Khalid Latif – First Steps Essentials of Islam #09
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If you wanna move up a bit,
we usually have a little smaller of a
group for this
program.
It's a little more intimate.
You wanna take a minute
and just introduce yourselves to the people sitting
around you. I know everyone doesn't know everyone
else.
We just kind of share names, how your
day is going, and we'll get started.
Okay. I'm about to start a holiday. I
was like,
Okay.
Okay. Should we get started?
So there are a couple of other things
related to
Ramadan
that
we wanted to just go over so people
could kinda get acclimated to them.
And then kinda move on to a few
other topics.
So
we have
in Islam just like in other religious traditions,
celebrations and holidays that take place.
And
within the Sunni tradition of Islam,
there's 2 main holidays
that take place.
There
is a holiday that's at the end of
the month of Ramadan.
It's called the Eid ul 5th,
and there's a holiday
that is around the Hajj time.
It's called Eid ul Adha.
Has anybody heard of these holidays before?
Yeah. Great.
So
the month of Ramadan,
which is the month that we're in right
now,
when it concludes
on the first day
of the next month,
it's called Shawwal,
is
the holiday of April 5th.
And you wanna be able to anticipate
the holiday,
coming.
We're gonna celebrate it here at the Islamic
Center
on Friday, April 21st. So if you remember
last week, I talked about briefly
how the start and ends of months are
determined on the Islamic calendar and that you
have
a local moon sighting or global moon sighting
for the actual, like, naked eye.
Somebody showed me the other day this really,
interesting way that they were teaching this to
their kids' public school classes,
using not like something that I think a
Muslim person came up with, but maybe they
did, and that's, you know, that much more
interesting.
But they have, like, using Oreos,
they demonstrate, like, the phases of the moon.
Right?
So utilizing, like,
the outer cookie part of the Oreo
to kind of distinguish
kind of the phases of the moon as
they're dark and then kind of cutting chunks
off of it. So the white cream makes
kind of the phase of the moon when
it's a crescent or it's at its fullest
and these kinds of things.
Which if we weren't fasting,
I'd have us all do that.
But for those of you who are not
fasting, I'm fasting.
And I love Oreos,
and I would be miserable watching you all
eat orchids as well.
So those were like the 2 traditional modes
of determining the start and end of a
month. And then a third mode of utilizing
calculations,
where
people already are aware scientifically of what the
start and end phases are,
of the moon,
in terms of kind of how it cycles
through
a crescent to a full moon and then
back down again.
So we already know that we're gonna do
here at our community
on Friday, April 21st.
We'll have prayers in the park,
right behind us,
near the arch. We do a really big
brunch that's open to everybody.
You're more than welcome
to attend here if you can. And then
we simultaneously
do
potentially
a second
celebration of Eid based off of also a
local moon sighting opinion.
That primarily,
our Shia community
adheres to the Sheikh Faz Jafar.
We have opportunity
to celebrate Eid here twice potentially, if you'd
like.
But likely, it's gonna all end up being
on the same day, which is at Friday.
There's a potential of it being Friday Saturday.
Does that make sense? Does anybody have any
questions on that? Because it tends to be
something that comes up
only around, like, holiday times
because nobody's really paying attention to things. Like
I said last week, you wanna revive, like,
as a practice.
Islam is very much so rooted
in kind of an elemental relationship with the
world around you. Right? So we're taught to,
like,
know our prayer times by a cyclical pattern
of the sun. Right? You are connected to,
water through making wudu. Right? We wash up
for prayer. And so here too, like the
moon cycles,
are things that you can only
see
the moon if you're looking at it, so
to speak. Right? So we're taught to engage
nature in that way.
If we didn't live in the middle of
Manhattan,
you know, we'd probably be able to do
this a little bit differently.
But maybe at some point as COVID restrictions
are relaxed, we can start kinda like monthly
trips upstate
that people go see if they could actually
see the moon, but something you wanna try
to do and revive as a practice, and
people do this all over the world.
So with Eid al Fitr, the first day
of Shawwal,
it's like an actual holiday.
And if you are a member for those
of you here, like, 3, 4 weeks ago
when we read the article called Islam and
the Cultural Imperative.
