Khalid Latif – First Steps Essentials of Islam #08
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AI: Transcript ©
Are you asking where the fix
is? You ready to that? Yeah. Alright. When
he's done, he's done. Do that.
I can handle this.
I only have half the drum down.
I'm sorry.
I called it that one. I can't find
it. Oh. It's a it's a Oh, it's
doing that. Okay.
All I can do is not these days.
I can't read from here. Mickey, what do
you do? Come on, hurry up. Yeah. Come
on. Let's do 4. Mickey, what do you
do? Number 1, hand washing. Make sure I
interlock fingers, and then that's all I wrote.
Are you reviewing?
I was taking notes, but I Look at
you. You take notes. I gave up, I
think.
But I didn't take notes in the podcast
either. So just just lesson 1.
I saw And you listen to the podcast
too? Yeah. I had to catch up. I
just take the one train out. Does it
make any sense? It was really good. I
like it.
You're such a nice person. You should be
here all the time. You don't even know
that. Busy.
I took goodness on the first one.
Look at
that. A student.
Well, he
he, like, he gave me he didn't like
my essay
Oh, that one. Which was annoying because the
whole point of the essay was I could
write whatever I wanted. Yeah. And he was
like, I don't like what you picked. And
I was like, that's how this works best.
It's okay.
Is that thing actually on? Yeah. Is it
live streaming?
Yes. Is it? Yeah. There's 2 people. There's
2 people. Oh, no way.
Wait. So should we start? Oh, so everybody
just heard my serve on my essay soon.
I
hope you're.
Oh, okay. Can you imagine?
I don't think he is. Your professor is
one of the 2 people that I
You both have to partner account.
Yeah. I really need to set up my
new phone.
I realized I was, like, just looking at
the iPad.
Okay. Don't take my job though. Oh, what's
your dog? I hit the x at the
end.
That is all yours. Yeah. I'm so
sorry.
Steer clear of the x.
Will do.
Oh, now there's one person. Oh.
If someone came out, it was just a
grown man.
I think
we have to leave. And he like, how
dare you?
Should we get started?
I don't know.
Yeah. I can't figure it out. Oh, yeah.
So if you wanna just take a quick
minute. I don't know how many people are
gonna show up because we haven't done this
during
Ramadan before.
But,
if you wanna just kinda introduce yourselves to
one another,
learn people's names, maybe how Ramadan has been
going so far, and then we'll get started.
Yeah. And if you already know the people
sitting next to you, maybe trying to find
a new face
and and using yourselves. Do I move you?
Hello. You guys can move up too as
well. I know you. I think so. I've
really had, like, a sister
I'm Nyla. Nice to meet you.
It's an amazing year.
That's nice. Yes.
I feel like Nyla is just, like, 3rd
Ramadan.
And 2 before, like, really changed my whole
experience.
My first Ramadan, when I started playing 5
times today, I started Ramadan, so I got
kids to community. How am I going to
the mosque the
there's one upstairs and one down there. It's
all written on the board outside.
Times. I don't mind what is it.
So last week, we started to talk about
fasting,
and we were looking at the verses in
Surat Al Baqarah, the second chapter of the
Quran,
that speak about fasting. People wanna pull those
up.
It's verse 183
onwards, and we could have somebody just read
those out loud again,
from 183.
Through 187.
Does anyone wanna read?
You wanna read? You're like the.
Up in class, I wanna try to get
kids to read. So Yeah. I know, man.
Look at that.
You who believe fasting is prescribed for you
and is prescribed for those before you so
that you may be mindful of
fast for a specific number of days. But
if one of you is ill or on
a journey, then another days later.
For those who can fast only with extreme
difficulty, there is way to compensate.
Feed a needy person. But if anyone does
good of his own accord, it is better
for him, and fasting is better for you,
if only you knew.
It was in the month of Ramadan that
the Quran was revealed as guidance for mankind,
clear messages giving guidance, and distinguishing between right
and wrong. So anyone of you who sees
in that month should who sees in that
month should fast, and and anyone who is
ill or on a journey should make up
for lost days by fasting on other days
later. God wants ease for you, not hardship.
He wants you to complete the prescribed period
and to glorify him for having guided you
so that you may be thankful.
Prophet,
if my servants ask you about me, I
am near. I respond to those who call
me,
so let them respond to me and believe
in me so that they may be rightly
guided.
Here you go. Yep. You believers are committed
to lie with your wives during the night
of fast. They are closest garments to you,
and you are to them.
God was aware that you were betraying yourselves,
so he turned you in turned to you
in mercy and pardoned you.
Now you can lie with them. Seek what
God has ordained for you. Eat and drink
until the white thread of dawn becomes a
thing from the black, then fast until nightfall.
Do not lie with them during the nights
of your devotional retreat in the mosque. These
are
balanced by God, so do not go near
them. In this way, God makes his messages
clear to people
that they may guard themselves against doing wrong.
Okay. So
these passages
are fundamentally
the base of understanding
the how to's of Ramadan,
but they also give us a lot of
indication on,
like, the importance of Ramadan, what some of
this is about outwardly and inwardly.
And so last week, we kinda just did
a breakdown of what a day would look
like in Ramadan
if somebody
was starting from, like, the night prior going
into
the next day,
and
gave, like, a very cursory understanding of what
all those different components meant. And so what
I wanted to do today was get into
a little bit more of the do's and
the don'ts and to kinda
distill from some of these verses so that
the same way when we were looking at
we'll do, we broke down the verse, and
then we talked about what were the obligations
and what were the kinda
recommended acts and what were things that we
disliked to do. Also, in the course of
Ramadan,
understanding what these things are more explicitly and
where they're drawn from so that when we're
engaged in the Quran, we're also able to
allow for it to have a more practical
meaning for us.
