Khalid Latif – First Steps Essentials of Islam #05
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
So
water, for example, that you, like,
make will do with is both pure and
purifying.
But water that's been used for wudu,
it's still pure,
but you can't use it a second time
for wudu, so it's no longer purifying.
Does that make sense? Right?
But, like, certain substances are inherently impure,
so you couldn't use, like,
alcohol to make wudu with.
Does that make sense?
Now the types of water that you can
make woodu with, there's 7 types of water,
and rainwater is like one of those things.
Right? It's a pure
and purifying form of water.
So when that rainwater is washing
these streets,
like it's also playing a role in cleaning
things up. Do you know what I mean?
Right?
When the snow falls, right? Unless that snow
is yellow, Right? Don't play with that snow.
But
it's, like, it's clean. Right? Hail, snow,
like it's essentially just water in a different
form. Do you get what I'm saying? Right?
And we've been having a lot of precipitation.
It rains, like, pretty consistently in New York,
in and of itself,
and that also then serves as like a
clean cleansing mechanism.
A lot of these buildings that you pass
by, in Manhattan especially,
a part of the responsibility
by, like,
just the code of the city is that
you're supposed to keep the area in front
of your building clean, and so they take,
like, high pressure water hoses, and they're hosing
down the sidewalks all the time. You know?
So
literally, like, the default is and I know
the city smells, like, sometimes, right? But, you
know, who doesn't smell every once in a
while? Right?
But you can.
You know? You can pray on the street.
And that's why, like, you know, people ask,
do you need a prayer mat like this
that we have in the corner there?
The prayer mat in and of itself is
not sanctified in any way. Right? There's not
like so many objects in Islam
that have sacredness to them, you know, in
that sense. Right? The way other religions might
have objects that become blessed in some capacity.
When I used to work as a chaplain
for the NYPD,
one of the things that we do
that we did as chaplains is we had
invocations and benedictions
on, like, pretty much everything.
You know, a lot of ceremonies,
like, all kinds of stuff. And so the
first time they
were doing, like, some kind of, like, street
naming
ceremony or something,
and they said, you have to bless the
sign.
And I was like, I don't know how
to to do that, you know, because it's
not a concept in Islam.
And they were like, no, just, you know,
and then their explanation to me was just
like saying the same thing again and again.
They're like, you know, just bless it. And
I was like, but what I don't know
how to do that, man. Like, what it,
like, can you explain?
Like, give me some formula that somebody else
would do it so I know. Because I've
never done that before. Right? We don't we
don't have that conceptually
in our tradition in the same way
as other,
like, traditions do. You know?
It's not to not it's not to knock
anybody's belief,
but it's pretty simple, like Islam,
in terms of its ritual and its theology
and its practice, because it claims to be,
you know, for everybody. Right? There's a hadith
that says the entire world is is a
mosque by default, you know?
Meaning, like, you can pretty much pray wherever
you want to. Right? You can pray in
the park if you want, you know, you
can pray on the roof of the building
if you want. There's literally, like, pictures of
cab drivers
praying on the hoods of their taxi cabs
in New York City, right,
and just because there's just no place to
pray on the street because they're on these
narrow streets,
traffic is coming through,
so they just, like, get on the hoods
of their cars
and they pray. And that's totally fine also,
right? But you don't you don't, like, what
the mat does
is not, like, oh, the mat is, like,
some sacred object. It's just like a clean
spot.
You know? All you're doing is putting a
clean thing down on the ground.
Does that make sense? And we talk about
prayer in a few weeks.
We'll kinda
break this down a little bit more. Like,
the place of prayer, like, what does that
look like and how does that function?
Does that answer your question? Yes, it does.
Yeah. So,
I'm not the type of person that, unfortunately,
I would tell you, like, if you ask
me, I would say the best thing that
you could do and your will do is
that, like, you can wash your feet if
you have that capacity to do so. Right?
But if you have to be strategic in
your day,
then you wanna think about this. And so
the shoes that we talked about that go
above your ankles,
that don't have any like
holes in them, etcetera,
like you can wipe over the top of
those after you've performed wudu
fully first,
and then you've placed them in. Right? We
said that's good for 24 hours if you're
the resident in a state of residency, like
you're in your city, your locale. Right? And
if you're traveling, it's a little longer than
that.
And if you're gonna use socks, those, like,
wudu socks are pretty good. Right?
But the cotton socks are where, like, the
contention comes up for people, and there's some
people who say that that's fine to do.
If you do that, or you see somebody
do that, don't like getting their face, you
know? Right? Like, let them be. Right? But,
also, like, if somebody follows opinion that says
that's not how it's done,
like, that's okay for them as well. Do
you get what I'm saying? Does that make
sense? They all have basis's to them. Yeah.
Any other questions? I know, yeah. Yeah. I
just wanna confirm, the washing of the hands
at the very start, is that one time
or three times?
He's gonna run the water over your hands.
Okay. If you do it 3 times, but
interlocking the fingers, like, if you could. That's
also a few times. Yeah. Everything, as best
as you can, is like, a few times
other than the head. I was just wondering.
Yeah.
Anything else?
Yeah. I was just wondering after last week,
if, starting with Ismaila and ending with the
dua is a confirmed sunnah or recommended practice?
And then in addition,
if you're saying, for example, Bismillah or a
Quranic dua, the beginning or end of your
wudu,
can you say that in the bathroom? Do
you say that silently? Do you mouth it?
Like, the way a bathroom so just so
people know, like,
bathrooms are considered to not be clean places
according
to Sharia
because they're bathrooms. Right? Like you're going to
the bathroom there, you know? So there's very
few places that were told to not pray,
but the bathroom is one of them. So
one of the prayers that the prophet would
make
when he left from a
bathroom
was, Wufranek Yarrabi, like your forgiveness,
my my God, my Lord.
And, you know, the idea was he was
seeking forgiveness for one of two reasons. 1,
that he went into a place that he
wasn't able to remember God there. Or 2,
by habit,
he was so inclined to remembering God that
he remembered God in this space that we're
told to not remember God. Right?
Functionally,
the way your bathrooms are built
in our bathrooms in this country, right, anonymize
your bathrooms, mine too. Right? Mine will look
different. You come to my house, I'll have
like this magic fancy bathroom, which is like
yours. It's like different than it is in
other parts of the world. Right? I went
to Zanzibar
in December,
the toilet
is in a separate room
from even the sink that you wash your
hands in where the toilet is, you know?
There's a lot of countries and a lot
of cultures that this is what it is.
Right? Maybe some of you have been to
places or your own, like, heritage is traced
back to places
where the place that you would actually go
to the bathroom
is separate from where your shower is, where
the sinks are, and these kinds of things.
Right?
Functionally, when you are in
the bathroom that you have,
it also isn't like the way most bathrooms
are in different parts of the world. Right?
Like, I've been to some parts of the
country
where,
like, bathrooms are gross, you know? There's just
no other way to describe it. There's like
no real sewage system,
right? If you've ever been to,
like, refugee camps that I've gone to, Rispanola,
they're already
kinda densely packed. And in the immediate aftermath
of crisis,
you know, what's built to kinda meet the
needs of 100 of people, has now thousands
of people using it. It's really, like, terrible
conditions,
for many people.
But
for a lot, like, that's like you could
walk into it and it's just a filthy
place, you know?
But there's some
shiuk that I've heard
say that because, like, functionally,
your restroom
also encompasses your shower,
your bathtub,
your sink where you brush your teeth.
