Khalid Latif – First Steps Essentials of Islam #14
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So last week,
for those who weren't here, we talked about
what were the obligatory
parts to the daily prayer. You guys might
have seen I don't think anybody's praying right
now.
But you probably, if you're not familiar with
it, haven't done it yourself before, you've likely
seen somebody pray in this way.
Some of you are just kinda getting accustomed
to learning the mechanics of the prayer. Some
of you are, well, experts in it.
The way that we're gonna go through this
is we're gonna
review what we talked about last week briefly,
the obligations.
Today, we're gonna focus on what are the
necessary acts, and then next week, we're gonna
talk about what are the recommended
acts. And the Arabic words for these are
farr, wajib, and sunda.
But, essentially,
what this does is it creates a mechanism
for somebody who's new to prayer,
whether you're exploring Islam, you're a recent convert,
you are somebody who was born into it
but just reconnecting with your faith and you
might be praying for the first time,
what
this creates is also an opportunity
to kinda ease your way into the learning
mechanism
without thinking that step 1 is to do
the thing in its full complete
state. Does that make sense, what I'm saying?
Right. So, essentially,
what we talked about last week
is kinda the skeleton
of the prayer.
Right? It's what you're gonna build upon. What
we're gonna talk about today
is what essentially adds to that skeleton,
kind of,
the
fundamental
muscle, the body,
and then what we'll talk about next week
is kind of what adorns that body and
what beautifies it.
But the idea with prayer
is that as soon as somebody becomes Muslim,
it's something that's obligatory
upon you
as long as you meet other requirements. Right?
Like we have some people
who are converts in our community
who are pretty young. Do you know?
The age of discernment
when something
now creates accountability
is when you're post pubescent in Islam.
So my 7 year old and my 10
year old,
they are Muslim. They're born into Islam but
they're Muslim and
they're not required
to pray yet. You know what I mean?
So when I teach them to pray,
I'm not gonna start from what is
the typical prayer that many of you have
likely seen or might even perform yourself,
but to give them a learning kinda methodology
that allows for them to get acquainted at
a certain level
and learn first what is obligatory,
then necessary,
and then what is recommended.
And similarly, if you're new to Islam, you
just converted to Islam.
You are somebody who's just,
for the first time, praying in your life,
right, which is not a abnormal experience for
Muslims who are born into it, you know.
We have a lot of people who come
here
and literally, I could tell you just
huge numbers of people who I meet on
a regular basis and they'll say, today is
the first day I've ever prayed in my
life, you know. Today is the first time
I've ever prayed with somebody else in my
life. I've never prayed more than 2 times
a day in my life. Right? They're building
a relationship with it and they have to
reorient themselves
in terms of things that they've forgotten or
things that they were just never taught in
the first place.
So
the obligatory
acts are those things we talked about last
week
that if these things don't happen,
then the prayer just doesn't happen. Like, it
needs to happen in order for the prayer
to count. Does that make sense? Right? Its
validity
is rooted in
these things happening.
So
a quick recap,
the first invocation,
something that praises God,
right? So this is different from what we
talked about 2 weeks ago which are the
conditions outside of the prayer that are necessary
for 1 to enter into one of the
daily prayers that we have. Right? Being in
a state of wudu,
dressed appropriately, a clean place to pray. Right?
Facing towards Mecca.
Right? Do people remember these things that we
talked about? Yeah? You sure? Great. Okay. So
we are assuming that that's happened.
You know, people are in the conditions outside
of prayer. Now they're in prayer.
You enter as an obligation
with something that's just praising God. Right? This
could be anything and it's gonna be juxtaposed
now to stuff we talk about here. So
this is required. It has to be something
that praises God fully
only. Right? So it's not something that brings
you into the mix as well where, you
know, you praise God and then ask for
your forgiveness.
It's just pure praise of God. Right? Alhamdulillah,
subhanAllah,
many of these things. It's not what people
do but as you're learning,
you're getting to a place
then the standing in the prayer. Right?
Oh, there is somebody praying over there.
So I'm not gonna talk about them because
they can still hear me. Right? You don't
go in this, like, magical world and start
to pray if you can't hear anything.
But this standing
is a requirement of the prayer if you
are able to stand.
Somebody's not physically able to stand. You're not
gonna go up to them. Right? Like the
brother came and he moved the chair because
he has braces on his knees. He can't
stand when he prays.
So we're not gonna get in his face
and say you have to stand. He fundamentally
is not able to. Does that make sense?
If you have the capacity to stand, you
stand in the obligatory
prayers.
A recitation
of any part of the
Quran. Not just the first chapter. Not an
entire chapter. Right? We said, for example, the
last class we talked about, the shortest verse
in the Quran says, Thumanadir.
