Khalid Latif – Imam Nawawis 40 Hadith for Modern Times #07
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The speakers stress the importance of affirming the message and setting boundaries in prayer as it is crucial for personal transformation and achieving personal growth. Prayer is crucial for personal growth and avoiding overwhelming emotions, as it is necessary for regular engagement in practice, regular communication with partners, and regular awareness and intentionality. Success achieved through regular engagement in practice, regular awareness and intentionality, and upcoming events such as a retreat and workshop are crucial for personal growth. Regular engagement in practice is crucial for personal growth and avoiding overwhelming emotions.
AI: Summary ©
Okay. Should we get started?
Yeah.
So we're on hadith number 3.
People wanna pull it up on their phones,
laptops, whatever you have. If you have actual
text too,
you can just type in,
like,
hadith 3 or Imam
Hadith number 3,
so we can pull it up.
As we mentioned, we wanna try to also
start to memorize these hadith in their entirety
or parts of the hadith as best as
we can.
So they start to become
not just things that we know, but things
that we're acting upon or building relationships with.
Right? So
was the first hadith.
Lead actions are by their intentions.
The second hadith, the hadith Jibrael,
the angel Gabriel comes,
ask questions of the prophet,
he's giving a lot of etiquette in terms
of, like, a student teacher dynamic.
And then this 3rd hadith
that we're looking at is just focused on,
like, the foundational rituals and practices in Islam.
Right? Islam or the Khamps
Islam is built upon 5 things.
Then talks about the
prayers,
giving charity,
the pilgrimage,
and fasting a Ramadan.
And so last week, we focused a lot
on just the first part, the shahada, and
where the conditions of
the in terms of, like, knowing what it
means, having faith in its meaning,
affirming it through acceptance,
love,
you know, these kinds of things. People remember
what I'm talking about? Yeah. Great.
And then what does that mean from the
standpoint of
that there's nothing worthy of worship except Allah
and then Muhammad and
that Muhammad is the messenger of God. So
we wanna get into the latter part of
the hadith now that looks at these remaining
4 foundational
pillars,
and trying to understand and extrapolate meaning from
the Hadith
in ways that allow for us to think
about it through
the Hadith's illustration in and of itself,
as a literal foundation
upon which everything else is built upon. It's
not saying exhaustively that there's an equal sign
between this and Islam as a religion,
but this is the basis of it.
And without this, you can't have anything built
upon
the foundation.
There's no foundation to begin with. Right? And
the was that main kinda pillar that everything
comes into that if you don't have an
affirmation of these 2 theologies,
a very pure monotheism
and the acceptance of prophethood and finality of
prophethood
in the prophet Muhammad,
then these other things
are not done within the course of Islam.
You need to have those two things in
order
to be able to
then
engage these other aspects in a more meaningful
way. Right? And last week, we also talked
about briefly who
Umar is. Abdullah, the son of.
So today, we'll start by talking about
these other parts to the hadith, the salah,
the zakah, the hajj,
and the,
the fast of Ramadan,
and try to see where there's room to
actualize and engage in these things. Right? Can
somebody read the hadith in its entirety,
in English or in Arabic?
You're trying to avoid reading? You're a grown
woman. You're not in, like, 5th grade. This
isn't, like,
class you're gonna get called out. You know
what I mean?
Somebody wanna read it?
Can someone read it?
They're waiting for you to see. Yeah. I'm
really Cool.
Great. So we wanna nuance the meanings of
this.
Can somebody read the Arabic?
Just for the barakah of it.
The blessing of it. Yeah.
Guys don't volunteer all at once.
So okay.
So the hadith says, an
Abi Abdul Rahman, Abdullah,
Muhammad.
Muslim. Right? And the hadith is
as was read.
So here now is we're looking at this.
The Arabic is,
It's not talking about the doers of prayer.
Right? It doesn't say the Muslim,
but it's talking about the establishment
of prayer.
So
in Arabic, for example, when we pray
at night in Ramadan, a lot of you
have come when we've done, like, the grand
programs here. Right? We get a a 1,000
plus people on the 10th floor of the
room in the building next door. We pray
from Isha till Fajr time,
trying to seek out
the night of power, the night of destiny.
May Allah make us from those who witness
it and benefit from it. So that standing
in the night is called
the standing in the night. Right?
So you have, like, the same root here
in when it says,
in this establishment
of the prayer. So you're literally conceptualizing
this now. In the establishment of the prayer,
you're kinda trying to make the prayer upright.
And so how do you reinforce this? And
we wanna think about this in terms of
attaching meaning not just to salah
as a practice or an exercise,
but everything that surrounds it.
And if you were to think about this
in a more kinda literal example,
If you guys took any of you the
class we did
on the how to's of prayer in the
summer,
like the thick of prayer, the do's and
don'ts, according to the Hanafi School.
We talked about what does it mean to,
like, establish
prayer
in that sense. So it's about the establishment
of it as outward and inward aspects of
it. Not just the mechanics, but that's part
of it. The postures,
the mechanics,
the standing, the bowing, the kneeling, the prostrating,
but also presence, focus, these kinds of things.
And so when you're thinking about making the
prayer upright,
right, how do you establish it in the
sense that it's upright?
The example I used in the summer is
if you're ever walking through Manhattan
and you ever see these little trees that
have just been planted,
that they fundamentally
cannot stand on their own,
so there's usually, like, a stick
in the middle of it that the tree
is braced upon. Does anybody know what I'm
talking about? Right? If you walk down the
sidewalk,
because we live in New York City, so
we're not surrounded by heavily forested areas. Somebody's
trying to plant something new, and it's just
in a nascent stage
as a sapling of a tree,
it could be knocked down by severe weather,
rainstorm,
you know, winds that are heavy, etcetera. So
what they do is
if they have,
like, the
tree, there's essentially what looks like a small
broomstick
that's in the middle of it that the
tree gets reinforced around so that it's able
to sustain itself.
Right?
That
piece of wood that is helping for the
tree to stay upright,
That's the idea
that you are reinforcing
your prayer so that it is staying kind
of upright.
And so that can't be done just through
the postures in and of itself because it's
super easy to go through just the mechanics.
Right? As you get the hang of it,
it can become a habituated action. Do you
know? Standing, bowing, kneeling, prostrating,
you're just going through it, and you think
about the things you can do with mindlessness.
Do you know what I mean? People are
taking a shower and they're singing. You can
do those 2 things at one time. Right?
You're exercising
and you're listening to something.
Do you know? You can do those 2
things simultaneously.
There's certain things you cannot do simultaneously
where you are really in danger if you're
driving and trying to text on your phone.
Do you know what I mean? You can't
fundamentally
be talking to someone
and listening to someone else talk at the
same time. It just doesn't work. Right? If
you guys are talking to each other, you
might hear ambient noise around you, but the
ability to speak and listen
simultaneously
is not just something that we're wired to
do. Do you know? So the challenge with
the mechanics
is that you can actually start to
be in prayer in the postures physically
while you're doing something else. Do you know?