It adopts the functionality
based off of, like, how you're utilizing it
as well. Do you know? And that's an
important thing to think about, especially
when you're talking about somebody who's exploring Islam,
who's a convert, who's new to Islam. Right?
I talk to people all the time who,
they become Muslim, their friends don't know they're
Muslim, their family doesn't know they're Muslim, they're
scared to tell people that they're Muslim,
and they'll come into my office and they'll
say, I'm really sorry, but the only place
I can pray in my house is when
I close the bathroom door and then I
go to pray in there. Because aside from
the fact that I can't tell my family,
like, they hate Islam, right? I'm scared, like,
what they'll do, you know? It's not even
in a worst case scenario,
but you're in these places because we're gonna
talk about wussul, like the shower that you
take,
in certain instances,
depending on, like, the state
that you're in.
So if somebody, for example,
like, uses the bathroom
to pray you have to be in a
state of wudu,
going to the bathroom breaks your wudu. So
then you have to do this again. Right?
There's certain things that require
more than just wudu. You have to take
like a full shower, what's called a ghusl.
So if you engage
in certain forms of physical intimacy,
if somebody has like a nocturnal emission, what
you would call a *, when a
woman is ending her menstrual cycle,
you know, at the end of it, you
would take like this larger shower.
When you're in the shower in the bathroom
of your home,
like you're in the shower
doing like these duas.
Do you get what I mean? Does that
make sense?
And fundamentally,
like most of us likely have in that
same space,
some feet away,
this apparatus that we use to go to
the bathroom, you know? But it's now
multi,
like
utility. You know what I mean? Does that
make sense? Do you get what I'm saying?
So do you just say it out loud
or just, like, mouth it to yourself and
think the words? The duas? Yeah. It depends.
Right? Like, it's different from your prayer, and
we haven't talked about prayer yet. But like,
when you recite in prayer, you're actually reciting
in prayer. So if you're praying to yourself,
and like you're reciting to yourself,
you're saying it loud enough
so that somebody else wouldn't hear it if
you were saying it. Right? So, like, whoever
led Isha, I wasn't here, they theoretically should
have recited it loud enough so everybody in
the room could have heard it. Right? So
when you come into a room and you
pray alone, you don't wanna leave it that
loud by yourself. That's reading out loud.
Reciting to yourself
is like in a whispered tone. You can
hear it. You know? Loud enough so that,
like, it's you and it's not, heard by
someone at a distance. Do you know what
I mean? So when you're making dua,
you can make dua in your heart,
you know, because there's not an etiquette to
to dua that says, like, you have to
say it out loud when when you're reciting
your prayers, you say it out loud. You
see what I mean? But it's also not
a problem to make duas out loud. Does
that make sense? Absolutely. Yeah. Does that make
sense? They really follow that, I know I
said a lot of words in Arabic
and we're like kind of built a little
bit here and there. Yeah. So, what if
it's like certain words like bismuth and stuff
like that, you can't say that in the
bathroom.
You shouldn't be doing that like when you're
using the bathrooms definitively.
Right? Like my son, he was 3
when he memorized
a chapter in the Quran that we looked
at in the very first class, Surah Ikhlas,
the chapter on sincerity,
that says,
say he's god the one. If you guys
remember, we talked about the word ahad. Right?
And he would like say this thing, because
you memorize Quran, it sticks in your head.
So he's like saying it on the train,
he's saying it on the bus, and he'd
be saying it like sitting on the toilet
in the bathroom. And I believe, man, he
can't do that. That's like the one place
you get, is it possible you're telling me
not to read Quran? You're telling me to
read it, now you're telling me not to
read it. And I'm like, no, like when
you're doing this thing, like don't do it
here. Right?
So that's like very specific context, do you
know what I mean?
Most of us are not gonna be in
a place where when we're making wudu,
like we are, sorry, when we're doing other
things in the bathroom, that we're we're doing
these things
fundamentally
like while we're using the toilet. Do you
see what I mean?
It's not the ideal situation,
but we live in a society that isn't
based off of, like,
Islamic ethics.
It doesn't mean that it lacks ethics, but
there's certain things that are gonna be different.
There's certain things also that you could go
to different parts of the world
and they don't necessarily like,
when we sleep, for example,
you know, you're not supposed to have your
feet, as a point of etiquette, face the
direction
of the gibla, like towards the Kaaba, you
know, as a point of etiquette.
You can go to Mecca, right, some of
us are gonna go in a couple weeks,
And in the hotels,
a lot of the beds face towards the
Kaaba.
So a lot of people design these buildings,
they're not Muslim. So they're not thinking about
it in that way. Right? So you're living
in a non Muslim society
and the
contractors who built your home, they built them
in the ways that they did and you're
a product of like a New York City,
you know, thing. If it's something that, like,
you wrestle with and you're at home, for
example,
you can,
like, go and, you know, use your kitchen
sink to make woodoo if you want to,
right? You know, if you don't wanna do
it in the same place that you go
to bed. Right? Like, you wanna be creative
around it. Do you know what I mean?
But that's where you have to remember,
like, the minimum were the obligations.
And then everything that's on top of that
is something that's recommended to do. Do you
get what I'm saying? Right? And if you
need to
make this du'a,
like you make it, also you can step
out of the bathroom and still make it.
It's like, unless you all are like fancy,
fancy people, your bathroom is not the size
of this room. Right? You know, your bathroom
is small enough that when you're done, you've
made will do. It's like a step out
of the bathroom and that's just just make
your du'a there. Do you get what I
mean? Does that make sense? Yeah.
Any other questions?
Yeah. Well,
just on this point of the the bathroom,
this, maybe we should
maybe this goes into another
sort of area
that, deals with,
aqeeda, I guess, but,
the the dua that we make before we
go into the bathroom and, you know, why
we make that dua and sort of that
those the existence of these beings and
how that kind of Yeah. Of the prayers
we make when we go into the bathroom,
it says,
that, oh, Allah, we seek protection from you,
from like entities, beings that,
are essentially just like not good beings fundamentally,
right, if we were to translate it, you
know.
But it's purposeful in certain ways,
like,
being able to delineate that there's different functions
happening in a room, that typically this isn't
what was happening, like,
14 centuries ago. Right? And how it is
that we're able to understand,
like, functionally for yourself,
the mechanics of it, you still just have
to get done, you know? And so when
we go, there's a reason why our wudu
rooms are separate from the bathrooms here, you
know what I mean? Like, you know, and
if you get to a place, inshallah, where
you're building your own house, just keep, like,
you know, as best as you can. If
the toilet's separate, that's great. It's not, like,
also okay, you know. Your bathrooms are
are, like,
are You just gotta try your best. You
get what I mean? Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Okay. Did anybody, like, sit and do some
of the other stuff that we talked about?
Just try to be, like, present and mindful
in the performance of your wudu?
Has anybody seen let me change the question.
Has anybody seen any change between last week
and this week when they were
making
their
wudu?
Anything different?
Or how was it?
Is anybody made what we'll do in a
week?
Just a little bit more mindful. Like, I
used to do a few things just automatically,
and
now I find myself correcting those,
just breaking things up a little bit. Yeah.
Are you comfortable with sharing any things? Yeah.
I used to I remember this was a
question last time, but I used to take
water and also, like, put it in my
nose simultaneously.
And that was a question that one of
the sisters asked. And he said, you don't
know if it's possible or not? But now
when I'm doing it, I'm like, okay, don't
do that. Like, gargle and then put it
in your notes.
Like, split it up. Great.