Right? You could say that and then that's
it.
Then you bow, prostrate
in a final sitting
and that suffices the obligations.
These are things that you are required to
do. If they're not done,
the prayer is not valid. Does that make
sense?
Yeah. Okay. So today, what we wanna get
into are what are called the wajib,
the wajibat.
Right? The necessary
acts
of the prayer.
Yeah.
Last class, we were watch I online and
then we had a discussion where you said,
when doing the recitation,
like, for the obligation for the class, you
don't have to say the
No. Instead, wajib. We're gonna talk about it
too. Okay. Okay. Yeah.
So, the first necessary act, the first wajib
act is that this opening indication,
you're saying in specific,
Allahu Akbar.
There's some people who would say that you
could say
Kabir,
something similar to that, but you wanna just
say Allahu Akbar.
A wajib act is different from a Fard
act,
In that if a Fard act is missed,
the prayer does not count
unless there's like a legally excused reason for
it. Right? So if you're new to Islam,
you're just learning it,
then you're good to do these things initially
as you're learning all of the rest of
the stuff we're gonna talk about. Right?
So with the Wajib act, what we're gonna
talk about here
is if this is left out intentionally,
purposefully,
then that omission
purposefully will necessitate
you can do what's called the prostration of
forgetfulness,
which we'll talk about towards the end of
this class.
If it's done with regularity, the omission of
something in this category,
then there's some who would say you don't
have to redo those prayers. Right? Like, if
it's done again and again. But this is
essentially the difference
between a wajib and a fard, a necessary
and obligatory
act. Why do they say
a differentiation
between a necessary and an obligatory act? Well,
the
basis for these things
still has some room for interpretation to it.
But like the verse that says don't eat
pork, it just means don't eat pork.
There's not really other ways to look at
it. Right? Like when you read it and
it says don't eat pork, you're like, well,
does it really mean don't eat pork? Yeah.
That's what it says. Don't eat pork. There's
nothing else that it can mean. Right? But
there's other things that there's room for
interpretation that renders,
like, meaning to be probabilistic
in some capacity.
And there's a hesitancy
on the part of those
who
are legal scholars of this religion
to deem something to be obligatory or prohibited
unless it's very definitive that that's what it's
understood to be. You get what I mean?
Because they're trying to understand as best as
they can how to categorize these things from
the perspective of what God wants from us
as a practitioner of this faith.
So this first
invocation now
is specifically
Allahu Akbar as a necessary act. Right? If
you've ever prayed with Muslims in congregation, you've
seen them pray, you know, they're gonna line
up and they're gonna face towards Mecca.
And likely you see some people will put
their hands up to their shoulders, some people
will bring their hands up to their ears,
but they're gonna do this and say, Allahu
Akbar, and they're gonna start the prayer. Right?
The raising of the hands, we're gonna talk
about later. Okay? So what you wanna do
is just if you've seen it or experienced
it, just kinda let that not be where
your mind is taking you. Do you know
what I mean?
So with specificity,
the first
necessary act
is to begin the prayer
with,
the particular phrases of Allahu Akbar
instead of some of those other phrases that
we said could work when you're kinda in
this first phase here. Right? SubhanAllah,
alhamdulillah.
Right? Like glory be to God, praise be
to God.
The second
is that you are going to recite
the first chapter of the Quran
which is called
Fatiha.
All this is done in Arabic.
This is distinct already now from here
and
we're not repeating, like, these other parts because
these are already,
like, obligations. Right? So we're assuming
the standing is happening.
So in this standing,
you are going to recite
the first chapter,
the Fatiha,
and then you are going to recite,
in addition to this,
3 verses
that are short.
Or one long verse
from the Quran.
When we get to, like, the types of
prayer that we pray,
there's a distinction
in now the obligatory
and the voluntary prayers. Right? Like how we
said last week,
the standing is necessary is an obligation
for the obligatory
prayers.
But in the Hanafi school, the standing
is for obligatory prayers. One could, in a
voluntary prayer, do that sitting down, even if
they have the capacity to do it standing.
Here, similarly,
this recitation
of Fatiha
and another part of the Quran
is
required
in the first two cycles
of every obligatory prayer.
And in the voluntary prayers, it's required in
every cycle of the prayer.
Does that make sense?
Yeah? You sure? Okay.
So what you want to do
is try your best
as you're doing this now. Right? I'm in
this phase.
I am
new to Islam.
I've just became Muslim.
I'm gonna engage the timings of the prayer
and do this.
But as I'm doing this, I want to
start to learn this.
This first chapter of the Quran
in terms of how to recite it.