We were looking at how culture relates to
Islam as a religion.
And the fundamental argument in that paper, which
was written by a convert who's a scholar
of Islam, doctor Omar Farooq Abdullah.
He basically says,
you know, Islam
is like into a stream,
a river,
something flowing
as water
and the bedrock upon which it flows is
culture. And so the water takes on kind
of the hue and the color of the
bedrock that is flowing over. So to Islam
relates to the culture that it intertwines with
in a way where it doesn't necessitate
committing cultural apostasy,
but it blends with the culture. So Islam
in China looks Chinese.
Islam in Malaysia looks Malaysian.
Islam in,
you know,
Singapore, it looks Singaporean,
Gambian Islam, Senegalese Islam, Turkish, Bengali,
etcetera.
Why is this important?
Because
you're not gonna celebrate the holiday
experientially
in the same way as somebody who might
come from a different cultural background to your
own. And there's gonna be Muslim people that
you meet who they're gonna say, oh, the
night before Eid, like people all get together
and they put henna on their hands
and they do in South Asian culture what
they'll call like a Chandra which means just
like moon night. You know, they're looking for
the moon, but it's not that that is
not a permissible thing to do. It's not
like an absolute thing to do. Do you
know what I mean?
So if you went to people
who are Muslim in China, they're probably not
doing that.
Right? And it's more of a manifestation of
how culturally people relate to something, but you
want to be ready for that. So you're
not in a place where there's absolutes that
are presented to you and then it gets
confusing.
You know, you don't have to wear a
cultural attire that's not your own on the
day of Eid, right? You're gonna celebrate it
as your own kind of celebration.
You also don't want to make your experience
absolute,
right? For those who it's your first time
here, this is a class that we do
that is for people who are trying to
rebuild a foundational relationship with their faith to
be in a place where they're new to
Islam or exploring Islam. So you kind of
understand
the basics of ritual, theology, spirituality
and just what it's like to live as
a Muslim.
What I love about our community
is on the day of Eid, everybody comes
out. Right? And the weather, you know, thank
God
is getting better. Right? It's a little rainy
today, but there's still benefit in that, you
know, because you imagine you were fasting and
it's like a 100 degrees outside and very
humid.
It'd be just a totally different experience.
But I want you to think about, like,
where we're seated right now and looking out
of this amazing unobstructed view that we've been
spoiled with of the park, that whole park
gets filled with, like, 3 or 4000 Muslim
people,
And
they're all kind of engaged
within
the celebration of the holiday
based off
of who they are
in their entirety.
Right? So everybody's not wearing, like, a South
Asian shawarma.
Everybody's not wearing like gulf Arab attire of
long thobes.
Right? Everyone's not dressed in abayas
and these kinds of things
or, you know,
any kind of locale that you would think
about. But you have people that are coming
and in full force
celebrating their identity.
Right? You see like amazing
kinda
colors from people in our community who are
coming from a West African background.
You see distinct modes of dress from people
who are coming from Malaysia, Indonesia.
You see just a lot of diversity because
we have people in our community
who are like Italian, who are Scottish, who
are German. People who just see themselves only
as American,
and it's all blended altogether.
There's not a lot of gatherings that are
like that that exist in the world. You
know what I mean? And if you want
to see how deep Islam can be,
bigger than just your own experience with it,
which doesn't mean that your experience is invalid,
but it's not absolute.
Do you get what I'm saying? Does that
make sense?
What we're gonna do, so you also ready
yourself for it, if you're gonna celebrate here,
is the way that we line up for
our Eid prayer
is, you know, I'll stand
at the base of the arch. We have
a sound system that goes back.
And instead of having
the men pray in the front and the
women pray in the back, we have a
separation that goes in the middle and the
men are praying on one side and the
women are praying on the other side. It's
also a completely legitimate way to pray your
prayers.
People will say, well, why don't we pray
like that here? Well, it's more of like
a confine of space than anything
but when we're out there and the park
is ours, right, because I'll talk about this
in a little bit, but we're praying in
the morning time.
There's nobody in the park like that early
in the morning. All the NYU kids are
asleep
because they're not waking up for class early.
