
be done. You have a question?
I have 2. Yeah. Go ahead. I have
a question. So
one,
does it matter from what side to what
side you,
do the digits of the toes?
You're gonna start from your right foot,
like, in between your pinky toe, your little
toe, and then work your way left
to your left foot, ending at your pinky
toe.
Okay. Yeah. And the second question, if you
have long hair, how do you reach the
back of your neck if you're just Go
ahead. So if you have a lot of
hair on your head, right, the same idea.
You're gonna get to the roots of your
head, but it's wiping. Right? So, you're just
wiping over your head. Right?
It's different than if you have a beard.
Because on your face, you're washing the face.
Right? But on the head, you're just wiping
the head. Does that make sense?
Yeah?
Okay.
Yeah.
To speak here according to Hadafi's school,
is it a confirmed sluna to also be
in the nose?
Yeah. We're gonna talk about that right now.
Yep.
So when do you interlock the fingers? Is
it when you're cleaning your washing your hands?
Right in the beginning. When you're washing your
arm. Wash the hands up to the wrist.
Okay. Is the first, after you make your
intention, you're gonna wash your hands up to
your wrist. Then you interlock the arm to
the back in between. Now when you're cleaning
your arms. Okay. Yeah.
Right? Yeah.
So when you're whitewashing the, like, the arm
in, like, the obligatory stage,
can you in are you allowed to interlock
hands to get between the fingers to watch
that specific arm or the you know what
I mean? Yeah. You should wash you should
interlock your hands. Okay. Even when you're washing
your arms. Even when you're washing the right
arm, you interlock
You were saying just if you were doing
the bare minimum?
No. No. No. I mean, like well, I
mean, I'm just saying it when we're washing
the arms 3 times. Just washing the right
arm, let's say, the first
time, and I wanna, like, I just I
finished Oh, you're saying when you get to
here Yeah. And you wash 3 times? I
wanna wash. Yeah. I would start from like
the top of your hand again as well.
And then go. Right? And go up to
your your elbow. But is the hand obligatory
in that in with the arms? You've already
washed your hands at that point. So it's
not so when you do your arms, the
hand is not obligatory. Yeah. If you you
did your hands here, so now you're washing
your arms up to the elbow.
You see?
But you've already washed your hands. You see
what I'm saying? I guess if you washed
the hands, I'm not sure. Yeah. I'm saying
you should start from the tip of your
finger
and go to here. Okay. Right? But if
you're asking because you said it's when it's
in an obligatory
state. Right? So when you're doing just the
minimum,
right,
you still have to wash your hands
as part of this process. Yeah. Because you're
gonna go from the tip of your finger
to the top of your elbow. You see
what I mean? If you are doing it
like this, you're gonna wash your hands up
to your wrist in the very beginning,
and then when you get here, you should
do it again also,
just because that's a part of, like, how
we're doing it. Do you see what I
mean? Can I ask a question about the
ears also? Yeah. Like, do you have to
like actually get water in like every part
of the ear or is it just like
the, like, the ear canal?
No. Because you're just you're you're wiping your
head, so the ear at that point is
a part of your
head. So, you're gonna
take, like your,
whatever finger this is, index finger, it's gonna
go, like, in the inner part of your
ear. Right?
So like this. Uh-huh. You're gonna take your
thumb and rub it on the back side
of your ear. Do you just rotate the
finger? Yeah. You don't have to actually hit,
like, literally every part of the ear. You're
not getting new water. Right? So whatever water
remains on your hand, you're putting it in
the inner part of your ear. Right?
Whatever goes in, everyone's ear is shaped differently.
Right? And then with your thumb, you're gonna
rub on the outer part of it. And
then with the back of your hands, you're
gonna wipe your neck.
Does that make sense? Yeah. So as we
go into the recommended acts now,
one of the recommended acts when you're making
wudu is that you're gonna face towards the
Kaaba.
Right? But you don't have to. It's not
a confirmed sunnah, right, so this is now
that mustahub
kinda
category, right? So facing in the direction of
the Kaaba, you go to our wudu rooms,
they don't face the direction of the Kaaba.
You know, it's not the same as when
you're praying, like you face the Kaaba when
you pray. Right? When you're making wudu, you
don't have to nor is it a confirmed
sunnah, but it's one of the recommendations
when you're making wudu.
