Khalid Latif – Perfecting Your Prayer Essentials of Salah (Hanafi) #02
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
So last week,
we kinda went through just an overview
of prayer itself, talked about what it meant
linguistically,
and
some of what was relevant to
its etymological roots,
connection,
aspect,
etcetera. If you missed it, it's up online.
And also if you miss anything, let me
know. We can catch up.
Today, what I thought we do is to
start go through,
like, some of the actual words to the
prayer,
break it down, and I'll get into it
in a little bit more detail. So I
go,
as we're kinda getting through it.
If you remember,
for those of you who were here, like,
a few weeks ago, we talked about what
were the integral conditions to the prayer, like
outside of the prayer. Right? Being
kind of in a state of wudu, washed
up,
facing towards Mecca, etcetera, things like that.
So what we wanna do is to start
building
in some of the inner aspects of the
prayer and how they relate to the outward
aspects.
So if anybody has a copy of the
translation of the Quran or you wanna pull
it up on your phone, I wanted to
start with us looking at the last couple
of verses
of the 22nd
chapter of the Quran. If people don't have
translations, we also have copies of translations for
everybody that we give to people in general
who need it. Whether you're exploring,
you know, you converted recently, etcetera,
let me know. We can grab some from
my office. Does anybody need a copy?
We have 2 versions that we give out
to everybody.
Would you like one? Yes. Yeah. You want
one too? It's the clear version. We have
the clear Quran and,
the Oxford Press one, the Abdul Halim one.
Yeah. Those 2. Okay.
Yeah. You want more? I want just the
clean one. Yeah. Okay.
You want one also? Yeah. So sorry. I'm,
like, really old, and I forgot already. How
many people raised their
hands? 1, 2, 3. Yeah. Probably. 4.
I was gonna bring a bunch. And feel
free to take a look. A pan. Yeah.
Do you wanna can you grab can you
grab them from the office? Yeah. Sure. Yeah.
Where are they? In the left hand translation.
Cupboard,
there's a bunch. I think I found 5.
There's
Sorry. Which which translation is? We're just gonna
bring the whole stack of it. Okay. Yeah.
Like, to when I got When you're facing
the wall,
it's the left hand cover here. Okay. It's
got both.
If you bring this, like, 10 of these.
Yeah.
The court, so there's still a bunch in
here.
So just for people who have it
pulled up in the meantime, and we'll we'll
start to bring it up. Hey, guys.
If you look at the last
set of verses, the last two verses
of the 22nd chapter, which is called Surat
Al Hajj.
It's the pilgrimage, and we're gonna be focused
on the first couple of verses
in the next chapter which is called the
believers
almot minun.
But just for people who could pull it
up
while we're waiting, actually, why don't we wait
till everybody gets a copy? I know more
people trickled in. Maybe we can really quickly
again. You just introduce yourselves to the people
sitting around you. You know, there's new people
that came in. If you share your names,
how your day went, and then we just
get started. Kevin's?
Yeah. How are you?
We're kinda everywhere, but I've been doing, like,
15 years. Not yet?
Okay. Why don't we get started just in
the interest of time? And then when comes
with
the translation, I'll go back to that. So
one of the things we're gonna look at
today
is a concept
in Arabic that's called Bashur.
And if you were here last week, we
talked about how Arabic as a language is
structured. Thanks, man. There are
words that are derived from trilateral roots. People
remember this? Yeah. So we use the example
of like
the words
Islam, Muslim
And which one do you want? And salaam.
You can give them both.
Both. Yeah. Oh, both? Yeah. Plus we have
another. We can share that. Okay. That's okay.
That's it. So these have, like, the same
letters,
Salama,
right? In Arabic,
Seen, Nam, Meem.
And a couple of things just to give
you guys like an idea of how we're
gonna structure
today. We're gonna talk about this concept of
kushua.
We're gonna look at some verses.
I'm gonna talk to you about it in
the context of some of what we've discussed,
the obligations,
the necessary,
and the recommended acts of prayer.
And then we're gonna also start looking
at the Arabic alphabet today,
going through the first set of letters. So
you start to kind of engage
from the reading standpoint of the text as
well,
so that we're able
to kind of get
connected to the Quran in that way.
So this word, Khushur,
it is got the letters,
and Ain. It's not a cognitive for Ain
in Arabic,
but it's got a
kinda
connotation of just humility,
submissiveness.
It's translated as, like, tranquility.
It's about just having kind of presence in
your prayer and being in a state of
focus in your prayer. So people want to
open up to the 22nd
chapter
of the Quran.
It's called,
Surah Al Hajj.
Just the last couple of verses, right. It
starts in Arabic,
Oh, people of iman.
And it talks about bowing and prostrating, etcetera.
So people wanna take a look at those
two verses really quick. Does anybody have it
up?
Sorry. Can you say the chapter? What The
22nd
chapter,
and
it's called Al Hajj.
Is it verses 77 and 78?
The last two verses.
I have it up. Yeah. You wanna read
it? Sure.
Advice to the believers.
All believers, bow down, prostate yourselves, worship your
lord, and do what is good so that
you may be successful.
Strive for the cause of God and the
way he deserves. For it is he who
has chosen you and laid upon you no
hardship in the religion.
The way of your forefather, Abraham. It is
God who named you the ones who submit
in the earlier scriptures and in this Quran
so that the message may be a witness
over you. It is that you may be
witness over humanity.