You know, none of the guys who sell
weed are up at 8 o'clock in the
morning selling weed. The people who are playing
instruments,
they're not,
you know, like, out there so early. So
it's just like in a place of stillness.
And you want to just come to see
just how beautifully deep Islam actually is.
I can't tell you that's what it's like
in every community,
but it doesn't have to be like that
in every community,
right? People can have
their own cultural engagements.
And many Muslim spaces
tend to be deeply rooted
also sociologically
in shared race, shared culture, shared class. I'm
not saying it's a good or a bad
thing. It's just a phenomenon
as to how we relate.
So if you go to your local mosque
in New York, where there's 200 mosques in
New York City,
you will likely find
a majority
of one cultural background.
Right?
And I don't want you to think about
that as a good thing or a bad
thing. It's just a thing. You know? But
if you come here, you're gonna find people
from all different backgrounds that are going to
be coming here
and they are going to be in a
place where they're ready to celebrate.
You want to also be in a place
where you're ready to celebrate,
right? It's a holiday.
And what you're celebrating
on Eid ul Fitr
is everything that you've achieved in the month
of Ramadan.
You're in a place where you anticipate
on the first of Shawwal,
Ramadan is done. I'm looking back now at
my growth over the course of this month.
It's not in comparison to anybody else. It's
not a religion
that utilizes
delusional senses of self
in terms of introspection,
superiority
complexes
that give false senses of grandeur
or inferiority
that give delusional senses of insignificance.
You're not in a race against the person
next to you, but it's more about me
becoming attuned to myself. Interiority
is the mode of introspection
and my growth even if it's gradual is
still growth nonetheless.
Right? And so on the day of Eid,
at the end of Ramadan,
that's like a mode of celebration,
right? You're in this place where you're like
recognizing through the awareness that you have. What's
gonna be really weird for a lot of
you who are fasting this month
is that
on the morning
of Eid,
like, you're gonna eat something
and you're gonna have gone from so many
days
of not eating
or even if you had an exemption of
fasting
it's still like there in the back of
your head, right? Should I be putting this
in my mouth or not?
The whole idea
with it being a holiday
is also to not in like a day,
let go of everything you gained in 30
days
by overindulging
in different ways
and now
relenting fully
to kind of a lack of self restraint.
Does that make sense? Right? Where we're just
kinda
going into a place where our celestial growth
is now limited.
It doesn't mean you shouldn't eat but you
wanna have mindful eating. You know, mindful sharing
of sweets and gifts and all these things
that are still rooted in an element of
gratitude.
Right? So every bite you're taking of something
to still have awareness and consciousness of it.
You know, how did this come to me?
Where did it come from? And one of
the things that you'll find
that in Islam,
a lot of the ritual and practice
is also deeply attached to elements of social
cohesion and social equity. It's not like a
private religion, the way people think about religion
in a personal sense, but it's a religion
that also teaches you to be connected to
those that come from different backgrounds than you.
So on the day of the evil 5th,
one of the things that you do prior
to the holiday is you give a particular
charity
that is called Zakatul
Fitr
or some people will call it
Sadaqatul
Fitr.
And essentially what this is,
it serves like 2 purposes.
Prior to the day of Eid,
each person
who has, like, wealth and means
per person in your family,
you're going to give this particular charity
and it's given to people who are in
need within your kind of local community ideally,
but can give it really to anybody who's
in need anywhere.
Right? The idea being so that they have
a means to also celebrate the holiday.
It ends up being, like, 10 to $15
per person in your family. Right? So you
do the math.
If you have,
like 5,000 people just in this community, where
there's a 1,000,000 Muslims in New York City
and let's say of the million, right,
half a1000000 of them
are giving
this $10,
$15
per person, right? That's 5 to 7 and
a half $1,000,000
by itself.
Let alone the other aspects of charity that
we'll talk about probably next week.
But for the purposes of our conversation,
the holiday is also celebrated
by engaging people who are in need.
Right? One of the first things that you
are required to do
if you have the wealth and means to
do so
is to engage in an act that is
mindful of the fact that there's
all kinds of people who celebrate this,
inclusive of people who don't have any money.
They don't have wealth.
Right? Does that make sense?