You are able to be present in the
physical sense, but, mentally,
you are elsewhere. You're praying with your body,
but not with your heart. There could be
different things going on. Right? Like, I've used
this example before. My son is 8 years
old. He just turned 8. So if you
ever prayed next to this kid, he can
do, like, 50 things while he's praying. You
know? In Ramadan,
he put a juice box in front of
him, straws popping out. He went down to
bow, stood up, and then when he went
to prostrate, whenever he prostrate, took a sip
out of the juice box. Right?
But he's a little kid. He's still figuring
out what it means. He's doing these things
simultaneously.
You can't eat and pray
not just because
eating is not allowed when you pray, but
the function of eating while you pray would
take away from the focus in the prayer.
Does that make sense? So when we're thinking
about it, we wanna think about it holistically.
What is it that I'm doing to reinforce
it the way that sapling is reinforced
by the pole
in its nascent stage of being a tree.
Do you get what I mean? And how
am I doing that outwardly and inwardly by
attaching meaning to this? So I want us
to think about
with a few prompts around this
that allow for us to understand
in a broader sense from everyone's experiences,
certain things around this ritual and practice
that enables us to think out
then, why do I leave it behind?
You know, and we can have this as
a conversation in a few different ways where
I could tell you first to talk to
each other about why is it that we
don't pray all of our prayers on time.
But that's not the way we wanna approach
it initially,
but that's the conversation you wanna have within
yourself,
to think about it objectively, what gets in
the way, but more so from start to
finish,
thinking about it in different ways so that
I can now actualize for myself
a sense of, well, what am I giving
up when I don't do it like this?
Right? And being creative
in thinking about, like, what's the benefit of
having a direction that you pray in?
What are some of the yields that you
get from that? What's the benefit of having
a congregational prayer?
What are some of the things that you
can draw from this? Do you see what
I mean? Right? And you can think about
it from various ways just to give you
ideas as we're kind of talking some of
this out.
Right? Like,
if you have a congregational prayer,
you don't have position in a prayer
that is deemed based off of social class
or affluence or wealth. You stand where you
stand based off of the time you get
to the prayer.
And it's not about religiosity
or practice, but,
or level of observance, so to speak, that
anybody can stand wherever fundamentally in the prayer.
There's some parameters to it.
So also you're standing with people in gatherings
that you don't necessarily see too much of,
either personally or professionally. Do you know? I
mean, I'm sitting and looking in a room
right now that's got brown people, white people,
black people,
people who are different in their age,
people who come from different professional ambitions,
people who
have likely different politics, different this and different
that.
You're situated
in a moment
deliberately that has you engage diversity
at times that you other than that moment
are not in that. Do you see what
I'm saying? And if you reflect on, like,
what are the gains of these things? What
are the things that have
for me and my capacity
and ability
to then reinforce
the way that that tree is reinforced by
that stick. I'm not just thinking about it
from the performance of just going up and
down and up and down, but I'm enabling
myself outwardly and inwardly
to harness from it what it uniquely can
offer to me by reinforcing
and establishing it upright
in this way. Does this make sense?
So I'm gonna throw out a few things
to you all.
You don't want to only speak if you're
saying the right thing or avoid saying something
because you feel like it's wrong,
nor do you want to think about this
at a level that says somebody else can
give more input on it than I could.
But just for us to have an exercise
that you continue on with when you go
home because there's no way we can go
through every aspect of it, but we can
go through some of it to think out.
Like, what's the benefit
of saying Allahu Akbar so many times in
the prayer?
Right? Why is there a gain
for us
to be gazing, like, where we're gonna be
prostrating in the prayer. Do you know what
I mean? But you start to think about
it, reflect upon it so that it's not
just mechanical. And this is why it's important
to understand that this is a hadith about
Islam.
And when you have these slogans
around Islam as a religion,
Islam does not mean the word peace
the way, like, 10, 20, 30, 40 years
ago, a bunch of people would say this
is what it means.
Islam
means submission,
Like, that's what it means.
So submission, the Hadith is saying, is built
upon 5 things.
Right? And submission to who? Submission to the
divine.
Submission to the Shahadah.
And a key factor to it is this,
the establishment
of prayer.
And why we wanna think about it more
deeply
is because we're pretty much given
everything that we have to get ready for.
So if you remember in hadith number 2,
we talked about a system.
Right? Islam.
What is Islam? It gives you something to
do, the religion.
What is iman? This religion gives you something
to believe in.
What is ihsan? It gives you something to
embody. Tell me of the hour. Right? It
gives you something to get ready for. So
as you leave from the to
this second category in this hadith,
the prayer, the salah,
is what we're taught is the first thing
we're gonna be questioned about on the day
of judgment. May Allah grant us ease on
that day. Right?
But that's it's not like
to catch you off guard.
Right? It's it's there. You're told
this is the first thing you're gonna be
asked about.
You're not asked about, like, other things. The
first thing everyone is asked about is their
salah. They're not gonna be asked about, like,
how much money you had, what degree you
had, did you get married, did you have
babies. The first thing you're going to be
asked about is your salah.
What the hadith says, if it's good, then
everything that comes after is good. If it's
not good, everything else that comes out not
good. Right? But if the salah is good,
it's established.
Right? It's not just prayed. It's established.
It's meant to then be transformational as a
spiritual exercise. So somebody who's, like, really praying,
they're not gonna be a jerk. Do you
get what I mean?
There's connection
between what you're doing in the prayer and
outside of the prayer.
If it's observed in that way,
you're not gonna think about somebody who is
really on top of praying fudger as being
somebody who's abusive to their kids, then there's
something wrong with their prayer. They're not doing
it right. Do you know? It's not being
done well. Does that make sense?
So here, we wanna think about it in
these frames. So as a starting point in
the establishment
of this,
just starting to incentivize
for ourselves. Right? So I love for you
to do
is to think out, like, benefits of these
things
and also think out where it might be
hard so that you can think about things
not just as, like, absolute
good and bad, but identifying where are the
obstacles, what's the struggle with it. So if
you can turn to the person next to
you, introduce some names,
one of the things that comes within the
establishment
of prayer, not just praying,
is praying it in its window of time.
Right? Fajr is prayed at Fajr time. Fajr
is not prayed at Maghrib time. Fajr is
prayed at Fajr time.
Is prayed at Duhr. Asr is prayed at
Asr. Maghrib and Maghrib,
Isha and Isha.
What are the benefits
to me
as an individual
to actually
stick to the windows of time?
What is it doing for me if I
am sticking to
the windows of time? Does that make sense,
the question? What's the gain with it? And
then thinking out also
what comes up that makes it hard, that
makes it a struggle sometimes.
Do you know what I mean? Because there's
books that people have written. Right? There's a
Turkish scholar who wrote a book that was
premised off of the idea, not about why
is it hard to get up for fajr,
but why is it hard for some people
to get up for and when they're sitting
at, like, a office desk? It's a lot
more difficult to get up in the middle
of the day for those prayers than it
is when you're at home, like, getting out
of bed. Do you know? But you wanna
be able to confront what the obstacle is,
especially amongst people who get it. So then
you can start to distill, well, how do
I kind of take it on and
understand it vis a vis the benefits?