So establish prayer,
pay alm tax, and hold fast to God.
He alone is your guardian. What an excellent
guardian. What an excellent helper.
Okay. So I want you to read these
2 verses to give you an idea that
when you're reading the Quran,
translation or otherwise,
the actual text is you're kind of getting
familiar with it in your own exploration
of Islam as a religion,
that you don't want to look at verses
only in isolation of each other, right? The
text in and of itself
is a text that you're meant to extrapolate
meaning from.
The science,
religious science
in Arabic is called tafsir. It's the exegetical
analysis.
You're taking meaning from the text
rather than an eisegetical analysis. Right? You formulate
an argument and then you take a verse
to prove, like, this is what that argument
means. You can turn a book into anything
you want to fundamentally,
right? But the Quran, you look at it
as a text on a whole
and you see how do
concepts and verses inform one another, right? How
do we kind of understand it thematically? How
do we understand
legal rulings and theological rulings and ethics and
parables and historical accounts kind of in relation
to each other as well as separately. But
one of the interesting things I wanted to
show you here because the main focus that
we're gonna look at is the next chapter's
first couple of verses.
But in the last
set of verses here, the second to last,
it starts out by saying,
oh you who believe
that you bow down, you prostrate,
and you do what is good so that
you might be successful.
Then I want you to keep that in
mind. And then in the last verse, it
talks about something we talked about last week.
If you remember, we talked about the establishment
of prayer. Right? They call it salah.
Right? People remember that. We gave the example
of the tree
where if you walk around the city and
there's no trees and they had these, like,
little trees they're planting, and they put the
wooden kind of pole in the tree to
keep the tree upright
to maintain it. Right? That pole is essentially
helping the tree to stand upright. So you're
making the prayer stand upright is what the
command is. That's in this verse.
And in the next chapter we're gonna find
the presence
of the ending of this chapter
right at the beginning of the next chapter.
So it's telling you that
this is a means that you might be
successful.
And can we read the first verse of
the next chapter?
Chapter 23,
the chapter.
You have it? Yes. Go ahead. These true
believers.
Successful indeed are the believers.
Those who humble themselves in prayer.
Those who avoid idle talk.
Those who pay alms tax. Yeah, we can
stop there, right?
So it's got a connection, the ending of
the first
set, the last set of verses of Surat
Al Hajj,
it's saying so that you might be successful.
And then the very first verse of the
next chapter says,
these are the people who have succeeded.
You understand?
The last verse of the chapter before
talks about prayer and giving and charity.
And the first couple of verses in this
chapter that we're gonna look at, it talks
about prayer and giving in charity.
And it's an interesting
dynamic in the Quran in terms of just
how it is that the entire text
has a linearity to it that sometimes we're
not so familiar with. And the nuance doesn't
get lost in translation
but you got to spend time just thinking
on it, reflecting on it, contemplating.
Because we're used to a linearity of here's
a book, it's got a chapter, a beginning,
middle, and end to it, right? That's how
a story is told to us. The nonlinearity
of the Quran
from kind of a bird's eye view is
something that as you get accustomed to it,
you can actually see that there's so many
real unique dynamics that go in that you
can just kind of take more and more
and more from it.
I wanted us to look at this set
of verses.
It
says the first verse
of the 23rd chapter.
Indeed
the
people of Iman, the people
of faith, they have succeeded.
Falah
in Arabic
is also
a word for farmer.
And if you think about the relationship
between
success,
which means
Falah in Arabic,
and a farmer
which also has success.
In a spiritual sense,
success is something
that everybody wants fundamentally,
right? You don't wake up in the morning
saying I really hope I failed today, right?
Hopefully.
You didn't say I'm gonna get into this
relationship with this person because I really wanna
screw it up.
You're not in a place where the idea
is that I don't want to succeed, but
you want to have success in certain things.
The Quran is giving an understanding of success
not attached to something
materialistic or just worldly,
but is giving a sense of success to
things that exist
materialistically
in the physical sense, metaphysically,
as well as in an otherworldly sense.
But the relationship
between the farmer and success is something that's
important because if you have any experience farming
has anybody here ever farmed before?
Yeah. Yeah. What did you farm?
I just grew up in Vermont, and so
we had got new gardens.
Great. I've spent time on farms. Yeah.
So can you think out, like, how does
it work when you're farming?
Like, what makes farming successful? How are you
a successful farmer?
Patience.
My was, like, pay pay attention to the
weather, the time of the year,
planning ahead,
you know, from your crops last year,
you know, looking you know, saving your seeds,
proper storage,
water, sunlight,
protection.
You know, if you have seedlings, you know,
covering them up to a certain degree until
they're strong enough to live on their own.
I'm I'm really inclined to think of the
biota and intercropping. Right? What goes well together?
Yeah. And so they can support each plants
that support each other. There's a lot. Right?
It's not you just throw some seeds in
the ground. You're like, hey. Look. We got
corn. You know?
Yeah. It's a beautiful.
Right. And you get and you gotta think
about this. So the same way the farmer
is literally
taking to the soil,
breaking into it,
introducing into it what's necessary
for the harvest to grow.
That same parallel
is in relation to the heart that is
within your chest.
