Khalid Latif – First Steps Essentials of Islam #13
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AI: Transcript ©
Okay. Should we get started?
It's not like an off to the left.
Oh, I can set up the if you
wanna take a quick minute, and you can
just introduce yourselves to the people sitting around
you,
share your names, how your day was going,
then we'll get started. I know everyone doesn't
know everybody else. We're gonna today be going
we're gonna continue on what we discussed last
week, which was written on the board,
which were the conditions outside of the prayer.
So things that you need to
have outside of the prayer for the prayer
to be valid. And today, we're gonna start
talking about what is obligatory
within the prayer,
in order for the prayer to
have validity.
But if you just take a quick minute,
introduce yourselves to people around you, and then
we'll just get started.
Okay. Should we get started?
Great.
So today, we're gonna talk about the
integral
components to the prayer once you're in the
prayer. Last week, we talked about the conditions
that had to be met outside of prayer.
And now we're gonna talk about this within
the actual performance of the prayer itself.
And as we go through it, just keeping
in mind that we're kinda going in an
order. So whether you were born into Islam,
you're a recent convert to Islam,
you convert a while ago to Islam, or
you're still exploring Islam,
there's also gonna be embedded in this kind
of a structure
in which one can actually, like, teach somebody
how to pray,
who either is a convert
or somebody who,
is just returning back to faith, and they're
starting to pray for the first time in
their life. Right? Because the idea isn't
that you need to know how to pray
in order to convert to Islam.
Right? Or somebody takes their shahada, there's no
prerequisite
course of study.
And you wanna be careful because quite often,
we utilize language that's very absolute,
that can create challenges for people as they're
kinda getting acclimated into things
systematically. So remember, those of you here when
we talked about Wudu, we went into Wudu
really in-depth so that you know what are
the different elements of wudu.
So in any scenario, you know how to
be able to adapt
to the performance of wudu. It's a little
different when you're sitting in your office place
versus a classroom versus in your home or
in a place surrounded by Muslims versus you're
the only Muslim that's there.
So I want you to understand
this in the context of just
where you might have learned how to pray,
but not learned how to pray in the
ways that we're gonna talk about it right
now. Does that make sense?
Right? And so at the end, we'll answer
questions.
But the way that we're gonna look at
this over the course of the next couple
weeks
is
in the prayer itself. So this is now
in prayer,
not outside of prayer, but in prayer. There's
gonna be
3 ways we're gonna understand this.
The Fard,
the Wajib,
and the sunnah
parts to the prayer.
Right?
The meaning
the obligatory,
the wajib,
meaning the necessary,
and the sunnah
meaning
the recommended.
When we talked about
wudu,
we to recap really quick, talked about what
these words mean
in Arabic, in English. Right? Because even in
English, we don't necessarily utilize these terms. Right?
Like, somebody asks you, you know, why are
you doing what you're doing? You don't say,
this is an obligation of mine. Right? Likely,
it's not in kinda just common jargon.
So
this is something
that is from a religious standpoint
understood
to be
definitive in its evidence as well as definitive
in the meaning
of what it's invoking. Does that make sense?
And
something is Wajib
and that it's a little bit less
in terms of the definitiveness
of it.
So in the Hanafi school, which is what
we've been looking at,
these are things that are still important to
do,
but
they don't have
as definitive. It's more probabilistic
like what the potential meaning is within this.
Right? So if somebody says, how do
you know you pray your salah, your daily
prayers as a Muslim?
Because in the Quran, it says again and
again. Right?
Establish the prayer.
And there's not really other ways to understand
that. Just establish the prayer means establish the
prayer. Do you know what I mean?
And we're gonna go through the conditions here
that are the obligations
and what you wanna know is that if
any of these are left out,
then the prayer doesn't count. It's not valid.
The way you wanna conceptualize it
is kinda like the likeness of your skeleton
to your entire being. This is what's creating
the frame
of your prayer.
The wajib
are elements that are necessary.
And if one of these is left out,
forgetfully,
not purposely but forgetfully,
we'll talk about this next week, it doesn't
invalidate the prayer.
You can do what's called a prostration of
forgetfulness
that then remedies
that deficiency.
You don't have to know what that means
right now. We'll talk about it next week.
But
this is still something that's important just on
that spectrum.
It's of a
lesser
degree of obligation.
And then the sunnah
acts. So the wajib in relation to that
example,
like, the fard is the skeleton.
The wajib is now gonna be kind of
the body that goes down the skeleton.
And then the sunnah parts to it, which
we'll talk about next week and potentially the
week after,
this is what, like, beautifies that body.
Does that make sense?
So what I wanna do as we go
through this is to talk about this, but
to also demonstrate some of the things that
come up so that we're aware of what
it is that we're talking about here.
So the first component to this
that is an obligation
is what's called
or
what a lot of people do when you
see them start the prayer, they say this
initial
Allahu Akbar.
Right? It's a glorifying of god.
The term Allahu Akbar is gonna fall under
this category,
just so you know.
So
here in the Hanafi school,
the conditions we talked about last week outside
of prayer,
some people would say this is also an
obligatory
condition outside of prayer, and some people say
it's a condition
of the prayer. Right? The same thing, practically
speaking, you have to do it.
This is a phrase that just has to
be something that is glorifying god at the
level of an obligation.
Somebody could theoretically say,
glory be to God, and it still fulfills
the obligation.
Everybody
ends up saying Allahu Akbar,
but just so we can understand conceptually,
that is what is there for validity.
Someone
could say any statement in glorification of the
divine.
It has to be a full sentence, like
a full statement
in that sense.
This
is in relation and quite often connected to
the intention that we talked about last
time. So you're making an intention to pray
the prayer as an outside condition. You're not
in prayer yet when you're making that intention.
And now to signify
that you are in this state of prayer,
you're doing something
that becomes
a glorification of God. When we pray all
together at sunset, we're gonna say Allahu Akbar
to signify the start of the prayer.
The second part to it is gonna give
a little bit more understanding, and we'll talk
about this in a little bit more detail,
is now
standing.
If you are physically able to do so
in the course of your prayer, it's a
fard in the obligatory
prayers.
You have to stand in the prayer.
If you don't have the physical ability to
stand,
then you
are not required to stand. But if you
have the physical capacity to stand
and the obligatory
prayers
in the Hanafi school, you are required to
stand
during the course of the prayer.
Does that make sense?
When you're standing in prayer now, the actual
standing, just so we can understand it, right,
in this room, the qibla is this way.
Standing
means that you're standing upright.
So you're not gonna, like, feign humility and
be hunched over.
Standing as a description
is that you're standing straight enough
that when you're standing
that your hands, they're not able to touch
your knees.
Do you get what I mean?
And the mechanics are things that are important
in the course of the prayer, but you're
standing upright
when you are in prayer.
Now I wanna give you a couple of
things
because you're gonna stand in prayer
whether you're praying alone
or you're praying in congregation, there's some distinctions
that are made. And just to be aware
of it in terms of what you're gonna
be met with. If you go into a
masjid
or you're praying where there's other Muslims,
quite often, you might find somebody
when they're standing,
they will put something in front of the
area that they're going to prostrate.
This is outside of this conversation of what's
obligatory,
but just so we understand it, because there's
gonna be a lot of things that can
come up just in the course of, like,
you're standing in the prayer that you wanna
be ready for. Right?