And then experientially, we can, like, take a
little bit more from it. Does that make
sense? How's Ramadan been so far for people?
Like, when you were talking about it in
kinda the beginning part of the conversation,
What's it been like so far for those
who have been able to participate in different
things?
Yeah.
Majority of my nights have been, like, very
quiet,
like,
just in my schedule, like, the way things
work out. Like, I'm by myself most nights
doing guitar by myself. I've had, like, a
couple nights. I I saw you last week
and then,
here and there, but,
yeah, a lot of quiet time.
And how is that for you?
Oh, it get it get it gets lonely
a couple times, but
which is odd because I'm I'm typically, like,
I'm cool roaming by myself all the time.
You know? But I was I was chatting
with somebody about it, and it's sort of
like there's this whole collective
you know, there's this global
thing that is happening. And,
yeah, I mean, in in my first time,
you know, practicing it,
trying to figure out, you know, with getting
where I fit in. You know? I'm trying
to figure that out. Yeah. Amazing.
What else? How's it been for other people?
Even if it's, like, more
than your first time you've done it before,
how was it this year? Backing off of
sorry. What you had mentioned, I feel like
my nights have been quite the opposite. They're,
like, so busy because I often come here
for a car in,
and then there's, like,
and
stuff and
hanging out with friends and, like,
building my relationship with in that way. And
then I feel kinda guilty, like,
spending alone time by myself in my apartment,
which is, like,
one of my goals to increase on so
I can, like, read more on and benefit
in other ways than what I've been doing
in the past year.
So I I, like, appreciated what you said.
Anyone else?
How's it been?
I think I've been a lot more mindful.
I'm
I'm in school, so
most of my days are just studying. And,
normally, I I I I've realized how much
I depend on snacks and water
and,
like, candy. Like, I'm just my whole day
is just, like, sitting at my desk, like,
eating, studying.
So having none of that, it's stripped of
it, I think, has been, like,
unbeneficial,
but also lonely.
Lonely? Yeah.
Lonely because of no candy or It's not
lonely. It's like it's like I'm bored. I'm
very bored. You're bored. But, like, in kind
of in a good way. Like, it makes
me
just seem more mindful
and, like, present. Nice. Thank you for sharing.
Anyone else? What's it been like?
Yeah.
So coming back from,
it has been, like like, I feel like
that trip has, like, been, like, a cleanse
for me. And then, like, starting Ramadan,
like, couldn't have been, like, a better time.
So, like, spiritually, I feel really good, but,
like, I did get sick, and I'm still,
like,
recovering from that. And, like, I was fasting
while I was, like, still a little bit
sick. So that was, like, kind of hard.
But, you know, like, day by day, I'm
getting better. So I believe it or not.
But, yeah, it's kinda hard. And then also
with school, I kinda had, like, the hardest,
like,
rush of, like,
like, schoolwork and, like, heavy load the week
I came back from. So
all of that just made things a little
bit hard, but, like, I don't know. I've
just been making a lot of duas. So
it's, like, still kinda I guess not the
end of the world.
Anyone else?
Any thoughts?
Great.
So if we were to kind of just
recap what a typical
night into a day looks like, so what
we said last time, right, from a gone,
It's
a
good spot.
So a couple of things that we wanna
look at today,
right, if we're looking at a typical Ramadan
schedule.
Where where you're at now, the night, like,
precedes the day in our tradition.
So you have the far,
which is a fast breaking meal.
You have
madre.
You have
prayers.
If there are we
we'll talk about these briefly again.
And then you have support,
fudger,
and
you have
more, Oscar,
and then thing repeats. And in the midst
of all this, you can have work and
school and class and sleep and everything else
that is going on.
What
a typical day looks like in Ramadan,
There's also now distinctions
made over the course of the month and
some other things that you wanna think about.
And then we'll talk about some of the
practical ways that we can deal with some
of these things,
in terms of exhaustion, tiredness, loneliness.
Because we're only in, like, day 6, right,
or something or 7 or 5, one of
those days. But there's still pretty much the
majority of months ago.
And, experientially,
some of these things can catch up as
we're kind of getting to a place of
self awareness,
how we can better ourselves through them mindfully,
but also, you don't wanna get to a
place where, like, a few days of loneliness
is a lot different than a month worth
of it. Do you know what I mean?
And being able to learn from one another,
how do we kinda shift paradigms to
enable ourselves to get what we need throughout
the course of this? So this is what
a typical day looks like.
When
you
get introduced to Muslim community,
the way Ramadan functions as a month, we
have a lunar calendar.
And the start and
end times of months are based off of,
like, cyclical patterns of the moon,
not,
necessarily a solar calendar that many of us
are used to that also have fixed routines
to them. Right? So
December is always when December happens.
And you say, well, that makes sense. But
in relation to Ramadan,
Ramadan and every month in the Islamic calendar
is 11 days or so earlier in comparison
to the Gregorian calendar.
So if my average life span of adulthood
is, like, 60 to 70 years, right, excluding
when you're a baby or your child
or anything, you know, preadulthood.
So say somebody
is going to spend, you know, 60, 70
years
of adult living,
you'll experience Ramadan
probably for the most part twice
in pretty much every time period of the
calendar year. Right? So you'll have twice, like,
in your lifetime,
if you're Muslim your whole life, like 60,
70 years worth of Muslim living.
