Khalid Latif – Perfecting Your Prayer Essentials of Salah (Hanafi) #04
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AI: Transcript ©
Well, we're gonna take a pause on it.
Not maybe entirely depending on how kind of
the course of the session goes today,
because I wanted us to focus on something
that
is relevant to prayer also.
But in particular,
seasonally,
we're in a time of the calendar year,
where people go to make the pilgrimage to
Mecca. The major pilgrimage is called the Hajj.
And Sunni Islam
is one of the 5 pillars of Islam.
It's considered an obligation,
and there's gonna be a lot of different
things relevant to
this time of the year.
Here's a major holiday that'll happen next week.
There's some other
very,
specific practices, etcetera.
So if you are coming to the class
around Ramadan time, and we talked about the
holiday that took place after Ramadan,
So I wanted to give a overview of
it in that regard as well.
And then we'll go
into some of the Arabic letters again, and
people have been practicing that.
So we can start,
moving forward on just, like, the reading
and writing capacity.
And then at the end, if there's time,
we'll jump back into Fatiha.
So the Islamic calendar,
is
a little bit different from the Gregorian calendar.
If I also sound
more monotonous than I usually do,
it's because I just got off of a
plane. I was in Portland yesterday and flew
out this morning
at around 6 o'clock in the morning,
and then landed in JFK.
And if you ever come from JFK back
to Manhattan in the middle of the day,
it's not the most fun thing to do
in the world.
So that's kinda where I'm at right now.
So I apologize for that.
The month on the Islamic calendar that we're
in is called Dhul Hijjah
And it's the last
month on the Islamic
calendar.
The next month, to give you an idea
that we'll talk about also in the coming
weeks, is called Muharram.
This is the 1st month on the Islamic
calendar.
So we're looking at the last month on
the calendar.
So I
go, did you just wake up? Yeah. You
look like you're so peaceful over there. I
don't want to disturb
Yeah. I was waiting for class.
Great.
So this is the last month on the
Islamic calendar.
And
in
this month,
especially in the 1st
3rd of the month, there's a lot that
goes into
particular practices,
rituals,
rights.
The most
kind of well known one
is what's called in Arabic
Hajj
And this is essentially a pilgrimage to Mecca,
that Muslims are required
to do at least once in their life.
Is they have the means to do so.
And the means to do so
is not just limited to financial means, but
also
capacity.
Say I'm the caretaker
of,
you know, a sick parent,
and I have the money to go for
Hajj, but there'd be nobody to look after
my
sick mother or sick father if I was
to go. Right? I have a baby that
isn't
able to go, a newborn. Right? I'm a
recently,
you know,
pregnant woman who just delivered. There's a lot
of scenarios
that means can kind of extend
beyond
just, financial capacity, but financial capacity
is a part of it.
And one of the things that's gonna come
up in the course of a lot of
this is gonna be how
a lot of these rituals in the month
of Dhul Hijjah
revolve around the idea
of
sacrifice.
Has anybody ever seen pictures of Hajj?
Right? You see, like, the Kaaba and Mecca.
People are kind of dressed in very similar
clothing, etcetera.
So people have been leaving
for the Hajj pilgrimage
from about a week ago, if not longer.
Some people from different parts of the world
will go, like, multiple weeks in advance, even
months in advance. But what's happening is millions
of people from all over the world,
they're converging on the city of Mecca,
and so just logistically, it necessitates
people
arriving,
as well as departing
in a systematic way,
cause there's no way that everybody could land
on the same day. Right? Let alone thinking
about just the traffic flow of individuals getting
to hotels, getting to different areas. It's a
really beautiful
experience.
Maybe
in a couple weeks, we can look at
pictures and things.
The AV in both of these rooms is
getting redone right now.
Otherwise, we'd show you a bunch of stuff
around it. But it's one of the main
rituals within Islam, like you have to do
Hajj if you have the capacity or the
means to do so.
I went in 2,005
for the first time. I was 22 years
old.
And in 2019, I went for a second
time where we took a group of people
from the Islamic Center,
and then COVID hit.
And then last year, the Saudi government changed
the rules
in terms of groups being able to go
from the United States and Canada,
they essentially nationalize the entire process,
and
people now have to go through the Saudi
Ministry of Hajj
in order to
apply
and perform and get selected for the Hajj.
And we'll talk about all of that, But
Hudge is one of the things.