Right? Just like when you make dua, we
could sit here right now, you're facing this
way, I'm facing that way, we can make
dua, but it's recommended when you're making dua
that you're in a state of wudu and
you're facing towards the the Qibla, towards the
Kaaba.
It's not though something that like
is
it's it's not the same as a sunnah
wakada. You see what I mean? So these
are recommended acts. They're mustahab.
If you do them, there's blessing in it.
If you leave it behind, it doesn't invalidate
or decrease, like, the benefit of what it
is that you're doing. Yeah.
Other things that are recommended
in this that I'm just gonna read through,
you're gonna avoid splashing a
lot
a lot. It means like extravagance,
wastefulness.
Right? And quite often, it is rooted
in an explanation of like spending money superbously.
It's also about, like, just wasting water, you
know? We're we're not supposed to be wasteful
in any way. You know what I mean?
So, you know what, like, making will do
is not, again, in front of the sink,
you know, and I turn the water on
and then I start like rolling up my
sleeves
and I'm like undoing my scarf. You just
lost like 3 gallons of water, right? There's
not mindfulness there. Do you know what I
mean? Like you use the wudu water to
make wudu,
you don't waste as a part of it.
So, you don't want to, like, to avoid
splashing
the water
on oneself.
This is just more about being measured. Right?
You're not like just dousing yourself with the
water, but you're in a place
where you
are,
just
like conscious of what's going on.
We're not gonna talk about these here, but
maybe I'll share them in a document with
you, but as you go through the wudu,
there are different,
invocations
as you wash, like, the different parts of
your body.
These are recommended
like duas to make as you're going through
it.
So
now, we're gonna look at recommendations. So here
when you have
rinsing your mouth,
It's gonna
be rinsing this with, like, 3
separate handfuls of water.
And this is where the recommended
practice comes when you're talking about your nose
that you
insert
the water
with your right hand and
you take out the water
with your left hand.
Right? So I'm gonna take the water, I'm
gonna, you know,
put it in my nose with my right
hand, and I'm gonna blow it out with
my left hand coming out.
Right? This is a recommended act.
Is that the same time as you're putting
water into your mouth? I've seen people where
they take a scoop and then they do
both at the same time. That's pretty crazy.
How do they do that? I don't know,
but that's not what you're talking about. You're
saying 2 Uh-huh. Mouth and then the nose
3 separate spooks also Yeah. Out. I'm not
like, I don't know how how did you
do that? In my back, I've been juggling
at the same time. This is crazy. You
know how to do it? Is that why
you're raising I'm not raising my head. Yeah.
So you should just keep them as separate
acts. Okay. Right? Yeah. If somebody I don't
know. Right? And I said this before,
I I can't tell you,
like, why someone else does what they do,
but also you don't want to assume that
the way they're doing it is not correct.
I couldn't tell you if there's an opinion
that says that's how you do it. And
you just you wanna be comfortable with the
idea,
as hard as it is, because we have
so much access to information online
that
there's like opinions on everything
and spiritual maturity
recognizes
diverse opinions.
Spiritual immaturity
says that I know every opinion on everything.
Do you know what I mean? So, I
I don't know, like, and I'm sure there's
a basis to it, but here, you'd you'd
wanna keep them as separate things. Right? So
you rinse out your mouth 3 times
and you spit out the water, right, 3
times. And then you're gonna do your nose.
Right?
Once, twice,
3 times.
Yeah?
Makes sense? Yes. Yeah. So, I mean, this
is like a definition of like a wash,
I guess. I'm really kinda curious. So, like,
if you does a wash mean, like, you
take a new scoop of water and then
you, like, let's say, like, if I'm washing
my right arm, I, like, fill my I,
like, cup my hand, fill it with water,
like, let it flow down the arm, and
then, like, wipe it all down, and that
counts as 1? No. You're gonna take water.
Yeah. And you're gonna pour it over your
arm. Right?
And this is where like, if you have
assistance, you know, we have ease with this
because we're rubbing, we have the utilization of
2 arms. Do you know what I mean?