And the opportunity to engage in a way
that allows for it to really bear what
are things of growth and positivity
necessitate understanding
this parable that's there and why success is
something
that
is related
in this way to a farmer when you're
talking about it in the spiritual sense or
metaphysical sense. It's not something that just happens.
Like, it takes a little bit of effort
to go into it.
And you're in a place where the process
in and of itself
is going to yield you
what it is that is the outcome. So
what you put into it is going to
play a role in what you get out
of it. Does that make sense?
The next verse that he's talking about, which
is the crux of what we want to
talk about today, it says, those who have
this in their prayer, the hushur,
right? And it gets translated
as humility. It gets translated
as reverence. It gets translated
as presence, all kinds of things. We'll talk
about that in a bit.
But
it's an inward aspect
of the prayer.
That focus in and of itself
is something
that is easily
removed
as you're gonna get used to the mechanics
of it, the motions, the postures,
Where you can fundamentally
go through it in the physical sense,
but we want to as we're learning the
steps of the physical prayer,
also be in a place where we understand
not just how we pray with our bodies
in Islam, but how do you pray with
your heart?
And how are you in a place where
that inward presence
is not something that is just focused on
later on,
but you're in a place where it's really
seen as a spiritual exercise.
It has
the yield for you
that is going to be again
gaining from it what it is that you're
putting into it. So it's not just about
going through the motions and the postures,
that's definitely a part of it. But understanding
what allows for us to have
the inward elements
and one of the key inward elements
is going to be this thing of kushur.
And we can call it
focus,
we can call it presence,
we can call it humility
we can call it
submissiveness
tranquility,
calm.
All of these things are embodied in this
word.
Does that make sense?
Does it make sense that this is, like,
the state that prayer should enter us into?
Right? There's not words here like anxiety
or agitation.
It's not meant to be a source of
frustration.
And just like any exercise, you're gonna build
a deeper relationship to it.
So we can have this conversation
in a lot of different ways,
and you could think about it for yourself.
Right? When we talked about
the shurut,
the conditions of prayer, outside of prayer, you
know, clean clothes,
being in a state of ritual purity, wudu,
facing towards Mecca,
all of those different things.
You can understand that through the presence of
this actual term
because everything
that you're doing before you get into prayer
is aligning for you now a state of
awareness
that says, hey. I'm about to pray.
Am I wearing, like, the proper clothes? Is
there anything filthy on what it is that
I'm wearing? Do I have wudu or do
I not have wudu? Am I facing towards
Mecca? Am I not facing towards Mecca? It's
a checklist that's getting you acclimated
that you can do pretty easily
as you get into a routine
or you're taking a breath in between each
step and you're thinking about it very thoughtfully
in a way that it's still part of
the spiritual exercise
and it's getting my mind and my heart
focused
as organs of cognition
to be ready to pray the prayer
not just with the presence of my physical
self but with the presence of my inward
self.
The part that I wanna focus on for
today
is understanding
the focus
that we can build
through
to our prayer,
to the salah, the daily prayer,
by
one specific thing,
understanding,
like, the meaning
of what it is that we're saying.
Right?
Why is that an important thing, you think?
How does that relate to focus?
You can take a quick minute and just
turn to the person next to you. Why
would knowing the meaning of what we're saying
be an avenue to increasing
in focus
in the prayer or in any of these
kinds of things that are related to kushur?
And I'm not saying the translation,
I'm saying, like, knowing the meaning behind the
words. If you can just turn to the
person next to you or around you, just
talk it out. What's the relationship between these
things?
Okay.
So what's the connection there between
focus and knowing the meaning of things?
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. What else?
Yeah. A concern, like, you know, the fact
that we receive the same things so many
times,
Any other thoughts?
Just think about it. Right? Like, right now,
all of you
are seemingly
paying attention to what I'm saying. You might
not be,
but it's like seemingly you're paying attention.
In the course of any conversation that you
have,
whether that's between you and another person, like
you both were just talking to each other
in pairs, maybe 3 of you at a
time, 4 of you at a time. But
what is necessary
for you to be able to communicate effectively?
What are, like, some necessary things for that
communication
to actually be able
to have impact on everybody
being a part of the conversation.
That's what it is. And what else? Yeah.
Next or what you're gonna listen to. Okay.
But think about it more simply. Don't think
about it so deeply.
Right? I'm not saying be be idiots, but,
like, for a minute, just think the most
obvious thing. The definition of words, not from
the same language. Yeah. Right?
If you all didn't speak the same language
to each other, you couldn't
be attentive to what was going on.
Right?
It becomes necessary
for even this conversation.
The only reason that you
can pay attention
fully to what I'm saying
is that you understand what it is that
I'm saying.
Right? What if I was speaking a language
that you did not understand what I was
saying?
I would have a hard time following. And
then what would happen?
Okay. Right? And that's the experience
for a ton of people who convert to
Islam.
Many Muslim communities are structured
off of
similar sociological tendencies
as other communities.
Even people who are born into it to
a certain extent
get to a place where
the local
space is more homogeneous in terms of shared
culture, shared race, shared class,
and where and how it becomes
a problem
where you fundamentally
walk in
Friday afternoon
and the sermon is literally in a language
that you just don't understand.
It's like, well, what do I do? Similar
to you walk into a gathering, everybody's speaking
a language. I don't speak that language.
You know?