So when somebody is in prayer,
the recommendation
is that you put something in front of
you that essentially
functions as kind of a
barricade between you and the person
that is walking in front of you.
So where I am
standing in prayer,
I can put anything
that is even
as small as a marker
that goes in front of me. If I
move here, is that a problem?
No. That's alright. Just so everyone can see.
Can everyone see me here?
Yeah. So if I'm here and I'm in
prayer
and I put this in front of where
I'm gonna prostrate,
what it allows
for is people to walk immediately in front
of that thing. In Arabic, it's called the
sutra.
Right? It's a cover. The hadith says, even
if it's a blade of grass, you want
to have something that's there that kinda blocks
people's
ability
to walk in front of you. If there's
no sutra,
then essentially
twice the length of your prostration
is an area. So it's not like somebody's
praying all the way back there and there's
nothing in front of them, then nobody can
walk in front of them in the entirety
of the room. When you pray in congregation,
the cover of the person leading the prayer
counts for everybody else. Right? So that's one
of the things. Why is that important?
Because if you're walking in a mosque or
you're walking and people are praying separately
and somebody's standing in their prayer and you
come and walk in front of them or
try to, they might stick their hand like
this
to indicate don't walk in front of me.
Right? They're not trying to shake your hand.
Okay?
And you just wanna be mindful of that
because I know a lot of people who
they don't know. Right? How many times you
meet Muslims and they're constantly shaking hands,
etcetera etcetera.
Now when the person's praying,
like, and they stick their hand out, they
want you to not walk in front of
them. That's what they're doing. Does that make
sense? They're gonna do that while they're standing
and you just wanna be mindful of it.
If you, by accident, shake their hand, it's
okay. It's funny story to tell somebody later
on. But that's not what they're trying to
do. Now say I'm standing
and I'm not praying
just by myself, I'm praying with 2 people.
What is gonna happen
is that the person leading the prayer
has to be standing in front of the
person that is praying with them
to the extent that the person who's praying
next to them,
their heels have to be behind
the heels of the person leading in prayer.
Right? Can you come and stand up here?
So if we're praying together,
we're gonna essentially just stand like this,
and that suffices.
That make sense?
Okay. Now say the 2 of us are
praying, standing side by side,
right, And then a 3rd person comes and
joins us. There's a couple of different scenarios
here that can happen.
Right?
One can you come here? Yeah.
Say,
we're praying and all of this is behind
us. Right? There's a lot of stuff behind
us.
There's no room for these 2 to move
back.
So in this scenario,
the situation
would be such that we want to have
a separation between the one leading the prayer
and the two people praying behind.
Because all these things are back here,
this scenario
would now have the person leading the prayer
move forward.
Does that make sense?
Yeah. So if you walk into a mosque
and somebody's praying
like this and you join them, 2 people,
and
the person leading the prayer takes a step
forward, you didn't do anything wrong. You guys
can sit down. I'm gonna call you back
up in 2 minutes. Just be ready. Right?
They're not moving away from you because you
broke the prayer or messed up the prayer,
but formulaically,
if there's a person leading and someone praying
next to them, and there's a barrier behind
them and someone comes here,
then this person is gonna move up because
there's no place to move back.
Does that make sense?
Okay.
Is that for men only?
You have, like, in some schools of thought
that there's women led jamats also. Right? Must
the must the heel if it's, like, shallow?
Shadowing? You still have to be in front.
Okay. Yeah.
The only school of thought that I know
of right? Well, forgive me if I'm wrong.
But in the Maliki school,
the imam doesn't have to be in front
of the congregation. People can pray in front
of the person leading the play.
Yeah. But,
in the other schools
that you have the
the person leading the prayer has to be
in front of everybody.
Yeah.
So
here, say now for example,
all 3 of these people are praying
and for whatever reason, they just don't know
that, you know, you're you're supposed to move,
the prayer is still valid. It still counts.
Right?
But just so you're aware of it, if
this barrier is not here,
then there's a couple of things that would
happen. Right? So you wanna come up again?
Can everybody see you when we stand
here? Are you sure? Okay. Come stand.
And you come up too.
So you're gonna just join from back here.
Right?
He's going to enter into prayer first.
He's gonna make his intention to pray the
prayer,
and one of 2 things will happen in
this scenario now.
He's gonna either automatically
be aware that this person is here and
then take a step back. You wanna do
that?
And now we're
good.
Or he's not gonna know that this person
is back there. Right?
Deeply pious person. He doesn't know what's going
on in the world around him. Some dude
just came and stood behind him. He doesn't
know. Right? He's intoxicated with God at the
moment.
So he's in this place where he doesn't
know.
So he's in his state of prayer, and
all he's gonna do is gonna tap him
or he might even pull him back.
So if somebody does that to you while
you're praying, they're not trying to, like, mess
around with you or test you in some
way. You can sit down.
But they're just now getting to a place
that is
the
mode formulaically that we stand in the course
of the prayer. Does that make sense?
And, again,
if there's not,
like, movement,
right, it doesn't mean that it's invalid.
Do you know what I mean? But I
just want you to be aware that if
these things are happening,
don't get thrown off. Right? And if somebody
comes to tell you something and they're like,
you didn't move, you messed it up, this
or that, right,
Just sometimes you gotta smile and nod to
people, but, essentially, what's gonna happen
is if there's 2 people praying,
a third joins,
this person is going to move back and
the rows start building out this way.
Okay. I saw a couple of hands. Wait.
Yeah. Just real quick. If it's just 2
people, right, I've seen some people where,
the guy leads a prayer and the person
with them, their clothes are aligned. And in
other situations where the person that's not leading
the prayer is, like, staying slightly behind the
hip, which is The toes can be aligned
because your foot is not based off of
the front of your foot in terms of
a line. It's based off of the back
of your foot. Right? So if you're here
in Ramadan, you heard me say this, like,
50 times. Right? Line up from the back
of your heels, not the front of your
toes. Do you know what I mean? So,
like, your foot is bigger than my foot.
And so if his toes are lined up
where my toes are, the back of his
heel is still behind, like, the back of
my foot. Do you get what I mean?
So you can stand if you're just 2
people, you can stand directly next to the
person who's leaving, like, the amount.
More or less. Right? You're close to them.
You know? Even if you're a little further
back, it's fine. Right? But the person leading
the prayer should be in front in some
capacity. You know? Okay. Yeah.
Couple of things.
Another scenario where
you may have to move is, like, during
duet, sometimes
spaces will come up in in in front
of you, and you may have to move
forward. Yeah. We're gonna talk about it. Yeah.
Yeah. Just to let people know how many
big movements they can make with before they
invalidate the salah. Yep. Just to let them
know. Yeah.
Does the first one
say?
Taghima.
Oh,
yeah.
And then two questions on that. Do we
know why it has to be a full
sentence? And
do all these apply to all * of
Islam and all This is in the Hanafi
school. Okay. Yeah. These are the Fard. Right?
Why are we doing this? Because some of
you have been Muslim for a week.
Some of you are not Muslim yet. Some
of you born into Islam, but you're trying
to reconnect to prayer and you haven't prayed
in years.
You wanna have at the end, we'll talk
about the scenarios.
Right? The next point will help to illustrate
this a little bit because the third point
is recitation.