Right? So you don't wanna make it harder
for yourself. Right? Remence is like, as in
like, does wash mean how many times you
pass over a part of the arm? Or
as in how many scoops of like, one
scoop of water that you use that scoop
to up the arm? No. Because they would
have, like, a vessel that they're pouring the
water out of. So you're not scooping the
water out when you're washing over the arm.
You're pouring it over your arm. Do you
know what I mean?
Right?
And so as you pour it, you're rubbing
it over your arm. Do you know? Does
that make sense? So then if we've asked
the definition, what counts as washing once, I
guess?
Washing is the water has to flow over
the limb.
The wiping is I take the water,
right, and I'm just, whatever I have on
my hand, I'm wiping over it. The only
thing you do that with is when you're
wiping over your head,
like, in general. Right? We're gonna talk about
some exceptions in a bit. But other than
the wiping of your head,
everything else is being washed in full. Right?
So you take the water for your your
your mouth, it's gonna be like water in
a handful.
You put it, gargle, spit it out. Right?
Your nose, you put it, you rinse it
out. You know what I mean? And your
hands, right, you're gonna
put it
from forehead
to chin, earlobe to earlobe.
And it's not wiping in the same way.
Right? I'm wiping, I'm like going like this.
I'm washing
like the water is kinda going all over
my face. You see the difference?
Supposed to. Yeah.
Okay.
You're gonna have a recommendation
that when you're washing your face,
you're gonna start from the forehead. It's a
recommended
practice.
So, you start from up here and then
do like the rest of your face. Right?
And,
with the arms, you start washing from the
fingertips.
From the head, a recommended practice is is
that you start wiping the head from the
front
and do all of the wiping with the
same water.
You wipe the outside of the ears with
the thumb, like I said,
the inside
with the index fingers,
and you'll have some different opinions on this
and recommendations,
but you can take the little finger
and you stick that into, like, the hole
of your ear. But not like so you're
damaging your ear, right? Just like, you know,
so it kinda gets in there.
And then with the feet, you're going to
start by washing from the tip of your
toes
going up to your ankle. You rub with
the left hand and pass the little finger
through the toe starting with the little toe
of the right foot, ending with the little
toe of the left foot is the recommended
practice. We use our left hands for some
of these things versus our right hands. In
our tradition, like, there's designations
for things. Right? So you eat with your
right hand, you know? So when you are
washing, like, your feet, you're not gonna wash
your feet with the same hand you're eating
with. Does that make sense? Right? And this
is why, like, there's specificity.
Use your left hand,
when you're doing some of these. Some of
the things that are disliked,
is
like just talking without need.
You know, so, when you're making wudu and
you're sitting
and you're, you know, like, we have a
really nice community. People, you know, get along
pretty well. You go to some places
and Muslims look more angry than anything for
whatever reason. But, like,
you know, you're making wudu, it's a spiritual
act. Right? You don't want to be rude
to somebody. Somebody gives you salams, you respond
to their salams,
you know, that's fine. But while you're making
wudu,
it's definitely not the time that you want
to just be talking about random things. You
also don't want to be talking about haram.
Right? Like, you're engaging in a spiritual purification.
It's not the time to lie or gossip.
You know? It's not the time, like, to
be doing things that divert your attention from
the act that's in front of you. So
much about
this religion
is rooted in the ability to be present
and to have kind of awareness of what's
going on. Do you know what I mean?
This becomes a challenge, right? I talk to
people who are older in their life all
the time and they're like, I feel so
embarrassed,
I should already know this. Like little kids
know it. The challenge when you learn this
as a child
is that you don't think about it as
an adult then.
You just learn
it rotely and mechanically
and then it becomes something that you do
instinctively,
but there's no kinda
continuing education
about what this means when you reach a
capacity
that is beyond like what a child's capacity
is. Right? You should learn wudu
and study it also like a teenager, as
an adult. And keep revisiting certain things so
you're building know
what
I mean? Right You know what I mean?
Right? Like my
7 year old when he was like 4
or 5 and he's going through this will
do book, right?
The kid is like looking at it. It's
like
a I love my son. Don't get me
wrong. Right? I love my babies. They're amazing.
MashaAllah.