Because you can't benefit from the good you
don't do. Do you know what I mean?
And you have to individually build a relationship
with this.
Is also talking about
that this is your individual
obligation.
You can't pray my prayer.
I can't pray your prayer. Some of these
things we could do for others. Right? You
could theoretically
perform Hajj on behalf of someone else if
you've done that for yourself, and we'll talk
about that when we get to that part.
But some of this is just you. Like,
you gotta fast your fast. I can't fast
your fast. You can't fast my fast. Do
you get do you know what I mean?
So if you turn to the person next
to you just as one of the starting
points, what's some of the benefit of actually
having
a regimented time structure to our prayers?
What do I gain from it as an
individual
if I stick to it?
And what are some of the things that
make it a little bit difficult to stick
to it? So we can talk about that
for a few minutes, then we'll come back,
and we'll move on. But go ahead.
Okay.
So what are some of the things coming
up?
Like, why why would this be a beneficial
thing to have
these
windows of time in which we we do
this? Yeah.
So me and Rehda talked about it, and
one of the things that we came up
with was
it's an identity for the.
It's something that separates,
a person who's Muslim or following the from
someone who's not a Muslim because all the
Muslims
who
That's a lot like, praying on time gives
more balance to your life. So you're not
just, like, just focusing just
on your deen and just forgetting all about
dunya, or you're just focusing on forgetting all
about being. It's like something it's like a
reminder you do it at a certain time,
and then you can go back to, like,
your other affairs.
And then just, like, discipline.
This song is all about discipline, having, like,
a certain, like, habit, routine,
even when we're praying, you know, making sure
that our roads are
straight. Like, Islam focuses heavily on that. So
Amazing.
Other thoughts? Yeah.
I was talking about the idea of,
how's helping organize my day.
The breaks in my day and then I
need certain things happen in certain windows.
Either before or after,
makes a lot. So, like, that's, like,
Okay. Anything else? Yeah. It might also keep
away from sin.
Like, if you are gonna pray in an
hour, you're not gonna go drink because you
can't drink and pray at the same time.
Okay.
Other thoughts?
Yeah. Oh, we talked a little bit about
Fudger specifically
because what's special about Fudger is that, obviously,
Fudger starts at the first break of dawn
and then ends at sunrise.
So you're gonna be waking up at that
point. Right?
And so because it's required at such an
early time, it means the first thing you're
doing when you wake up is you're remembering
Allah. Correct?
And
so that kinda just sets the whole day
into motion, you know, in the sense that
you start with Allah. How are you gonna
falter along the path? And then we were
also talking about how, like,
if you're struggling with oh, this is something
that a brother of mine had told me
is that I was telling him about, like,
a certain sin that I might have been
struggling
with. And he said, well, have you been
doing this so long?
And I've just read that kinda, like, completely
shifted my mentality to the point where, oh,
I was thinking so much. Oh, I I
have to stop doing this. I have to
stop doing this. I have to stop doing
this. But, really, once you start praying,
it's kinda like it is magical in a
sense the way that, like
because now your days are centered around a
lot 5 times a day.
How are you going to, like, falter from
that in a sense? Like, obviously, we all
will falter, but, like, it definitely is like
a rock. It is like a fortifying
part of the.
That's why it's, like, one of the pillars.
Great.
What gets in the way? What makes it
hard?
Yeah. In the routine routine days, routine
lifestyle.
So it's the if you're in the business.
So they don't they don't really understand
most of the case that you have to
leave what you're doing at the same at
that time. So you have to go
and just pray and then come back. Yeah.
It is
it is very rare that
especially your employee
employees
understand
that.
Okay. You work for people who are not
Muslim,
and they don't get it.
Other things?
Yeah.
Yeah. Definitely.
Other thoughts? Things that get in the way
or why there's a benefit to this.
Yep.
So if you have, let's say, a big
meeting or, like, an exam with you,
Fudger might be very stressful. Like, you're you're
asking,
Right. And we wanna have this conversation because
as you get older, consciousness
just
kinda arises,
but doesn't mean you utilize
it. It's there. It doesn't mean you do.
Right? Like, we have a lot of faculties
that we don't fundamentally use. Do you know?
I went on a hike in Southern Virginia
on the weekend,
and this guy
was walking with me down the mountain,
you know, the whole way. And he was
like, man He's like, I just realized
how out of shape I am,
because
it's just hard. You know, the poor guy
was breathing heavy, and it was really tough.
But he was seeing it in the sense
of
he has something and he doesn't use it.
And now when he's engaged in it, it's
making him realize,
if he doesn't use it, he's gonna lose
it even more. Right? So just because you
have it, doesn't mean you use it. You
have spiritual gifts that God has endowed you
with. You have capacities
that you've been gifted
and given. It doesn't mean that
because I have it, I'm I'm using it
necessarily.
Do you know? And so to hear,
it's applicable
in these ways
that it's it's there, but it doesn't mean
that I necessarily have attached,
like, intentionality
and meaning to it. So I can do
my prayer or I can be experiencing it.
Right? And there's a nuance difference there. Right?
Am I just getting it done or is
it actually something I'm experiencing in some capacity?
And I have to distill for myself now
through the utilization of consciousness
and reflection,
like, hey.
What is it that
is important here? What is it that's being
derived from here? And all of these things
make sense, and we could probably come up
with a whole
another list of things. Right? Discipline,
very important.
If you can learn how to manage time,
you will learn how to manage yourself.
And most of us spend tons of time
just doing nonsense. Do you know? Right? And
that becomes a challenge. So
you get to a space where there's a
lot of objectives and goals. It's like, well,
how do you achieve in certain capacities?
If you say to yourself, I don't have
time for something, you're saying it's not important
to me. So you say yes to something,
you're inevitably saying no to something else.
Here, if you're saying no to the performance
of this thing,
then you're telling yourself it's not as important
as whatever I'm doing,
and it's time.
Right? And some of it is hard. Like,
it's not easy.
You get into a place where you get
used to
a certain
frame of existence.
It's exhausting waking up at certain hours,
like, you know, it's warm under your covers
in the winter,
but acknowledging what gets in the way and
juxtaposing it to what the benefit is,
you will not derive
what you can from praying 5 times a
day on time
as that you would get from not praying
it on time.
So it's given as an exercise in a
certain way
and attaching to it this sense of intentionality
that says, here's where the gains are,
here's where the losses are,
here's where I gained from not doing it,
Are the gains that I gained from not
doing it at all or not doing it
on time
worth it in comparison to what I'm giving
up by not doing it on time?
Do you understand the the framing?
And you can't believe it because I believe
it just as much as I can't believe
it because you believe it because belief is
in your heart.
This is why, like, a lot of people
when they're in college, for example,
they're on point with their religion in certain
ways because they're surrounded by a lot of
Muslim people in a community like ours. Right?
We're blessed
that some of you aren't students here, and
you still get to be in this space.
I'm not a student. I've been here forever.