And this can be something
that is a little bit of a daunting
task for some of us. Right? Especially if
Arabic is not your first language.
If even Arabic is your first language, the
Arabic in the Quran
is different from a lot of just colloquial
Arabic, dialectical Arabic,
right, is different.
So what you wanna do is set time
for yourself
as you're getting acquainted with this to learn
this and to learn it in a way
where
for the purposes of the prayer, you just
have to learn its recitation.
You don't have to learn its meaning.
You don't have to know, like, its explanation
or anything
And
where you're getting used to it, the Quran
as a text is
really remarkable
in terms of just the ease through which
one can actually remember the words from it.
Right? It is very purposefully
kinda given to us in a way where
the memorization
is something that isn't hard as such. If
you leave it for a while,
then it's easy to forget what you memorized
just like it's easy to forget anything that
you memorized at any point in your life.
Right? I remember like the most random things
from when I'm little. I'm 40 years old.
I know what kind of schools you all
went to. I went to school in New
Jersey. We were part of a choir and
we had to read, like, all these, like,
concerts at various
parts of the year, winter concert, spring concert.
I can still remember because every single week,
multiple times, they're making us practice
like this thing and that thing. Again, I
know how to sing songs in Hebrew.
I know how to sing songs to you
in various African languages.
I know how to sing songs in German.
I don't know a word in any of
these languages.
Right? But it just in kinda drilled
into us. Do you know? That was what
it was, to get ready for this thing.
Right? It's not impossible
to do. It's actually very probable to do.
What gets many people a generalization I make
is that I'm comfortable making is that they
assume that this
is
what they need to do right from here.
And then that just creates anxiety.
Right? You've been Muslim for 5 minutes. Now
you gotta read 7 verses
of
a book that you want to access because
fundamentally
you believe it's from God
and you're already starting your relationship
with the religion in a place of, am
I right for this thing? Like, this is
so hard to do. Why would it be
easy to do?
Right? Like it's arbitrary, the language, in terms
of it's a language you might not have
grown up speaking, so you're gonna stumble over
the words. It's gonna take a little bit
of time. But you want to, as you're
doing this, set a reasonable
amount of time to learn this and to
try to learn to pronounce it as best
as you can in the way that it's
intended to be recited. Do you get what
I mean?
So my recommendation would be
that you could do a couple of things.
You listen to these things from people who
are reciting it online
because they will have the proper recitation
of it.
But you also find somebody. And here, we're
gonna work over the summer as we're now
more out of, like, a a post COVID
kind of restriction stage
of rebuilding some of, like, our mentorship programs
and buddy programs and things like that, where
you can actually sit with somebody and you
can just practice with them. You know, how
does this sound? Does it sound correct? Right?
They can give you, like, a little bit
of back and forth so that you're kinda
reading with someone as opposed to just on
your own. Do you know what I mean?
Does anybody have any other advices
on what might make it easier as you're
trying to and none of these things are
absolute, by the way. Right? We could pick
any random person, whether they're a convert, they're
born into it. People have varied experiences
just with everything
that comes up. Certain things might come easy
to some people, might come really hard to
other people. We have a prophetic
narration
in the prophetic tradition where the prophet Muhammad,
peace be upon him, he says that,
for every
letter that you recite,
there's benefit in it. There's reward in it.
You know? And he says that the one
who struggles with the reading
of this
is getting more reward than the one who
can read it fluently.
Do you know what I mean? Right? You
just wanna remember that. Right? You're it's just
a work in progress. You're you're not supposed
to be anywhere other than where you are
right now, you know? So what are some
things that could be like good advices,
You know, as I'm trying to learn how
to memorize
and recite in my prayer,
this thing as a necessary act. What are
some things? Yeah. Angie, go ahead. I don't
know what the Hanafi school says about this,
but for me, writing it down on paper,
obviously, like an English transliteration,
and reading it as I'm praying or practicing
praying,
was how I learned. Just, like, literally reading
it on the paper and doing that as
often as I could. Also, just listening to
it over and over and over again.
There's especially, I find helpful, this, like, children's
YouTube series called Recite with Zacky.
Recite with Zacky? Yeah. It's, like, literally for
children,
but it takes it really slow, and it
goes aya by aya, and it repeats it,
and that's also how I learned.
Yeah. Shala, go ahead. And then Michal.
1 of our friends recently converted in Solis,
all as if we bought him this this
really cool prayer mat where you just stand
on it.
And right when your leg's on a certain
point, it recites for you, and that's how
we memorize the faqihah really quickly. And so
when you when you do the rahu, it
it does
the exact thing that you're supposed to say.