You know, Ramadan will be twice
in the summer, you know, in July. It'll
be twice around Christmas time. Twice. Does that
make sense? So what's happening
and what you wanna be aware of as
you get introduced more to Muslim experiences and
Muslim community,
most people don't pay attention to the start
and end of any month other than Ramadan.
And the way that months
are determined
are
traditionally
through 2 methods,
a localized moon sighting
or a global moon sighting.
They're just seeing if the new moon has
been born.
Right? The crescent moon to indicate
this is the start of a month. So
an Islamic month can be on average anywhere
from 29 9 to 30 days. Sometimes you
get the off chance of a 28th day.
You don't have 31 days because if the
moon's not sighted,
you just complete a month of 30 days,
and then you just assume the next day
is the start of the new month. Right?
Why is this important? Well, do you remember
a few weeks
ago when we read the article Islam and
the Cultural Imperative
that talked about just cultural diversity
in Muslim communities and how it likened,
Islam and its relationship to culture
to
a stream
flowing over a bedrock
that the water of the stream takes on
the color of the bedrock upon which it's
flown. Right? So Islam in China looks Chinese,
and Islam in Malaysia looks Malaysian, and Islam
in Sudan looks Sudanese.
But we have the challenge here in the
United States. The people from all of those
places live here as Muslims, and they intertwine
their culture. Right? Do people remember the article
you're talking about? Yeah. Okay. Great. No one
knows what's going
on. So just like there's different cultural
kinda diversities
in Islam, you also have different
opinions on things.
And so
some people will say the month starts
if anywhere in the world
they saw the moon.
And that means if they saw the moon
in any part of the world
then the month starts for everybody.
And some people will say
that you have to see it within a
locale
in order for
the moon to be,
like, sited
locally so that the month is there. They'll
cite narrations in the prophetic tradition
where people would go to different towns,
and they'd be observing different months
because
they had the moon sighted in one place,
but not in the other place. It's a
literal,
like, viewing of the moon by a naked
eye. Right? No method of scientific understanding,
etcetera. What gets factored into this, though,
is it has to be scientifically,
like, possible
for the new moon to actually be birthed.
Right? So somebody claims that, like, tomorrow, I
saw, like, the new crescent moon
of the next month that's called Shawwal.
Right? So maybe like, no. This is not
fit, like like, scientifically possible. Right? We're not
in that phase of the moon cycle. Does
that make sense?
Why you wanna know this is because,
like, people argue over this quite often. You
don't wanna give yourself a headache. Whatever your
local community is doing, you just kinda go
with that. And they're both valid opinions and
perspectives.
But similar to when we talked, like, some
weeks ago about the example I gave you
of the guy whose friend was telling him
about dogs
and,
like, watering apparatus, the lota when you're using
the bathroom. That's what they made Islam into.
There's certain things people just make Islam into.
Right? It's It's a very beautiful practice in
Islam.
We have a relationship to nature. Right? There's
elemental aspects. Right? We make wudu with water.
We tell prayer times by the sun. It's
actually a very beautiful practice to go
see if you can sight the moon. And
in many places, people would do this. If
we had the capacity in New York City
to take people
every month
to some place upstate so you could actually
see the moon. Right? But as you're building
traditions or, like, with friends and loved ones,
you wanna get to a place where you
start to do some of these things and
build that relationship. So you're actually looking up
at the sky, and you're sighting the moon,
and you could see it yourself.
And then about
I don't know how long ago, but more
contemporarily,
people started to utilize calculations,
to determine the start and end of months
as a way to recognize that, especially in
this part of the world, that it becomes
really difficult that if you have to go
based off of a moon sighting,
the challenge that people would have is I
don't know when to tell my employer, like,
tomorrow is my holiday.
But I would go and say to them,
any one of the next 3 days could
potentially be, like, when my holiday is, or,
you know, I can't potentially come to class
or an exam or these kinds of things.
So this was something
that was also incorporated into it. All 3
of them are valid opinions,
but they're associated with how a month starts
and ends
on an Islamic calendar. Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Okay.
So the thing that I wanted to talk
about today in reference to to Ramadan because
we've gone through some of these things. And
after I talk about the main thing I
wanted to talk about, I wanna talk about
just some of the, like, do's and don'ts
driving more
from
the verses,
that we read. But there's a practice now
that is embedded in Ramadan. So if you
remember when we looked at the verse
that you just read that said fasting is
related to what we call taqwa
last week. Right? A sense of mindfulness consciousness.
So there's a relationship between the external act
and what it's meant to yield inwardly.
And we had a few people talk about
mindfulness in the course of how Ramadan's been
so far.
So there's a practice
that
is rooted
in Ramadan in particular.
It's called Ittigaf.
It's traditionally done in the last 10 nights
of Ramadan.
The prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, he
would just seclude himself to the mosque.
And this was a confirmed
like prophetic practice.
Men and women do it.
It's something that
has a very important kind of purpose to
it,
but essentially the idea
is it's just overt seclusion.
So in Islam,
there is a regular spiritual tradition
around
the seeking of solitude,
which is very different from, like, feeling alone
or lonely. Right? They're 2 different things.
But solitude
is a spiritual practice
that our tradition
is very deeply embedded on,
but it's not a practice that's about being
away from people. It's about being away from
distractions.
Right? This idea of mindfulness associated with fasting,
Reading the Quran and as a text, it
gets associated with people who have mindfulness.
Right? People who have taqwa. So much of
it is just about wakefulness and not
realizing,
state of just physical hunger, but seeing that
nourishment is now more about the celestial self.