Yeah. I feel like I became, like, less
anxious when you do because, like, I thought
the confirmed syndrome was obligatory. So I was
just like, oh, I need to make sure
I did all of this. But now I
was just like, oh, I'm doing, like, the
sunnah, so it's like, less pressure, and I'm,
like, doing the art. So that was nice.
The default is you wanna do the confirm
sunnah.
Mhmm. Unless there's a reason as to why
you can't do it for some reason. Right?
You know? Mhmm. Does that make sense? Yeah.
Yeah. And I'm glad to hear that, Hamdulillah,
that it's it's a little easier.
Anyone else?
They're not meant to be like stressful acts,
right? They're meant to be acts that are
spiritual acts that are meant to like give
you a sense of
spiritual
increase, but within that
there there is like mechanics to it that
you have to follow, you know? Like you
want to be in a place where
you're, like, honoring the mechanics as best as
you can. Okay. So we were gonna walk
through, like, the process of
this.
So
the first thing I'm gonna do is remove,
like, barriers
from what'll get in the way. Right?
Yeah. So,
we're gonna first start with the hands. Right?
Okay?
And the way we're gonna wash you're gonna
wash your hands, like, kinda get water onto
every part of it. Right? You know, kinda
like you're scheming something. Right? You know what
I mean? So you're like rubbing your hands.
It's a cold day, I'm trying to bring
some warmth to my hands. Right? And when
the water comes on you just pour it
on.
Okay? I'm gonna interlock my fingers.
And that's that's pretty much it. Makes sense?
Yeah? Everybody's good so far? So you didn't
count, like, 3 times?
Did you count 3 times for each hand?
It was doing 3 times. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
You know?
When you get to it, we'll do it
slower. Right? So, yeah. Yeah. Go for it.
Right?
Good? Yeah. Right?
The key part is that you want to
interlock your fingers
in the midst of it
so that there's, like, parts to your
finger
that fold up. Right? So if you're washing
your hand like this,
you're essentially creating a barrier that's coming in
the middle. You know. And most of us
don't, we don't do this, right. Like, when
do you do this
in life? You know, like, ah, right. This
doesn't happen, you know. So you have to
be very purposeful
because you want to get in between
the different things in your, the digits, Right?
Because this is still a part of your
hand. Right? This is what I said.
You notice there's nothing on my hands.
No rings,
bracelet is off, right? I'm not wearing any
nail polish.
There's no barrier in between
what
I have to wash
as something that's a part of the wudu.
Right? Does that make sense?
Yeah? Okay.
So, I'm gonna then take, we don't have
to waste water, but
conceptually,
I'm gonna take water now in my right
hand.
I'm gonna walk my mouth.
And then you spit out. Right? You're gonna
do that 3 times.
Yeah? Does anybody need to see me do
that 3 times?
No. Right? It's pretty simple. Right?
Okay.
If I had a toothpick,
the Miss Walk that Khalid showed us last
time are you good holding this? I'm sorry.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. If I if I had the toothstick,
at the end of like rinsing out my
mouth, I would use it. Yeah. You can
take your finger, kinda push around. The idea
is you're just getting gunk out of your
mouth. You put it down for a second.
Why do you think that is?
Just on a practical level. It'll distract you
when you're free. If you have something Yeah.
That could be it. Right? Like, you ever
had a place I mean, just think about
this, you know. A lot of you
I'm not a native Arabic speaker. If you're
standing behind someone, especially it's a silent prayer,
right,
and or you're, like, out loud and you
don't understand what's going on in the prayer,
you start to just become conscious of other
things. You know, like, I just broke my
fast. Oh, man. I got, like, a date
stuck in my teeth. Right? And I'm like
playing around with the date and these kinds
of things. You know?
Also, you can't eat while you pray.
Right? You've never seen likely somebody praying their
daily prayers and they also have, like, a
sandwich in their hand as they're eating it
simultaneously. You know what I mean? My son,
he's now 7, when he was little, this
kid, like, did every single thing. You should
probably like, what are you doing, dude? He's,
like, popping like Skittles in his mouth a
lot of his brain. He's like, God's having
a great time. We don't eat in our
prayer.
It's not something that is done in the
prayer.
And if there's an act that you do,
we'll talk about this when we talk about
prayer, but like you can't eat when you're
praying. You know? If something you swallow, like,
it's there, that's fine. But you can't purposely
and consciously. You know what I mean? So
it's just removing distractions
also and ensuring that what's actually you
is having the water get to every part
of it.
The mouth is not like an obligatory
spot, but you wanna still take it seriously.
Do you know what I mean?
Our religion is also very much so about
good hygiene.
You know? So the mist walk was something
that had its own aspects
that provided dental hygiene.
So we're supposed to be people that take
care of our body on a whole, but
you wanna get like rid of all of
the the gunk as best as you can,
but not be like
paranoid about it so it creates like a
frenzy. So if you're praying and you're like,
oh man, I just felt something on my
teeth, it's okay, like don't worry about it.
Does it make sense?
Yep.
And getting to like the back, gargling,
what we said last time,
when you're fasting, fasting, you wanna be cautious
about it because Ramadan is coming up.
So you can rinse out the front of
your mouth. Right? You could do it a
little bit more minimally,
but you can't swallow the water while you're
fasting. Even if it's coming from wudu,
like, so you wanna avoid then,
like, kinda the head tilt with the gargle,
you know? Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay.
Then from there, we're gonna do 3
that's good.
It's gonna go into your nostrils. Like, you
wanna feel it in there. Right?
And then have it come down,
but don't like snort it all the way
up. Right? Did everybody see what I did?
You put it in with your right hand
and you bring it out with your left
hand, because Yeah, you do again.
And I didn't need so much water. Right?
I could show it to you, but it
was literally like in
this kind of little diamond in the middle
palm of my hand. There's not so much
that you really need. Your nostrils aren't so
big, right? You know,
I'm not saying pick your nose, right? But
you can literally fit
like half of your pinky in your nostril
and you filled your nostril.
So, to clean your nose,
you don't need a bucket of water
because your nose is not that big to
begin with, right? You know, so when people
are saying how can you make wudu
with just like a small amount of water,
we're not like
huge
in the sense that the things that we're
cleaning
necessitate that much. Does that make sense? So
you're gonna take it in
and
just spray it out. The same idea though,
with
kind of fasting again.
Your fast breaks,
if anything enters your body through
one of these cavities.
Right? So like, you can't take when you're
fasting
nose drops
that enter medicinally
through your nostrils into your system. Right?
So you wanna be smart,
like, as to how much water you're consuming
through your nose. It's just about putting it
in the nose and keeping it out of
the nose. Right? Goes in with the right
hand, comes out with the left hand. Make
sense? Yeah. We're gonna do that 3 times
also.
Yeah? Any questions on that?
Great.
Is this helpful? Do we need to, like,
go through the walk through? We do? Yeah?
Do you just want me to throw water
on this? Is that what you're saying? I
can see you laughing behind your mask. Okay.
Amazing. Great. Just don't throw
it. Just don't throw it? Don't throw it.
Yeah. At the end, we're gonna dump this
bucket in celebration on holiday.
Like, yeah.
We've won. Okay.
So what comes after your nose?
Hands?
Face? Face. Yeah. Great. So you're gonna have
water on both of your hands now. Right?
And you can pour it. Yeah. And this
is going to go from the forehead,
your earlobe to earlobe,
and down to the lower part of your
chin.
Right? I'm not snacking my face with it
and then it's done and I'm just going
like this. Starting
top of my forehead,
going down, right, and it would go under
my hat. I would take my hat off.