In the Hanafi school,
you only have to recite in the Fard
prayer
in the first 2 rakas or of the
sunnah prayers like in every rakah,
just a small portion of the Quran, any
of it.
The smallest verse of the Quran says.
Right? You could say
to fulfill the just
that in the prayer, and that's it.
Because you, as somebody who's new to Islam,
you have a legally valid reason as to
why you won't know all of these things.
Because when you take the shahada,
the prayer becomes obligatory upon you. Right? And
so we're understanding
this not in the context of
you wanna assume you don't already know these
things.
You know? I'm teaching somebody
how to pray at a pace that makes
sense for them as a new Muslim.
There might be people we meet who have
converted to Islam
or they prayed for their whole life. Right?
I have to pray my whole prayer. I
don't have, as a default,
a valid excuse. There's other instances where the
faraya, they're important to know because, say, you
woke up today and fudger ended at 556,
and you woke up at 554,
the same way when we talked about wudu,
these are the obligatory
parts of the wudu. These are the recommended
parts to the wudu.
You're not gonna spend the 2 minutes you
have to pray fudger
doing wudu in its entirety.
You're gonna do the obligatory
parts
and then because it's an obligation
to pray in the window of time. Right?
If the time passes,
then you have missed the window of time,
that's
religiously impermissible. It's haram to do that.
So what Trump's is praying in its time,
and you got 45 seconds left to finish
fudger in its window, you're gonna do this.
Do you get what I mean? There's different
perspectives that say, hey.
Like, you might be recommended to make up
that prayer or not, and we'll talk about
the nuance of that. But understanding this
not in terms of what you already know,
but assuming just a blank state from the
beginning. Does that make sense?
Yeah?
Thank you. Yeah. Go ahead. So for for
women leading women in prayer,
so the rules that you showed, all of
them apply? In the Hanafi school, there's not
a opinion about women led prayer. In the
other schools, there are. Right? But it's it's
gonna be something similar. I don't know the
rulings in these other schools, so I can't
comment on those. A woman imam does not
stand in front because it's based on Aisha.
Say to Aisha, so she would leave the
prayer standing in the middle,
with 2 sisters on the other
side of her. So there needs to be
3 sisters is my understanding, and she stands
in the middle, not in front. So I
I will learn more inshallah at the feet
because I don't know about that, but she
shouldn't stand in front. Yeah. Great. I'm
gonna that, but you shouldn't stand in front.
Yeah. Great. And
Okay. So also with the standing now, right,
where
in the previous, like, class, we talked about
conditions outside of the prayer.
So you're standing, like, facing towards
Mecca. Right? You're already oriented towards the Kaaba,
but you're gonna be standing facing towards Mecca.
One of the things that comes up when
you're praying in congregation
rooted in this idea of gaps being created
is
in its initial state, you're gonna be standing
with no gaps between you and the person
next to you. Right? So
the recommendations
of it being shoulder to shoulder, and you'll
hear people say this out loud, shoulder to
shoulder, foot to foot, But the specificity
of that is something that at least in
the Hanafi school or others that I've heard
as well is that it's not meant to
be something that's definitive. Right? That when you
stand up,
you don't want to engage in excessive movement
that is now in a place where you
are changing
the kinda natural state of standing to elongate
your stance, to have your foot be touching
the foot of the person next to you
in every single raka,
every single time. Does that make sense?
Yeah. And you'll find people will do this
differently,
and some people will say that it's gotta
be there no matter what, toe to toe.
And most people would say that that's not
what the understanding is of that hadith. You
can't have large gaps between you and the
person standing next to you. Right? There's not
supposed to be, like, these huge distances.
You know? If you came here during the
Ramadan,
we, like, would deliberately
between prayers make sure people were lined up
as they were supposed to be lined up
and there wasn't bags
between people or, like, gaps between people and
these kinds of things.
In the Hanafi school,
if you move an excessive amount of times,
it breaks your prayer. If you're also doing
things that
indicate
that there's something that is not done in
the course of prayer, like, that breaks your
prayer. Right? You can't pick up your phone
in the course of your prayer. Do you
know what I mean? Right? You can't also
talk to somebody else on the phone while
you're in prayer. You know? But
fundamentally,
what you're gonna do when you stand in
congregation
is you're gonna be standing
too close to to the person next to
you. Right? You're filling up those gaps. And
then you're gonna have movements just as you
go up and down where some of the
alignment is going to change a little bit.
But the focus is still on the prayer,
not necessarily
on the posture
that can in and of itself also become
a distraction.
Do you get what I mean? Right? So
if you're praying next to somebody in a
congregational setting,
there might be somebody next to you who's
very adamant about this. And if they're trying
to get their foot right on top of
your foot,
this is why they're doing it. Just let
them be. You know? That's like something that
they've been taught, and that's fine. But for
yourself, as you stand,
you don't wanna have, like,
a focus that says it's gotta be kinda
rubbed up against another person. You're just ensuring
that there's not great distance in between.
Now if you're in a place where
there is,
a gap that pops up. Right?
Say we're praying
and in front of me, behind me,
there are things. You can't be aware necessarily
of something going on behind you. Like, how
would you know that? Right?
But if now there's the prayer started
and there's an opportunity for you to move
to close the gap.
You're moving, but not excessive movement. Right? In
the Hanafi school, if you move more than
7 times,
like, it's considered to be too and it
breaks the prayer. Right? So you're not engaged
in that kind of excessive movement,
like, so much. Do you know what I
mean? If you have ever been to Mecca
and Medina, for example, people line up to
pray and there's gaps in the rows in
front of them. Like, if I'm here
and I see a gap all the way,
like, up there, I'm not gonna push my
way through to fill that gap. You know?
But where there's a reasonable kind of
movement that isn't excessive, that's going to have
you, like, go at a point where
somebody looking at you from outside their prayer
saw you, and they're like this like, what
you're doing is not prayer at that point.
Do do you get what I mean? Does
that make sense?
Here also,
what you wanna be mindful of,
that'll happen. Like, in the course of your
standing
is,
well, we'll talk about it as we go
through, like, the other,
obligatory parts of the prayer. Yeah. Sorry. Not
to No. Go ahead. To find a point
on this, but,
how much is how much time
is there between
each movement
that it is consecutive? Like, how,
how much of a gap can you leave
between the movements
so that you so that it's not consecutive?
It's not about consecutiveness,
at least in the Hanafi school. It's just,
like, total movements over the course of it.
Right? You know?
Yeah. Any other questions on standing? So standing
is a part to this. Right? In the
Hanafi school,
in your voluntary prayers,
you don't have to stand.
It
reduces the reward, but it's not an obligation.
Right? So you see a lot of people,
particularly from the Indian subcontinent, they do this
a lot. They'll pray
their fard and, you know, in congregation,
they'll stand, they'll go through it, and then
when they pray their sunnahs or they pray
nafil,
they just stay seated on the ground. Right?
That's something that in particular, the standing is
relevant to the obligatory prayers,
in the Hanafi school. Right? You should still
stand
if you can,
in, like, all of your prayers. But if
you don't in a voluntary prayer,
that is something that's valid. The standing is
a fard act, an obligatory act
in
the
obligatory prayers in the Hanafi school. Does that
make sense? Okay.
Now in the course of your standing,
you're gonna have
recitation.