And so what would happen
in many places, right? And you could see
this if you yourself come from
a distinct religious family,
your family could be Christian, Jewish,
Buddhist, Hindu,
whatever it is that
you are in as someone exploring Islam yourself,
maybe, like, no faith affiliation, but you have
familiarity with this.
We have in our religious tradition
communities
that solitude was a regular practice of people,
who were serious about their spiritual diet. So
the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, for
example,
he's seeking solitude
when he goes to the cave of Hira.
He's separating himself from the Meccan society.
He's very deliberate
in making time
in pursuit of just him being on his
own.
If you look at Moses,
peace be upon him, he separates himself from
the children of Israel for 40 days.
Mary, the mother of Jesus
and our religious tradition,
she
seeks solitude
and lives
like in a temple
at a time when let alone
like no women are doing that, like no
people are doing that
in that society.
In the course of their solitude,
this is where they also have
really big experiences.
Right? So the prophet Muhammad gets his first
revelation in solitude.
Moses speaks to god, you know,
in that solitude.
Mary, peace be upon her, gets like food
from
just nowhere appears to her in the temple
while she's in the solitude.
The idea with it also is that they're
not seeing it as an escape,
but as a means to enhance the reality
that they find themselves in. So all of
them go into solitude,
but all of them also return back to
their people. You know what I mean? Can
you guys move up? Because otherwise, people are
gonna still come in to pray. So people
can move in so no one feels like
they have to pray in the kind of
corners of the space.
Also, just if people are here for doctor
Marwa's, I'll look at it upstairs.
You're more than welcome to stay here. We're
gonna do this every Wednesday also.
So
in that course of solitude,
essentially, what's happening
is that they
are away from now societal
distractions.
This is what the etagoth
is.
Right? It's
a 10 night
seclusion,
and what's happening is you are both simultaneously
consuming
only what is good
as you are
diminishing the consumption of what is negative.
Right? This is what Ramadan in its totality
is about. It's about
gaining control
over your consumption habits, but through all of
your organs of sensory perception.
You wanna think about this in terms of
just distractions on a day to day basis.
What do I mean by being away from
distractions
and not being away from people? The example
I like to utilize
revolves around a social experiment
that was conducted by a man,
named Joshua Bell in the Washington Post.
And Joshua Bell was put onto a DC
metro platform
during rush hour,
and he opened up a violin case and
started playing the violin
during rush hour, pre COVID.
And while he's there for a few hours
playing on his violin,
Joshua Bell says that in the hours he
was there, pretty much nobody paid him any
attention.
An elderly man stopped for some moments
and listened and then went on his way.
He said when children,
like, heard him speaking, they just stood,
stared, fixated upon him, and the adults that
were with them had to, like, drag them
away. And he said, I could see them
looking at me over their shoulders.
He said in the 2 or 3 hours
he was there, he collected maybe, like, 10
or $20.
And what made this crazy was that this
man, Joshua Bell, he was considered to be
one of the foremost practitioners of the violin
in the world.
That in those days around that social experiment,
he had sold out concert hall after concert
hall where tickets started at 100 of dollars.
The violin he was playing that day was
valued at $2,000,000.
And all these people had the opportunity to
sit and engage
in this moment with him,
but their hearts were being pulled by something
else. Something else was distracting them, taking the
attentiveness away from them.
This was a moment
if they understood what they were privy to,
they'd likely tell their friends about, their children
about, their children's children's about.
But there's something that they are subservient to
and they're in this default mode of existence.
Right? The idea of the fast in our
tradition
is if you follow it based off of
its mechanics,
but then you also understand that just like
we have a daily schedule,
the days also
are categorically
distinguished.
And the last 10 days of Ramadan
are very distinct from the first 20 days
of Ramadan.
And so in those last 10 days, what
was happening was the prophet sought this solitude.
As a regular practice,
outside of Ramadan you wanna do it, but
in the midst of Ramadan,
he did it in this very specific way.
If you've ever done this as a practice,
for those of you who have observed Ramadan
before, has anybody actually done the eitzigaf before?
You've done it? How is it for you?
Something that I see every year, every Ramadan
and every year.
Watch. Just as you said, you know, it's
a it's a game changer.
What did it do for you? So just
so you know, I don't think you've ever
been in this class before. There's people here
who are exploring Islam, people here who are
new to Islam.
They've never, like, engaged in this before. So
what what is it, Atikaf? Like, for you,
why was it a game changer?
As you mentioned, you know, since it's solitude,
there's a lot of things that I've been
distracted by.
Very involved and I, I always wanted to
change and,
solitude
of running away from all the.
Great.
How about for yourself?
Don't say it was bad, by the way.
If you're gonna don't feel like it's terrible
because that's good. No. Throw off the cliff
too.
I think you showed a lot about
how much of the world that we're consuming.
You don't realize until you step with.
And that was, like, a true
time that you can really isolate
and and kinda pivot your mindset,
and get close to yourself and not only
to. You know, it's really important.
Yeah.
And when you're in that space,
essentially what's happening. Right? When I was a
freshman in college,
Ramadan
was around Christmas time. Do you have an
idea of how old I am? Okay? And
so it was the winter holidays,
and I finished my exam
and I did adzegha for the first time
in my life. I was 18 years old
and I went into a mosque in New
Jersey
and
I spent the last 6 days or 7
days there in the mosque.
There's a lot of young people in the
mosque at that time because of the winter
break. But I went
in leaving from the semester,
and now all I'm doing
is literally
in a space of seclusion.
It's filled with people. Like, more people that
are in this room,
like, 3, 4 times as many. So it
wasn't about being away from people.