But, it's gonna go from the top of
your forehead,
earlobe to earlobe, right?
And you're gonna go to the bottom of
your chin. If you have a big beard
and your beard is long,
then you gotta make sure you're rubbing your
fingers
through your beard
to get
to the parts that you need to get
to. But from the top of your forehead,
you're gonna go down and come. Right? You
wanna get into like your eye areas.
Right? You're not missing any part of your
face. This
whole thing constitutes the face.
Does it make sense?
Yeah. And one of the wisdoms behind us
doing it, like more than once, is that
you're ensuring then, more likely than not, that
every part is getting water on it. You
see what I mean?
Does that make sense?
The minimum is one because you can then
definitively do it also in one stroke, right?
But there's that much more likelihood that it's
hitting all the places that it needs to
hit when you're getting to do this a
few different times.
Yeah? And each time you're doing this, you're
doing it with like presence. You're doing it
with a sense of this is like me
getting ready for my prayer. Right? Remember the
narrations I shared last time?
You know, we're taught that, like,
the wudu that you make, it's literally like
illuminating the body parts that you're watching, you
when you stand on the day of judgment,
right? It's a source of kind of blessing
and like a spiritual sense
that you want to be and will do
as much as you can because it's a
state of being as well, you know?
And our tradition teaches us that this is
something that those limbs as you wash them,
it's also then like literally like cleansing
the sins
that are committed, you know, by these parts
of your body and things that you use
them for, right, which bleeds into the idea
of you can't make
wudu with the same water twice
because its utilization is not just a physical
utilization,
but
it has now
metaphysical
impact
that
once it's kinda washing off from you, like
those things are there present in the water
as well. You see what I mean? Does
that make sense? Yeah?
Okay. What comes after the face?
Yeah. Okay. So, when printing your face, do
you need to use both hands or can
you use just one hand?
If you can do your whole face, you
just gotta do your face.
You know?
Can you wash your face with 2 one
hand? Yeah. I know. Yeah?
I got a big head, guys.
Yeah. Go ahead. I don't know if you
talked about this last week, but how do
you go about,
doing what you do on your face if
you were in makeup?
So I don't know enough about every type
of makeup, and I think 2 or 3
weeks ago, we talked about makeup, maybe. I
have worn makeup before,
so I used to be on TV
more
than I I do now.
And makeup,
it it has like, everything has to be
water soluble.
You know?
So if you are putting something on,
it's not about whether it's makeup or not,
it's about whether it creates a barrier or
not. Right? I took this off
because
this thing is gonna be really tight on
my finger,
and the water isn't gonna,
like,
definitively. There's a chance, but it's not definitive.
So I gotta take it off in order
to do it. You know? This ring, I've
had since I was 12 years old. Right?
I have gotten much fatter from the time
I was 12. So the ring is adjustable,
but it doesn't, like, I gotta pull on
this for it come off. Right? And when
it's summertime
and, like, I'm getting that much more, like,
from the heat, you know, your,
like, swelling that comes up. It's definitely not
getting to where it could go. So it's
the concept. Right? You want to understand the
concepts. Do you know what I mean? So
that you can understand then
why
something might be a problem. So if you're
wearing makeup
and the makeup is becoming a barrier,
especially
with the face, the arms, the head, and
the feet, which are obligatory
parts to this,
then your wudu is not complete if the
water doesn't hit where it's meant to hit.
Do you get what I mean? Right? There's
some makeups that are water soluble.
Right?
But
they're like, if it's
creating, like, a barrier that the water is
not hitting directly when it needs to, then
the water is not hitting directly when it
needs to. Does that make sense? Yeah?
Okay.
Any other questions? That's why, like, the nail
polish can be a problem, because the nail
polish is literally creating a barrier. You know?
And that's that's what it is, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
So what comes after the face?
Arms. The arms. Ready? Okay.
So when you do the arms,
we said up
to and including the elbow. Right? So I
gave the example, the prophet had a companion
by the name of Abu Harira
who, on his own, we don't do this,
but he was once seen and he would
wash all the way up to like his
armpit area.
Right? Because of these narrations, it said, your
body is gonna be, like,
glistening, illuminated on the day of judgement, you
know, from where you did wudu. And so,
here,
we're gonna do
every part of the arm,
including, like, this little fold here. Right? So
if you typically
fold your arm when you're making wudu, you're
running it under a sink or something like
that. The same way if your fingers are
stuck, the water can't penetrate through it definitively.
If I'm here, right,
like, the water isn't necessarily getting into this
fold. You know? So I have to do
every part of the arm
up to and including, like, the elbow. So
above it. Make sense?
Yeah? Okay.
So we're gonna start
with the fingers and
this is something that's washing. So if you
remember,
it's about
rubbing the arm also. Right? So that it's
there
and ensuring that the whole arm is getting
done. Does that make sense? Yeah?
Okay. That's good.
Any questions on that? I don't have to
do both. Right?
Yes? No?
Yeah? Yeah? So there's no, like, particular way
you go about it as long as you
get your arm wet. You don't have to,
like,
use your to
You can use your I mean, so, what
we said last week were you here last
week? Yeah. So one of the things that
we're recommended to do, where does it say
it? Arms.
You wash 3 times.
So you wanna rub the limbs that are
washed,
is one of, like,
the sunnah practices to do. Right? And the
only thing that's not washed that's wiped is
the head.
Right? So you can't rub the arm
like with your, like with the hand that's
attached to the arm. Right? You know? But
you have to use the opposite arm to
do that. Does it make sense? Yeah. Does
it matter which arm do you start with?
Just start with the right.
Yeah. So, in all of these, you wanna
start with the right,
as best as you can,
unless there's a reason as to why you
can't do that, you know.
And the specifics of it, you wanna just
ask people, you know what I mean? Somebody's
got a cast on their arm and you
see them in the bathroom and be like,
Colin says you gotta, like, do this. Right?
You know? Like, there there is different
for them than where you are. MashaAllah, like
none of us have a cast on our
arm right now. You know what I mean?
And this is what I'm trying to tell
you.
You you want to, like, be helpful to
somebody
as best as you can.
There was a brother here the other day,
we came in and,
asked, did anybody pray, Oser? And somebody prayed
with me and he said he had already
prayed.
And
in our
like, prayer, there's
after Asar, once you pray Asar, the afternoon
prayer, the 3rd prayer of the day, you're
not allowed to pray any prayers with prostrations
in them until like the 4th prayer of
the day, Maghrib time.
So this guy, I know him. And you
know he's new to like his prayer, he's
building relationship with his prayer,
and as I'm leaving, he's praying in the
corner.
So I told his friend, somebody I know
who's his friend, I was like, hey man,
I don't know what this guy's praying right
now, but you should just talk to him
after. He might not know, but they're friends
with each other, you know. He's not gonna
come like hammer down on him and make
the guy feel like he's the worst of
the worst, right? There's a hadith
where the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,
he is leading people in prayer. Somebody had
just converted to Islam.
And this man asked the prophet, you know,
to teach him something.
And he said, if you hear someone sneeze,
say,
this is a right that they have over
you. Right? May God's mercy be upon you.
You know? So this person now stands to
pray
with everybody. He's new to Islam, like many
of you are.
And as he is praying
with people the way you guys just prayed
Isha with people, somebody sneezed out loud in
the prayer he was praying.
And he had just learned that when somebody
sneezes, you say,
may Allah's mercy be on you, Yirhamakkulullah.
And so he said it out loud
and people he was praying with
started to look at him.
And he got uncomfortable
and he spoke again,
why are you looking at me?