None of us are on Hudge right now,
right? We're all here. So we don't have
to go into in too much detail.
It's not one of those things that you
have to know
the how to's
unless you're actually doing it, right? That's the
way
Islam
functions
on a practice level. So, you know, whether
you're exploring Islam, you're a recent convert to
Islam, you,
you know, are born into it and you're
trying to reconnect to different levels,
things are not obligatory
upon you. So it's an obligation
to go,
if you have the means to go, but
you're not obligated
to know how to do it
unless you're going to do it. Does that
make sense?
And if you're never in the category of
people who are required to go, so you
just never have the financial means or capacity
to go, then you're not obligated to know
something
just because it's an obligation.
You're obligated to know it if it's obligatory
upon you.
Do you see the difference?
Right? And why that's important is because you
might meet Muslims,
right? Who they were born into Islam or
even if they're converted to Islam
and they're gonna just start piling information,
you know, like do's and don'ts,
this and that. It might not all be
applicable
or relevant
in the kind of stage that you're in
right now. So just because it's the time
of Hajj,
doesn't mean that you're supposed to just learn
everything around
Hajj as a requirement.
And that there's somehow inadequacy or deficiency in
your practice
if you don't know the rulings relevant to
something,
because that's not how Islam functions on a
practice level. You're only required to know it
when it becomes required for you to actually
perform it.
Does that make sense?
Yeah?
Okay.
So
what is gonna come from here also are
a few other things that I'm gonna write.
There's a holiday that's going to come.
It's called Eid al Adha and
a part of this holiday
has a practice that's called the Udhia.
Some people will also call this Korbani.
After Ramadan, we have a holiday that's called
the Eid al Fitr.
Right?
And some of you were here when we
celebrated it.
Eid al Adha and Eid al Fitr
are both holidays
that are celebrated
after
a period of time in which
people who are Muslim
engage in a lot
of,
deep religious practice. So Eid ul Fitr is
a holiday that comes after a month of
fasting,
Right? And within that, people are giving charity,
people are standing into the night in prayer,
and at the culmination of it, there's going
to be
this holiday that takes place.
And similar to Eid ul Adha,
at Eid ul Fitr, you have
the charity that's given
that serves two roles, right? It's called the
Zakatul Fitr
that serves as a remedy for any deficiencies
in your practice in Ramadan,
but also as a mechanism through which those
who don't have so much, they're now given
financial capacity to also celebrate the holiday,
right?
The
has that same concept and
is on the 10th day
of Dhul
Hijjah.
And the month of Dhul Hijjah started
on Monday.
So today is the 3rd day of Dhul
Hijjah.
How it's relevant or similar to Ramadan
in some capacity,
is that the entire first 10 days of
this month of Dhul Hijjah
are days that
are considered to be deeply auspicious
and sacred.
So there's a chapter
in the Quran is called,
the dawn.
And in that,
Allah takes oath
by
these 10 days.
Right? In Islam as a religion,
individual
is only allowed to swear by God if
they swear by anything.
But God is the creator of all things,
is able
to take oath by his creation,
and what
the commentators
of the Quran says that when God has
taken an oath
by something in his creation, he's giving an
indication
that it's something that's really important.
And there's a lot of meanings and lessons
that are drawn
from the oaths
in relation to the chapter that follows it.
There's usually a commonality that's there.
So in this chapter, this called Al Fajr,
The second thing that God takes oath by,
that Allah takes oath by, he says,
and Ashar
by 10 nights. And what they say is
that those 10 nights are in reference to
these first 10 days of Dhur Hijjah.
And
they're said to be the 10 days that
are the most sacred days.
And good actions,
doing good works
are more emphasized to be done in these
10 days.
So the same way Ramadan
has 30 days
of fasting
that's obligatory
for people who have the capacity to fast.
It's got charities that are recommended, that are
obligated,
unique prayers that are recommended,
all of those things. And at the culmination
of it, you have this holiday.
Within
these days of Dhul Hijjah, you have 9
days that
also have recommended
practices to them.
And at the end of those 9 days,
there's this holiday
that brings in
that social cohesion practice the way in Ramadan
you give a charity at the end of
the month so that people in need can
celebrate. And
the end of these 10 days following the
Eid prayer,
there's this thing that's called the Udhiya Durkurbani.