We had a young woman who came to
our Friday prayer a few weeks ago
from Switzerland.
Her name is Cindy.
And Cindy said, I've been listening to your
Islamic Center's podcast for years.
And she said, even on Fridays, I just
listen to what you all do here.
And she said, in Switzerland,
there's
no
mosque that speaks in other than Turkish and
in Arabic.
And I said, well, where do you go?
And she said, I don't go anywhere. And
I was like, well, where do English speakers
go? Or, you know, she might speak French
or German. She's like, there's nobody that speaks
those languages
in these mosques.
It's not that it has to be
always a both and. Right? Like, my great
great great grandfather,
if he was Muslim, he probably didn't speak
English
and he would need a space that resonated
with him
and understood kinda his upbringing
and socialization,
etcetera.
When you talk about 2,000,000,000 people from all
over the world,
at some level, what connects us is not
going to always be these types of things.
But on a practical level,
it would be really hard. Right?
And this is why
when we go, like, a few months from
now, we're talking more about
who the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,
was and what his teachings were. He has
narrations that are rooted just simply in mindfulness
and etiquette
to the extent that we're taught in the
prophetic tradition
that if there's 3 people
that are together,
like, 2 people shouldn't be speaking a language
that the 3rd person doesn't understand.
It just creates, like, potential for a lot
of inward conundrum there. Right? Because I don't
know what you're saying when I don't speak
the language that you speak. If there's 3
that have a shared language, you know, and
it goes in either direction. Do you get
what I mean? But for this conversation, just
think about it for yourself now. Right?
I'm in a place
where
I can't understand
the words that come from you
if I literally don't understand the words.
And where and how we can now be
something that the recitation of the Quran
when it's recited properly, it's beautiful.
You don't necessarily have to know what the
words mean. You can just be compelled by
the sound.
But what if you're praying on your own?
You're trying to learn the prayer for the
first time.
You are praying with people but it's a
silent prayer.
Do you get what I mean?
One of the avenues, not the only avenue,
is going to be for us to be
able to start to understand together
what is the meaning of some of what
it is that we are saying when we
recite
the words that we're reciting in the Quran.
And so the first thing that we're gonna
look at is the first chapter of the
Quran
that
in the Hanafi school
which is the legal school of thought that
we've been looking at and if it's your
first time here and you don't know what
I'm talking about, don't worry, we can catch
you up.
The recitation of the first chapter of the
Quran
is seen as a necessary
action, not an obligatory
action.
Meaning, if you remember when you were praying
as
a Muslim, whether you
became Muslim 5 minutes ago or 50 years
ago,
if you are post pubescent, you are an
adult,
and you have converted to Islam,
the prayer is obligatory
upon you after you've converted.
But in the Hanafi school,
what are the obligatory parts to the prayer
that can be performed in that way should
you have a legally viable excuse,
which being a new Muslim
or someone who's finding their relationship to faith
again at a later time. You don't know
how to pray. It doesn't download automatically
in its most complete form into your head.
And there's no expectation that when you convert,
you've studied Islam prior to your conversion.
That the mandatory parts of the prayer
are inclusive of just reciting
in the standing of the prayer
like, the shortest
verse
in the Quran is sufficient,
which is thumanadir.
That's all you'd have to say and then
just go from the standing, the bowing,
the prostrating,
and the final sitting. Like, you remember when
we talked about these things? Right?
But a necessary act and what we wanna
start with and in other schools of thought
becomes also an incumbent act is this recitation
of the first chapter.
And we wanna get to the depth of
its meaning
because it's a beautiful chapter in the Quran.
It's got so much that's in there.
I don't want you to just learn the
translation,
which is helpful. It's not that it's not
helpful.
But even in the translation of things,
like, we know the meanings of things through
the names of things.
So the way I could say marker to
you,
everybody knows what a marker is. Right? We
have a common definition across everyone in the
room. The same way all of us know
what a laptop is. None of us are
gonna be confused
if somebody says,
point to Khaled's laptop.
Everybody knows it. Just like, you know, livestream,
you know the word phone.
But if I said, what does love mean
to you?
Everybody probably wouldn't have a common definition.
We all know the word,
but the meaning of the word
might not necessarily be so concrete.
If I said forgiveness to you,
if I said good to you, if
I said
kindness, compassion,
sincerity,
integrity,
the way somebody taught you 2 +2 equals
4 very concretely,
like with some of these other words, you
have awareness of them, but there's an ambiguity
to it
that doesn't then allow for us to understand
its meaning to its depth.
Do you get what I mean?
So we wanna not just know the translation
of words, we wanna know what the meaning
of words are. The second goal to this
is that we start memorizing it so you
can start to say it in your prayer.
Right? Because what we had said was
doing the obligatory
acts
of the prayer
is also with the understanding that you're reasonably,
like, learning
the necessary acts, the wajibat,
and then after that,
the recommended acts.
People remember this?
Yeah.
Great. So we're gonna start by looking at
the first chapter which is called Fateha
which literally means the opening.
And people wanna open that up in their
whatever translations they have. And the books that
you have are yours. We also have stacks
of them here so everybody can have them,
and we have more of these inside.
So you don't have to share. You could
keep them with you. Right?
So that first verse
that says all praise, does somebody wanna read
that?
Yeah. Go ahead.
The first one? Mhmm.
With the name of Allah, The
first
one?