But you know, he's looking at
this the way like if you study
like pre med and you're staring at a
bio book like this is crazy. What does
any of this mean? He's looking at this
thing that's got like one sheet of paper,
it's got a giant hand on it, it
says hand, and he's staring at it and
then looking at the water like to be
like, what do I you know, he's like
really intense. Right?
What's he gonna think? He's 5.
He's 4.
That's like where he's at. Right?
If you learn wudu at that time and
somebody said to you, here's this hadith
that tells you
that your limbs will glisten on the day
of judgement. Well, if I said that to
my son, what's he gonna even think?
Do you get what I mean?
It
removes,
like, the spiritual
aspect of it when at that point in
time, and it's not even fuddered upon you.
Right? We'll talk about this next time.
Like, who is it incumbent upon to do
voodoo?
A little kid is not required to do
wudu. They're children.
You are required to do wudu if you're
Muslim,
you're post pubescent.
Right? Other factors that go into it that
we'll talk about,
but like little babies, they don't have to
do it. So when they learn it at
that age, like, it doesn't even
allow for them. They don't have the capacity
to think about it differently. Do you get
what I mean? Yeah. Go ahead.
Just a clarification
on what you briefly mentioned
regarding the left hand Yeah. In the Hanafi
school, do you only referring
to the referring to the brother's question earlier.
Say, for example, I'm making woodu in a
sink where there's running water. Mhmm. Is it
preferable for me, say, when I'm washing my
arms
to actually have my whole arm go under
the running the running water three times? Yep.
Or is it acceptable to have a scoop
full of my hand of water and then
wash and then scoop and then wash 3
times? Yeah. You could do it. I mean,
it's fundamentally still the same thing. The same.
Right? But because you have the luxury of,
like, running water, do you know what I
mean? Yeah. Then like run your arm underneath
it. Do you know? And allow for yourself
to have more gain from it. You know
what I'm saying?
Versus like, you know, it's a blessing for
us. You know, there's not
a gain to saying,
I have to make it more difficult on
myself in that way.
Like the sink is there, like put your
arm underneath it. If it works for you
differently,
by doing like this method where the water
As long as you can like still have
it kind of be in the washing mode,
then it it suffices.
Does that make sense? Yes. Yeah.
Yeah. Go ahead.
So
let's say that you're making a wudu and
you forget
the amount of time that you,
you know, like, wash your arm, for example.
Like, you think it's 3 times, but you
you might have been
but it might have but it might have
been 2. Do you assume
2 and then do another, like, a Yeah.
In our fiqh, not in Hanafi fiqh, just
in Islam more generally,
the default is if you kind of forget,
then you wanna do more than less. Right?
So if like, I'm doing tawaf of the
Kaaba, and I have to do 7 circuits
walking around the Kaaba for a pilgrimage,
And I don't know, did I do 6?
Did I do 7?
Right?
And you're kind of in that place, then
the default is you should do one more
rather than leaving it less. Do you know
what I mean? Yeah. Right? So, you know,
here, like, but but the idea is different
than like, man, you know what, if 3
is good, I just should do it 7
times. Right? No. Like, you don't do it
7 times. You do it 3 times, that's
what the prophet did. If you did it
once or twice, it also suffices
because once is enough. But you you're not
like adding to it by saying
that
this is somehow going to be increased because
I did it like 11 times, you know.
Like, no, it's just, you do it the
way that it's intended to be done. If
you lose track of it, then you're gonna
do more than less. Right? And that's like
applicable
in our prayer, like in other things.
Here also
so wasting water is disliked.
When you're washing your face, you don't wanna
slap your face with the water.
Right? You're washing your face, you're not slapping
the face. Right? This is like you think
about it, when you're a little kid and
you learn how to wash your face, you
know, and you take like a bar of
soap and you rub your face on it
and then you're washing your face, like little
kids slap their faces. Do you know what
I mean? You ever seen a little kid
wash their face? Right? You know how they
slap their faces? Right? Yeah. So don't do
that when you're making wudu, that's something that
you shouldn't be doing. You're washing your face
when you're making wudu and then,
you wanna,
also just use
like one set of water when you're wiping
your head. And this is what goes into
making will do. Right?
Okay.
Does this make sense?
Right?
And you just think about it.