Right? And
what the narration says is that the people
that were praying with him, they start to,
like, strike the inner part of their legs
to tell him, essentially to indicate, like, you
can't talk. So he got it. He became
silent.
He's really agitated inside,
you know?
And at the end of the prayer, he
says, you know, I swear to God that
Muhammad is the best of teachers, sallallahu alaihi
wasallam.
He did not revile me or repudiate me
or scold me. He simply came to me
and said,
in this prayer of ours, we are reciting
the words of God. It's not appropriate to
mix them with other words. Right?
They both got him to understand you don't
talk in prayer,
but one made him feel like he was
the worst of the worst
and the other made him feel like you're
still good with your relationship with God. Do
you know what I mean?
I don't know why some people might not
do certain things.
Right?
Literally, somebody might have some kind of, like,
skin ailment or illness that they're not washing
their arm in the ways that you might
be washing your arm. You know? When my
son was born, he still has, like, all
kinds of marks on his back from different,
like, skin conditions that he had. The poor
guy is constantly, like, scratching his back for
years of his life. He had to put,
like, various, like, soaps and medications and things.
We don't know. Right? So that's the assumption
that you want to go in
and if you give somebody information,
then you give it to them with a
sense of,
you know,
just compassion,
right? And just think,
not like,
knowledge can be like very empowering, but can
also be easily weaponized, you know, and a
source of arrogance. Do you know what I
mean? That's not like why we do these
things, right? We do these things because in
Islam, it's what we believe that God has
taught us is the best way to worship
him. You know what I'm saying? Everybody's just
trying their best. Does that make
sense? Yeah. So like, you know, if you
can get your whole arm washed, that's fine,
right? That's why in the Hanafi school, at
least, you can make wudu
by just jumping into like the ocean,
right, and you intend wudu and then you've
done all of this stuff, you know. You're
not under the water like scrubbing arms and
like this, you just jump into the water,
you know what I mean? Does that make
sense? I went snorkeling with a friend of
mine. We went to Saint Thomas
and
we're, like, seeing beautiful things under the water
and while we're also like in these beautiful
places,
we literally can just like dive into the
water
and it suffices for wudu.
If we have things that are barricading, right?
If I'm wearing,
like, instead of this, I'm wearing, like, a
swim cap, Then I have to let the
water come in underneath it. Do you get
what I mean? Does that make sense? Right?
Yes? Okay.
What comes after the arm? So we're gonna
do that 3 times to the right arm
and 3 times to the left arm. Up
to
and including
like the elbow.
Then what happens next?
The heads. What do we do with the
head?
Yeah. So you're gonna wipe instead of wash
the head. Right? Yeah? Okay. You ready?
Great. So,
you can do it in different ways, like
you said. But now you have water on
your hands.
You take these three fingers,
right?
And you're going to take
the palm of your hand with these 3
fingers and go back on it.
Yeah?
You're gonna take
index finger
and you're gonna go through,
like, your ear on its inner part
and take your thumb and go on the
outer part of your ear.
So now you've used
every part of the inside of your hand,
right?
Then with the back of your hands
that you haven't used yet, you're gonna use
and put on the back of your neck.
Make sense? Right?
You're using every part of your hand
to do the wiping.
Okay?
If it's not done specifically like that, you
put your whole hand on here, and then
you do your ears, whatever else. Right? It's
fine. Do you remember in the Hanafi school,
how much of the head is the minimum?
A quarter.
A quarter. Right? And in other schools, it's
even less than that. Right? So if this
is your face,
right,
then this is your head,
then a quarter of your head is just
like right here. You know?
Yeah?
Does it make sense?
Okay. Any questions on that?
Yeah. So then when you're making we'll do
it in public, for example, when you're wearing
hijab,
do you,
wipe over, like, the, you know, this part
of the hair under your scarf or Yeah.
You could, theoretically. Right? You can lift up.
Right? Because this is your head.
Right? And so you're doing,
like a quarter of your head and this
was a question that was asked like 2,
3 weeks ago.
I don't wear a hijab.
Right? Like a woman's hijab. Right? I don't
typically,
like, this is just for instruction,
but if you see me the way I
dress, I'm always wearing long sleeves,
right? And other than in eharam,
in Ran Umrah or Hajj, my head's always
covered, he has like big beard on my
face, right. This is all part of like
a man's, like also
covering in some capacities,
you know? We have hijab for men and
women
and
where and how,
like, you're pinned up, you got stuff going
on, right?
We're in a space where you want to
know fic
so that you are able to adapt
within the circumstances you're in. You know, if
you're a student and you got 15 minutes
between
a 6 hour lab
and, like, another class where you have a
quiz,
and if you don't get there on time,
they're gonna give you a 0 no matter
what, plus not mark you for attendance or
lateness, and you gotta figure out what to
do. That's why you wanna be strategic and
know, like, okay,
it's Tuesday, I got this going on, I
gotta wear some boots that I could wipe
over so Wudu goes faster. Right? And it's
not the norm. You don't wanna get lazy,
right? You do what is confirmed
unless there's a reason for it, right? And
so if there is a reason that you
have to do,
then you're going to
like do the minimums as you can. Do
you get what I mean? And if you
do the minimum in one capacity,
it doesn't mean you have to do the
minimum in all of it. Right? So if
you do a fourth of your head, you
can still do your mouth and your nose
and do everything 3 times and this kind
of stuff. Does that make sense? Yeah?
Okay.
Any other questions on the head?
Yeah. So you get water,
like these three fingers, You're gonna go over
and then the 2 fingers, you can
take on the outside, the inner part with
your index fingers, your thumbs on the back.
If you wanna, like, be even more particular,
you can take your pinky and stick it
in, you know, to kinda where it is,
but don't hurt yourself. Right? And then, you
take the back of your hands, go on
your neck, and then that's the head.
Yeah? Okay. With the feet,
what we would
do or we could do the feet like
here. Can everybody see?
So, with the feet, what you're going to
do
is you're going to essentially
have your pinky
go in between
each digit,
so that the water gets through. The way
we did with our fingers, and you kind
of interlock them to make sure the water
gets through, with the pinky,
you're gonna do the same thing, and you
start with your little toe
going leftwards.
And then on your left foot, you start
from the big toe going right.
Going left also until you get to your
your little pinky toe. Right? So it's kinda
just like going in a order. Right? From
smallest
to big to small again. Does that make
sense? Yeah. So the key part here
is that you're gonna wash up to your
ankles.
Right? You're not just
doing So this was the example I gave
last time. Right? When people were making wudu
back in the day,
they would
kinda put their foot, you know, they're in
like the sand, they're in the dirt, they're
in something, but your foot is like pressed
on something. Right? So, say right now,
if we poured water on my foot,
there is a block between, like, where the
plastic is and the back of my heel.
Right? It's very easy to, like, miss that
spot. You know?
So you wanna make sure you're washing the
whole foot,
you know, up to and including the ankle.
Do you know what I mean? And what's
great when you have, like, a boot or
one of these socks
is, like, it's essentially showing you the the
length, the height of something. Right? So you
replicate
it as best as you can to that
to that level of the height. Does that
make sense?
Yep. And then, you're gonna when you're done
with that, like, that completes
the
the wudu.
And so, if you are doing this now,
like, over your
boot, right, you're not gonna, like, drench your
whole boot. Right? So let's say this was
one of those wudu socks or the boot.
So I'm gonna just take my left hand
now. Right?
And if you remember, I said this, like,
some point in the last couple of weeks.
But, you know,
traditionally, we eat with our right hand.