Mhmm. With the name of Allah, the most
gracious, the most ever merciful, I Keep going.
All type of perfect and true praise belongs
to Allah alone. The Lord of the worlds,
the most gracious gracious to ever merciful. K.
You can pause. So that's the verse we're
gonna look at.
All praise is to Allah,
the Lord of the worlds. Does anybody's translation
say anything different?
What does it say?
Great. So
we're not gonna talk about the basmalah
today, which is in the name of God,
the most merciful, the most compassionate,
or what precedes that that's called the where
you seek refuge
with God from Satan.
We're gonna talk about the Fatiha first for
the next few weeks, and then we'll go
back to what the meaning is
of those other two things.
So the verse we're gonna look at is
the one that says, all praises to God,
the Lord of the worlds.
Has anybody ever read a different translation
of
that first chapter
or heard it differently?
You have a different one? No. This was
the third
one.
I'm gonna write in a transliteration.
So Alhamdu,
can everybody see that?
Say yes. Can you see it?
Like, can you see it well? So
Al
Hamdu,
this means
the praise
in that first word. Right?
Then it says, lil
lahiil
is for Allah.
So what they're translating is all praise is
for Allah.
So what I'd like for us to do
is practice saying this also. So if you
can repeat after me,
Alhamdu.
Alhamdu.
Lillahi.
Lillahi.
Alhamdu.
And then we'll do the second part of
the verse, right? Have you ever heard a
Muslim person say, Alhamdulillah?
Like if you ask them, how are you?'
They say, Alhamdulillah,
right? Has anybody ever heard someone say that
before? Yeah, great.
That's the same word
as the beginning of Fatiha.
So a good number of you already know
it
and they translate it as
all praise
is
for Allah.
We want to break it down so you
know the meaning of what you're saying so
we can help to increase in this focus,
this mindfulness.
And hamd is an interesting word
that often gets translated
as praise,
but in Arabic,
the actual word for praise
is,
mud,
which means
kinda like to glorify, to praise, to commend
these kinds of things. Right? When you eulogize
someone, it's got this root also. Because in
a eulogy,
you're not, like, saying bad things about someone
unless you're, like, a horrible human being. And
they ask you to talk about someone when
they're dead, and you wouldn't typically say bad
things. You'd say nice things about them. Right?
Sometimes
people also
think about this not in terms of praise,
but in thanks.
And in Arabic,
the word for thanks
is shukr.
What's the difference between praise and thanks?
If you just talk to the person next
to you for 2 minutes, what's the difference
between praise and thanks?
Go ahead.
In English, what's the difference between praise and
thanks? Yeah.
Okay. So what's some of the difference between
praise and thanks? It's like thanks. It's like
a Yeah. Sorry. We're talking, like, I think
praise means to, like, compliment
somebody and, like, thanks is, like, you show
gratitude
for an action that they did for you.
Okay.
Yeah.
We were talking about how,
pray like,
thanks is simply associated with the transaction,
whereas
praise,
can occur
without a transaction
preceding it.
That we're
someone brought up a car. Right? If if
you see a flat car, you
you praise to the car,
but if you drive the car, you can
be thankful that you drove the car.
Yeah. Amazing.
Yeah. Yeah. I'd say similar to that sound.
We had some,
like,
getting more nuanced with it, but praise sometimes
can be more of a one way thing,
where things,
tends to be more of
a we have a response to something.
Yeah. But not always. Right? And just you
wanna be able to distinguish because we become
subservient to language.
Right? So Giuseppe walked in and I said,
hey, it's a nice shirt. It is a
nice shirt. Everyone else is also dressed very
nice even if I didn't say it to
you, your clothes look nice. Right, Ochelle? You
know? But
I said to him, hey. That's a nice
shirt. Right?
He didn't walk in and I didn't say
to him, thank you for the nice shirt.
Right? It wouldn't make sense,
you know?
And there's a distinction there that's
covering everything that what you're saying.
It's a proactive,
not a reactive.
Also, I do think it's a nice shirt.
Right?
But I could have thought it was an
ugly shirt.
And I could have still been like, hey,
man. Nice shirt.
Right?
And I could have said it sarcastically.
I could have said it condescendingly
or, you know, I want Giuseppe to be
my friend
because I heard Giuseppe buys his friends nice
things.
So I said, hey. Nice shirt.
Really not with the air of praise, but
with an air of
let me, like, benefit
from my new friend who I think is
wearing an ugly shirt. Right? Do you get
what I'm saying? You had something to say?
Oh, yeah. Well, we were just talking about
praise and thanks as as verbs
and and so I use word praiseworthy.
Uh-huh. And that got me thinking, you can
thank someone who is praiseworthy.
If someone is praiseworthy, they would be worthy
of thanks.
But if someone is not praiseworthy,
they're typically not worthy of thanks,
I guess.
Do you think are they? Could they could
they be? It's more of a question. It
doesn't put out there to the room. You
can praise someone, and it has nothing to
do with thanking them for anything. And you
could thank someone
who's not a praiseworthy,
like, individual.
Right? You know? Like, you could have professors
who are at a university. You could have
employers.
Right? You could have students in your class,
right, that you really don't like.
And it doesn't mean that they've never done
something for you
that you can say thank you to them
for. Do you know what I mean? A
person could be a horrible human being.