And this is
not
the recitation
that is
within the category
of what's wajib and what's recommended.
Right? We're talking just at the place of
what is an obligation.
And it's important to understand this because there
are scenarios.
So you can recite
any
part of the Quran,
just a small verse of the Quran and
that suffices
at as a minimum
for the obligations.
Right?
In the Hanafi school.
So there's a hadith, for example, where
companion is being taught by the prophet how
to go through the movements of the of
the prayer. And he says to this companion
that just read from the Quran like what
you know of it. Right? He doesn't specify
in that hadith
reading
the
in
particular.
You know? So these hadith, what the people
who are making these rulings and adopting methodologies,
they're looking at them altogether. How do they
communicate with one another? There's other people who
would say there's hadith that says, like, the
there's no prayer without.
Right? You know?
School, they would say that in and of
itself is not strong enough to indicate it's
a fard. It's a wajib. It's a necessary
thing.
When you learn your prayer, you have to
say the.
We're gonna talk about this next week. You
have to do what's there. But as you're
learning,
which can be very daunting for many people.
Right? You're going through it. Somebody took their
shahada.
On Friday, there was 2 brothers that took
their shahada. Right? Allah increased them.
If you take your shahada,
the next the prayer is obligatory
upon you at that point. Right? So the
leeway isn't,
okay, you get a month to just not
pray, you know, but in understanding
that
all you're gonna have to do in a
language that you don't know
is going to essentially be this.
And it can be any
small verse.
You could say
and then that's it.
You could say
and then that's it.
In this scenario,
right, what are other situations that this might
come up in? You know, what if somebody
wakes up and they have to perform?
Right? A man wakes up and he realizes
he had a nocturnal emission during the course
of the night. A sister finishes her menstrual
cycle
towards the end of a period
of prayer, and there's only a short window
of time. You got,
like, 10 minutes to do your
and, like, put on some clothes, do all
of those conditions that we talked about last
week, and then get the prayer done. So
now there's, like, 2 minutes left. Do you
get what I mean?
The exiting of the prayer time
is something in relation to this. You're gonna
get done what you have to at a
minimum
or you're somebody new to this prayer thing.
You're new to Islam.
You didn't pray, born into a Muslim family,
and you're just learning prayer for the first
time.
You don't speak Arabic. And even if you
speak Arabic,
Quranic Arabic is different from regular Arabic. Do
you get what I mean?
So you're in a place where it's not
the destination,
but it's a starting point, and you are
reasonably learning then outside of that and fulfilling
the obligation.
Does that make sense?
Does anybody have any questions on that? And
this is really important because people are going
to say things like,
you know, it's better to do this or
it's that. Yeah. Like, these things are there.
That's what we're talking about. This is the
skeleton of it, and then we're gonna talk
about what is the body that goes on
the skeleton
and how do you make that
beautified in some capacity.
But you gotta pray the prayer and now
you think also in kind of the constraints
that you might have. Yeah. Go ahead.
Can you pray in English in addition to
the Arabic?
This? Yeah. No? Or is it just strictly
Arabic and then, like, maybe, like, for sunnah,
can you pray in English? What some people
make exceptions for
is within the course of your prayer making
dua
in certain parts of the prayer,
but this has to be in Arabic. Right?
But, like, lit like, the smallest verse in
the Quran
is two words. It says,
You don't have to know what it means.
Right? You don't have to, like
like, it's it's just that's it.
You're not worshiping a feeling
when you're praying in Islam.
You know? You're praying to God.
And the mode through which you pray to
God
is based off of how God has outlined
this and God's messenger. If somebody says the
prophet Muhammad never prayed like this, well, yeah,
because the prophet Muhammad prayed like this, like
the whole thing. But that's not how
sharia functions. That's not how fiqh functions. Right?
You have what is obligatory.
You have that whole spectrum that we talked
about. Obligations,
prohibitions,
what is neutral,
recommended,
disliked,
you know, all of these things. Right?
So what is also reasonable is going to
vary for person to person. You know what
I mean? Somebody might have a
natural aptitude towards language. You know? You might
be in a place where you,
like
we have people here who before they took
their Shahada,
they, like, observe Ramadan for 3 years, prayed
with us every day. Like, it's different. You're
not in competition with anybody else, but you
want to understand
that as a starting point, you're still working
towards something. So in the course of the
prayer,
you're doing what is required
obligation wise.
And then from there,
you are outside of the prayer learning what
needs to be learned to get you to
these parts that we're gonna talk about next
time. Yeah. Can you clarify what you mean
by what you can decide? Because
my
my understanding is it has to be, like,
it has, like, make sense. You don't have
to recite Surah Fatiha here.
I mean, like, in 4th prayer. Right? Like,
it's not like We're gonna talk about all
of that next week Okay. So it's not
confuse people.
This has
to be just a short verse of the
Quran.
Right? That's my question. Yeah. Like, it A
verse is gonna have a full sentence to
it. So I but mean, can I say,
like, elif lamim and that's it?
It's a it's a verse. Okay. Yeah. Okay.
But that's what I'm saying. Right? You don't
wanna think about it experientially.
Right?
And you don't wanna use words when you're
talking to somebody
who's new to it
that claims something is absolute when it's not.
Do you know what I mean? Because the
alternative is what? Right? Like, if you took
your shahada
at Maghrib time today, like right now,
Maghrib is fired upon him
after he took his shahada.
He's gonna pray in congregation, so he's following
along with everybody.
But if he went home to pray Isha,
are we telling him that by the time
Isha starts
in an hour and 20 minutes,
he's gonna have to know how to recite
Fatiha,
one long verse or 3 short verses of
the Quran,
every invocation
and every posture of the prayer. He's been
Muslim for 5 minutes. Do you see what
I mean?
Right? That's why it's really important to understand
that
where and how it might have been given
to us is not necessarily
given to us in the way so that
we know how to teach it also.
Right? Because you have to know how to
pray in order to pray, but knowing how
to pray doesn't mean that you know how
to teach somebody how to pray. They're different
things. Do you get what I mean? Does
that make sense?
Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Is it so is
this also an opportunity, like, with that obligatory
recitation, like, to if if you just need
a verse to find a verse that kind
of,
like, sticks out to you if there's something
that resonates with you within that sentence or
Yeah. It could, but I would say, like,
it doesn't have to be that. Right? That's
not a condition of it. You just have
to say the verse. Yeah. Do you know
what I mean? So whatever is going to
get you through the fulfillment
of the obligation.
Right? And it can be a verse of
fateha if that's what you're working on. Right?
You know? But it's gotta be something
at a minimum that's there. Right?
Any other questions on that?
What time is my group? What time is
it right now? Okay. So we still have
some time.
Yeah. I have 755.
Okay.
So from here,
what happens next
is the bowing.
In Arabic, this is called the. I changed
to invocations.
Right? So it's in English. Right? So bowing
in,
is also like a posture movement now. Right?
So what we're saying, when you move from
the standing to the bowing,
in terms of the obligations,
you don't have to say anything in the
bowing position
in terms of the fara'id
of it.
The posture of the bowing is
such that
what constitutes
bowing
is moving in such a way where your
hands can now,
like, rest on your knees. Do you know
what I mean? So the ideal
is that your back is in a place
where it's making a 90 degree angle when
you're doing that.