And when you go down and going down,
it says it out loud. And you just
do it for a week or 2 and
then you don't even realize that you know
it. And so
that's that's a pretty cool gadget.
Claude, do you have a idea? Yeah. I
was just,
thinking that,
to alleviate some of the pressure
of learning Quran specifically,
it's helpful to just immerse yourself in Arabic
in general.
So when you're not
working on learning the Quran, just
put Arabic in the background, have, like, either
news or cartoons or something,
where people are just speaking Arabic, so you
get familiar with the sounds,
and just start imitating the sounds as if
you're a little kid learning a language for
the first time, which is really what you're
doing.
I find that very helpful because
you have more fun with it, you know,
because the ant
can be very intimidating, very serious.
So, if you have fun with it when
you're, you know, at other times, it'll help
you feel more comfortable when you do,
start to try to learn the recitation.
In shaman. Great. Yeah.
Just reminded me when you said having fun
while doing it. When I was growing up,
my grandma would say,
like, line by line
the alphadiya,
and
she'd make me stand there and say it,
her line, every day,
but she wouldn't let me go until I
memorized one line. So the first day I'd
say one line, she'd give me a piece
of candy, and then I'd go run and
play. The second day, I'd be able to
say both lines
for, like, a few minutes.
Give me a piece of candy
on my way, and then the 3rd day
and 4th day, so on and so on.
So it was just a
fun little exercise.
Yeah. Because, you know, you get candy at
the end.
And it should be a joyous thing, really,
because
your your your whole body is loving, reciting
God's word,
and you so
you
you should be,
feel happy that you have this opportunity,
this gift from God,
because it shouldn't be
scary. You know, it should be something very
joyous. Right? Because you're connected with God. Yeah.
Tell them, man. You tell them. Oh, yeah.
I can hear you. Yeah. Know, actually, when
I try to teach my kids, I was,
you know, I smile and I try to
get them to just
experience the joy of it as as we're
doing each
each verse.
So that's just a little thing that we
should always keep in mind.
I have a question, Khalid, if you don't
mind. Yeah. Is so recitation in Arabic,
for our Dora Wajid, like, is
reciting in the English translation
percivisible?
We should be doing this in Arabic. Okay.
Yeah. So that's why in the fard, it's
just even like a small part of it.
You know, you can
recite, like, a verse that you've learned,
and just keep doing that. Do you know?
But this would be done in Arabic, and
then this would be done in the Arabic
also.
Any other thoughts for people?
Yeah. Well, let's just stay on here because
we're gonna talk about, like, makeup prayers probably
in 3 weeks. Yeah. So just come back
in 3 weeks, and then you can ask
your question. Yeah.
Any other advice people have? And it doesn't
have to be about learning Arabic. If you've
learned any other language, right,
you don't wanna go in with anxiety or
intimidation.
You know, this is a religion that everything
goes back to god.
And, fundamentally,
when you
embrace it, you kinda re embrace it, You're
in a place where it's very easy
to get to a place where the learnings
of things
have
a separation from it being about God.
You know? So
where and how, you want to just try
your very best, and And you wanna go
at a pace that makes sense for you.
But this should
be in a place where it's a reasonable
pace that you're learning this
as you're doing these things. Right? So the
idea can't be
that this is it's there's not like a
metric of a timeline also.
Do you know what I mean? But, like,
like, my wife is a convert. She converted
to Islam,
like,
20
3 years ago. I don't know. A long
time ago. Right?
23 years is probably enough time to learn
Surah Fatiha. Do you know what I mean?
Right? But you your learning of it doesn't
mean you have to learn how to read
it in Arabic,
that you have to be able to teach
somebody how to do it. You just have
to be able to recite it
and recite,
3 short verses or one long verse,
in the course of
that
unit, that cycle of prayer also.
Right? So what you wanna do
is get acquainted with it. Spend some time
everyday
just like engaging this in some capacity.
Listening to it,
reading it where you can,
like in, you know, trying to talk back
with somebody
and just verse by verse
and you'll get the hang of it. Right?
My recommendation would be, of all the things
that we're gonna talk about, you wanna start
with learning
like Fatiha
and then some of the shorter chapters. Right?
If you were here,
like, 4 months ago, we talked about a
really short chapter when we were talking about
some basic theology in Islam. We talked about
the chapter,
entitled Sincerity, akhlas.
Alright. If you remember, it says, kulhu allahu
ahad.
Essentially, you know, that say his god, you
know, is uniquely 1. Right?
Allahu Samad, he is the eternal refuge, you
know, until the end of it. And he
gives, like, this foundational
understanding of the essence of God. Right? We're
different from other monotheistic
religions and that one could make the claim
that the God that the Abrahamic traditions worship
are all essentially the same God. But the
way Islam
understands that God
in
God's essence is very different. For example, the
way Christianity
understands God and God's essence to be. Right?