Right? We are blessed with having an amazing
building staff in this building. Right? May Allah
increase them and reward them for their efforts.
Say they weren't nice people, they still vacuum
the floor that you're sitting in right now.
So you could say thank you for vacuuming
the floor without
praising them for anything. Do you see what
I mean? There's a distinction there. Right?
In the word Alhamdu,
there is both
praise and thanks
simultaneously.
Right? And we just talked about a whole
different bunch of ways as to how these
two words are different from each other.
They're not the same thing, praise and thanks.
And when you're saying Alhamdu,
you're
saying praise and thanks
simultaneously.
You're not saying praise and thanks
separately.
It's praise and thanks simultaneously.
And now what was just brought up, which
is really important,
is understanding this grammatically.
And
I'm assuming everybody speaks English in the room
because we were all talking to each other
in English. Right?
We might not necessarily
speak English in ways that are kinda mindful
of, you know, just kinda
how
English flows as a language grammatically.
But from a grammar standpoint,
Alhamdu
is not a verb.
It's a
noun.
Makes sense?
Everybody know the difference between a verb and
a noun? Right? What's the difference?
What's the difference?
Noun is not connected with time.
A noun is not connected with time? Yeah.
Great. What else? Noun is that person's place
a thing and a verb is an action.
Great. Yeah. Why is that relevant to this
conversation? What do you think?
When you're saying
Alhamdu. It's a static in this form. It's,
like,
constant.
Yeah. It can't change basically. Because it's not
requiring
anyone to act
on the praise.
Right? There's no actor.
Like, you praise God. I praise God. We
praise God. That's not what it's saying.
And when you think about it in that
way,
the act, if it's rooted now
attached to a specific time frame, the way
a verb is.
It means that it also is something
that can have a limit to it in
some capacity.
That it was done yesterday,
but doesn't mean it's gonna be done today.
Or I might do it tomorrow,
doesn't mean that it was done in the
past.
This word
is giving an indication
that praise and thanks,
and we're gonna talk about it, is
for Allah,
Definitively
without interruption,
it's just a constant
that
God doesn't need you to praise Him is
what the Quran is saying.
Does that make sense?
If we were to separate these into 2
different words, if we said
and shook,
right? Because you can still say that and
say it
The challenge that would come in by separating
these into 2 terms. Like, remember when for
those of you who are here, we looked
at the verse
that
gives us the basis for how we make
wudu.
Right? Remember?
And it talks about the different
obligatory parts of wudu
in sequential order.
Right?
So everything save the mouth and the nose
is mentioned in that verse. You don't have
to remember the specifics.
But
what's
giving us an indication
through the verse is that you're washing
the face,
you're washing the arms, you're wiping the head,
you're washing the feet
like a separate actions.
And so here, if they were to be
separated,
it would give an understanding
that maybe sometimes you would praise and sometimes
you would think.
But Alhamdu
is saying you're doing all of it together.
And if you were to do this form
of praise,
or potentially
even to a certain extent,
give like gratitude or appreciation,
this doesn't necessarily on its own
denote
that there's an actual genuineness to it.
Right?
Like, I could tell my brother Giuseppe,
hey, man. Nice shirt.
Like I said,
but in that, I'd be like, man, that's
a ugly looking shirt. Right?
Is the words manifesting,
but it's not genuine? Do Do you get
what I
mean? When you say
it's,
understanding
that it's just, like, real.
Does that make sense? Yeah. So now when
you're saying, it's
not just
praise, which is not a word we use
like in our common jargon. Right? Thank you
for praising my cooking today. You know? I'm
glad you enjoyed it. Right? Somebody tells you
the food you made was good. You don't
talk to them like that. Do you know
what I mean? They might have praised you,
but you still are gonna be in a
place where you're thinking about it limited to
the language that you use regularly.
So
is giving us a sense
that this is something that's happening simultaneously.
We wanna know that it's a noun, not
a verb. And what does that mean in
terms of the continuity
of it, you know, etcetera?
And then just in the interest of time,
we'll go to.
Right?
So the lam in the front
is
translated as 4.
And so this is saying
for
Allah.
Allah is the proper name of god
in
Islam.
So the way you have a name,
Allah is the name of god in Islam.
The Meccan society
had the conceptualization
of a theology
that also
had
a polytheistic
undertone to it. Islam is a monotheistic religion.
And amongst
the gods that they
had,
they also had a god
that
they named Allah.
So from a language standpoint,
the name in and of itself
wasn't something that was unique, but the essence
of who God was
is different
from the Islamic theology to the Meccan theology.
And we can talk about who Allah is.
If you remember, like, months ago, we broke
down the chapter called Ikhlas,
Sincerity,
that gives a good base
of the theology of Islam. Right? Our understanding
of God and Islam is a negative knowledge,
not pessimistic,
but we know who God is by knowing
who he is not. Because there's a verse
in the Quran that says,
there's not anything that's like a likeness to
god. So anything you would understand god to
be, you know that he is other than
that. Alhamdulillah
is
very particular
in giving an indication
by word
certain things.
This could have said
anything.
Right? Like
the words prior to it says, in the
name of Allah, the merciful, the compassionate.
The verse after this one also says, the
merciful, the compassionate,
Ar Rahman, Ar Raheem.
You might have heard other divine names that
Allah names himself through in the Quran.
Al Malik.