I I don't know how I've never like
looked at any of you make will do
before. Do you know what I mean? I
don't go in the bathroom and like, oh,
let me watch somebody make their wudu. I
I don't know how you do it. You
wanna just take your time with it
and you don't wanna be in a place
where there is any notion of,
you know,
kinda shame or embarrassment.
Right? It's an exercise. Just like any exercise,
you wanna treat it like an exercise. The
more you engage it, the more you're gonna
build a relationship with it. The idea is
to just have presence throughout it as best
as you can
and to recognize that there might be different
ways that some people do different things. That
the bathroom or the place where, like, the
restroom is, is essentially
going to be based off of how you're
using it at that time.
Do you know what I mean? Mhmm. Does
that make sense? Yeah. Because I was told
like, you just you say the you say
the Dua before you go into the bathroom
because like well, around from this, you could
talk in the bathroom.
You're not supposed to talk Yeah. When you're
using the bathroom. That's not good. But like
if you go for Hajj, for example,
and you're staying like in the tents that
are the no frills tents, right,
the bathroom
is
like built in the same
kind of compartment stall as the shower.
Like it's all in one thing. There's a
toilet and there's the shower head like right
on top of you. You know what I
mean? It's all there. Maximizing space and efficiency.
You know what I'm saying? Yeah. If it
sounds like it's gross, just wait till you
use it. Yeah. It's pretty crazy. Yeah. Go
ahead.
I I don't know if you already addressed
this, but I remember the week before you
left for a certificate, you had mentioned that
water and periwinkle shoes. Yeah. We're gonna
you're wearing,
water imperilable
shoes. Yeah. We're gonna talk about that right
now. Oh. Yeah. So what you're gonna find
when you look online
are different opinions that come up quite often,
like, in reference to your feet
and your socks.
Right?
So,
in most of the opinions that you'll find,
if you there's there's,
an exemption to washing your feet
if you are what's called a resident of
a place, right? So
there's like 2 categories that you can be
as an individual. You're a resident,
like this is your hometown, right? Or you're
a traveler,
right? You are somebody
who
has gone x amount of miles in the
Hanafi School. It's like 48 and a half
miles from a city limit
and you are
traveling
to a designated area
for like, you know, less than 15 days,
you're a traveler,
right?
Those two categories
affect the impact of the amount of time.
If you're a resident for 24 hours
and if you're a traveler for up to
72 hours,
you can
perform wudu as we described
and then cover your foot
with
what is an acceptable
like footwear
that you can then wipe over that as
opposed to washing over your foot
in full.
Now, where the different opinions lie
are
in what is a valid thing to actually
wipe over? When you go online, you'll see
people making wudu. Some people will have socks
that are just like regular socks. Right? I
have a regular sock. Somebody will say, you
can just wipe over this regular sock. There's
different basis to these things.
In the Hanafi school, this kind of sock
does not work.
You cannot wipe over this sock and it
counts
for your wudu.
Of the 4 schools of thought in Sunni
Islam
that
are kind of constituting the canonical schools
and in what we would identify
as more like Salafi Islam,
right,
you
have the opinion that you can wipe over
this sock and that suffices.
What the requirement is in the Hanafi school
is that what you're wearing
has to go above the ankle.
It's got to be something
that is waterproof.
There's no kind of holes in it. It's
not torn up or anything.
So the water can't seep through it. Nothing
else can seep through it. You can walk
a certain distance in it without it tearing
apart also and that would suffice.
These
socks, which are essentially like camping socks, you
can go online.
Their
brand is called Wudu Gear.
Right?
And they suffice.
You can get these in different colors.
Black, brown,
navy,
whatever.
They're socks
And they work. What people literally did,
because of the prevalence of different opinions,
was they were in places like Jordan and
elsewhere,
different Masha'i
got different brands of socks
and tested them to see like would they
work? If I walked this much distance in
it, will it tear? Is it permeable in
some capacity?
These kinds of things.
So,
what I would say is if you are
in this place, right,
I travel a lot. I was just in
Turkey. I was, you know, near the northern
border of Syria.
It's like a war zone over there right
now. I gotta still pray.
I wore my Timbs
not only because I like wearing my Timbs.
People are like, why do you wear Timbs
so much? I got used to wearing them
when I was younger, But also because I
travel so much these days. Right? And I'm
traveling across time zones. I'm on an airplane.