Do you know?
But now when you leave from that space
and you're out in the workplace and you're
the only person,
if it's not an inwardly established practice,
it becomes very easy to let go of
it. Right? I don't know how to ask
my boss for something because I've never thought
about it before in that way, like, what
does it mean to me?
What is it that I'm actually letting go
of here? And if I'm letting go of
burdensome obligation
or something that's distraction,
it's the thing that makes it hard for
me to watch an entire game and its
duration because Maghrib came in the way or
Isha or I'm watching a Broadway show and
I gotta figure out how to pray in
the middle of it because the window of
time for is less or I'm out with
somebody at a restaurant and I don't wanna
like, you're telling yourself
why it's not important at that point in
time,
which is not a good or a bad.
It's just understanding it objectively so you know
about yourself through it and then you think
about these other things that are there.
All of this has to get informed by
that first part which is Shahada.
And the conditions of the Shahadah
are not just knowing what it means
but also
believing in it and accepting in it and
understanding
all of the other things that we said
were conditions in it. So you don't have
to understand,
but God in his infinite wisdom
decreed that these are the best times to
perform this prayer in.
Do you see what I mean?
And all that other stuff. Right? It does
inform it. If you can stay committed to
something,
like, consistently,
it's gonna bleed into other habits that you
have.
I have students that go to this school.
They have no anxiety
because
they do what Suad was saying. They
work their day around their prayers.
And so they're up at Fudger and then
they study after Fudger. Like, they wake up
and they wake up to stay up. They
don't wake up to go to sleep.
And so they're in a place where they're
studying at that time, maybe take a nap
in the middle of the day.
I get more work done. People will say,
how do you do all of these thing?
It's not a secret, man. Right? I get
more work done
from, like, 5:30 in the morning till 8
in the morning than I would if I
started working at 9 AM until, like, 5
or 6 PM. Do you know? And I
love sleeping. Do you know what I mean?
I love to eat and I love to
sleep and sleep even more than eating. I
really enjoy sleeping. It's amazing.
It's not like an either or. You can
orient these things,
but a missing ingredient
in the establishment
of it, The establishment
of the salah.
And a key part in the establishment
of the salah,
you pray at the times that Allah and
his messenger told you to pray. Not when
you feel like praying. It's not a knock
on anybody who's struggling with their prayers. For
a good chunk of my teens, I did
not pray 5 times a day.
And I can tell you the joy I
felt when I started to pray 5 times
a day, not just from the experience of
5 prayers in a day, but because I
overcame it and I can understand where I
came from as a necessary part in tasting
more sweetly prayer now in the ways that
I have a relation to it. Don't hate
on yourself. Like, you gotta start someplace. Do
you know what I mean? But there's a
difference between saying I'm starting or I'm struggling
versus
I just don't do it.
And I'm saying a part of the reason
why you don't do it or establish it
is because you never thought about what the
gains are from it, the benefit from it.
Discipline
is really key
because discipline isn't about,
hey, I'm gonna do it because I'm worshiping
the feeling.
Discipline is I get it done even when
I don't wanna get it done.
You all asked me a lot about my
relationship with my kids. I love my children.
But even when I'm exhausted and I get
home, I'm still gonna hang out with them
and smile and play.
The discipline
I derived from being committed to my practice
helps me to be in discipline of myself
in these moments when I have to do
things and push myself
when I'm running on empty.
It's not just like here's this ritual and
then there's no bleeding into the rest of
your life.
There's not secrets. Do you know what I
mean? And Allah wires you in this way
that you're gonna worship something.
So you're getting up and going to bed
for some reason.
Is it worth it? Like, the reason that
you are orienting
kind of your sleep schedule around,
your eating habits, like, all this kind of
stuff? Do you know? Like, what do you
gain from that? And you see. Right?
That people are showing you right now who
worship money,
like, they worship dollars,
what that translates to in terms of their
ethics and their morals and their character and
belief. They're killing babies and they don't even
care.
So
you attach these things together,
and so that's one bucket. Right? The timings
of it. And you go home and think
about it a little bit more. Hey. What
am I giving up?
And think broadly. Like, what do I gain?
You gain a little bit more sleep.
That's true.
Right? You don't have to deny that.
Is gaining that sleep
worth it in comparison
to what you're giving up on the gains
from staying commitment to the regimen?
Does that make sense?
And you, like, sit and think and reflect
upon it. Do you know what I mean?
Okay. So we wanna think about this in
other facets also.
Right?
Like,
we could go through a bunch of different
things.
What is the benefit of having a qibla?
What is the benefit of making will do
before you pray? What is the benefit of
making sure that the space you play in
pray in is clean? That the clothes you're
wearing are actually clothes that you should be
praying in. Right? That everything is covered that's
supposed to be covered. Not in like a
elementary Sunday school type thing. Nobody's judging you
here. This has positives and negatives. Do you
get what I mean? Because even if somebody
is just a self righteous,
like, fool in your face, like, this isn't
covered properly. Why is this sticking out? They're
still engaging you in instruction
sometimes on things that you still necessarily need
to hear. Right? And may Allah make us
those who are willing to take instruction,
the rubber means he gives it to us.
When you're in a space where people are
kind and gentle,
sometimes also it's hard to be taught certain
things, and it can build up now a
defensive reaction
to things that you don't even have to
defend yourself from. Do you know?
So just in a lump bucket,
before we even talking about getting into prayer,
there's all these things that happen before you
start to pray in the establishment
of the prayer. Right?
That you are in this place where you're
establishing. You're not just praying. You're not just
standing randomly.
Right? I'm gonna pray towards Mexico today. I'm
gonna pray towards California today. Right? No. You
pray towards Mecca.
Why?
Why is this a benefit?
So think now on whatever of these conditions
that are prior to the prayer will do
the clothing that you're wearing, the direction of
the prayer,
the
cleanliness
of the space,
the time of the prayer coming in, Like,
what are the advantages
of this?
What are the gains? You don't have to
talk about all of them, but just pick
1 and talk to the persons next to
you. Like, why is there gain to this?
What are the benefits of some of these
things that I derive? And we'll come back
and discuss, but go ahead.
Okay.
So what are some of the things we're
talking about?
What's coming up for people?
Like, on these other parts to this.
Like, we'll do the clothes you wear,
you know, all this stuff.
What's, like, the benefit to this?
Are there yeah.
Senses and stuff. Like, if you're in a
place where it's dirty
or it's disorganized,
you know, you're using your eyes, your you
know, the smell, if it stinks. You know,
these kind of things. Or if you're dirty
and smelling,
it's like you can't
feel a a a sense of peace or
calm
and and purity.
So
that that's to me the benefit of, you
know, being clean, being in a clean environment,
and just a space that's clean,
at least, or or not cluttered and things
like that. And then
as far as when we're talking about facing
the kid love, like, I feel as though
even when I'm in the house by myself
or even when, like, we're just, like, this
woman praying
that it's like I feel as though when
you pray one time too, you're saying to
the whole world. Muslims all over the world.
Yeah.
Other thoughts?