Right? And we do things with our left
hand, like you're cleaning out your nose. If
you're, like, washing yourself when you're using the
restroom,
you're taught to use your left hand. We'll
talk about that in a little bit. So
when you're now wiping over your feet, right,
you're still, like, touching your shoe or something
to that extent. So you're gonna put water
on your left hand. You're not gonna drench
your whole foot. You've already made wudu
and you've put on the external barrier
that suffices
for you
to wipe over it for
a maximum of 24 hours. You can't take
it off. When you take it off, then
you've broken that, and you have to make
a new wudu fully before you could put
that on again. So if I have
my boot on, I'm gonna take the water,
and I'm just gonna wipe over the top
part of it. Right? Like, I'm not gonna
get, like, on the bottom of my Timbs
and, like, you know, rinse those off. You're
just taking the water and wiping over the
top on both of your feet using your
left hand.
Does it make sense?
Yeah.
In the concept of, like, the soft sword
over the shoe, can we do it simultaneously,
like, both feet
on it? You should use your left hand
and do the right foot and then the
left foot. Yeah.
But, like,
if if you did them both,
like, I I don't see why that would
be a problem, because you've wiped over them
both. In the Hanafi school, the order
is not like, from the the
the obligations.
It's a recommendation,
you know. So you could do them theoretically
out of order, but, like,
you wouldn't do that unless you had a
reason to. You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Yeah. When you're done, do you just swipe
yourself dry?
You can, if you want to. There's some
recommendations that you don't wipe because
as the water is dripping, it's still like
a part of the spiritual purification to it.
But you have to just be mindful of
it. Right? Like,
I'm in Turkey
and it's 20 degrees outside
and it's snowing and we're already limited on
a lot of things.
You're not gonna, you know,
say I need to, like,
just be drenched in water. You should dry
yourself off. Right? Do you see what I
mean? It could be a source of, like,
all kinds of problems. Do you know? Yes,
I just wanna be smart. These are not
just tips. Okay? Tips whether you're born into
Islam or you're new to Islam, these kinds
of things. If you put socks over your
wet feet again and again and again, you
will develop athlete's feet and your feet will
also stink and your socks will stink and
the shoes that you wear when you put
those shoes on will also start to stink.
Right?
This religion is about cleanliness,
You know?
Hadid says, Atuhu Shatral Iman,
that cleanliness is a part of your faith
of your Iman. Right?
So, you don't wanna do that. Right? So
if you gotta sit down and you have
to put your sock on for whatever reason
after you make your wudu like you want
to, then definitely dry your feet off, right?
Because you don't want the consequences that you
get into bad habits
and that might not be any of you
all.
I see like these like young guys come
here, man. They're like drenched in water, you
know, after wudu. It's like they just rolled
down a slip and slide or something. They're
like, what are you what did you do
in there, dude? Right? But then also like,
their feet are soaked
and then they just put their socks over
their feet, you know. And I'm like, man,
you're honestly, if you if you get married,
your wife is gonna hate you dude. Like,
you're killing your feet for the rest of
your life, you know.
It's it's not like a good idea.
So, you just you wanna anticipate,
like, what's coming next. Do you know what
I mean?
But if you have the capacity to let
the water kinda just stay,
you know, as it dries off on its
own, like, on a spiritual level, there's a
kinda understanding that there's continuity then, you you
know, as the water is kinda dripping off
of you, it's still serving as a means
of purification.
Yeah?
Okay. Any other questions
on that?
Okay. Yeah. Well, it's not a question. It's
a comment. The wudu room, like, to be
fair, when you're like doing wudu, I swear
to God, I feel like I'm like drowning
every time, like the water goes so fast.
It's like so much water. Really? Yeah.
I've never seen
any women
as drenched as I've seen some of these
boys.
Like I don't, it looks like they fell
into a pool
and just started walking out of it, you
know?
I don't know.
Okay. So really quickly,
maybe we could do a few other things.
Do people know,
like, what necessitates
will do? We wanna think about that. What
breaks you will do?
Any ideas? Yeah. You can just say The
bathroom.
The bathroom, but you wanna be specific. Right?
And this is important. Do you know what
I mean?
What makes sense in your head
is not going to sound
like that to the person receiving your words.
So when you talk about Islam and you're
presenting Islam to somebody,
like, you have to understand that you're talking
to someone not at them, you know. So
this is a great example and I'm glad
that you said this, right,
Because
if you are somebody who is new to
Islam
and
someone said, you have to do this water
washing
and one of the things that like breaks
your wudu
is the bathroom.
Right?
You can think of the conundrum it'll create
in someone's head to like the only place
I can make wudu is the bathroom. And
if I go into the bathroom, it's gonna
also like break my wudu. Like what what
do I do?
Right? But that's not what you mean.
You know what I mean? Right? And I
know what you mean,
but it's not like what it is. You
get what I'm saying?
If you are going to get into the
habit, which is not a bad thing, we
have a hadith that says, the best amongst
you are the ones who learns the Quran
and teaches it. If you know something, like,
you should teach somebody something. Right? There's not
a problem in that
in the things that you have built a
relationship with but you want to be able
to understand how the person will hear it.
You know, the example that I think I
gave before, maybe I'll just reiterate it, it
was like a young woman who's a new
Muslim in our community.
She,
you know, was super excited, converted right before
one of our major holidays, Eid al Adha.
It's around the Hajj time, the pilgrimage to
Mecca.
And if you're not in Mecca or even
if you're there, but around the world, you
know, celebrate it a little different than if
you're on Hajj itself.
But part of it in the Abrahamic tradition
is, you know,
we
like slaughter an animal and distribute the meat
to people in need. Right? A lot of
Islamic ritual has elements that are communal and
rooted in social equity,
you know? And so,
this girl was super happy and excited and
I saw her in my office a couple
weeks later and she's in tears and I
was like, what's going on? And she said,
I looked up how we celebrate our holiday
and it said, I gotta kill a goat
and she said, I don't know what I'm
supposed to buy a goat and do I
like kill this thing in my apartment? You
know, I got a studio.
And I'm like, no man.
Please don't kill any animals
in your apartment. But why would she not
think that based off of what she read?
I know converts
who prayed
in like short spandex and tank tops for
most of their lives
and you can't fault them because what they
read online
didn't tell them anything otherwise.
Right? So
our world,
our our our religion is very much so
based off of the importance of, like, language
and understanding,
like effective communication
goes hand in hand with somebody's ability to
really comprehend and understand. Do you see what
I mean? Right? So if I was to
distill,
like, what what what did you intend to
say? That might be a better thing. You
seem to be bad. Okay. But what is
it? Like, you gotta be specific. Right? Using
the toilet?
Yeah. Right? So, if you urinate,
right, it breaks your wudu.
If you
pass wind,
right, it breaks your wudu.
If you
go to the bathroom
and, you
know, you are defecating,
it breaks your wudu.
These are three things that break your wudu
specifically,
right? You're going to
pass wind, urinate or defecate.
You then have to renew your will do
in order
to pray your prayers,
to touch like the copy of the Quran,
some other things.
But you are not required
to make wudu
immediately after those things happen.
Do you see the difference?
Does that make sense?
In the Hanafi school,
there is also
a breaking of wudu
if
you
bleed to a point,
in some schools of thought,
your wudu breaks if there's physical contact
across genders.
In the Hanafi school, that's not the case.
Right?