The other reason that this charity is given
is as a means of education for any
shortcomings that somebody might have in their month
of Ramadan,
Right? So the way that, for example, we
haven't talked about prayer yet and we will,
but like the extra prayers you pray,
like outside of what's obligatory. If you remember,
we went through the different categories that acts
can be placed in. Obligatory
is far. Right? You have what's recommended.
What's the hub? You have what's neutral, muba.
You have what's disliked, makru,
and you have what's strictly prohibited or haram.
You have,
I forgot what I was talking about. What
was I talking about?
I don't know. That's the only word you've
ever heard of.
So I guess So I guess the system
that is the for for anything that you
did wrong during Oh, yeah. So when you're
praying,
right, you have obligatory prayers
and the recommended prayers,
they also
serve as a means
to feel like inadequacies
in your obligatory prayers. Right? So we're taught,
for example,
when we stand in front of God and
he assesses our prayers,
one of the things that he'll tell the
angels to do
is look to the extra prayers
to compensate for
inadequacy
in the obligatory prayers. Right? So the idea
with this charity
is twofold.
1, you want people to also celebrate the
holiday wherever they are. And 2 that
it serves as a means of recompense for
anything
that was deficient in your own like practice
of Ramadan. Does that make sense? Yeah.
What happens now on this day?
He coming.
This is Kareem Gabriel Latif
dressed with a Mega Man jacket on. Why
are you looking so shy? I'd be embarrassed.
Kareem is my son. He's not a random
child. I've
come into interaction with. Is this all I
can tell you, boo? I think
so.
Me and my computer?
Where is the adults in your life that
you just walked into this
room? Is anybody else here? Yeah.
Okay. Here, you can take this.
Got it?
I'm glad we got to spend this time
together.
What
just happened?
So.
Okay.
K. I have a 7 year old and
a 10 year old who from tonight through
next Sunday, they're on vacation. You should probably
see them running around here a lot.
So what happens on the day of their
eve is gonna vary from person to person.
My strong recommendation,
whether it's your first time,
you're still learning about Islam, you've experienced Eid,
like, for years in your life, you want
to celebrate the holiday as if it's in
a holiday. Right? And as you're prepping right
now, allowing for yourself to think.
Even if the people in your life are
not Muslim,
you have family members who are not Muslim,
you have friends who are not Muslim,
there's nothing that restricts you from giving gifts
on your holiday.
Right? You can spread love through the giving
of gifts. You are in a place where
it cements relationships and allows for people to
experience things in a different
way. When you are in a place where
sometimes you'll go to some communities, they don't
know how to celebrate, and it's like very
miserable. And so it won't be miserable for
us. But the way that the day of
Eid starts
is
after fajr time,
which is the first prayer of the day,
right, at sunrise,
like, true dawn, you know, this is when
you stop eating in Ramadan.
Right? That's kind of the mark there.
And
we have the second prayer of the day,
Dhuhr
In between these prayers,
there's going to be
the Eid prayer.
The Eid prayer is a little bit
similar, but still different from if you've ever
attended a Friday prayer service
in a Muslim space
where you have a sermon
plus a prayer,
but the sermon
precedes the prayer
on Friday?
Right? How How many of you have ever
been to a Jomamah prayer on Friday before
by a raise of hands?
Yeah. Great. Some of you haven't. Some of
you have.
So on Eid,
it's different in that
the prayer precedes the sermon.
And there's a distinct
kinda set of mechanics to the prayer for
the Eid prayer
that'll vary slightly
from community to community
based off of some nuanced opinions
on how the prayer is conducted.
But it's pretty much the same that in
each standing of the prayer,
you have an additional set of
what's called the takabir.
The person leading the prayer will say Allahu
Akbar and you'll raise your hands kinda up
at that moment.
And then the prayer will kinda continue and
ensue in the way that it is, but
it'll be explained to you wherever you go
to pray the Eid prayer.
Following that, there'll be a sermon that takes
place,
that will have 2 parts to it. And
then after that,
you're gonna have a lot of people that
just start hugging each other. Right?
And you wanna be ready for that.
The person next to you will likely turn
to you and then just give you a
hug. Even if you don't know them and
you don't wanna be caught off guard,
that's the way that people kinda celebrate,
on the day of Eid.