Right? When we say Malik e omidine, the
master of the day of judgment, so many
other things.
One of the reasons as to why this
specifically
says Allah
is because
the understanding
is that all praise
is uniquely for Allah.
And if we were to replace that with
any of the divine names that we were
taught,
Ar
Rahman, the Most Merciful,
Al Latif,
the Most Kind, Al Wadud, the Source of
Love.
One could then make an argument saying that,
well, the praise is only because of that
one unique quality of God.
You understand?
Does that make sense?
But what we're saying is that
God is worthy of praise
because
of who God is
in his essence
of everything that we know and everything we
don't know.
It's not limited based off of
any one of the divine names of god
that we have been taught
or that we,
are in a place
where,
we might
necessarily,
you know, think of when we think of
the divine, like, you could believe that God
is the creator of everything,
but you might not believe that God is
the most merciful,
you know. You could believe that God is
the most merciful,
but it doesn't mean that you might believe
that god is the source of your provision
and the one who gives you everything you
sustained are sustained with.
So all of that is embodied here.
Also,
this is to render, like, no confusion whatsoever
because this is the name of god,
Allah.
Right? So if
somebody said,
like,
hey, go there.
If I said, everybody get up and go
there.
Like,
where where is there? Do you know?
But if I said, everyone go to Danesh.
Right? Raise your hand in case people don't
know. There's Danesh. Right?
We know Danesh through his name.
There's no confusion then. There's no ambiguity.
There's no way to mince it in other
words.
We're not talking about
any other conceptualization
of God.
We're not in a place where
we are
identifying.
Right? This is in real time to people
who have the theology
and they're being told that
this is
a praise that is only
for
him
and him alone
and built into it
is then the understanding
logically
that not only is Allah the one that
is worthy of this praise,
but nobody else is worthy of this praise.
You see?
Does that make sense?
So it's saying anything else that you might
claim to deify in some capacity,
only
the one god, Allah,
is worthy of Alhamd.
Nothing else
is worthy of this kind of praise. Does
that make sense?
And when you're saying
that's what you're saying
in the prayer.
Do you see how it's different
from all praise
is
to
Allah, the lord of the worlds?
Right?
Because now you can start to really break
it down. What am I praising and thanking
God for?
Who is God to me?
Who do I understand him to be?
And as we go through the rest of
it, we'll kind of break it down a
little bit more. Did everybody follow what I
was saying here?
Does it confuse anybody?
Right? So all I want you to do
between this week and next week, so I'm
like, oh,
is just memorize
this word.
That's all you gotta memorize.
Right?
It's the first part
of the first verse of Surah Fatiha.
If you can memorize the whole first verse,
including
that would be great. But just this part,
Does it make sense?
Yeah. So,
to be
You would say it
in the Hanafi
school. You don't have to say it.
It's not an obligatory
act. You weren't here for those sessions.
Right? I'm down for a second. Yeah. No.
It's good. I'm glad I'm glad you you're
down, man. That's good. It works out well
then. You know?
But in the
in the
in the beginning
of each cycle of prayer,
you're going to
include in each cycle of prayer the recitation
of Fatiha. That's the goal. The whole thing.
The whole thing. Not Yeah. In every prayer,
in every cycle of prayer, in the 5
daily prayers,
this is gonna be recited.
That's, like, the end goal. So what we
had discussed
were
in there's obligatory
acts
and there are necessary
acts,
and then there are recommended acts.
This is essentially like the skeleton
of the prayer.
If you leave this out, there's no prayer.
And in terms of recitation
in this bucket, in the Hanafi school, which
is what we're studying,
you only have to, in the standing
of the prayer,
recite, like, some short verse of the Quran.
Does that make sense? Which doesn't require you
to recite Fateha.
The recitation of Fateha
comes in here,
and this essentially is, like, where you're adding
flesh to the body.
And then the recommended acts, which is the
end, like, goal for us, is, like, what
kind of beautifies,
like, the body in its entirety. Does that
make sense?
But we wanna start to actually learn this
and memorize it.
Okay. So what we also wanna do is
start to get in a relationship now. We'd
like learning some of the letters. And,
again, we're learning
this so that we can deepen in this,
the focus.
And we'll continue to talk about elements of,
like, which
are gonna be about dealing with distractions, for
example. Right? Making sure, like, the environment you're
praying in kinda makes sense. It's not about
kinda being in a place where there's no
noise around you. Because when you're taught to
lead the prayer, you're the imam of the
prayer, the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,
for example,
like, he could hear
the cry of a baby in the prayer
and he would shorten the prayer because he
didn't wanna cause difficulty for the mother. Right?
You can't
hear the prayer
in the prayer if you're not, like, hearing
things around you. Right? You're not in this
kinda, like, Jedi Zen moment where all of
your senses just get shut down. But if
anything, they're more kinda
accentuated
when you're in a state of focus, you
know? Or when you make a mistake in
prayer, for example, someone's leading the prayer,
what you're taught is to listen for the
person behind you if they correct you or
mistake in recitation.
Or say, like, you are bowing,
but you're supposed to be prostrating,
or instead of, like, kneeling, you're supposed to
stand,
somebody behind you will say
You have to be able to hear them
say that in order for you to then
remedy the mistake. Right? So that's not what
focus is. We'll continue to talk about it,
but we want to start with, like, the
meaning. Right? The same way we said, a
key part in being able to maintain focus
even in this room, when you're discussing with
each other, is that you have to understand
the words that are coming out of your
mouths. Right?