It's very, like, different realities
there.
It's not to knock anybody's belief, you know,
But that's where the theologies are are not
lining up.
Okay. Why don't we move on?
So
the next
necessary act is that when you prostrate,
the hard part of your nose
is going to touch the ground
also.
Right? So if you remember, when we were
talking about prostration here,
we said
that
we didn't include that part of the nose.
We just said the forehead.
Right? So here now, it's important to understand
in the Hanafi school, you'll read certain things
about
where in some schools
there's a hadith where the prophet says, pray
as if you see me pray. Right? As
you've seen me pray. Right? So men and
women pray exactly the same. In the Hanafi
school, there are opinions that in certain positions,
men and women stand differently.
But it's not about validity
as much as it's about optimality
in this. Right?
And the reason as to why there's differences
in it
is attached more so to some of the
questions we had. We were talking about finding
a clean place to pray and people were
thinking about their own safety. You know? So
if you remember,
like, when we're standing and bowing I'm not
praying anymore.
This good because it was like 20 minutes
ago. Right?
In the course of this prayer,
there are subtle differences but think about it
conceptually as one is standing.
Right? So, when you go into a prostration
in the Hanafi school,
everything is very separate
in terms of how your various body parts
touch the other body parts. Right? So you're
not gonna have your stomach resting on your
legs. Your arms are gonna be spread out.
Right? Things are at a distance from each
other in that prostration.
What the recommendation is in the Hanafi school
is that when a man prostrates,
their prostration is very
kind of loose in that sense.
But when a woman prostrates, her arms are
more close to her body and that her
stomach is actually resting on her legs. More
so to cover
just herself
physically more.
And even when you're going in the bowing
position, you can talk about it now,
the idea is if you remember last time,
I said standing
is essentially
this standing is that you're standing,
meaning that your hands can't touch your knees.
Right? That's how straight you're standing up, you
know. And bowing is bowing to the extent
that your hands can touch your knees.
So when in the Hanafi school,
the men bow, they'll bow in a way
where their backs are 90 degrees,
their legs are straight, and their hands
are kind of clasping onto their kneecaps. Right?
Like this. You know?
And the recommendation for women
is that their legs don't become fully straight,
but there's a slight bend. And that you're
not bending all the way over, but also
just a slider bend
where your fingers are not kind of positioned
like this, but more like this. And they're
kind of just They're still touching your knees.
Right? And you think about this, in terms
of you're playing outside in the park.
You know what I mean? And you're now
in a place where
you're
could be either a man or a woman.
Right? But how you're moving is gonna draw
that kind of to you. And so the
recommendations here
come from this idea that you're in this
public place. What you also can take from
this
is that the hadith that they draw upon,
the prophet is not telling
anybody,
like, why are you playing in a place
where somebody can see you pray?
Do you get what I mean?
Right?
His initial reaction isn't to somebody,
like you should be praying in your house
somewhere.
Do you understand what I'm saying? Right? But
he's saying you're praying outside,
like, be mindful.
Where you are now in a place
surrounded by this.
Why it's not about validity
in the sense that it's more about just
kind of the optimality
of
the experience
is because if somebody doesn't pray that way,
in the way that it's recommended, it doesn't
impact the validity of your prayer. Right? And
the and
the hadith is there where the prophet says,
pray as if you as you've seen me
pray. Right? And that's what a lot of
opinions go off of, that there's no difference
between
a man and a woman's prayer. There's other
differences in the Hanafi school that we'll talk
about. But in relation to the prostration,
right, the necessary
act is that this part of your nose,
the hard part of the nose,
is also touching the ground.
Does that make sense?
Yeah?
Why it's called the hard part is if
you remember when we talked about wudu,
right, when you're doing wudu, you're washing up,
you rinse out the soft part of your
nose.
Right? So you put the water in and
then you take it out. This is your
soft part of your nose. Right? You can,
like, jiggle it around and do whatever you
want. So the soft part's here. The hard
part is here.
This part, along with your forehead,
has to be touching the ground
when you prostrate
in
the Hanafi school.
Perform
the second prostration
before moving to the other parts of prayer.
Right? Because if you remember here, we didn't
specify, like, numbers of things in the course
of the prostration.
Right? In the cycles of prayer, when you
go down and prostrate,
you kneel and then you go back back
down again. You see what I mean? Right?
So here, you're gonna have a second prostration
before you move to the other parts of
the prayer.
I'm just gonna
put it over here.
That you have stillness
in between the movements.