That's a ritual sacrifice,
in commemoration
of the Abrahamic narrative
where the prophet Abraham, peace be upon him,
is commanded to
sacrifice his son. In the Islamic
narrative,
it's his son Ishmael.
Ishmael
in the Judeo Christian narrative,
it's said to be is hawk Isaac.
But it's a very similar narrative.
There are differences in it that we could
talk about, but
the is a commemoration of that. That Abraham
is asked to or commanded to sacrifice his
son.
And in this ultimate sense of sacrifice
where he moves forward to do it,
Allah sends
a ram down
in place of his son, and then the
ram is sacrificed.
And so what Muslims do around the world
is they perform this Udhiya,
and they distribute the meat
to people in need,
so that they're able to have access to
that. One share of a Udhiya,
you know, it depends.
If you could slaughter a camel, you could
slaughter a cow, you could slaughter a goat
or a ram or a lamb or a
sheep,
right? In that order of like what is
best
to what is like least meritorious,
not kind of hierarchically, but why a camel
was better at quote unquote is because the
most expensive and it produces the most meat,
right? And then you trickle it down to
the last animal which is a sheep. The
sheep is much smaller than a camel. Do
you know? But more or less, what you're
gonna find on average is that when somebody
does this,
it's gonna help feed up to 5 to
10 families.
I've done a lot of work
in refugee camps and conflict zones. Some of
you have probably seen photos when I've come
back from trips. I was just in Turkey
and you know, the devastation there and all
these kinds of things.
I went to Myanmar twice,
once right after Idil Adha
in 2018,
and once right before Eid al Adha in
2019.
If you're not familiar with the situation Myanmar,
they experiencing genocide
there. Right? The Rohingya community
is being targeted
and
go into, you know, stories in detail. But,
the second time I went, I met a
woman
who to not give too much,
at this time,
and I might talk about her on Friday
at our Friday sermon.
But she asked me to pray with her,
and we prayed for her husband who she
witnessed
soldiers kill
in front of her along with one of
her children
before they assaulted her. And we prayed for
her 2 remaining children, 1 years old and
3 years old, that she walked for 20
days with
fleeing soldiers who chased her through the hills
of her country.
And we prayed for
her countrymen who she said the pathways that
she walked on were just littered with the
corpses of people who were Rohingya.
Right? We prayed for
people who when she got to Bangladesh where
the refugee camps were set up,
gathered money together
because when you're a refugee in this camp,
you're essentially
entitled to a free tent and housing,
and an official who is at the gate
didn't let this woman and her children in,
who had walked for 20 days fleeing violence,
unless they paid her Paid him,
800 taqa, which is like the equivalent of
8 American dollars.
She doesn't have anything. She's fleeing violence, and
so she stayed in a dilapidated
school,
under the rain, all alone. And the villagers
who didn't have so much gathered their money
together so that she could pay this man
his bribe to get
a tent
that was supposed to be hers for free
to begin with.
And she said let's pray for these people
who gave me the money even when they
didn't have anything.
And then we prayed for people,
she said specifically,
always let people know who have contributed,
volunteered, helped support,
but let us remember that we're not forgotten,
The people would notice what we're going through.
We made a special prayer for them.
And at the end of it, I asked
her, is there anything you would like?
Like anything I could help you with?
And she said,
we've been eating the same rice every day,
3 times a day for the last 10
months.
And e this coming. This holiday is coming.
And she said, all I wanna do is
give my kids something different to eat.
Maybe give them some meat.
And every part of me was about to
be like, I'm gonna bring you anything you
want.
And one of the relief agencies I was
with pulled me outside and they said,
don't promise her anything
because we don't know if we're gonna even
have something to give to her.
People back home, they might not do what
they're supposed
to do. You get what I mean?
So there's real tangible people on the other
end of this. Right?
And what Islam is a tradition
seeks to inculcate within the individual practitioner
is that
the world is much bigger than you.
Where and how all of this is rooted
in idea of sacrifice
is that it's not about it being a
matter of convenience,
right? People will literally have nothing to eat
or their life is set up very differently.
The entire Hajj journey for example,
which a lot of Muslims don't really do
in its own accord
is not meant to
be something that is when
you have a matter of convenience. You're retired.
It's when you have the means to do
so.
2 of my friends
who,
I think CBS or NBC did
a story on.
One played for the Kansas City Chiefs, the
other played for the Vikings.
Khamsin Hussain Abdullah, they're NFL players, right? People
watch football.