Right? And
Muslims
have a lot of challenges around race and
culture and class like any community,
but there's certain moments
where they just come together in a really
beautiful way. Right? Like when I'm traveling,
there's been numerous times when
I'm going from New York to a place
that doesn't warrant me taking a plane, and
I'll drive down
to, like, Washington DC
or to Boston if I'm not taking a
train and I have people with me. And
numerous times I've stopped at rest areas
to pray
and random people join me in the prayer.
Right? The way we have our 5 daily
prayers.
Has this ever happened to anybody that you're
praying someplace and someone just comes not in
a prayer space, but you're like outside praying
and someone comes and joins you in prayer.
Does that ever happen to you? It has
happened to you. How do you feel when
that happens?
Happy. Happy. Right? You're not ever like, oh,
man. I'm in prayer and some random stranger
is behind me and what's about to happen
here. But you always feel good.
And it's unique
in our religion's experience
that random strangers can meet just in that
moment
and join each other
in prayer
and feel elated at the fact that someone
that I don't know and will never likely
meet again, we interacted in this moment and
it brings joy to my heart. Right?
That's like a pretty interesting phenomenon.
Similarly,
at the end of the Eid sermon, the
chutba,
random strangers are gonna start hugging you. Right?
Like, if you are a convert in this
room and you've converted in our community
at times when there's a gathering of people
around you, people just come and start, like,
giving you hugs and stuff. They're just happy.
Right? You know? You don't you don't have
to. You could, like, say, I need my
space. You know what I mean? But fundamentally,
that's something that's gonna happen. It's like meant
to be a joyous
celebration.
You know?
What we try to do here is create
opportunities
throughout the day for different groupings of people
to interact with each other.
But you wanna be mindful, especially if you're
in this room as somebody who's born into
Islam,
that you're sharing a space right now with
people exploring Islam or people who are recent
converts to Islam
or maybe they converted a long time ago,
What experientially it also means
to be the only Muslim in your family
on a Muslim holiday?
And where and how you are purposely creating
opportunity
to ensure that no one is also celebrating
a holiday by themselves.
Right?
And this becomes
an experience for many people.
Not so much in our community
at this center,
but in many Muslim communities
that now share
culture as a common source of bond or
class as a common source of bond. They're
not necessarily thinking
that that person that I jumped up and
down for and hugged when they converted,
they also probably need to be invited somewhere
to celebrate the holiday.
Right?
Do you hear what I mean? So you
want to think for yourself,
like, how will I play a role in
ensuring
that there's opportunities for people to engage in
this?
What are things that people do?
There's not like a lot of things that
Muslims do other than eat. Right? You know,
we're not we're not like doing so much
other stuff
that, you know, you'd be like, yeah, you're
gonna go out and do this. You're gonna
go out and do that. So people spend
the day quite often
interacting with friends. They're eating with friends.
Gifts don't have to be lavish. You know
what I mean? If you come here, there's
gonna be, like, kids probably. They're praying with
us. You can buy bags of candy and
just give it to little kids. Right? You
saw my son. If you came up to
him, he has no concept of, like, stranger
danger. You know? So if you give the
guy, like, anything, he's gonna, like, be sticking
it in his mouth as he's asking me,
is it okay if I can eat this?
Right? But it's a holiday. So you want
to allow for people
to be creative in their celebration of a
holiday. Do you know what I mean? Does
that make sense? Right? And it makes a
big difference, you know?
But to think about that as you're navigating
some of it. So I'd like for you
to do is is just turn to the
person next to you.
How do you anticipate
celebrating on the day of the eve?
What does that day look like for you
as of right
now? Ideally.
Right? And you don't want to be in
a place where you're kinda you know, it's
your first time or you don't know. But
what do holidays like, what should they feel
like? What should they look like experientially?
And then we can kinda come back and
discuss. Do you understand the prompt? Okay. So
what what should it be like on the
day of Eid for you, for anybody who's
coming, and then we'll come back and speak
about it a little bit. But go ahead.
And this year is, like, having a community.
I definitely wanna be here.