Right? So if I'm standing
and,
I am in a place where
in in between the intervals,
Right? And I said this briefly last time,
but the idea is, like, you're not just
going in one swooping motion,
you know,
but you're moving
from position to position.
And it's it's a prayer. Right? It's about,
like, stillness. It's not about
creating anxiety within yourself,
You know? So when you're going from the
standing to the bowing, there's like a stillness
that's there. Right? There's a literal hadith
where the prophet
sees a man, peace be upon him, and
he tells the man after he's done praying,
like, go back
because you haven't prayed. Right? And he comes
and he like the same thing happens. I
mean,
interaction is happening, like, the man prays and
the prophet's like, go back and do it
again. Right?
The prophet tells him that, like, essentially
what he's missing out
is in this kinda just calmness in his
prayer, you know? That you wanna be in
a place where, like, you go from the
standing
and you're gonna stand, and then you're gonna
be in the bowing position.
And you find some stillness here. Do you
know what I mean?
When you come back up, you're here. Right?
There's friends of mine who, in between each
of these prayers,
movements in the prayer, you know, they're taking,
like, breaths and letting it out.
You know? Allowing for themselves to be, like,
very centered. Right? And this is a beautiful
part of Arabic as a language, as you
learn the letters and how to pronounce them.
Right? When you're taught recitation
principles,
they literally will tell you where certain letters
are pronounced in terms of the place of
your throat it comes from, the positioning of
your tongue. Right? So the
name of God in Arabic is Allah.
And the Arabic letters that you have for
this are Alif Lam
Right? So if you ever see Allah written,
you know, it's written like this.
The Alif is coming from the throat.
Right? If you even say, Right? Where put
your hand on your throat and say, Where
does it come from?
You can feel it. Right?
The first
sitting,
which is after
2 cycles,
2 rakas.
Right? So here, we had the final sitting.
You
see?
And here,
we're adding in the first sitting after the
2 rakaz.
Then we have something
in the sitting
that is called the teshahood.
And you have to say the entire
thing.
So just as you learn the fatiha,
you want to learn
what this is. When you convert to Islam,
right, or if you are a convert, you
said what was called the shahada.
Right?
Some of you, you know, we're blessed to
have you do this here. Some of you
have done this in other places.
And you'll have someone say something like,
Right? Prior to it, a part of the
teshahud,
it
replicates a conversation. So if you remember last
week, I told you where the mandate for
5 daily prayers comes from. Right? That the
prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, he goes
on this journey called the Isra and Mi'raj.
He ascends into the heavens.
Remember the conversation I told you he has
with Moses, peace be upon him, he gets
50 prayers and Musa alayhi salam, Moses says,
go back because your people won't do 50.
Like, mine didn't do what they were supposed
to do. Yours are not gonna do, like,
what they need to do. And he goes
back and forth and back and forth every
time Musa alaihi salaam says like go back
and get it lowered because they're not gonna
do it, right? And it stops at 5
because the prophet says, I'm embarrassed to go
back and ask for more. Right? But it's
5 written as you did 50. Right? And
so in that, there's also a conversation that
takes place between the prophet Muhammad, peace be
upon him, and Allah. Where he says,
Assalamu alaykum.
And then that's the first part of it.
The second part is, Ashaduallaha
illallah,
or Ashaduallana
Muhammadan,
Abdulhuw Rasulu,
or Ashaduallana Muhammad Rasulallah.
Yet, you have to say that as a
necessary act. Okay?
I'm gonna take a pause here, right,
Just for a minute.
Do you see why this would be hard
to do 2 minutes after you took your
shahada?
Do do you see what I mean? Right?
And it's okay to say
that. If you are new to Islam
and you're learning the fundamentals,
the farad
are what you start with, the obligatory.
Right? Because the difference here
where there's a lot of stuff going on
that there's no way you can fundamentally have
a aspects in the Hanafi school that's being
asked of is just a recitation of any
verse. Right? The shortest verse, from another.
Right? That's all you gotta say and then
you could go through the rest of it.
Do you get what I mean? Right?
And you wanna know this because some of
you in this room are gonna also be
teaching people how to pray. And if you
start and you say, well, you gotta memorize
this and memorize that and memorize this,
why wouldn't somebody get overwhelmed? Do you get
what I mean? So after you memorize Fatihah,
what you wanna
do as you build a relationship with the
obligations,
right, you do this.
As you add in now different
Right? So you want to learn fatiha, Right?
So you want to learn fatiha,
learn 3 short verses or one long verse,
and then you learn this, the
part.
Right?
You had your hand raised?