But we're spending our days now
all just in the mosque itself
unless there's a need to leave from the
mosque for some reason. Right? So if you
have to use the restroom, for example, you
go use the restroom. Right? But not anything
that's just, you know, I need to go
for a random walk. I'm gonna go like
play some video games. You're just in this
place of spiritual seclusion.
You can talk to people, interact with them,
but you're praying all your prayers, you're hearing
Quran being recited,
there's people in the community that are making
food for you to break your fast on,
to have suhoor in the morning,
but also
you're not hearing like any negativity.
Nobody's really gossiping. There's no lying or backbiting.
There's not anybody being deceptive.
There's not anybody being mean to one another.
Right? You're just kind of there in the
space and the consumption now
is rooted in this notion
that I am not away from people, I'm
away from distractions.
My heart now starts to get to a
place where it can be focused on these
deeper kind of reflective questions.
Things that might be emotionally jarring, stresses that
I have in my life, bigger existential
questions. Right? What is the prophet doing when
he's in the cave of hira? Right? What
is Mary doing when she's sitting in the
temple? And you think about how much of
your daily routine
has no stop to it. There's no break.
But not only is there no break and
that you're just constantly going, you actually feel
bad to take a break. That I can't
rest for some reason. I can't have a
place where I'm just breathing, so to speak.
When I went
in,
to hear 2,000
when I was a freshman in college
into the mosque over the winter break,
and then you leave now
at the end of Ramadan.
Right? So the last, like, adhan for Maghrib
is called. You pray Maghrib. And at that
point, like, the etzikaf period is done because
Ramadan is done.
And I walked out of the mosque
and
the world just felt very different.
And my parents said, what do you want
to eat? They took me to a halal
fried chicken place because that's what I wanted
to eat.
And I remember
as I left from the restaurant,
I heard 2 people arguing.
And just the sound of their voice
in this state where their argument wasn't of
anything that was really
other than their egos fighting with each other,
it like pierced my inside so much. I
felt just terrible hearing it. I didn't wanna
hear any of it.
And I went to them,
and I said, what are you guys fighting
about?
And it has something to do with shoes.
I still remember.
And I said, why is this something
that you really want to be fighting over
at this time? Right?
And Allah forgive me. Right? God forgive me.
Because in that moment, I don't think it
was purely for them, but it was really
for me. It was really hurting me to
hear it. And then when I got older
and I could reflect back on an experience
when I was 18,
it was
essentially like a detox of all of this
negativity
and what we become desensitized
to and numb to. You know what I
mean?
But can create a different reflective point that
says,
if that's what's happening,
if it's coming into me from somebody else,
what must be happening
if I'm the originator of it into the
world?
Do you get what I mean?
That's the whole idea with this fasting thing.
The first layer
is a fast of the physical. Right? So
it's definition,
we said last week the word for fasting
is som in Arabic. Right? And it's about
abstaining from something that's permissible.
Right? That's the idea. You're keeping yourself from
something that would normally be allowed.
So here now, you're not eating, drinking,
or engaging
in
any kind of physical intimacy,
at like a more, like, sexual level
with your spouse.
These are things you abstain from when you're
fasting.
But you use as an entry point
the
abstaining of what's permissible
to get to a second level of fasting
that is about the impermissible
and staying away from that.
But it's all rooted in this idea
that you're reawakening
your consciousness, your awareness, your wakefulness.
Do you know what I mean? And so
what the prophet would do was he'd engage
in this atikaf
for the last 10 nights
of the month of Ramadan,
seclude himself to the mosque
and just be there.
If you can't do 10 nights, that's okay.
But if you want to anticipate for yourself
that, one, the intention of ettigaf,
the seclusion
to the mosque
can be done at any point in time
in the calendar year. You could go to
a mosque and you're going there just to
pray
like the sunset prayer, the Maghrib prayer. And
you can sit with the intention of
this is
also an etikaf period for me.
If you can't get out the last 10
nights of Ramadan,
you don't wanna hate on yourself for it.
It's not an obligation.
But I'm saying this to you in the
course of understanding
how the month in its entirety functions.
Like what is it supposed to bring you
to
as an experience
of not just the
of it, but what is it doing to
you in all of your entirety,
emotional, mental, spiritual, as well as physical
kind of heightening and elevation. Do you get
what I mean? So if you have a
weekend towards the end of the month,
then
go and try to engage in some of
this. If you're not able to do this
in a mosque, right, and some mosque that
you'll engage in by principles of their understanding
of culture and gender, they might not have
a space for women to do this.
If that's not the case, it doesn't mean
that you can't do it. But what you
would do is in your home, just set
up an area through which you will now
be engaged in this kind of
process of spiritual seclusion.
You know what I mean? You try it
for a day, but I'd say try to
do it for more than a day. Right?
So if you have a weekend, you get
out of work, get out of class on
a Friday,
and you go until like Monday morning, Sunday
late night
because the first
set of
like experiences
is gonna be similar to the first time
you fasted
likely
and your head's gonna hurt, you know. It's
like, what do I do with my headache?
I can't drink any coffee.
You know? I'm, like, going off of this
withdrawal.
But as you get to it potentially for
a good number of people, by, like,
day 6, 7, 8, you're probably feeling different
from the food aspect. Maybe the sleep aspect
is a little bit throwing you off and
other things. But from a food aspect and
water aspect, it's likely different today than it
was on day 1, right?
And so similarly,
if you go into Etigaf,
minute number 1
is not going to feel the same way
as minute number
like 100
or like 200.
So if you allow for yourself to be
in that state for a couple of hours,
What do you do in it? You can
read Quran, you can make dua,
you can sleep. Right? Like you could literally
go into the mosque and you could just
sleep, but you're in a state of a
place
that has more metaphysical
increase in blessing to it.