Last year, I did have community with
not leaving here. I'm not going home. I'm,
like, spending the day.
I'm not going home because I literally my
friend drove me home. And I was like,
what do I do now? Oh, my friend.
I'm feeling a bit awkward with, like, there's
no people around, and then we can't
Okay. So what are some of the things
you're talking about?
How do you foresee, like, that day looking
for
you? It's a holiday.
Like, how how would you feel, like, celebrating?
What did you discuss?
Who wants to start?
We talked about Hannah. Hannah? Yeah. Yeah. Great.
What about it? Like, wearing it. Like, having
the little design and
Why is that enjoyable? A form of celebration.
Yeah.
Yeah. Great. It's a fun thing to do.
Right? What
else?
For me, it's really, like,
embracing
people that day.
You know, getting to hug, getting to celebrate.
Lots of embracing.
Amazing.
Yeah. I stand at the arch
and select a line of, like,
strange men I've never met in my life.
This is how come start. Giving me hugs.
My kids get annoyed. They're like, how many
people are you gonna do this with? I'm
like,
well, there's 4,000 people here.
Anything? I'm I'm a small guy. Right? Like,
it's not you know?
Because it's it's, you know, it's
nice, I guess. Yeah.
What else? What do you do to celebrate
the holiday?
Yeah. Eat some good food, exchange some gifts.
Yeah.
Anything else? Yeah. With that room, we have
here still, like, 2 hours on 3 hours
to go eat with the people. Uh-huh. Everybody
has an opinion where we should go, and
then nobody does. And then since about 2
hours, eventually, it goes off.
Yeah.
Any other thoughts?
Like, we visit family.
Visit family. Yeah. If you can do that,
that's the nice thing to do. It's just
like any other holiday.
You know? And you wanna treat it in
that way.
We start our prayers here
probably, like, around 8 AM or so, 9
AM,
maybe,
depending if it was on a weekend or
not.
You can do this anytime between these two
prayers. When I was growing up,
you know, they'd pray this at, like, 6:30
in the morning sometimes.
And I would feel miserable,
half asleep.
And my dad's like, we gotta run to
go do this.
Everyone's also super exhausted.
We're not doing that. Why we would start
at 8 is just because there are some
people who have to get to work. They
don't have the option of missing work that
day because of the nature of their job
industry. Right? And so it's a privilege to
have the ability to take a day off
from work without getting penalized in a way
that you can even get terminated from your
job, which is all the more reason as
to why if that's not your reality,
you should be taking the day off for
your holiday.
Right? Because there's a ton of people who
would love to do that,
but they're just not set up in roles
where that's, like, an option.
You know?
And so
any other thoughts on, like, how to celebrate
things you could do? It doesn't also have
to be in large numbers.
You know? It can be in very small
scales. You get groupings of people together.
You find different people.
We typically do some things for the converts
in our community,
where we'll have, like, a picnic in Prospect
Park or meet up for lunch or dinner.
Our broader community,
I think, will have a couple of events
that'll be, like, larger scale or smaller scale.
But you're also able to just kinda think
about proactively how to do that for yourself.
And it's hard. Right? Because the ideal is
that well, someone would have thought to include
me in something.
But to shift the paradigm to recognize, hey.
If there's not something that I've been invited
to, there's probably thousands of people literally who
haven't been invited to something.
So let me kinda start up what needs
to be done. And if any of you
have ideas that you want us to amplify,
just let me know as long as, like,
they're not crazy things. Right? We were gonna
at one point because we didn't know where
we were gonna do and what COVID protocol
was.
So one of our potential venues to fit
people was we were gonna rent out Webster
Hall on 12th Street. John Hope people know
where Webster Hall is. Right? What's Webster Hall?
He likes smiling, Victor.
It's it's a music venue. Yeah. It's like
the club. You know?
So, you know, we were gonna have Ethan
in a in a in a club in
in a square.
Like, it fit us, and it was it
was empty.
But we're gonna do it in the park,
here.
But if you were like, hey. You know,
can you advertise this, like, Eve party that's
happening late night at this club? I was
like, no. I'm sorry. We can't do that
because I'll get fired and people will be
really upset with me. But within reason. If
there's things that you have that you feel
like will create opportunity, that has whatever limitations.