Well, it's actually for the also,
there's always a mystical part of it, but
you also think about how practical
it makes for your life too. So I
I was telling him that I really I
didn't really think about why we are always
facing to,
Mecca all the time. But now while we're
discussing it, yeah, there's a logic behind it
because if
it's it it it should be like that
because otherwise, when you're in together with everybody
and playing,
so he he maybe say that, okay. Today,
I wanna just turn my back and just
wanna pray like this. So it is it
is for the order,
actually.
So,
like like everything. So when you think about
it in Islam,
you should also think there is there is
the mystical part and there is the logical
part.
So everything is for some law has a
logic. So if you really if you really
understand the logic behind it, what we are
doing, then it is I think it is
easier for you to do it.
Yeah. For mystical.
Yeah. Exactly. Okay. Are there thoughts? Yeah.
Well,
about the being in Mecca,
there's this
aya
144.
We have seen you We have been seeing
you're turning your face to the heavens.
So we all certainly assign to you a
that you will like.
So by our iman, by our loving of
the prophet, we should love the same hymn,
the same things as him.
So
this is this is, like, the incident that
changed it. I don't wanna spoil your CR
series. No. It's okay.
It's
okay. No worries. Yeah. Yeah.
This is the pinpoint where the
change from Masjid
to Masjid
to Mecca.
So, yeah, as we are loving the same
thing as our prophet,
we should love to have that Qibla too.
Yeah.
Amazing. Other thoughts
on any of it?
Yeah.
And this is, like, for for all the
requirements.
I think maybe it's, like, the way designed
that
having, like, those requirements
signifies,
the aspect of our life. Even, like, in
Yeah. And you wanna think. Right? All of
us is present in this prayer. So it's
a very cerebral
activity.
There's a hadith that says
the dua is the essence of worship, but
the word in Arabic
is not essence,
you know, in that sense. It's referring more
to kinda like
your your nervous system. Do you know what
I mean? So it's denoting this idea that
this is a cerebral
action.
So if I'm now starting my day out
and I gotta plan out this stuff,
I'm bringing presence into it.
What time do I have to go to
bed
in order to wake up to pray fudger?
Do you ever think about it for yourself?
Do you know what I mean?
And then, why am I going to bed
after that time?
But just as a conversation point to, like,
think within yourself, or you're up in the
morning or the night before,
you have to have designated parts of your
day or your week where there's reflection.
Right? When we're doing the book of assistance,
we talked about the,
and
Mohammed Haddad
in, like, the categories of this
daily litany,
the subtopics he talks about is reciting Quran
every day, like, some part of Quran, you
gotta engage it on a daily basis.
Right? Thikr, he says reflection
is also needing to be done with regularity
in a 24 hour time period. Right? So
that contemplation is important. And reflection is not
in a vacuum, it's upon something. So the
night before, I'm thinking about the day that
I just had
transpire upon me or the day ahead or
in the morning. I'm thinking about what's gonna
happen, and I gotta, like, figure out. Hey.
I'm gonna be on a plane
to Roanoke, Virginia.
Like, how do I pray? What direction am
I praying in? You know what I mean?
I went on Friday night
on this little plane to Southern Virginia,
and they asked me when I got there,
have you ever been here before? And I
said, yeah. I remember
because the last time I flew out here
is the worst plane ride ever in my
life. So this is tiny plane. It's got,
like, single seats on it. Whenever the wind
blows, you just go all over the place
because nobody's flying to Roanoke, Virginia,
except me. Now I flew from Roanoke,
and then,
this weekend, it was New York to Roanoke
to Atlanta to Detroit back to New York.
Tomorrow weekend. Right? Yeah.
Friday night to Sunday night.
I have to have a mindfulness
strategy
around
where am I praying,
what am I wearing
in this thing,
do you know, what's the direction,
where am I making will do.
You know how annoying it would be
if I only thought about it while I
was in it,
and then I'm creating anxiety around it.
If you go to work and you're the
only Muslim and it's already tough, Allah make
it easy.
And then when you're there, you're trying to
figure out, like, hey. Is this classroom empty?
Is this stairwell empty? Is this you're bringing
anxiety
to an act that's meant to create rest.
So the consciousness
of it,
it yields presence
in the planning.
You have a checkbox that is increasing now,
taqwa,
and it's allowing for you to say, hey,
Am I wearing what I can to pray
while I'm in the office? I'm on this
plane. Like, what am I gonna do?
Right? I like, will do.
You know? I don't know if you've ever
flown on a plane and tried to make
will do
in the plane bathroom.
Unless you're flying like business class or first
class
where the bathrooms are bigger than the economy's,
like, seat. Right?
But if you're flying on a plane, that's
just a regular plane. This plane to Roanoke,
Virginia
did not have a giant bathroom in it.
Do you know? It had a bathroom
that was, like, very tiny,
and there's no way you can maneuver
without, like, hitting something or bonking against something.
Do you know what I mean?
So if I'm
running late to my flight
or I'm eating something that I know is
gonna break my will do,
I'm in a place where I don't have
awareness of my entire physical being. Right? And
it's not, like, meant to be a joke.
You're gonna have it happen. I take people
for Umrah every year. Umrah and Hajj, and
I tell them, hey, man. Don't be eating
KFC
247
because when we're on Umrah, you are going
to be so upset that you cannot keep
your wudu.
Right? It'll be farting all over the place.
You know, what's going on? Right? So you
gotta bring some self awareness
into this. Why am I gonna make my
life miserable?
And then the option is what?
Maybe I just won't pray?
No. It takes 5 minutes
of deliberation
using the intellect that the divine has endowed
you with
to shift a paradigm
and to think out, I know what this
day ahead of me is going to be.
And here are the windows of time in
which I will need to pray.
So what are the things that I have
to do to ready myself for those things?
So that they're actually an oasis
in the midst of a very heavy experience.
That they're not adding more chaos and anxiety
in a world that's already agitating and distracting.
Do you know what I mean?
And if you're bringing it to it, you've
already kind of mapped it out, you know,
like, sometimes when I go
to a wedding
or to speak in a place I've not
spoken before,
I'll go
to
see the room
beforehand
because I gotta visualize everything in my head.
It's not easy, right, to stand in front
of people. Some of you come to Jumah
here. Standing in front of 800 people and
teaching them about life is a very anxiety
inducing
experience.
Do you know? If you've ever been on
a stage, you're a performer, you're an artist,
you know what I'm talking about.
So you can acquaint yourself now a little
bit more by acclimating yourself to the environment.
If you don't have a plan and you're
already helter skelter,
it's not gonna, like, make it easier. Right?
And these are not things to create judgment
against oneself
or weaponize
to, like, police somebody else's
kind of ritual and practice, but it's for
yourself. Like, hey, am I actually dressed the
way I'm supposed to be dressed when I'm
standing in front of the divine?
Are things covered the way they're supposed to
be covered for women and men? Right? It's
not just about, like, hey, you know, his
hair tucked under a hijab. There's, like, a
ton of brothers who their pants are not
where they're supposed to be when they're prostrating
in the world. Right? Allah make it easy.