But if you go down and you stay
here, it still counts.
Does that make sense? Because your hands are
touching your knees. What you don't wanna do
is
give religious significance to something that's not there.
So somebody says, I'm gonna go down, and
I'm just gonna, like, go really down. Right?
You know, like, well, that's not like
the merits to that is not rooted in
anything
of our tradition. You know? So you want
to get to a place where your back
goes to the 90 degrees. The same way
we said standing
necessitates an under like, the standing
essentially is that you're standing in such a
way where your arms are not able to
touch your knees.
Right? So if you were hunched over in
your prayer, your hands could touch your knees,
then that's not standing. Right? You're standing
straight. When you're bowing,
you're bowing in this way too where it
allows for your hands to touch your knees.
Does that make sense?
Okay.
Any questions on that?
No?
Yeah.
So one thing you wanna be careful about,
my son learned this the other day. I
don't know if any of you have ever
had this happen to you, but we were
all praying together,
and he was standing,
like, I was leading my wife and my
daughter and my son in prayer. My son's
7 years old. Right? He's not like, a
25 year old man. He's a little kid.
You know? I don't know if you ever
seen Kareem run around here. He's got, like,
a unique relationship to his prayer. We were
praying in Ramadan.
He would, like,
stand to pray. He'd run out the door,
drink some water, come back, stand next to
us, and kinda do his thing. So we're
praying in the house, and he put his
prayer mat behind where my daughter was standing.
And
as he came up, my daughter,
like, bumped him with her backside in the
prayer, and Kareem just, like, lost it. You
know? He didn't know what was going on.
Yeah. He, like he was he was so
funny to him. And at the end of
it, he's like, papa, do you know what
happened to me? I was like, what happened?
He's like, Didi
bumped me with her butt. Right? And I
said, Kareem,
today you reached a milestone as a Muslim.
Because every Muslim praying in congregation has had
somebody in front of them, smack them in
the face in some way, shape, or form.
Right? So when you are going through this,
it's just inevitably gonna happen at some point
in time. You're gonna, like,
stand while somebody else is still, like, down
or something's gonna happen, but just be mindful
of people bumping you as you're going through
things.
Okay.
Number 5 is
the prostration.
And in terms of the obligatory
parts of the prostration
are gonna be
your forehead, hand, knees,
and some part of your toe.
Right?
The,
not the.
Right?
So
the obligatory
parts to this. Right? We're not saying,
like, what is the complete part. We're saying
at the minimum
what one is going to
be required to do.
What needs to happen in that prostration being
valid
is that everything should ideally be unlike an
evil even plane,
so that there's not elevation to certain parts
versus others. So if you're prostrating,
the limit between
how elevate like, say you were in a
place where, like, there's just a bump in
or, like, something elevated in front of you.
Somebody put, like, some books in front of
you or something. Right? You're in here. There's
a bag in front of you.
You can't have
your head
be elevated
more than half a hand span above where
your knees are. Right? If that is, then
the prostration
isn't complete.
Does that make sense? So the ideal is
that everything is just kind of flat in
front of you. You know? You can put
something in front of you when you're praying.
Right? If I pray and I put this
where I'm gonna prostrate
and this just hits my stomach,
right, that's different.
But if I'm in a place where I'm
praying on top of it, reasonably speaking, right,
like, it is creating now,
like, a
challenge to the posture of the prostration.
Does that make sense? Yeah.
Okay.
And then the last
obligation
is the final sitting,
and that sitting is done to the length
of
the, which for those who are not familiar
with it, in terms of its length, you
could read it in probably, like, 10, 20
seconds. Right?
So a sitting that's in that extent.
There's things that are very clearly missing from
here that in the course of your prayer
or even when we pray in, like, 5
minutes, you'll notice, like, we didn't do a
lot of this stuff
because those are gonna get filled up here,
and then some are gonna get filled up
over here as well.
But in this place,
you're
just understanding
what is the obligation
upon you.
Right? It's a Islam 101 class,
someone is trying to build a relationship with
our prayer
after, like, maybe years of not praying, we
could have forgotten
how to pray. Someone taught us to it.
Some of us are new to Islam.
Right? And, also, you can use the opportunity.
Somebody comes to you
and you wanna teach them about their prayer
in Islam,
you're gonna teach them in a way that
has, like, a sensibility
to the learning experience.
Somebody comes on day 1
and says to you, I just became Muslim
this afternoon,
and you're like, you have to learn how
to pray, like, great, teach me, and you
say, well, the first thing you have to
learn is Surah Fateha,
Right?
Which might seem like the most
common sensible thing to say,
but in reality, the first things that they're
gonna be required is is what we're talking
about here in this kind of list,
you know.
And as they start to do this, because
the prayer is obligatory
upon you,
as soon as you become Muslim,
they're gonna have to
get to do these things
as you then move through, like, a learning
process around the rest of it.
Does it make sense?
Okay. So next week, we're gonna talk about
what are the necessary
components.
So here's the skeleton,
and this is what we're gonna build off
of. Right? So when somebody says, what can
I do? I'm new. You remember
we talked about the conditions. One of the
conditions was that
praying within its time, that knowing that the
time has entered. So when the time is
entered,
as you are navigating,
learning how to
read,
part of the Quran,
like the different invocations
and the bowing positions
and the prostrating positions,
You're still just doing a minimum
of this because you have to complete the
prayer,
and it's
a valid reason as somebody who's new to
it that you're going to do just what
is obligatory.
Does that make sense?
Any questions on that?
Yeah.
Yeah. You have to stand if you can
stand.
Right?
There's some people who would say that praying
an obligatory prayer
on a moving vehicle in and of itself
is a problem, but most people would say
it's fine. Right? You can pray on a
plane, you know, but
you
are in a place where, like, considerations have
to be made. Right?
But
this is also just, like, with a generalization.
If you're in a place where you have
a fear of safety, for example,
for some reason, right, You're in a place
where it's something
that kinda adds different variables to it. But
in the most general understanding, yeah, if you're
driving, like,
you and you can get out of your
car to pray, then you get out of
your car to pray. You know what I
mean?
Yeah. Does that make sense?
Okay.
So why don't we take a pause?
We'll pray Maghrib and then come back just
for a little bit. I know last week,
we were here for 2 hours, which I
didn't mind. And I asked the halukkah that
I do on Monday night, which also went
for 2 hours because it started at 6,
and then they're Maghrib.
That is 2 hours, like, too much. I
don't want people to go on a marathon.
So we probably won't go all the way
till 9 like we did last time, just
because we don't wanna exhaust people. But
spend some time and just kinda thinking about
this, how it might be relevant to you
as as you were kinda going through the
learning process, and then we'll come back and
just talk a little bit about prayer itself,
what it kinda how it fits in more
specifically,
and then we'll wrap up.
So people wanna make wudu if they don't
have it,
and then we'll pray and then we'll come
back and and finish them.
Okay.
Yeah. Some of these cameras, I think, are,
like, made they have been just down for
40 5 minutes or, like, this one was
yeah.
This one's, like, 30 minutes when it's tested.
It
was okay for
I
want
I
love.
Along with
the
I'm logged with
them.
Along with along
with
I was with
Okay.
Should we start up again?