You wanna get, like, 10 people together, it
could be 10 people. You have a place
that could fit a 1000 people, it's a
1000 people. But things that we could help
to amplify.
But you yourself individually
should be ready to celebrate the holiday. It's
a holiday.
And think about also within whatever capacity
that you're just spreading like joy to people
because it's a holiday.
Right? So the people who are in your
lives,
inclusive of those
who are not Muslim,
that are your family members, your relatives.
There's nothing that restricts you from being able
to extend
the celebratory
nature of the holiday
to them. Do you get what I mean?
Does that make sense?
Okay. So how the day will lay out
here, because there's a particular to it because
it's a Friday. Right? And so you're gonna
go from an Eid prayer
to now instead
of, like, there's
prayers. There's Friday prayers.
If you look at books
of Islamic law,
they'll say if you attended the Eid prayer
in Hudba,
you don't have to go to Jummah that
day. Right?
If anybody has to go to Jummah that
day, it's the person that delivers the chutba.
That's me. Right? It's not you. So I
would be required
to do both things. Right? Yay for me.
But where you're in a place where you
contextualize
that, the reason as to why
one would be,
like,
exempt from attending the Friday prayer,
if the Friday prayer is on the same
day as the eve prayer, is because
everybody came from everywhere to celebrate eve together.
Right? The way many communities were set up,
you'd have small mosques and then you'd have
a Friday mosque and then the small mosque
would be empty on Fridays during Jummah time,
the Friday prayer, because all the people would
go from the little mosque to the big
Friday mosque.
The same way the small mosques would have
everybody to come and pray in the Friday
mosque.
All the Friday mosques would get together in
an area and everybody prayed to eat together.
Meaning if somebody was coming to Washington Square
Park to pray with us,
they were coming from miles away.
And so for them to have to also
stick around
or get to it,
the idea was they already had one sermon
that day, and their distance from their locale
because everybody's coming together
doesn't then require them to have to kinda
go to a second one. Does that make
sense?
We're gonna have Eid prayers here, and then
we're gonna have Jomah prayers here. Right? I
would love for you all to join me,
so I'm not the only one in the
room.
But it's usually also like filled with people
because people want to continue to stick around
given just the vibe that's here is very
upbeat.
And you'll see a lot of people taking
pictures.
People are gonna be eating brunch together,
and they're not looking for a reason for
it to stop. They want for it to
continue.
But on the nuance of that, like, that's
where somebody might tell you, oh, I heard
if Eid is on a Friday,
then you don't have to go to the
Jummah prayer. Well, it's based in that ruling.
Does that make sense? Right?
It's a holiday also.
So the idea is that there is unique
blessing to the day.
And just like many Muslims
for however many of the last nights of
Ramadan
have been, like, praying at night and doing
these things,
Praying in the night before
Eid is also an important thing to do.
Right? Making du'a in that night is an
important thing to do, Engaging in acts of
charity and these kinds of things. And it's
very particular
to understand
in the spiritual tradition of Islam
that with immediacy
at the end of the month of Ramadan,
people now have an opportunity
to choose choices
based off of what they learned they had
capacity to do in the month
that is inclusive of prayers
and fasting and whatever else ritualistically,
but also the capacity to just have, like,
self restraint,
to be mindful in your actions
that doesn't suddenly now stop or get muted
at the end of the month. And that
first night and how you spend it
is important
because you don't want it to be something
that foregoes
what it was that you had kinda gained
from in the 30 days 30 nights prior
to it.
Does that make sense? Yeah. If you can't
be here with us,
you're traveling, you're going elsewhere,
you know, you're not able to come at
8, 9 in the morning for something,
all is reasonable, and you're trying to find
spaces to go to, let us know, and
we can try to connect you to some
of these other places. Does that make sense?
Okay.
I wanna be mindful of the time,
because we had a couple of people that
were gonna take their Shahada today.
They were gonna formally convert to Islam.
And so what we'll probably do is unless
people have questions on this more, we'll start
to gradually just make our way up. We're
not, like, one floor above today as we
normally would be, but we are gonna be
on the 10th floor of the building next
door. But you don't have to exit the
building to reenter that building. The buildings connect,
on this floor, but it's still gonna just
take a little bit of time to get
everybody up there. And we
told, 2 people that we kinda do this
around 7 o'clock.