They play in the NFL.
And I don't know if any of you
ever played sports in your life. Right? And
when you're a little kid, you know, if
you thought you were really good and everyone
who played sports one day said,
my dream is to play professionally. They actually
were playing
professional football
in the National Football League
for really good teams. The Vikings and the
Chiefs.
Right? Hussein Abdullah,
you could look him up on YouTube. He
has a crazy
pick 6 interception that he runs back for
a touchdown.
They're both really great guys.
They made the difficult
decision. It wasn't easy
to take an entire season off
so that they could fulfill the Hajj.
And when you play at that level,
you risk the idea
is that
if you take the year off, somebody might
not invite you back. They were good enough
to play in the league,
but they're not like
the best of the best in that sense,
right? Like Michael Jordan,
he can leave the bulls and go play
baseball
for a year and a half, and people
will say, oh, he just took an 18
month vacation, and then they're gonna bring him
back to play. Right? That's not how it
works for most people.
These guys went
knowing what they potentially were sacrificing.
When they came back,
Hussein
got a contract offer,
Hamza did
not.
But the whole idea is that you're doing
it in the frame of sacrifice.
Right? Abraham is willing to literally sacrifice his
kid.
When you go for Hajj,
you see people like this. When I went
in 2,005,
there's millions of people pre COVID going for
Hajj.
And the way that
they
are
moving is like literally on top of each
other. People are very close to one another.
And if you've ever seen
what's called the Kaaba,
the black cube
that is in Mecca,
Part of the ritual is that you're
walking around it in circles. It's called Tawaf
in Arabic. We'll talk about in a little
bit.
When you have millions of people doing this,
everyone's on top of each other. And from
where I was standing,
I could see gaps
in the holes in the in the tawaf.
It didn't make any sense to me. And
when I got closer to where the gaps
were, they weren't actually gaps,
but there were women who were performing
the toawaf
who didn't have the capacity to stand.
So they were doing it crawling on their
knees.
And not only were they crawling on their
knees, they had their infant children strapped to
their backs as they were doing it because
they literally packed up everything
to make a once in a lifetime journey
that is the Hajj.
They're not coming from the middle of Manhattan.
They're coming from other countries in different parts
of the world,
but they recognize
what it means to do it once you
have the means to do so. Do you
get what I mean?
And the notion within this isn't
about
anything other than how am I getting closer
to God to it?
In the Quran when this is described, right?
So in Arabic,
the word Udhiya
comes from the word Duha. This is another
chapter in the Quran.
It says by
the morning light. So why this Udhiya, this
sacrifice is called this, is because you do
this in the morning time, right after the
Eid prayer.
Korbani
is also Arabic, it's got cognates in Urdu
and Hindi,
it's got the word Kareeb in it.
Right? So the idea is that through this,
you're getting closer to God, right? That's what
Kareeb means, right? If I said that, you
know,
this is close to me, right? I'd use
that word like an actual proximity.
Do you know what I'm saying? Right? So
that's what the base of this is, but
it's being done in a place where
there's kind of a a sense of it's
not about, like, the ease and convenience of
it. Do you know?
And it's embedded in the Abraham narrative within
the Islamic tradition
that the prophet Abraham,
he gets visions
that are repetitive
of this.
And his son, Ishmael,
in the Islamic tradition now comes and asks
him, what's going on with you?
And the prophet Abraham tells him what's happening
and he doesn't know what to do. There's
a sense of kinda, you know,
what direction do I go in? He loves
his son.
And his son is the one that says
to him, if God is telling you to
do something, then you should do
it. And it gives him that affirmation
that he needs,
and this is where then the ram is
sent down.
What the Quran says about this as a
practice
is that it's not a practice that's about
the slaughter,
right? It's a means to give people in
need
like
food. That's like a primary goal.
There's also understanding that the companions of the
prophet, they would keep some for themselves.
They would give some to their neighbors whether
their neighbors were Muslim or not.
There was a companion by the name of
Abdullah bin Amr bin Al As when he
would go to the person that was carving
up the meat, he would say break it
into thirds,
and the 1st third he would say give
it to my Jewish neighbor.
But
here, a big part of it still though
is to give it to people who don't
have anything,
right?
And so in that sense of an Abrahamic
narrative,
it's built upon this idea
of that kind of struggle.