And if somebody start to speak in a
language that you just fundamentally didn't understand,
which is different from, again, hearing the recitation.
You know? But we're talking about in those
moments where you want to add to the
depth of it, and we can, like, break
it down a little bit. We'll go at
a quicker pace when we go next week,
and probably try to go through the first
few verses of Fateha.
But, again, just try to memorize that.
Okay.
So we're gonna do the first four letters
of the Arabic alphabet
just by a show of hands,
who has, like, some familiarity
with the Arabic alphabet?
Great. So if I'm making mistakes, you can
correct me,
but don't be mean about it or I
won't let you back in ever again.
So when you study Arabic as a language
written, you know, like that yeah. This is
not it's not democracy, guys.
It's not. Yeah.
So you wanna conceptualize
letters in relation just to a line.
Right? And there's gonna be some letters that
exist above the line,
some letters that kind of have portions below
the line, etcetera.
Okay?
So
we're gonna start with the first letter of
the Arabic alphabet which is an alif
and it's just a straight line.
Does that make sense? You said that's a
letter? Yeah. That line is a letter,
and it makes it, like, a a sound,
and we'll go through the pronunciations.
Every letter
has a beginning,
middle,
and end form to it,
and some letters
will connect only from one side. So Arabic
as a language
is written from right to left,
not left to right.
Right? Some of our teachers, they say, you
know, it's right to left because it's bringing
it closer, like, to your heart. Right? It's
giving kind of the
indication towards some of the some of that
movement is going in the direction of your
heart, not away from your heart.
Yeah?
So
alif,
it only connects from the right. So when
it's in the beginning of the word, it
maintains
its form
above the line.
And when we do a few more letters,
you'll kinda get what I'm saying. Right?
In the middle,
because it connects only from the left,
from the right, sorry,
it's gonna go like this, and then the
end is gonna also look like that, straight
line.
The way alif is pronounced
and every letter is pronounced,
it's gonna have
a combination
generally of 3 sounds,
an a, e, or oh sound. Right? So
the alif, the a
is going to be similar to the letter
a in English.
Right? So if you repeat after me, it's
gonna be a a,
I, u.
Right? Pretty simple. Right?
Yeah? Any questions on that?
Great.
So we're gonna do that for a few
letters.
The next letter, if we put the line,
is called the ba.
The ba is gonna look like a little
boat.
It's gonna have a dot underneath it.
It's kinda like the English letter b.
The other letters are not going to line
up
in the same order.
The next letter does not sound like a
c.
Ba maintains
part of its shape.
The 2 hooks on the top are referred
to often as teeth
and it's
identified through the one dot that exists below
it.
Makes sense so far?
So in the beginning,
ba connects
and it's going to have its dot.
In the middle,
it keeps its tooth
and one dot,
and at the end,
it keeps its whole form and a dot.
Makes sense?
Yeah?
Yeah.
Yeah. For the middle, is it not under
the tooth, or is it under the Yeah.
It's under the tooth, kinda. Yeah.
Yeah.
What does that look like in a word?
I'm sorry. It's kinda hard for you to
I'm gonna show you. Right. So now we
have two letters. Right?
Okay?
So if we had ba in the beginning
and alif,
this means door in Arabic,
bab.
Right? So
the ba is in the first position
and the alif is in the middle
and it doesn't connect
from
the
left hand side, so the ba comes out.
Does that make sense?
A word can show up
in any language,
either it's the first letter in the word,
the last letter in the word, or it's
somewhere in the middle of the word.
Right? So the letter is gonna either look
like this if it's the first letter, it's
gonna look like this if it's one of
the letters in the middle of the word,
and this is gonna look like this if
it's at the end of the word.
Make sense? Yes. Yeah.
So if we were to have Anif in
the front
and then 2 guys,
they would it would look like that.
You see? What you're gonna do between this
week and next week is make, like,
nonsense words with all the letters. You can
put every letter in every position,
get a notebook with lined paper, and just
get used to writing the letters, right, again
and again so that you can see how
they connect and build a relationship with just
reading it. It'll work. Don't worry. Yeah.
It's been 6 minutes since you've been exposed
to these things.
You gotta just go at a pace that
makes sense. Right? And we're gonna start somewhere
so that we can end somewhere else. Do
you know what I mean?
Right?
The next two letters we're gonna look at,
they follow the same
breakdown. So ba is gonna be ba b
boo.
You repeat after me. Ba.
Ba. B.
B. B. B. B.
Yeah. Simple. Right?
Okay.
So on the front, it keeps 1 tooth,
in the middle,
it's gonna have 2 teeth,
and in the end,
it's gonna
sorry. In the middle, it's gonna have 1
tooth, and in the end, it's gonna have
2 teeth.
So if we were to put some arrows,
right, this one,
you can make just like a straight line
going down
or up.
Make sense?
Here, you're gonna go this way
and then this way,
and then here you're gonna also go this
way and then this way.
With the ba,
you're gonna have
an arrow
that goes like that.
Makes sense? It's like a elongated u.
Yeah.
Same here. You're gonna go up
and then you're gonna go down and you
put the dot.
You're gonna go up
and you're gonna do the