Yeah. So just on the question that someone
had asked about
the congregation
and the Chape school,
in terms of how they stand for the
in when it's women praying with women,
they say
the least amount of people needed to form
a congregational prayer is 2 people. If there
are only 2 people praying,
then the followers stand slightly behind the imam
such that their toes are slightly behind the
heel of the imam.
This applies to a male leading another man
or a woman
or women or a woman leading another woman.
If it's a congregation of 3 or more
people,
then the women stand in rows and the
female imam stands in the middle of the
front row.
But there is a difference of opinion if
by middle, it means that you're standing in
line
or that
the
female leading the prayer
would stand slightly ahead of the front row
to distinguish that she's leading the prayer. Does
that make sense?
Yeah.
So in the Hanafi school, there's there's no
concept of, like,
a women's congregational prayer. Right? But
as the question was brought up as per
the Shafi tradition,
that's where they
would think about it.
So,
if people wanna move in who are gonna
be sticking around, just so as people come
in to pray, they don't pray near the
the corners.
You can come pray over here if you
like to. You don't have to pray exactly.
You want to come stand over here? Yeah.
So what I want us to do for
this kind of the the balance of this,
is think of a couple of things. Right?
Like, 1,
why why are, like, these mechanics an important
part to all of this? Do you know
what I mean? Because we want to preemptively
deal with whatever
can potentially come to us. Right? There's gonna
be people who can only be able to
give to us what they have in the
first place. So you might meet somebody who
teaches you to pray
and say that from day 1, you have
to be able to do what we're gonna
get to in its entirety in the next
couple of weeks as opposed to here's the.
You're a new Muslim. You gotta pray your
prayer. It's obligatory upon you, but you're still
going through this. Right? This,
if you compare to what we just did
versus what is the bare minimum,
there is, like, so much that we did
that's not listed here. Right? And I want
you to think about this experientially
because
where and how in the course of now
entire windows of time that we talked about
last week. Remember, I drew the diagram, degree
markers, etcetera.
You're new to it. Let yourself be new
to it. Right? You're trying to learn it.
Be patient also with those
who are just learning it. Right? Some of
us are gonna be in a place where
you are gonna have a relationship with somebody
who's Muslim. Their family might be Muslim.
Right? They might not be able to explain
to you
that you are going at a pace that
makes sense for you, not at their pace.
Do you get what I mean? Because if
they've been Muslim their whole life and you've
been Muslim for a week, that is not
the same thing. Do you get what I
mean? You're learning. You're going through a reasonable
learning process, still nonetheless.
But if you see
what it actually takes to just go through
this,
you could do this
in a matter of, like,
25 seconds, 20 seconds,
realistically speaking. Do you get what I mean?
And why we wanna put that out there
so that the anxieties that come up, how
do I do this in my place of
work? How do I do this, you know,
at this time or that time? Right?
Fundamentally,
the notion
in this religion
is that God understands his creation.
You hear what I mean?
So if there wasn't an opportunity to understand
that
if I am born in New Jersey
and I'm a native English speaker and I
convert to Islam
and I literally have to pray the prayer
that is incumbent on me to pray.
How could I fundamentally
know how to do it
every step in the language that I've never
spoken? You get what I mean? Because not
everybody converts to Islam
because they found beauty in the prayer or
they practice being Muslim for a year or
5. Some people did. Right? Each person's got
kind of their own trajectory.
I've met people who literally have seen us
praying from the park,
and they came up here and they said,
what are you all doing?
And we told them. And after, like, 30,
40 minutes, they're like, I wanna become Muslim.
They don't even know we pray 5 times
a day. You know what I mean?
And then we're gonna be like, great. Here's
this list of things that you suddenly now
have to figure out how to do in
the next 20 minutes.
Do do you get what I mean? Right?
This is why they say different opinions are
a mercy.
You know? We think about it in terms
of recognition that I'm not
in a lonely journey, but I'm not where
the other person is.
You know? And you don't wanna become somebody's
homework project
that they now assess you based off of
where they're standing in relation to religion. You
get what I mean? There's a sister I
was talking to
just recently,
and she's, you know, trying to figure out,
should I start wearing, like, a headscarf or
not? Good job. And she said, all these
people told me there's no point to just
trying to wear it a couple of days
and then not wearing it a couple of
days. If you're not gonna wear it every
day, you shouldn't wear it. Right? And she's
like, what do you think? I was like,
don't listen to stupid people. That's what I
think. Right? Like, most people don't realize what
they're saying in their head doesn't sound the
way that the person receiving it is hearing
it. You get what I mean? There's a
kid who came to this school
and,
like, in the 1st semester, just in the
fall, he came to sat me. He's like,
I'm born into Islam.
I've never prayed in my life. I said,
okay.
And then he prayed for the first time
in congregation.
And he said, today is the first time
I've ever prayed in congregation. I said, great,
man. Congratulations.
A month later, he said, today is the
first time
I've ever prayed
3 times in a day.
And then a month after that, he said,
today is the first time I ever prayed
3 prayers in congregation in my life.
Now he's praying
5 times a day. He's on top of
his prayer.
He is in a place where where he
came from,
informs where he is right now. Do you
get what I mean?
But he's gotta start somewhere. Does that make
sense?
Why am I saying this? It's because
you will meet many Muslims
who they are going to give you perspectives
that don't allow for there to be
a trajectory that
has a sense of just how you can
kind of develop
in a way in relation to some of
these things. Do you get what I mean?
Yeah.
The mechanics are not unimportant.
Right? So in movement transitions,
it can't look like it's just one big
motion.
You know what I mean? So when you're
going from position to position, there's gotta be
some rest in there. Right? Because if it
looks like I just was standing and then
all of a sudden, I did everything in,
like, one swooping motion,
then that's not different motions.
Right? That then is just one kinda consistent.
So you're going, and then there's stillness,
and then there's stillness.
You know what I mean? Doesn't have to
be, like, tons of stillness, but just stillness.
You know? We were praying. My kids were
praying behind somebody
for his, like, prostration. It was, like, long,
man. Right? And my kids,
they're amazing, but they like to talk a
lot. You know? And we finished.
And in the prayer, my son is like,
was he is he okay? Right? And I'm
like,
like, what do I do right now? I
don't know what to do. You know? And
then afterwards, like, Baba, what happened? Like, did
he fall asleep? I was like, no, Karim.
He's like, Baba, you said fall asleep and
we'll do breaks. Right? I was like, go
to sleep and scream. You know?
But understanding,
like, when you're starting, you're starting off. Do
Do you get what I mean? You gotta
be patient with yourself. Right? If you are
born
into this religion,
you're teaching somebody how to pray. You're leading
them in prayer. You have to understand as
they go through the learning process,
they're not gonna be able to say everything
in each position
as quickly as you might be able to
say it.
Do you get what I mean?
So you could blaze through Surah Fateha,
which is
a of the prayer, according to Hanafi school,
and you finish its recitation
by the time somebody who's just new to
it, like, got through its first verse.
You see what I mean?
The prophet Muhammad when he led people in
prayer, peace and blessings be upon him.
He was conscious of the congregation he was
leading.
So if a baby
cried, he hastened the prayer. He shortened, like,
his recitation.
He didn't wanna create undue hardship for the
mother. Right? There's elders praying with you. You're
not going on a marathon
in the course of the prayer, especially in
praying congregation,
but also just be mindful. And for yourself
who's new to it, it's okay, like, as
you're going through it, that you go through
it slowly. Do you get what I mean?