You think it's hard to like stick your
foot in the sink over here. Some of
these airplanes, man. The bathrooms are like this
small and if you try to like stick
your finger in something, you're definitely gonna like
fall into the toilet in some way. Right?
So the Tim,
the boot, like many of the boots that
you have in women's fashion,
even some in men's fashion, they will suffice.
And what you will do is you put
the shoe on,
you put on like the Wudu gear sock,
then for 24 hours,
you can wipe over this,
but if you take off
the sock,
then you can't do it.
You know what I mean? Like it's gotta
stay on,
it's not something that you you remove. Meaning
like you broke your wudu
and you went to the bathroom,
you took off the shoe, you took off
the sock, you're not in a state of
wudu,
you have to keep it on throughout that
process. Does that make sense, what I'm saying?
Right? Say I'm wearing my boot,
on my flight
to Turkey
and I,
like,
go use the bathroom, which is one of
the ways your break will do,
and I then come to my seat and
I'm feeling like really hot and I take
off my boot,
then
it doesn't work. I have to redo my
wudu and entirety
and then put the shoe back on and
then a new 24 hours starts. Does that
make sense?
It's gotta stay on throughout that 24 hour
period and whether I break my wudu while
I have it on or not is like,
it's fine.
I I can redo my would do and
then I'm just wiping over like the
the the shoe. I'm wiping over the sock.
Does that make sense?
But this is a special kind of sock.
It's not like the sock that most of
us are wearing right now unless by chance
you're wearing like a Wuduk here sock. Right?
And these are like a different kind of
like durability. If you ever go camping, you
know, kind of mountain climbing, these are the
kind of things that they've done.
In accordance to the Sunni tradition,
like it's been vetted by people who are
of
every, like, legal school of thought and it
creates like a different ease. That's why you
wanna have a strategy to your day. Right?
The goal isn't to say, well I'm just
gonna get through my day by doing x
y or z things. Right? You can adopt
certain practices
that make it easier.
If you see somebody or you yourself
are wiping over just a regular cotton sock,
There is a basis and an evidence for
this.
You don't wanna get into the habit where
you start to assess and judge other people's
practices.
I used to be a writing TA when
I was an undergrad here at one of
the CUNY colleges in New York
and New York City Technical College. It's right
across the street from Tandon. People have gone
to Tandon
and they had a prayer room there
and I was teaching in the middle of
the winter, it was snowing like crazy.
I went into the restroom
and made wudu
and I did a complete wudu just like
how we rode out here. And I went
into the prayer room to pray
and their was
like much smaller than our space, so I
want you to just picture it in your
head, right? It's maybe like 10, 20 percent
of the size of this room
and there's a guy who is sitting on
the ground
like just looking at me
and then somebody comes in
and we prayed dhuhr together.
Then when we were done praying dhuhr,
the guy who was sitting against the wall
said to the guy who prayed with me
in Urdu
that this guy's prayer doesn't count. He's wearing
his socks and he wiped over his socks
and his wudu is invalid, which makes his
prayer not valid and he led you in
prayer, so your prayer is not valid.
So I started talking to him in Urdu,
I was like, what are you talking about?
And then his mouth dropped because he thought
I was like some white boy that couldn't
understand what he was saying. And I was
like, I understand it very much so. And
he was like, I'm so sorry brother. I
was like, you should be sorry. Right?
But like,
mind your business.
Do you know what I
mean?
And there's a certain etiquette
to understanding
how diverse opinions function.
You wanna be in a place where you
have a respect for these kinds of things.
You're not like the police of anybody,
nor is there like absolute perspective
that says this way is fundamentally the only
way. Do you know? You don't wanna get
into that habit, not even for the sake
of the person whose heart you might potentially
hurt,
but in the place where, like, it creates
now a very subtle mode,
may Allah protect us from it, of arrogance
that somehow
like, what is it? This guy ain't even
talk to me, you know?
And I'm like, what are you we talk
I was like, you're even I was like,
forget everything else. You're wrong, man. I stuck
my foot in that sink. The cold cold
water and the snowy weather that we're in,
like and who are you to like say
that I didn't do it? You didn't even
see that it happened. You get what I
mean? Right?
Don't be that person.