And, you know,
like,
for example, we're going for Umrah,
if you go for Umrah with us and
you adopt this opinion,
your life is gonna be a big mess
because you're gonna be in Medina, in Mecca,
surrounded by millions of people, you're walking around
the Kaaba,
men and women in Mecca pray next to
each other, they're making du'af next to each
other, there's no separation.
Right? You're gonna be, like, bumping into people,
you know? So, in these other opinions, they'll
say your wudu is breaking at that time.
In the Hanafi school, it doesn't break your
wudu. Right?
But
you have
these other things that come into play.
If you go into a deep sleep,
right, which is not like dozing, you're sitting
in your work meeting and you kind of
doze off,
You're in a classroom and you doze off.
You're in the halukkah and you doze off.
You're in Jomah, you doze off. That doesn't
break your wudu. But if you go into
a deep sleep,
then it's broken
your wudu.
And you have to then redo your wudu
after that. Does that make sense?
The types of water you can make will
do with, which aren't gonna necessarily be so
applicable,
in many situations, right? Because we all have
access to like regular running water, alhamdulillah.
But what you have with water
is now
in its like natural state.
What changes
the ability for water
to be something you can make wudu with
is going to be how its viscosity
is altered.
So the
color,
the smell,
the taste of the water,
these are the three characteristics
that if they are altered,
they are now not considered to be
than the water
that you can make wudu with. You know
what I mean?
So, can you make wudu with powerade,
right, or Gatorade?
Well, I don't know. Right? Because you can't.
You know.
And, you're in this place now where though,
alhamdulillah, we're blessed. Like,
literally,
we are in a place
on this floor alone,
there are
1, 2, 3, 4,
10, 11, 12. There's 12 sinks
and 2 water fountains
just on this floor,
on this side of the building and it
exists on every floor of the building and
then you have that building. There's no shortage
of water that you can use to make
wudu.
Does that make sense?
Yeah. Other types of water that you can
make wudu with, we talked about like rain
water,
You can make wudu
with water
that is kind of running water. Right? Like,
flowing water.
So rivers, streams, these kinds of things.
But, you're gonna have access to, like, water
pretty much wherever it is that you're going.
Right? If you are planning
in some type of journey,
you get yourself, like, stuck in some place,
you wanna plan accordingly,
and just be ready, like, to anticipate, you're
gonna pray. We're gonna talk in a couple
of weeks about,
a practice that's called the Yamun,
that if there's not water,
then you use, like, clean earth, dirt. You're
not gonna rub your body in dirt, but
it's very different in the format. You're just,
like, tapping,
like, the ground,
like a stone, something like that and then
you're gonna do something similar to what we
talked about, but I'll explain that when we
talk about it.
So these are the kind of things that
you wanna think about. Nullifiers of wudu
are these things,
and necessitate,
like, redoing your will do. So if none
of these things happen in the course of
a day,
you can maintain your wudu for the whole
day in its entirety.
Right? You don't have to keep making your
wudu
again and again and again.
Every single time you pray,
you can have maintained a state of wudu,
but you want to just be mindful of
it. Right? Like my kids, you know, they're
little kids. Right? This is also not incumbent
upon people
until they fit into certain categories.
You have to be Muslim,
right? If you're not Muslim,
there's no one who'll do for you. So
don't let grab people that, oh my God,
you're eating pork. They're not Muslim bro, they
can eat pork, it's okay.
They have to be an adult, right? Post
pubescent.
That's where in our religion
like, accountability
sets in at a date of adulthood,
you know. That to be sane so it's
different for people who don't have their sanity.
And when you have individuals also who have
distinct conditions, right, our tradition
has exemptions for ailments of all kind, not
just physical,
emotional, mental, spiritual, these are things that come
up. You want to have specificity
if there are things that have to be
considered
based off of conditions that you might have,
you know. There's people that I've met who,
subhanAllah, they have like severe OCD.
Right? May Allah make it easy for them.
I've met people
who
literally,
like from their wrist up,
you know, is a different shade than from
their arm down
because of the excessive amount of wiping their
hands because of their OCD. Right? You don't
want to just tell somebody something
not being aware of what the impact might
be back to them. Do you get what
I mean? Because different things apply to different
people in different ways. Right? This is why
you don't necessarily hear me get up at
Jumas sometimes and talk about like things in
these very broad ways
that I know our community and our community
is very different from others. We talk about
mental health here a lot. We have 2
clinical psychologists on our staff, right?
Anxiety rates, depression rates are very high amongst
people in general.
So you wanna, like, be in a place
where
you have conversations with people about some of
these things. Right?
When you now have some of these nullifiers
that are there
that come up,
there's a process to cleaning those things as
well.
So in order
for the spiritual cleansing
to take place,
we also have to have like a cleansing
of the physical body.
So in our tradition,
water is used
when we are cleaning things.
If I have clothing
that gets something that is
inherently
considered to be impure,
right,
there is, you know, I'm walking down the
street, I'm sitting in
like a bus,
you know, I go to a Nets game,
right, and the guy behind me
drops like beer on my shirt.
Right?
Put a beer on my shirt.
It's not a clean substance according to Sharia.
Water
is the purifying agent for me to clear
that out fundamentally.
Right? You could throw it in your washing
machine.
The ideal is that if you have an
impure substance that gets on your clothing,
that you have water like flow over it.
You know?
A minimum you wanna have is like once,
but the ideal recommended is like 7 times
the water is poured over it. Right?
But, like, one time at a minimum,
you would have like in a prism of
contemporary
legal rulings
that if something
that is considered filthy gets on your clothes
and you put it into the washing machine,
that does suffice.
But as a matter of just kinda following
what
the base rulings are, you wanna still they
try to rinse or wash those things out
as best as you can before you stick
them into the washing machine. Does that make
sense? That's like on your clothing.
Yeah? On your physical body, the concept is
the same.
So
where
in our tradition, like we use water
when we also go to the bathroom
to clean ourselves off. We don't use just
toilet paper. Right? Because the idea is that
the toilet paper isn't necessarily going to constitute
complete cleaning.
What it does quite often is just smear.
Right? Like
yesterday, I was watching TV with my kids
or 2 days ago and there's a toilet
paper ad that compares 2 rolls of toilet
paper and it says our toilet paper is
better and the example that they use is
when you use it, this one leaves more
stuff still on you and theirs doesn't say
it takes all of it off. It just
says less than the other one. Right?
Your prayer
is not something
that is complete if you don't have this
physical state of wudu
and the wudu
necessitates
also first
that any urine and any excrement
is removed from your body.
So you want to use water
to wash this off
and the water should ideally be able to
like drip off of the parts of your
body that you're cleaning.
You could use like a paper towel
and like scrunch it up. Right?
Wet wipes might work in some capacity.
Bidets
like are things that people use all over
the world
and Islamic culture is not the only culture
that gives in to washing
and it's something that's new, Right? If you
are new to Islam, you're exploring Islam,
right, it's something that you might have grown
up with or not,
but it also has its own cultural manifestations.
You get what I mean?
I can literally take this
and use it to wash myself.
Doesn't matter
because it's just holding the water.
This thing is also
holding water. Right? It fundamentally will work.
We had a guy that was here
like some years ago,
he was in love with Islam.
And he was sitting with a friend of
his and me in my office
and he and I had been talking for
like 6 months about Islam as a religion
and he, you know, was like everything makes
sense to me.
And I said great. He said I just
don't get 2 things. I said what? He
said one, I don't really understand, like, what's
up with dogs in Islam.
And we talked about it. He had grown
up in a broken home.
He had pet dogs that were very close
to him,
right? And in some opinions,
in the Sunni tradition of Islam,
the saliva of a dog is considered to
be
impure in its, like, base.