In the obligations, like, when you're first starting
to have a break,
that
shortest
recitation that you were talking
about, do you just say that while you're
standing or do you have to This is
done in the standing. Yeah. The recitation. So
all the other positions, you can kind
don't have to do anything.
You just
you just you can recite from another, then
you go down, you come back up. Right?
You do you know what I mean? Right?
And it's it's there. Right?
In a learning pedagogy,
you know?
So little kids are gonna learn how to
pray. You can teach them simultaneously,
but you wanna encourage them to also get
into the habit of prayer. Right? If I
told my 7 year old, man, some of
you have prayed next to my 7 year
old. This kid, like, is jumping up and
down. He, like, runs around. I told you
he was drinking out of a juice box
while he positioned it strategically or if he
was gonna prostrate. You know, he was in
tarawir,
like, he fasted.
He we didn't force him to fast. Right?
But he fasted like 12 days in Ramadan.
He's a 7 year old. Right? So he
he stayed to pray Maghrib Isha
sometimes.
And in the middle of the prayer, right,
he knows Ishmael who led for a long
time. He knows some of these guys for
a while. So he knows they're not reading,
like, super short verses.
So after, like, the we stand, he, like,
ran out the door, go to the water
fountain,
come back, and then catch it before we
went into bowing. Do you know what I
mean? But he's 7. Right? He's gotta learn
where his capacity is. My kids are learning
Quran, mashaAllah,
right? But they still have to have the
ability to be able to retain,
like, the order, like, go through it. You
know, so you're going at a pace that
makes sense.
You have a different ease also when you're
like 7, 8, 9 years old to kind
of memorize and replicate things. When you're like
20, you're 30, you're 50, you're 70,
and you've been Muslim for a day,
you wanna be able to recognize, like, why
the study of fic is important,
not in terms of, like, why is everybody
else doing this and this way or that
way, but so that fundamentally you know how
to apply it in different situations
and how to then be able
to instruct somebody who's not you. Do you
know what I mean? So somebody came and
sat in my office and took their shahada,
and I gotta teach them how to pray.
I don't I can't expect them to
they're not me. Right?
Like, they're them. Do you you get what
I'm saying? Does that make sense?
And the obligation
to pray
is immediate after you become Muslim.
You know? It's not, okay, you got a
weak, like, grace period.
Right? So I think I told you all
last time, there's people who have literally seen
us pre COVID praying from the park. They
came up and inquired, what are you all
doing in here? And then they took their
shada on the spot. They gotta pray the
next prayer.
How are they gonna do all this?
Right?
Like, how? We could pray together and they'll
follow along with us, but then when they
go home, they gotta pray for you the
next day. Do you know what I mean?
So I'm like, hey, man. I know it's
like the middle of July,
and you usually sleep till 1 o'clock in
the afternoon.
But congratulations.
In your first 10 hours as a Muslim,
you're gonna wake up at
3:45 in the morning tomorrow
to
fumble through something that's gonna make you feel
like, did I make a mistake?
Or get to a place where you can
understand how its application is. Do you see
what I mean? That's why also in our
tradition,
you don't like say things unless you really
know what you're talking about.
Right?
And it's a sign of wisdom
to be able to say I don't know.
You know?
Because there's a lot of different opinions on
different things,
and the mercy is there because everybody is
not the same as everybody else. Do you
get what I mean?
So
here's something you want to also
recognize.
We're gonna start sending out more emails to
our conversations
email list, and we'll start sending, like, different
resources that can help you to memorize some
of these things.
And then you're going to say
here, say the word
assalam.
Right? So in this part,
when it's just the obligation,
you can exit the prayer by doing something
that has nothing to do with the prayer.
Right? You have that final sitting
and then you can grab a cup of
coffee and drink it. Prayer's
done. A necessary
act is at the conclusion of this, you
are saying a salaam.
And then there's a couple of points that
we'll talk about
when
we
are,
when we're talking about just like, some of
the other prayers, the wither prayer, the heed
prayer. Right?
But then, the last two necessary things, and
then we'll take a pause here for this
week,
is for the person leading the prayer, the
imam,
to recite out loud
in the
loud
obligatory prayers.
Meaning, when we pray a Maghrib, right, if
I lead the prayer, somebody else leads the
prayer,
I gotta recite
what I'm reading
in the first
two cycles of the prayer loudly.