Right? The idea isn't that you sit and
you think about this,
How can you have mindfulness in your wudu
if you're watching somebody else to see if
their wudu is not being done properly?
And when there's real love, there's muhabba, right?
And this is something that's important to understand.
The prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, he
had this with some of his companions, with
all of them. He was able to tell
them certain things, right? Omer ibn Al Khattab,
who's a senior companion of the prophet, the
prophet tells him, you will not have faith,
complete faith,
until you love me
more than you love your,
parents, your children,
and your own self. And the prophet and
Umar says, I love you, you know, Rasool
Allah, more than, you know, all of these
people, but not more than myself.
And the prophet says,
this is part of like the completion of
your faith. And Umar radiAllahu anhu goes and
he thinks about this, right? He wouldn't have
Islam
if it wasn't for the prophet.
Like all these people wouldn't have
this different insight that you don't murder your
daughters. You treat people of all races with
dignity and respect.
You have a certain understanding of social equity
and justice.
Right? There's a certain kinda
elevation and graciousness towards just humanity
that you share with people simply because they're
people. And he goes back and he says
to the prophet,
like, now I love you even more than
I love me.
And the prophet says to him, now your
faith is complete.
Right?
The prophet is telling his friend
something
about just the state
of his faith.
But they're close friends. Do you know what
I mean? Right?
If you walked up to some random person,
most of you don't even know each other
in this room. Somebody came up to you
and was like, man, your faith is not
complete. Like, what first of all, you sound
like you say ablutions, right? Who talks like
this?
And who are you to tell me something
about me when you don't even know my
name?
If you get to the level where you
have that closeness to somebody,
like the prophet had to Amr.
Then you can get to a place where
you can get deep and you want to
have real love with somebody
as you're giving them advice and counsel so
that you know how it is that they're
gonna be recipient of that advice and counsel.
You're not just throwing words at people
to be like, I'm just gonna tell you
this little nugget of information that I know.
Do you know what I mean? Does that
make sense? And it can create
real challenges and problems, right? You just have
to know that there's different opinions
on some of these things. And
one of those things that'll come up and
will do
is like wiping over your socks. Right?
Does that make sense? Yeah.
Okay.
It is
8:45.
We didn't do this, which I wanted us
to do, but this took a little longer
than I thought it would.
It seems like there were some things that
everybody was picking up on. Just like sit
on it and when you're making wudu,
you don't have to make wudu
only when you're about to pray.
Right? So, some of the things that you
wanna understand, if you've made wudu and you've
had wudu all day, then you've had wudu
all day. Right? I've had wudu all day,
hamdulillah.
Somebody told me I look like I'm well
fed. I just didn't eat anything today, you
know.
I didn't break my wudu in that sense.
Like when I fast on some days, I'm
not necessarily breaking my wudu. You can make
your wudu once and it lasts for the
whole day, and you're good with it. The
next time we meet we'll talk about some
of the specifics, what nullifies the wudu, what
breaks it, we're gonna talk about a different
type of washing that is called the wudu,
which you take a shower
and what necessitates that?
One of the things that I'd encourage you
to try to do, try to be and
will do as much as you can.
Don't be paranoid with it, right? If you
have like kind of health concerns, physiologically you
can't do it, but if you use the
restroom try to make wudu after. You wake
up in the morning try to make wudu.
Right? To be in a state of wudu,
it's a purified
state. You know, there's a certain
element metaphysically
that is good
from being in that state.
And when you're trying to practice,
don't practice
like mindlessly,
go home today and say, hey, do I
do it in this way? Right? Because some
of us aren't even gonna know. You're gonna
go through it and you're gonna catch yourself
like as you're doing each limb, you're gonna
be like, woah. I wasn't doing it in
that way. Or you could pat yourself on
the back and be like, yeah. I did
this really great. Yay for me. Good job.
But, when you're doing it and it's the
middle of the day,
it's like
15 minutes of a lunch break
or you're in between classes, you want to
practice this when there's no kind of time
constraints on it. Do you get what I
mean?
Right? Like you spend some time
with the form of it that's not attached
to I only have 5 minutes left for
Fudger and I'm gonna sit and try to
like practice wudu at that time. Does that
make sense?
Yeah?
Alright. Assalamu alaikum.