But that's something that's important to understand. You
woke up in the morning, did you not
think you were gonna pray today? And, like,
you decided not to wear a belt,
right? And then you have to think
when there's chaos inwardly,
that's what you're giving credence
to in comparison to your salah
that I'd rather
not have this thing around my waist,
and then the mechanics of it are not
observed
with consciousness, then you're gonna get out of
it what you put into it. Do you
do you see what I'm saying?
And so we can distill this in every
which way possible. Right?
What is, like, the advantage of saying
as you are going through these motions of
prayer?
What is, like, the gain of reciting
in every single rakah
of every prayer.
Right? Reflection,
contemplation,
so that the establishment of it is not
nonsensical.
Do you get what I mean? If you
were walking down the street and you saw
this
sapling of a tree,
and instead of
the pole going up holding it,
the tree was still up, but somebody tied
the pole going this way.
And it wasn't creating balance, it was creating
happiness on the tree.
And you'd be like, what guy did this?
That doesn't make any sense. Do you know?
Then don't do that to your.
You're putting it out of whack when it's
not established firmly.
And the crazy thing is, it doesn't take
a lot to establish it firmly.
And when you are in places that you
frequent regularly
and you can create a sense of how
to do this in those spaces
and the places that are unfamiliar
is gonna be a little bit less anxiety
inducing
because your regular norm is gonna be, I
know how to get it done.
So I'll figure out ways to do it.
And that's just sometimes how you gotta approach
it. Do you know?
And the fulfillment
of the obligation
in the window of time is what the
priority is.
Not, like,
how deeply, spiritually
moving it was.
Was I able to recite? Yeah.
10, 20 sec just Surah Kauth or Surah
Khlas. You get it done. You just gotta
get it done, but it gets done in
the window of time. The other parts to
the establishment of it, you learn, like, the
thick of the prayer, the mechanics, the do's
and don'ts. If you're gonna teach somebody how
to pray, you have to learn how to
also teach the prayer, which is not just
about I pray so I know how to
teach it. That's like saying I eat so
I know how to, like, teach people how
to cook. That's not how it works.
Right? We get like 5 people a week
who come here take their Shahada, Masha Allah.
You cannot tell somebody who's a new Muslim
from
the minute now the prayer
is, like, incumbent upon them
that they have to pray in that final
form of prayer that you are used to
praying. There's, like, entire processes
to be able to teach the Farahid, the
Wajibat,
the Sunan of the prayers. Do you know?
So
understanding it individually and then communally, where's the
responsibilities?
Do you see what I mean? And this
is about, like, the establishment
of it. It. All of this goes into
the establishment,
and then
the inward parts to it as well.
At some point, you gotta learn what Fatihah
means.
And it doesn't take, like, hours to learn
what it means.
Not just the translation in antiquated language.
It's recitation,
and
all of this is included,
but also, like, its meaning.
Like, what is it telling me? What is
it bringing me towards?
There's gotta be something in it that it's
been ordained to be recited
this many times. At a minimum, you're saying
it's 17 times a day.
Like, why? What is it about? Do you
know?
When you get to a place where you
can taste some of this inwardly,
you just want to know more. Do you
know? So you want to, like, read more.
The commentaries, the explanations,
you turn to your friends sometimes and say,
hey, man. What does it mean to you?
You start to actualize a relationship with these
things by actualizing,
like, the names of the divine. If Allah
is good,
then what we know of Allah to be
is also good.
So if God is good and God is
merciful, then being merciful is good.
So what do you do to put Rahma
into the world?
You make this dua
every day.
Like, why?
And as I have evolution in my life,
every day is not the same.
So I'm in a constant state
of needing this. Right? And hidayah
in Arabic, like guidance,
is
rooted in the same root as Hadia, like
a gift. Right? So this notion is, like,
this is something that's actually
gifted.
You know, it's got that kind of connotation
to it. I don't wanna be in a
state of just loss. I want awareness.
I want consciousness.
You know, I don't wanna just know where
the path is. Like, that's just why. Do
you know what I mean? Like, oh, if
Thar is there, just stare at it. You
know? No. Like, we don't we don't set
it up so you know it's there and
you look at it. You go and you
eat the food.
Right?
So you go and you walk on the
path after you see it. You get the
guidance and you do something with it. Right?
But you reflect on these different things.
What is, like, the gain of a bowing
position or a prostrating position?
Like, what is
it doing for me, these different things? Do
you see what I'm saying? And then beyond
the fara'id, like the sunnahs, praying the extra
prayers, and then thinking about it also from
what does the Quran and the Hadid say.
And definitively,
the Hadid tells us these extra prayers, they're
just about love,
building love
in various ways.
Because it's very different when you have to
do something versus when you want to do
something,
and then you want to do also the
things you don't have to do.
You just do it because you do it
because you love to do it. Do you
know?
Do you get what I mean?
Okay. So,
like, this is where it goes,
and the Hadith is really clear on this.
It's the first thing we're asked about. Allah
grant us ease in that questioning.
Just try your best.
If you're not down with, like, any of
it right now, just start with, like, one
a day.
Do what you can
and focus on it. You got one down,
do 2, do 3. You get to 5,
then start adding your sunnis to it. Do
you know?
But with the recognition
that you want to reflect on it, there's
going to be some days when you pray,
and it's just going to be going through
the motions.
That's just how it's going to be.
You still gotta do it.
There's gonna be some days where,
like, you feel
just I don't wanna stop praying.
You still just gotta do it the way
you do it on the days that that
feeling's not there. Do you see what I'm
saying? And intellectualizing
it, I'm not a bad per Yeah. You're
not a bad per Nobody's saying you're a
bad person.
But this is, like, a part of this
religion,
And it's not enough to say, like, it's
just about my heart or I'm a good
person. There's a lot of good people in
the world, like, nobody's saying you're There's a
lot of people who pray their prayers and
they're idiots. They are not good human beings.
Right? Allah forgives them and forgives all of
us. That's not what it is. But
you engage it for your own kind of
transformation.
Do you see?
So you're establishing it, and the establishment of
it, it needs, like, strategy. It needs plans.
You got hecticness.
It still gotta, like, work out in certain
ways. And that's where fic is a spiritual
activity
because you can now maneuver through situations
that allow for you to be adaptable in
certain ways. Right? I wear my Tim's a
lot and people say, why you wear these
boots all the time? You know, you're such
a New Yorker. I like my boots. That's
why I wear them. But, also,
like, there's
different opinions on wiping over socks and wiping
over other stuff. When I'm traveling, I don't
wipe over my socks. I'm happy to explain
this to people, like, I'm not saying you
should or you shouldn't,
but
in kinda across the board,
if you have
a
device that is known to be a shoe,
right? So you can't have something you just
throw on your foot that's not a shoe,
but like something that's a shoe. It's going
above your ankle.
There's no perforations in it. You can walk
a distance in it without it tearing, etcetera.
Like, you can wipe over this after you've
made will do.