By extension then, some people would say like
the dog in its entirety, like its fur,
etcetera is also impure.
You have other opinions that would say that
there's a distinction between a wild dog and
domestic dog. And the base that they would
use for this is that when people would
go hunting back in the day, that the
hunting animal, one of them that would bring
the animal back
was a hunting dog and the dog would
have the animal in its mouth and if
its saliva
was inherently impure, then that would be a
problem because what is at its base impure
put onto something,
like in that way is gonna render impurity
on it also.
So what they would say is that the
domesticated animal is different from the non domesticated
dog. Right? The idea, like, subhanallah, being that
like knowledge gives elevation to everything.
You know? Even like the dog that's learned
is different from the dog that does not
have knowledge. Do you know what I mean?
We talked about that and that was like
not relevant to this conversation.
And then the second thing that he said
that was like holding him up from becoming
Muslim
was he was like, I don't understand what
these like lorta things are. Right? I said,
what?
And in South Asian culture,
if you have ever had a South Asian
friend, which his friend was a South Asian,
His South Asian friend said,
like, you need to get this thing that
is called a lorda.
And I'm gonna try to bring up some
images
of a lorta for you. Right? So you
can look here. If you see on my
laptop,
right, it's pink,
like copper,
blue,
these things are like,
like, you know, they look like genie lamps.
Right? They're They're not small. You know what
I mean?
And this man told this other man, you
need to get one of these things
in order for you to wash yourself after
you go to the bathroom. He's looking at
my face and he's like, I work in
a corporate law firm, man.
He's like, what do I like, do I
put this thing, like this shiny pink thing
on my desk?
Am I supposed to walk in and out
of the bathroom carrying it? Right? It's fundamentally
the same idea.
What breaks you would do is not the
bathroom,
right?
There's specificity
to it.
So I looked at his friend who works
at the same corporate law firm and I
was like, hey man, you got one of
these pink things sitting on your desk in
your office? He's like, no. I said, what
do you do when you go to the
bathroom? I use a water bottle. I said,
did you tell your friend that? He was
like, no. I was like, do you see
why he's freaked out? He's like, yeah, I
guess so. And I was like, you also
made our beautiful religion
about dogs and
like lotas to this man. You
know? Why is that even the starting point
for you?
You know what I mean? Like where is
God in the conversation?
Where is like an empowering theology?
Where are concepts of justice and love and
forgiveness and all kinds of things
that have to be the base of what
everything goes back to. You know what I'm
saying? I said to that guy, hey, have
you ever used a bidet? He said, yeah,
we had a bidet in my house growing
up. I was like, that's good it is
functionally. Right? In our religion, you just have
to clean yourself after you go to the
bathroom because you don't want to be walking
around with, like, urine on your clothes,
with, like,
traces of excrement on your body, Right? Fecal
matter. Right?
And you could think, like, literally.
You know, there's studies that are done to
illustrate, like, the point
that most people when their cell phones are
tested,
they have
a huge amount
of fecal matter and urine on their phones
because of how much people use their phones
on toilets when they're in the bathrooms. Right?
And anybody who ever is like, I say
this to you, they're all so gross. There's
poop on my phone. Right?
Well, if it's gross there's poop on your
phone you're putting against your face. Right? That
is
gross. But also,
just think about the idea though. Conceptually,
what Islam is saying
is you want to wash your body fully,
of anything,
would you want to have urine
and fecal matter on any part of your
body?
And for us, like, that cleanliness is important.
There's a woman that I met once who
was
a housekeeper
in an apartment complex.
And people convert to Islam for all different
reasons. Right? Some of you have landed in
Islam for a variety of reasons, mashaAllah. You
know, there's not a right or a wrong
there.
This
woman, as I spoke to her, she worked
in this place
and one of the things that she did
was the building offered laundry services to the
tenants.
And she would clean people's clothes and see
just how gross people's clothes were. You know?
And there was one group of people
who their clothes were just never dirty when
she got them
and she went to them and she said,
why do you give me clean clothes to
wash?'
And these people were Muslim and they said
to her, we cannot pray in any clothes
that have filth on them.
So we
like have to wash every element of the
clothings in these ways and because subhanAllah,
these Muslim people clean their clothes like this,
she converted to Islam because of that. That
was like her in road to her shahada.
She said, these people are this clean, there's
got to be something going on in their
religion. Do you get what I mean? Does
that make sense?
Yeah. So when you are utilizing the restroom,
right, you want to be able to wash
ideally.
Right? And in the washing guys, we're gonna
be done in 5 minutes. If you want
to wait 5 minutes. Yeah.
If you
And you want to do that in a
capacity
that is not now going to overburden,
like, where you're at. You know what I
mean? You get a water bottle, you keep
it in your bag. There's all kinds of
things that you can get that are also
just like
plastic that you can roll up.
And many spaces now have single stall,
like, gender
neutral,
like, bathrooms that you can go to in
most places.
Right? You just try your best.
If you get to a place where you
fundamentally cannot do that for whatever reason, you
know, which happens. Right? You could go some
place and you go to the bathroom and
there's no water to clean yourself,
you still have to clean that before you
can pray
but it doesn't mean like you're a horrible
person,
you know. Just like wash it off before
you can.
And the specifics of it when we talk
about prayer, we'll talk about different scenarios. What
do I do if like the window of
time is shortening in prayer or these kinds
of things? Right? But fundamentally,
you have to like clean
the impure substances off,
of your body. Any questions on that? Does
that make sense?
Yes?
Yeah? We're good?
Okay.
If you have a band aid on you
from like a cut.
Right?
Unless it's like a severe thing. The doctors
told you you got a cast on something
more serious, that's different. But if you have
a band aid on one of the parts
of your body that are required to be
cleaned,
then you gotta still wash under the band
aid as best as you can. Does that
make sense? It's not enough to wash over
it. It creates a barrier.
You know? If it's gonna create a problem
though, infection, some type of challenge,
then that's different. You see? Does that make
sense? Yeah. Any other questions on any of
this?
Does it make sense? Yeah. I heard that
cursing can also break your wudu. Is that
true? Cursing can break your wudu? Yeah. That's
why I I didn't know that. No.
The things that essentially break your wudu for
the most part are things that like exit
from your body, you know. Some of the
opinions are gonna limit that to things that
exit
from,
you know,
like
sexual organs
and from your backside. Like, that's what it'll
be limited to. Right? You can have different
things, like, when you pray, if you laugh
out loud in your prayer, for example,
right, that's something that can also source itself
as an invalidation.
But
these types of things in of themselves are
problematic.
Right? Allah made us creatures of dignity. There's
a verse in the Quran that says,
that all of the children of Adam are
elevated, they're dignified, they're Kareem. Right? The word
Kareem means generous
and it means noble,
right? So there's a nobility to all of
us as humanity.
He didn't make us to bark like dogs,
right? He didn't make us to speak in
language that is, you know,
belittling us in our own sense of grace.
So when you speak, you wanna speak good
words. Right? And when you
curse, it's a challenge
in that it literally has capacity to bring
like metaphysical curse into something. So prophet Han,
alayhi sanam, is traveling with his companions
and one of them is on a mount
that stumbles
and the companion curses
this beast and the prophet
makes him cut it loose from the caravan
saying that you've literally, like, cursed this animal.
Right? It makes the circumstance devoid of blessing,
you know, metaphysical
increase, what we call barakah. Does that make
sense? Yeah.
So try try not to try not to
curse. It's not good. Yeah.
Alright. Assalaikum.