But as a practice
in Islam spiritual tradition,
this is something that was done quite regularly.
And the important part to it is that
when these people would do this,
they would always come back to their people.
They didn't use it as an escape.
They used it as a mechanism to enhance
the understanding of the reality that they find
themselves.
Alright?
What I'd like you to do just for
a couple minutes is turn to the person
next to you.
Where do you go to find stillness?
Where do you go to find solitude in
your life? Not like loneliness,
they're 2 different things.
Where do you go to just reflect
and contemplate?
And if you don't do it, why do
you think that is?
And let's discuss and then we'll come back
and and talk about it. So introduce yourself
to the person next to you if you
don't know who they are.
Now we'll talk to you soon as you
call it.
This one is all good. It is good.
And the solitude doesn't have to be in
a mosque. So not just in terms of
etagogue,
but in your week. Where's, like, your,
like, sitting space? Where's the spot that you
go just to think, to recenter? You know
what I mean? Does that make sense?
Okay.
So what are some of the things we're
talking about?
Where
how does how does this factor into your
life already?
Something you do, something you don't do.
Who wants to share? Maybe we can get
a few people to talk about.
Yeah.
I was saying that normally my place of
solitude is in nature, but ever since it's
been.
So yeah.
Great. There's some, like, secret spots I could
tell you, but don't tell anybody because
I want all these people in my face
when I'm.
Yeah.
What else? Yep.
We've also refined, like, eating outside.
One secret, not so secret, but that we
connected on was that we find water very,
like,
useful or at least it gives you a
way to kind of be with yourself, but
doesn't feel totally
stagnant.
Great.
Yeah.
Anyone else?
Yeah. I've got, like, like, time of day,
like,
6 o'clock, like, right around then,
stepping outside
because the city hasn't, like, really woken up
yet.
You know?
Like, it it's just a different kind of
quiet.
So, yeah, that works.
Most of us don't have regular
moments of stillness.
This is a challenge in the prism of
modernity.
There's an ever diminishing
nature to places of stillness
and just finding stillness in our lives.
So Ramadan
is very big about
inculcating within oneself,
a sense of wakefulness,
a sense of reflection,
the importance of contemplation,
and it's built into this
ritualistically
because you're not just thinking about eating food,
but you're thinking
in relation to how you eat food. You
see what I mean? You see the difference
in the 2? Right? You have awareness,
and it builds itself up now into these
things.
One of the things that you'll find in
Ramadan
is in the last 10 nights, there is
specific mention. So if we go back to
the verses
that we were looking
at,
in verse 183
in Surah Baqarah,
that's like the basis of
the
mandate of fasting in Ramadan.
And then we'll look at these really quickly.
184,
it says, fast to prescribe number of days.
That says in Arabic. The word I am
is a plural for the word yom, which
means day,
but Arabic grammar
has a lot of different kind of forms
to it. So
the word I am is a plural
but it's a plural of positivity, right? It's
like a it's saying it's it's
more than 1, but it's a few. Right?
And they're kind of prescribed. So there's not
so many days to it. Right? It's saying,
like, it's just a small number of days.
If you ask a lot of people,
as much as it feels like Ramadan has
been now forever,
it also feels like it's going pretty quickly.
Right? It it goes fast
but is experienced also slow
like somehow paradoxically,
but it's a set number of days.
And
as it continues on and it talks about
some exemptions now, and these are things that
we can go into in more detail, but
for the purposes
of like a foundational class, if you're sick
or you're traveling,
you're not required
too fast.
These are concessions
made
for people in that instance. Right? My 7
year old, my 10 year old, they're not
required to fast to begin with. You're required
to fast if you are adult,
sane, and Muslim.
These are like the general
understandings of who
is mandated to fast in Ramadan.
And then there's exemptions that are drawn from
that.
So if you fit into those categories,
you fast and then you have certain situations
where you're not required to. So my son,
he got sick and then my wife got
his sickness
and
the illness that she had was very dehydrating.
So the doctors said don't fast and it's
not easy because a lot of people want
to fast, but then she still didn't fast.
Right?
Because you actually can get to a point
where
it's prohibited for you to fast
if it's becoming
now detrimental to your life,
but it's an exemption. And for some people,
it's a lot harder
to actually sometimes do what's easier
than doing what's difficult.
Do you get what I mean? Because if
you feel like you're doing something that's wrong.
Right? It doesn't mean that if you're traveling
or you are
sick that you are required
to not fast,
but the option is there.
Traveling, we'll talk about this when we start
to talk about prayer and what goes into
prayer. There's different opinions on what constitutes
being in a state of travel. So it
doesn't mean that I could say, you know,
I traveled from my office to the prayer
room, so I have to fast today. Right?
That's not what it is. But in the
Hanafi school of thought, it's,
48 miles of a distance
that once you exceed that, you are in
a state of travel
if you are not intending to reside
in the place that you are traveling to
for a period that is 15 days or
greater.
The travel time is not incorporated
into
that 2 week period. Right? So if I
left from New York
and this weekend, I'm going to go to
Michigan and North Carolina
to speak at some humanitarian
fundraisers.
So I can go to North Carolina.
And because I'm traveling,
I am exempt from fasting.
The ease of the travel is not the
catalyst for the exemption
or delegitimizing
it.
But the verse says, if you can fast,
that's better for you. Right?
So I'm gonna fast this weekend.
Does that mean that
if, you know, we went together
and he was another speaker at this thing,
he's also a grown man, let's conceptualize.
Right?