So when I'm on this mini plane to
Roanoke, Virginia,
and there's no way I can fundamentally,
I could be the most, like, stretchy human
being in the world. There's no way my
foot is getting in this sink. Like, it's
just not possible. Right? How the way this
bathroom is shaped.
I got these boots on.
I can wipe over them.
I'm dressing for my prayer. I'm not dressing
for vanity.
Do you get what I mean? Does that
make sense? And it lessens the anxiety.
You know? You're gonna go sledding
in the winter. I had students who reach
out. They're in Central Park. Maghrib is, like,
finishing,
and they're like, what do we do? Like,
we gotta make wudu,
and there's snow all around them. You can
make wudu with snow.
You're allowed to.
But if you don't know the fara'id of
wudu,
and you only know, like, the form that
incorporates
all of it, the sunnahs as well. It's
not that doing the sunnahs is a problem,
but the farther the parts of wudu
are everything other than your mouth and your
nose,
and the number of times in the Hanafi
school,
like, the order is not considered
like,
a fard.
Right? In other schools, it is.
So what are these guys gonna do? They're
making will do in the snow in Central
Park. Are they gonna be gargling with the
snow?
Are they gonna be shoving it up their
nostrils?
No. And you could say, well, that sounds
silly, but what if they don't know?
And then at the end, they're gonna be
like, this religion is so hard. I'm putting
snow in my nose.
Right?
But if you know it and it doesn't
take a lot to know it. Do you
know? If you know it, then you know
how to maneuver and adapt in situations.
Does that make sense?
And it subsides
anxiety,
which for a lot of us is at
an all time high,
and it makes it that much harder than
to find, like, centeredness. Right? And the hadith
says, like, there's no prayer when food is
served, doesn't mean you don't pray, But if
there's, like, an entire meal on the table
and you're, like, trying to pray next to
it, you can definitely be. As you were
saying, it's one thing to smell bad stuff,
but everything smells great
and your mind is wandering, you're like, I
wanna eat that chicken right now. Right? Then
you're distracted in the prayer. That's not establishing
it well. Do do you see what I
mean? Does that make sense? We can apply
these things to these remaining categories also. Right?
That
you are giving the zakah. There's a link
here.
Always, you see in the Quran,
like, there's a right to God, the establishment
of salah, and then there's an engagement ritually
of God's creation, the giving of charity.
You know, they always go hand even in
different constructs. Right? We're praying Maghrib today,
and we read Surah Kotha. Right?
Right? So then make salah
for your Lord, 1 had and do the,
right, which is the sacrifice.
What happens when you do the ritual slaughter
around the days of Eid? You distribute the
meat to people in need. So there's prayer
to God and there's service of God's creation.
Right?
I would assume, and I say it with
love, that most of you in this room
don't know the rules of zakat.
You should learn them.
It's not like difficult.
The bar to entry in our religion is
not up here, it's down here.
And the things that everyone is supposed to
do tend to not be so complex.
But if you're only seeking to learn it,
the one time of the year that it's
obligatory upon you to do it, you're not
gonna get into a place where you have
a rhythm, and then it stops being a
spiritual act.
In order for these to be spiritual acts,
the mechanics have to be seen as a
means.
So many of us grow up learning how
to pray because everybody's gotta pray.
Not everybody gives the gods, only if you
get past a certain threshold of wealth. You
should still know the rules of it,
and you want to engage in it so
that there's an understanding
of the how to's that enable it to
be now a spiritual vehicle.
Right? The idea that this wealth
is not even mine. It's already owed to
somebody else.
And it's the minimum of what it is
that I'm giving to someone.
There's all kinds of things we're gonna do.
We would have done it already, but may
Allah grant ease to the people of Palestine.
A lot of our programming shifted
with the escalated violence in the last month,
but workshops on zakah, helping people to learn
it a little bit more. There's a ton
of things that you could look at online.
Imam Taher Anwar,
who's really great. Sheikh Masha Allah. He's got
a video on YouTube that's called from stocks
to livestock, the thick of zakah. It's like
a hour. Just listen to it. It give
you kind of a foundational understanding
and then listen to it a few times.
Do you know? So you're building relationship with
it. We had a woman in our community
who came after Ramadan. She's a survivor of
abuse.
She had really difficult life. She left from
her abuser,
and went into the government shelter system.
It's really terrible experience for her. A lot
of challenges.
And she was married at a young age,
came from an immigrant,
like, South Asian background.
She's married, no, like, resume, job,
like, experience, etcetera.
After Ramadan, she came to see me,
and this was
way back where we were still, like, collecting
cash and giving cash out. It's not like
a good system whatsoever. Do you know? But
the IC, for those who don't know, has
grown a lot in a short period of
time. And And we started out when I
was, you know, in the basement of churches
and whatever else. There are certain things we
were doing that probably in retrospect we shouldn't
have done. So after Ramadan,
like, there is the charity, the zakat al
fitr. Right? $10 per person in your family.
And we were collecting, like, tens and thousands
of this in cash. You see how many
people come out here to pray in Washington
Square Park? They're giving this cash. We'd collect
it, then people would come who are in
need and we give it to them. This
woman who was a survivor of abuse,
I gave her about 3 or $4,000
in cash
in an envelope,
and then she handed it right back to
me and I said, do you not need
this? And she says, no, I need it.
I just don't know what I'm supposed to
do with it. I've never had a credit
card.
I don't know how to open up a
bank account. I don't know how to pay
for a cell phone bill. She said, you
keep it and you tell me what I'm
supposed to do with it. Right?
Understanding her as a beneficiary
necessitates understanding her as a whole individual.
When you can build a relationship with the
categories of the goth recipients,
and you could think about just how deeply
wise it is that these are the people
who should be recipient of our zakat, it's
not just a mindless act of writing a
check or to get to a place where
I try to look for loopholes to see,
do I owe this or I do not
owe this? She's a whole person. She needs
an entire system that understands her existence
that gets her out of a place to
a place where she's entitled to live to
her fullest. Right? So why we started shelters
in our community. This is why now post
COVID, we wanna get back into the habit,
food insecurity, clinics, these kinds of things. Do
you know?
So, it's Isaac,
like, this is a foundation. If you do
not have it, there's no foundation to your
Islam.
Like the house is built on a faulty
base.
It's not gonna work.
Hajil Bayt
comes now. Right? The pilgrimage to the house,
we're taught that this is done if you
have the means to do so. Same thing.
Salah,
everybody's gotta do salah. My father, who has
severe strokes some years ago, was paralyzed on
the right side of his body. He still
performs his prayers
as he can.
There is videos of people from Gaza
that should not be undermined. May Allah grant
them ease of individuals who are strapped
to hospital beds and they're still praying just
through movements of their eyes. Do you know?
But that's what you do. Like, you do
it to the best of your capacity.
Hajj, you do if you have the means
to do.
You have the means to do it, that
means that's when it's incumbent upon you. The
means is financial.
Someone can pay for you to go, and
that is totally fine.
The means is also, right, like, say I
was the caretaker of my father who is
in a physical state where he needs support,
I cannot leave him and go for Hajj.