Loudly means that it's gotta be able to
be heard by people in the room,
you know. It doesn't mean necessarily that, like,
somebody's gonna have
the ability
to, through their voice, have it go further
back. Right? Because you could go online and
you could see some masjids,
that are super simple. They don't have sound
amplification
or kinda rooms with acoustics built. And they're
basically in a place where the person's speaking
as loud as they can
and when you follow the imam in the
prayer, you're literally following the imam. So your
movement doesn't precede the movement of the person
leading the prayer. So think now, that person's
reading out loud. There's not like a mic
system that amplifies the sound wherever they might
be. What's gonna happen
is that
that person is going to
like bow and then everyone's gonna bow after
him. You're gonna see like a wave, like
a domino effect to people bowing. Do you
know what I mean? Because if you've ever
prayed with a 1000000 people before,
right? You've ever gone I've gone to places
in Sri Lanka where Muslims are internally displaced.
They don't have any infrastructure.
Right? They're all lining up still to pray
together and it's beautiful to see how many
people come out to pray.
There's the movement still is something that helps,
but
where the imam recites out loud
in the
loud obligatory
prayers
And
in the silent prayers,
both the imam
or the person praying alone
recites
softly,
Silently, softly
in the quiet prayers.
If you're praying alone, like a loud prayer,
you also are reciting safely. Reciting
means, like, actual reciting.
So you should be, like, at a place
where what you're saying to yourself, you can
actually hear yourself say it.
Do you know what I mean? So I'm
praying alone. I'm not gonna be
like mouth clenched,
you know, talking in my head. But the
words are something that I'm saying softly enough
that if I'm praying over here, like, it's
not bothering somebody sitting over there,
but at the same time,
it's not like complete silence.
There's a recitation
that's happening. It's just a recitation to oneself.
Does that make sense?
Like,
potentially,
if we were praying together, right Can you
come stand next to me? Right? If we
were praying together
a silent prayer, like the 2nd prayer of
the day, the 3rd prayer of the day,
and I'm reciting to myself, he might be
able to hear me still, like, silently,
like, as I'm reciting softly. Right? That's very
different
than if, like, somebody on the other side
of the room could hear me when we're
praying a silent prayer. Do you get what
I mean? Does that make sense? You can
sit down. I'm sorry. Yeah. Right?
So these are the necessary
acts, the wajib acts.
Right? You see that there's a lot more
to this than this,
but you want to reasonably
start to learn some of these parts
and implement them where you can in the
course of the prayer. Some of what you're
gonna do is already
acclimated to you in terms of the next
section we're gonna talk about next week, which
are the sunnah, the recommended acts. Right? Turning
your heads to the sides, like how you
kinda position your toes facing towards Mecca, these
kinds of things. Do you know?
These are acts that if you purposely leave
them out
without a valid
legal reason,
then
you if you do it on purpose,
then you are going to
repeat the prayer.
And if you do it forgetfully Right? How
could one do it forgetfully?
Let's say for example,
I prayed the first cycle of prayer. Like
you're new to it. Do you know what
I mean? Right? Or you're in a place
where your mind is wandering. You got all
kinds of stresses in your head. And you're
like, I don't even know. Did I pray
2 cycles or 3 cycles? Did I recite
what I was supposed to? So you've literally
forgotten. That's where you do a prostration of
forgetfulness.
And we'll talk about the circumstances that
allow for those prostrations,
when we meet next week.
You were gonna say something? I have your
hand raised. No? I have a question, but
if we're short on time Yeah. What's your
question?
2 very quick questions. For the ending of
the prayer,
the assalam,
do you have to say assalamualaikum,
or
can you just say assalam? You say the
word assalam, like, that's what is necessary. Right?
We talk next week. We're gonna talk about,
like, the,
emphatic
recommendations.
The
the prophetic
recommendations, practices.
You know, where you're used to, like, turning
your head to the right and turning your
head to the left. You're making the intention
when you're giving that salaam to include different
individuals, angels, people you're praying with, etcetera.
Yeah. Let's share real quick.
If someone is learning We're gonna pray in
just one minute. Yes. Yeah. If someone is
learning or in the process of learning how
to pray, but they just need to be
a prayer and be a
Is that okay if they just
leave, like, maybe the obligations
and then part of what they've already
memorized
is necessary or I would say that you
want to,
like, have somebody
if if
if it's 2 people who only know how
to do this,
then that's fine. Right? But if it's
somebody knows how to do it fully,
then that person should be leading the prayer,
right, versus the person who is still kind
of trying to learn it. You know? Does
that make sense? Doesn't matter if it's the
other woman, like, let's say a woman might
go lower.
The If a man and a woman are
are praying together, then the default is that
the man leads the prayer. Right? If,
there's different schools of thought on women led
prayer. We talked about that last week.
That if a woman is praying in a
congregation with other women, then there are opinions
in some of the schools that in a
women led congregation, she would lead the prayer.
Yeah. Okay. Why don't we take a pause?
We'll pray Maghrib, and then we'll see everybody
next Wednesday.
Alright.