And he said, I'm not gonna fast. Can
I be like, oh my god? You're the
worst Muslim in the world. Stuck for Allah.
Allah is gonna bite. No. Right? The verse
says that when you're traveling,
it's one of the instances you don't have
to fast. Does that make sense?
Yeah. Any questions on that?
Because it it is like what it says.
Right? And this is where people draw this
from. It's one of the things.
If you cannot fast at all,
like you don't have the physical capacity
to fast.
Say I have a chronic illness.
I'm diabetic.
I have a mental health condition.
I need to take medications during the day.
Our fast does not allow for the consumption
of anything.
So if somebody says you can take a
tablet while you're fasting,
you can't. You can't.
Like, it breaks the fast. Right? It's still
consuming something. You drink water with the tap.
Like, all of it breaks the fast. So
if you have a chronic ailment
and you will never be able to fast
again,
then there is what's
an expiation.
In lieu of the fast, you would pay
for
people who are in need,
one meal
for,
2 people a day or 2 meals for
1 person a day. Right? So essentially 60
meals
over the course of
the days that you would miss 30 days.
Does that make sense? Right?
If you have a ailment or condition
that is not chronic,
you can make it up at a later
time. So say in the summer, it's hard
for me to fast because I have to
take medicines in certain intervals.
But in the winter time, when the day
is shorter,
I can fast at that time then all
I would do is fast at that time.
There's a concession
at that point. Does that make sense? That's
what this is saying. At one point
in the Islamic
kind of experience in the first generation of
Muslims,
people had the option of either fasting
or paying what was called the fidya
instead of fasting.
Then it wasn't an option. You were required
to fast
and only if
you could never fast again. There's different opinions
on this. But the Hanafi school, if you
have the capacity to fast at a later
time or the condition you have will allow
for you to fast later, then you just
make up the fast later. Does all of
that make sense?
Okay.
So if we continue,
the next verse talks about,
Ramadan
being connected to the Quran.
And this is something that is a big
part of Ramadan.
The listening, the recitation, the engagement of it.
And so you want to utilize Ramadan as
this way to have access to it
in that sense.
And then interestingly,
there's a verse in between all of these
rulings
where god says, when my servants ask you,
oh, prophet, about me,
tell them I am truly near. I respond
to one's prayer when they call upon me,
so let them respond with obedience to me
and believe in me, perhaps they will be
guided
to the right way.
Why do you think that verse is there?
In the midst of these verses that are
talking about the do's and don'ts of fasting,
why is there a verse now
that is saying, oh, Mohammed,
tell people if they ask you about me
that I am near to them and I'm
answering their prayers.
Does that make sense, the question?
If you could turn to the person next
to you and just talk about this, why
is this verse in the middle of these
verses
around the do's and don'ts of fasting? And
then we'll come back and discuss.
Don't say only what you think is the
right thing.
Don't avoid saying something because you think it's
the wrong thing. Don't also lecture the person
you're talking to. Just listen as people are
speaking.
But why is
this interjected into these verses of do's and
don'ts? And then we'll come back in and
talk about it. Go ahead.
So verse 186,
how does that fit into
verse 183 to 187?
Okay.
Okay. So what what are some of the
things that are coming up? Why do you
think this verse is there?
What are you discussing?
You got you got it's okay. Like, the
Quran pretty much on every page
invites its reader to think,
You know? So you don't wanna be intimidated
to think.
It's also okay if you think and then
a conclusion you reach might be a little
bit off. That's fine. Right? Because you wanna
be scared to think. You know what I
mean? You wanna be at a place where
you're able to utilize
your critical thinking facets.
Some of what goes into religion is not
just logically deduced. You know? So I couldn't
tell you why we pray 3 cycles of
prayer
at sunset as opposed to 4. I don't
think anybody could tell you other than that's
just the way God said to do it.
But some of these things we do want
to ponder upon. Right? So why do you
think this verse is in the midst of
these verses?
Anybody?
Yeah.
We talked about about how the, like, versus
prior were, like,
like, rules,
like,
a lot of rules, and,
they could be hard for some people, like,
whether it's, like, a sick person that, like,
really not so fast, but, like, their body
won't let them or if it's a person
that, like, struggles with that and, like, struggles
with, like, abstaining from the things outside of
just fasting itself.
And we we were just talking about how,
like, it's probably just like a reminder
that, like, you can turn to a lot
of things that are, like, getting, like, too
difficult for you.
But, yeah, that's basically
it. Okay. Great. Anyone else?
Adding onto that, I think it's just a
reminder that everyone knows your intentions.
So, yeah, it's it's clear. Like, he knows
what what your intentions are and
if they're pure, like,
there's nothing that, like, stands in the way
between you.
But the verse is saying,
oh, prophet,
tell people if they ask you
where like, where I am, tell them I'm
near. Right? I'm I'm close to them. And
when they call upon me that I am
responding
to the calls of the one that calls
upon me, I'm hearing the prayers of people.
Right?
Prayers. He's listening to them. He's responding to
them. He's accepting them.
But in the context of this in Ramadan,
any other thoughts
where the people land? What did you think
about?
Yeah. Structurally, I was, like, thinking now, I
guess, I don't know if anybody's ever, like,
run a 5 k before. And, like, I
know I've definitely seen people, like, start out
with all this, like, banging intention and, like,
jazz,
and then they get, like, halfway through.
And they're like, what am I doing here?
You know? Like, they're feeling some kinda
just just the the weight of the endeavor.
And and so sort of, like, structurally in
this sort of, like, a connection
back to that in,
an intention with divine and and,
yeah, because I'm struggling. It can be something
you can do. So between this week and
next week, just think about it more. Right?