And you're adding in components as you're learning
them.
The goal isn't to get faster
as an objective,
especially at the expense of mindfulness.
Right?
But the goal is to build and create
a relationship to this
in a way that allows for it to
still be a spiritual act. Because in Islam,
we're not praying,
but we're praying to God.
Do you get what I mean?
It can get really agitating
if the expectations
are unreasonable,
and it doesn't, like, function in this way
of better. Because how is it better? Right?
I'm a 40 year old man. My job
is to be Muslim.
Right? Literally, there's a office right here around
the corner and a office down the hall.
That's my office.
I can walk here any point in time
of the day I want to.
How can I reasonably tell somebody who's new
to this that you're supposed to be doing
it
the way that I've been doing it for
decades
and then use a term like it's better
if you do? Do you get what I
mean?
You might actually be in a place where
somebody is teaching you this, and they're not
giving you the steps that is not actually
better for you. It's actually making it harder
for you. Do you get what I'm saying?
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
So
start in a place where you know how
to make will do, like, make it will
do well. Right? You honor the timings of
the prayer, and you can literally do this
this whole thing
in, like,
10, 20 seconds. Do you know what I
mean?
It might not be
spiritually engaging
if you see it through the prism of
what's not there. But if you see it
in terms of you're exactly where you're supposed
to be in relation to it,
and what you're yielding to is not, I'm
gonna pray
because I feel something through the prayer, but
you're shifting and it's I'm gonna pray because
God told me to pray.
Does that make sense?
The performance of our daily prayers
is an obligation.
The 5 daily prayers
comes to us
in a particular moment where the prophet Muhammad,
peace and blessings be upon him,
he goes from his home to the city
of Jerusalem
and then ascends into the heavens on a
night journey. In Arabic, it's called the Israa
wa Mirage,
and it's very vividly described in the prophetic
tradition.
One of the things that happens is in
Jerusalem,
the prophet Mohammed prays with every prophet
ever sent to mankind.
And if you go to Jerusalem now, you
can actually see the spaces that are there,
that are preserved, that these stories are attached
to.
And when he ascends into the heavens,
he meets a different prophet at every level
of heaven.
And as he gets
to the last level,
he engages in conversation
with Moses, peace be upon him.
And then from there, the prophet has direct
interaction with Allah.
How that functions? We don't know.
Right? The way we have physical prostrations in
this religion,
sometimes this religion also requires mental prostrations.
Right? There's not any type of anthropomorphic understandings
within Islam as a tradition.
In the course of that
interaction,
one of the things that the prophet Muhammad
alaihis salam has given, peace be upon him,
is this gift of
daily prayers.
And what it starts off with is 50.
And then he comes down and Moses says
to him,
what happened?
And he says, I got 50 prayers. And
Moses says, go back.
Your people are not gonna pray 50 times
a day.
He said, my people, they left behind what
was required of them. Yours are gonna definitely
leave it behind.
The prophet goes back and forth again and
again, and each time Musa alayhi salam Moses,
he says, go back. They're not gonna do
it. Until it gets to 5,
and Allah tells the prophet,
you will have 5 that you perform, but
it'll be written as if it's 50.
And he comes down and Musa alaihi salam,
Moses says to him again, like, go back.
The prophet says I'm embarrassed now. Like, I
can't I can't keep going back. Right? But
the fundamental idea in this religion
is that we were made to do 50.
That was like the the idea, but it
was reduced to 5.
And this as a class
of, like, basics of Islam,
regardless of what any Muslim
has a capacity to do
in the sense of what they believe or
what they might tell you based off their
own practice,
Muslims are required to pray 5 times a
day.
Not when it's convenient,
not when it's easy,
within the windows of time. We're gonna talk
probably in 3 or 4 weeks about what
happens if you miss a prayer. You gotta
make it up.
But if anybody's telling you as a default,
it's okay
that
you, like,
sleep through 1 or you're at work, so
just pray the rest at home. That's not
how it fundamentally works.
So where also you want to build a
relationship with the timings
to understand that doing
as you're learning
what is required in the can
also allow for that to be done
in a shorter amount of time
that doesn't really have too much that goes
into it fundamentally.
You wanna try your best. You know what
I mean?
I don't know what everyone's circumstances in the
room, but I know I've met enough people
who are exploring Islam,
who convert to Islam
recent or otherwise or even born into it.
Right? I sat down with somebody who once
told me that her grandmother told her that
if you miss fudger, it's okay because there's
another prayer that you can pray that is
called the sub prayer
that after fudger, you just pray that if
you miss fudger. And I said, no. It's
not it's not a thing. Right? Like, you
pray fudger in the time of fudger. If
you miss fudger, you make up fudger because
you're required to make up fudger. You know?
People would tell you all kinds of things.
There's 5
prayers in a day.
Where there's different opinions
is not on whether there's 5 prayers or
not, but on what the timings are of
those prayers.
What the windows of time are of those
prayers.
The Sunni tradition, there's 5 separate
windows of time
in your generic prayer. When you're traveling, there's
different things. You can combine prayers and stuff.
The Shia tradition, there's still 5 different prayers,
but there's also
room to pray
Asar and Dohar together. They call it Doharain
and Magrib and Isha together, Magrib Bain, but
they're still praying 5 separate prayers.
In the Hanafi school, there's a different perspective
on when Azer starts
in terms of
it being a little later than what most
people would say,
But everybody agrees there's 5 of them,
and it's fundamentally
considered to be the most
foundational and important
kinda ritual within the course of a Muslim
person's life and their relationship to God.
So you wanna make sure that you're consistent
with it, that you have a relationship to
it. But in a way, we're also you
understand it's an exercise
and that the performance of it with regularity
is what's a necessary mechanic in order for
it to yield, like, the inward transform made
of kind of things. Right? But it's not
one of those things. So if somebody says
to me like, hey, man. I'm new to
this.
I don't know how to do this around
my family.
They don't even know I'm Muslim yet.
Or I don't know how to do this
at work.
I don't know how to do this here
or there.
You still gotta do, like, what you can.
Do you know what I mean?
Don't be in a place where that young
woman who came to see me,
who said, I was excited to practice
wearing hijab.
And then I talked to these Muslims, and
they made me feel like I'm terrible just
because I thought I wanted to try it
out sometimes.
So get done what you can get done
as you're building this relationship with it.
But
the fundamental understanding
is that there's 5, and you do them
in their windows of time. Do you get
what I mean? Does that make sense?
Any questions on that?
Where and how we're gonna go through over
the course of the next couple of weeks,
these other components,
you build time into your routine.
Right? As you are learning these things,
different language,
different structure,
it's really hard. You went an entire day
without having to now figure out how
to do this, and you have a routine
and now you have to build these things
in. The hardest part for a lot of
people isn't gonna necessarily just be about, like,
the
learning of words and these things, but how
do I, like, create a new schedule for
myself?
I've lived so many years, and now I
have to, like, figure out how to
do something that I just never did before.
That's why I just you gotta, you know,
you're it's it's gonna have some learning curves
to it. Do you know what I mean?
That's just the reality of it. You wanna
be reasonable with yourself in that in that
space.
So as you go,
where you're
adding as you learn things, but you're building
into your routine, just deliberate time for learning.