So if people are okay with us taking
a pause here,
unless there's any questions or anything that's coming
up for people.
Right? The whole idea is one to introduce
that, like, there are holidays in Islam,
that everybody celebrates these 2 holidays.
There's other holidays that come up as well.
In the Shia tradition of Islam, there's like
a lot of holidays that that take place,
but these are two main holidays that every
Muslim
celebrates. We'll talk about Eid al Adha, the
other one,
in a later kind of class
or session.
But
we're halfway through Ramadan.
And so you wanna just start anticipating now
as best as you can, like, how you're
gonna spend that day of Eid in in
a in a way that is celebratory.
I mean, how do you create opportunities for
celebration also? So if you have any questions
or any comments on any of this.
Yes. No. Is there any association
that we can send the 2nd filter to?
Yeah. So we're gonna send out an email
to the whole listserv
where you can online just contribute it.
Members of our community have set up
a separate nonprofit. It's called the Zagat Fund
of New York City.
They sell, right now support,
800 families in need in our community,
and it'll be distributed to them.
If you were here, like, throughout the pandemic,
you know, they were kind of our partner
institution.
We're issuing micro cash grants to people facing
food insecurity,
homelessness,
survivors of abuse that were now stuck at
home with their abusers in the pandemic,
You know, people with funeral assistant needs.
So,
within that, there's kind of an open application,
for people to apply for charitable assistance.
This is a big part of, like, just
Islamic tradition.
You know, that
you have awareness and consciousness of how the
community
kind of at large is experiencing certain things.
Do you know what I mean?
And this is how like a Meccan society
drew its sense of strength from. Right? The
idea that
the kinda strength
of a kinda tribalistic
society, a clan based society
was a clan's power was rooted
in ensuring that the most underserved and underprivileged
members
of their clan had their needs taken care
of. You know? And some of that principally
carries over to Islam.
In a like pre Islamic mindset, you're still
bringing in what's virtuous.
Right? The healthiness of a Muslim community
is that it's also taking care of those
that are underserved and underprivileged
within that community space. Right? And that's one
of the reasons why we fast,
for some of us is so that you
can understand that there's people who are involuntarily
hungry all the time. But a benefit for
our hunger, which is voluntary,
is that we can recognize some of the
difficulties that people go through and then purposely
built in, right? God creates a ritual
that says
at a minimum,
you're gonna give this thing so that other
people can also celebrate the holiday
in ways that everyone should be entitled to
celebrate the holiday. Does that make sense?
So we'll send out those things via email,
like, in the last week of Ramadan.
And all you gotta do is, like, click
a button,
and it'll go, and then it'll get distributed,
in cash,
in checks to,
some of these people who are in need.
Right? Just, like, think about that. You know,
as you're praying with people, breaking fast with
people,
understanding there's a plethora of experiences that exist,
that these are just 8800
families doesn't mean 800 people,
but people that have children, people who are
widows,
people who are undocumented,
people who are refugees,
people who lost their jobs at some point
and just were never able to find work
again. They're all still living in New York
City,
where
they have to pay, like, New York rents
and buy, like, New York food and all
this kind of stuff.
So
with a lot of love, you want to,
like, give
with an understanding that it'll go a long
way in helping somebody
who on the other end of it has
to deal with the fact that, like, how
will I help my kid
to celebrate their holiday when we don't have
anything? Right? Like, you're literally facilitating
for that family to be able to celebrate
in a meaningful way. Does that does that
make sense? Yeah.
Any other thoughts or questions before we break?
Yeah. Does anybody here know how to get
to the 10th floor of the building next
door?
Great. Can you raise your hands really high?
Okay. So if those of you with your
hand raised, just look for them if you
don't know how to go. And if those
of you who know how to go, just
linger in the hallway, and then they'll guide
you to the 10th floor. So you're gonna
grab your stuff and your shoes, and we'll
make our way over there,
and then kind of reconvene on the 10th
floor of the building.
I know. Go ahead. Listen up.