And keep coming back to it. You know?
The idea with the verses in the Quran
are not that they're meant to be read
once or you just understand legal rulings from
them, but you can extrapolate so much more
from it. And read through these 5, 6
verses and think about what they say to
you that has nothing to do with anything
ritualistic
or anything that has to do with just
do's and don'ts. But what else do they
have to do with? Right?
What else does it, like, speak to me
about? I wanna say one last thing before
we head upstairs.
So I wrote down now next to the
last 10 nights.
In the last 10 nights, there is a
night that one seeks out
that's called Layut Al Qadr. So in verse
185,
where it says, shahu Ramadan aladiunzalafihehil
Quran
that the month of Ramadan
in it is
the kind of revelation of the Quran.
Laylatul Qadr, which translates as the night of
power, the night of destiny,
that's said to be the night
in which the Quran was revealed.
There's a prophetic tradition
where the prophet gathered people to tell them
what this night of power was. Because there's
an entire chapter in the Quran
and the last part of it that's called
Surat Al Qadr.
The chapter talks about
this night, Leil Al Qadr,
and it says that it is equivalent to
1,000 months of worship if you were to
worship on this night. And in the hadith,
where if you remember, we said a hadith
is referring to an action, a saying, or
the tacit approval of the prophet Muhammad. So
if he said to do something,
he did something himself or he saw you
do something and then say don't do that.
This all fits into this kind of genre.
So in this one hadith narration,
he comes to tell the people of what
the night of power is, what its day
is,
and 2 people are arguing
in the crowd.
When the prophet comes out, he said, I
intended to tell you what the night of
power was, but because of the arguments of
these people, right, the negativity they interjected,
that knowledge was lifted from me.
And he then has subsequent narrations that say
to seek it out in the odd nights
of the last 10 nights, to seek it
out in the last 10 nights on a
whole. And so you'll find Muslims doing this.
Right? If you come in Ramadan, it's your
1st Ramadan, you're exploring Islam,
you're gonna come to the place, you're gonna
see people
and they're going to, in the last nights,
like, stand in prayer,
a little bit more than they would.
Some will stay up until the dawn prayer,
fudger,
just trying to seek out worship on this
night. The idea is that it's a night
in which what your destiny is,
is
impacted through the observance of it. It's a
very auspicious night to very whole night.
Mosques around the city will stay open and
have special programs in those nights.
There's not like a right or wrong in
this. If you're a person that kind of
feeds off of people's energy, then feed off
of people's energy. If you like your space
and you just like to kinda do your
own thing, you could do this in your
house. You know? But the idea is that
in those last 10 nights, you want to
use a part of it to just engage
in some kind of prayer, etcetera. And it's
attached heavily to the Quran.
So next week, what we'll do is kind
of pivot from some of this where we've
talked about wudu and we've talked about fasting,
know, and if people have specific questions on
fasting, we could talk about those also.
But,
I wanna move back to, like,
conversations
on foundational theology.
And so if we could talk about the
Quran, for example, like, revelation,
how does that all kind of come to
be? How does the Quran come compiled now
into the form that we have it? Just
so people have some baseline understanding on that.
And then we'll start to talk about just
the elements of prayer, the do's and don'ts,
like what goes into it, the timings of
prayer. For those who have not been here
on a Wednesday before,
pre Ramadan and after Ramadan, we typically do
an Islam 1 on 1 class for,
people who are new to Islam, exploring Islam,
people who are trying to just rebuild a
base, like, relationship with the foundations.
So we started this in January, and we've
been going through things slowly.
And we'll continue to do it on Wednesdays
in this room at 6. There's a concurrent
program happening upstairs
in the hall that we typically pray in
and break fast in.
That doctor Madwa,
Assar does a halukkah as well that you're
more than welcome to. And also,
Does anybody have any questions or anything before
we head up?
The time to break fast will be in,
like, 4 or 5 minutes.
Yeah. So for the
nights,
say someone intends just for the weekend or
for the 10 nights. I know that cleanliness
is important in Islam.
Would you, like, bring extra changes of clothes?
Or Yeah. You could bring clothes with you.
There's most mosques that allow for you to
do,
are going to be spaces that have, like,
showers built in the basement, maybe 1 or
2.
There's gonna be, like, other stuff as well.
You should bring, like, a sleeping bag. Right?
Some warm clothes because it's still cold. You
know?
You could bring food for yourself and whatever
else. If you have friends, they could bring
you, like, things also.
But you'd wanna, like, find a space that
you're also comfortable in. Do you know what
I mean? Does that make sense? Yeah. That
makes a lot more sense. Yeah. But it's
like you're camping out. Right? Except you're camping
out in mosque. I don't know if that
sounds like it would be fun or not,
but it's a really transformational experience. But also
if you can't do it in a mosque,
you can't find a mosque. Like in Manhattan,
there's not really a lot of places that
do this. This wouldn't count as a space
to do it because this isn't considered legalistically
to be a mosque. Right? It's a prayer
room. We call it.
But you can do this in your homes,
right, in the absence of mosques,
right, or circumstances, whatever they might be.
And we talked about this when we read
Islam and the Cultural Imperative,
and I mentioned it before too, but especially
for the women who are here. Some of
the mosques that are here, they won't have
spaces necessarily that are very adequate for women
unfortunately.
Yeah.
Okay. So why don't we take a pause
here? People wanna go up. Please put the
chairs against the wall, because Sheikh Valz is
gonna come to pray here with the, Shia
community.
We wanted to make sure they have adequate
for that.