One of the things that we're gonna do
as we kinda move through the summer, we're
gonna bring back, like, kind of a buddy
program that we had. We're gonna do some
kinda
trainings so that people
want to help
our Convert community or those who are trying
to build a relationship with the basics.
You know, they're in a place where we
have kind of a people are on the
same page as to how they'll do that
instruction and
bear with us. We apologize, but COVID threw
off a lot of things for us. And,
being here at NYU has been great, but
also the COVID protocol that they had was
lifted
well
But those, we hope, are gonna be things
also that help in the process as people
are trying to learn things. So you're not
just turning to the Internet alone. So the
other things I'll say here is that this
is according to the Hanafi school
of legal thought. The Sunni school of thought,
you can go online and type in different
things that would give you different perspectives on
some of this. Right?
But that doesn't make it better or worse
or more or less valid.
There's different evidences and different opinions to it,
and they're based off of, like, an entire
methodology.
You know? And I would say with your
prayer, just because it's an important thing. Right?
It's different from, like, reading other stuff.
One of the things you wanna do is
just double check with somebody in person if
you're engaging something online.
And you'll find also, like,
different sites adopt different methodologies
that it'll seem like they're in conflict with
each other. But they're really not. They're just
kind
of adding, like, a different kind of prism
to it, so to speak, if that makes
sense. Right?
And we're here to help in whatever way
we can on this. We'll take it very
seriously
because we are in a place where,
you know,
it's 1, our own accountability with God. But
2, like, it's supposed to be like an
oasis, your prayer. You know? Like, a a
place that is not gonna feel a certain
way. You might not know what it's doing
to you, but it's still replenishing in some
capacity. Right? So getting the form and the
mechanics down so that that anxiety subsides,
and then it allows for it to have
the openings that it's meant to have. Last
thing I wanted to say was, you know,
someone might say, like, well, why is it
not just
everything fits into some of these boxes neatly?
Right? That we look at something
and just through its meaning, you can say,
well, it's either prohibited or obligatory.
1, like scholars of the past, they were
very hesitant
in naming something
as being strictly prohibited
or obligatory
unless there was a concrete basis to this.
Because what they were trying to do
was as best as they can understand what
god wanted from them, right, and what god
ultimately wants from all of us. And so
the goal wasn't, like, let's just become as
restrictive as possible
or just label things like absentmindedly.
Right? So these terms
have actual meanings to them, and they are
gonna only say
you are obligated
to do something
or prohibited to do something
if it was definitively
understood
that these are what these things were.
And where you get these other categories in
that spectrum
is because there was a hesitation in saying
you have to do something
if that wasn't something that was just explicitly,
clearly understood.
Do you know what I mean? Right? And
so as you're talking to people, and they
might not know these things. Right? They just
attach words and qualifications.
You wanna orient yourself to kind of the
base of some of these so that you're
able to
familiarize
as people are saying. And somebody could
tell you, well, this is like like, you
have to do this thing. You could be
like, no. Like, I learned these are the
things I have to do. Right? Those are
other things that are important, but they're not
in that kind of level of categorization.
Do you get what I mean? Does that
make sense?
Yes. Go ahead. For the final sitting, can
you just elaborate on that? Is that just
like the final position of the Yeah. So
you're gonna be in, like, the final sitting,
like, the kneeling position. Okay. Yeah. And that's,
like, what that is. Okay. Cool. Yeah.
Great.
Okay.
A couple of things that people might be
interested in just as we're wrapping up,
on
next Friday,
which is
12th,
there's
a Sheikh from Pennsylvania.
His name is Yousef Welch. He's a convert.
He studied
at the Darulum
here in New York. It's like a Islamic
school in Madrasa.
He went to Yemen for a few years.
It's really great person.
And he's gonna be giving
a sermon, a Friday sermon of downtown
on that Friday. So not this Friday, but
next Friday. And afterwards, he'll stop by here,
to just
do, like, a open talk, a halukkah.
I think the topic is, like, waking up
the soul or something like that.
He's a really nice guy.
If you're free and you can be here,
I think it'd also be kind of a
great interaction point
where you can meet someone who's also a
convert to Islam, who's a religious scholar.
He works with a couple of other people,
including, Sheikh Yahia Rodis, who's also a con
convert. They started an amazing institution in Pennsylvania,
called Al Makassid,
where they go through a lot of different,
fundamental, foundational aspects of Islam as a religion,
spirituality,
more structured curriculum. It's just a really nice
space to also visit.
And,
that's next Friday.
So after Jummah,
next Friday, we're gonna have
our post Jumah lunch, fried chicken Friday. And
then after fried chicken Friday,
he's gonna start his program here in this
room. So probably start around, like, 3:30 or
so. I'm assuming he'll be here till probably,
like, 4:30 or 5 o'clock, give or take.
But if you're free at that time and
you can come, it's great.
On Sunday,
we have another program,
with
a
sister by the name of Yasmin.
It's pretty well known, very, like, popular in
terms of, like, speaking circuit. You guys can
come and pray. Where's Rapna?
And,
it's written a lot of books. There's a
lot around, like, kinda psycho spiritual models. If
you guys wanna pray, can you just pray
right here? Sure. Yeah. Sure? Yeah. Yeah. It's
fine. That's what everybody does. So
so she's gonna be talking
about,
a recent book she wrote,
called Healing the Emptiness,
and from 3 to 7 on Sunday 14th.
She's gonna be speaking.
There is a ticket to the event,
because we're doing it in conjunction with another
institution called the Almagrib Institute,
and they have a charge.
But if, you know, financial
considerations
make it difficult,
just let us know. Right? We don't turn
away anybody for financial reasons here, and so
we'll figure that out. But you should come
to it. It'd be a nice program.
I think we've already
gotten about 400 tickets sold.
And so, you know, make sure you reserve
yours and tell people to come. Which should
be a nice event.
And then after that week,
we're gonna transition into summer hours of operation,
which,
as of now, will be Monday through Friday,
till 8 PM. And on the weekends, the
building is closed. So we typically start this
at 7.
I think what we might do is either,
shift the time a little earlier
and use one of the other classrooms so
it's to not interfere with doctor Marwa's or,
what we can do
is potentially find,
alternative location,
or we just go from 7 till 8
o'clock. And then we have to have a
hard stop at 8.
And as the day gets later,
was just people have to find accommodations from
elsewhere,
because the building will close at 8.
But I'll keep you all updated. People have
preferences
on what they'd like to do.
You know, let us know. Another option is
we might move it to my building, which
is the NYU building where I live on
23rd and 3rd. I think some of you
have been to our home before.
So there's a lounge on the second floor.
We might do it there, but depending on
how many people will come, you know, hosting
it within the apartment itself,
which I would love because I love having
people come over. And also then after you
leave, I can just go to my bed,
mostly.
But,
I don't know because the building hours will
change, and so we'll keep you all updated.
And that's not gonna be next week,
or the week after. It'll be 3 weeks
from now. But, if people have any ideas
or things that would, like, inhibit them in
some capacity, just you can email me or
let me know in person
so that, you know, we're able to kinda
take into consideration with everybody,
would be helpful for everybody.
Okay. Great.
Thank you all so much. So we'll see
everyone next Wednesday,
and we'll
continue with what are the necessary components,
of the prayer.