Does that make sense?
Right? So the means is not only,
but does also include financial capacity
as well as other capacities.
I've gone for Hajj and Umrah, and I
see women who are immigrant
from all over the world. People literally pack
up all of their stuff, and they go
on this pilgrimage.
It's not something you do just when you
are elderly.
That's not how it works.
It's something you do when you have the
means to do it,
and the means to do it is what
is the
prerequisite.
Better to go when you're younger than not.
I went for Hajj when I was 22
years old.
Right? And for me, I was starting to
work here.
I went with the intention of asking Allah
to put Barak and whatever it is that
gets done here. Do you know? And when
I was on the ground there, I was
like, thank god I'm doing this when I'm
22.
Because if I was doing this when I
was, like, 52 or 72,
I don't it would be just a totally
different experience.
Right? It's like the equivalent of I gotta
figure out a place to pray with 3
minutes left in this building that I've never
even thought about it. You know? Your body's
gonna hurt. Everything's gonna hurt. It's a lot
of walking. You do it when you're younger
and you have the means to do it.
Do you know what I mean?
This is a foundation. Right? And then
the Psalm of Ramadan, the fasting of Ramadan.
There's a lot more Muslims who fast than
pray.
Do you know?
And it's a very passive act. You don't
have to do anything when you fast. You
can literally just sit and do nothing, and
you have fasted. You could sleep all day
in your room, and you fasted. Like, it
you can do it. That's what you do.
Should you do it that way?
Probably not. Right? But it's not an active
mode of engagement. It's a passive thing.
There's all other kinds of things that are
going on in Ramadan. The Barakah is undeniable,
but the same way we're breaking down. What
are like the incentives and the gains from
praying in congregation, having a qibla? These kinds
of things. You want to bring awareness to
your practice of Ramadan
even prior to or after the fact so
that it doesn't go just with ease after
it's done. Like, why are you excited when
Ramadan comes?
What are the things that are happening there?
You start to bring organs of cognition into
the practice, so it becomes a firm concrete
practice. Right? And if you have the ability
to fast, then you think about it. Just
like zakat
is something that is the entry point and
the minimum, then you give more on top
of it. You'll enjoy the experience of reading
Quran in Ramadan,
fasting in Ramadan,
fast outside of Ramadan.
What's keeping you from doing it? Do you
know? And then the discipline of salah becomes
important.
Because if you have the discipline to get
these things done 5 times a day, it's
going to just create more sheer will and
determination.
That's what these people go off of. The
doctors
going into these hospitals
knowing fully that a bomb might bring the
hospital down, but they're still going and still
smiling to their patients,
they just have, like,
will and determination
that's remarkable.
That's what they're going off of. Sheer will
and determination.
You have this inside of you too.
You just have to tap into it and
exert it and say, hey, Why would I
not do it? These days are great
because
fajr
is not so early
and Maghrib
is super early.
So you got fast to make up, do
it with a double intention that you're also
gonna make dua
for the alleviation of oppression of oppressed peoples.
Doesn't have to just be about you, which
is the thing I'm gonna pause on at
the end here.
You gotta understand
that these foundational things, as much as their
individual obligations,
you can look at them through a prism
of selfless worship.
I can't make dua for you when you
ask me to
and willfully still just engage in Haram regularly.
And so when someone asks me, like, what
brings you to certain things? The love I
have for the community I serve, the love
I have for other people I love, friends
and family
become an amazing preventative mechanism
from engaging in things that would impact
the
presence
and
kinda elevation
of my prayer.
And when you can bring intentionality
to it that says, my fudger is not
just for me,
but my fudger
is for the person sitting next to me.
It's for the little kid who is not
gonna see his parents in this world again
that is sitting in a open air prison.
Then my zakat is not just about
me,
but it's about the recognition
of a global population
that is in just dire straits.
Right? Afghan refugees
getting sent back to Afghanistan from Pakistan
after an earthquake is it, destabilized
country, all kinds of tumultuous realities.
Sudan,
200 plus days into its current conflict.
Myanmar,
the Rohingya,
you have Uighurs in China,
you have people in Palestine,
Kashmir,
all over India. There's no shortage of things
that we could list out in terms of
why your zakat cannot be just about mindless
writing of things, but it's gotta be a
spiritual
act. It's a spiritual vehicle. Do you know
where is your heart in this? Where is
the love? Where is it not just about
me fulfilling for me, but I'm thinking about
it from the broader standpoint of the beneficiary,
Hajj as well.
Right? If it's as soon as I have
the means to do so, then it's not
just about me. My fast of Ramadan,
like, it's not just about me. You see
what I mean?
Okay. Let's take 2 minutes.
If you can turn to the person next
to you, what are some of the things
you're taking away from today's conversation, And then
we'll
wrap up. But go ahead.
Okay.
Is officer Black there?
Can you just give him the help?
Hey, man. How are you?
Hey. Can you let her up? I'll I'm
gonna put her in the system. Yeah. Thanks,
man.
Okay.
What are some of the things we're taking
away from today? Sorry. I knew that was
super quick.
Anything coming? Maybe a few quick takeaways
Great.
Anything else?
Yeah.
Other things?
Anything? Yep.
Yeah.
Amazing.
Right. And these are things we've heard before,
but we wanna just think about them from
different vantage points. Do you know?
So next week, we'll get into the 4th
hadith.
People wanna just start looking at it and
kinda getting acquainted with it.
We have a lot of our same regular
helikas happening this week. I think on Thursday,
we're gonna do another healing space.
It's been a month since the most recent
escalated violence in Gaza, and, grant them ease.
And so people wanna just have a mark
for that and let people know.
There's other events that we're gonna be starting
as well. As I mentioned, Ajumu,
like phone banking to call electeds
around the ceasefire.
We're gonna do some Quran,
giyams.
We're gonna have our post Jummah lunch every
Friday now for some time just so people
can be in community with each other, and
they're not alone.
The iftar is on Mondays Thursdays.
You know, we're gonna try to reorient some
of how we do those as well as
just as, like, communal gatherings. I know it's
earlier in the day,
but if you can make it out, try
to come to those as well.
But a lot of it will start pushing
out on,
our email list tomorrow, if not, the day
after.
On Friday,
we're gonna do a program in here that
anyone can attend,
but we're gonna entitle it navigating Palestine as
a convert,
where we have a large convert community.
It can become, like, a
difficult
times conversation.
Family
is not so well aware of Islam. They're
consuming media
that becomes really hard to kinda distill,
you know, why would you join this religion?
Like, what do these things mean?
You know, there's a lot that goes on
there. So if you or someone you know
would benefit from that conversation,
we're gonna do that here at around 6
or 6:30
on Friday night.
On Saturday,
there's a all day seminar,
that we're hosting with the Almagrib
Institute
that's, called Angels and Demons,
with.
And I think there's about, like, 40 seats
left. I think they've had 200 some people
register. So So if you wanna go to
that, I think we advertise some of it
on our mailing list also.
Okay. So let's take a pause here,
and then we'll see everybody next Monday.
Yeah.