Like, that's what the Hajj is. It's not,
hey, everything else is done. I raised my
kids, I retired,
and now I'm gonna go because I got
nothing else to do.
But it's in the sense of, hey,
what really am I choosing between here?
And what's gonna demonstrate
a choice that is in the direction of
what God is asking me to do
versus what it is that I just feel
or I think I should do. Right?
That's why the chapter of the Quran that
we've been memorizing and looking at Surafatih is
important to understand
because
it's really easy to get lost
when you haven't consciously formulated an understanding of
who God is to you fundamentally
or who is
God telling us he is through the Quran
and through the prophetic tradition?
Then it can just be about do's and
don'ts, rights and wrongs. And what the Quran
says
is that the sacrifice has nothing to do
with the actual animal
in terms of God, because God is the
creator of the animal to begin with. Right?
Just like it says in the chapter we
were looking at the last few weeks, that
we're memorizing for the necessary actions of our
prayer, Alhamdulillahi
rabbilahalameen,
that God is the Lord of all of
the worlds. Right?
So what the Quran says is that it's
not like the flesh of this animal, the
blood of this animal, any of that stuff
that's going to God.
But what the verse says is that it's
about the taqwa, the piety of the person.
That their consciousness,
their awareness
that is essentially a mindfulness rooted in an
ethical imperative
is not morally relative, but it's relative to
a God centricity.
Right? God is asking me to do it.
That's why I'm gonna get it done. And
the two things go hand in hand. Do
you know? Whether we think about
women like the woman I told you about,
the Rohingya refugee,
who, like, literally, like, what is her life?
What has she witnessed and seen?
And this isn't somebody who's trying to manipulate
something. She fled genocide
and she's sitting in a tent that isn't
even bigger than the corner of that room
with her 2 remaining children.
I'm gonna ask her what do you want.
She's still thinking about somebody else. I just
want my kids to eat something other than
this rice that we've been eating for the
last almost year of our lives. Right?
And it can't be
that we get to a place where this
is not a religion that's about egocentricity.
So it's telling you think bigger than yourselves
even if empathy is the only thing
that you can use because there's no way
you can relate experientially to what somebody is
going through that has survived genocide unless you
are a genocide survivor yourself.
And that there's a person on the other
end that's gonna actually benefit from this. And
a lot of Islamic ritual
is rooted in this idea that it's not
just about me. It's about so much bigger
than me. Does that make sense?
Yeah. So what's gonna happen
on the 10th day of Dhul Hijjah
is
people who are not on Hajj,
they're going to similar to after Ramadan.
There's going to be a unique prayer that
has a sermon attached to it.
The prayer precedes the sermon,
and these are days that you'll see a
lot of people
engaged in the recitation
of Takabir saying, Allahu Akbar.
You know,
Tahmid saying, Alhamdulillah.
Right? Like the first word of Surah Fatiha.
But the idea is that their days of
glorifying God
and connecting to God, days of remembrance of
God.
It's a holiday,
so
where and how, like we would love for
you all to join us here.
And you can come on Wednesday.
We'll start at like 8 o'clock in Washington
Square Park. How many of you were here
with us
or went to any Eid gathering after Ramadan?
Not even just in New York, like anywhere
in the world.
Yeah. Great. Right. So it's similar.
Right? Like conceptually, it's going to be very
similar.
You're going to wear like nice clothes.
Do you know?
Be in a place where you go for
prayers,
like,
hang out with friends, loved ones.
People will celebrate it culturally in different ways
and it's very beautiful
like our gathering here because our community is
so diverse. You just see people come
in everything that makes them uniquely who it
is that they are.
We'll have a brunch afterwards and then bunch
of other programs that'll happen.
But it's a day to like give gifts,
to just be with friends and others,
and that's the 10th
of Dhul Hijjah,
Eid Al Adha.
Any questions on that
before we kind of go into a couple
of other things?
I like them.
So the day before it so for us,
this is next Wednesday.
So the day before it
is called
the day
of
Arafa.
And this is the 9th
of Dhul Hijjah.
This is a clarification point on the Ud
here.
You don't have to, like, slaughter the animal
yourself.
Right? And it's important to know, I think
I might have said this to you all
but maybe to reiterate it, we had a
young woman in our community who was a
new convert. She had converted
shortly before Eid al Adha. It's her first
holiday as a Muslim
and she was super excited talking to me.
I'm gonna celebrate
with my bosom brothers and sisters, etcetera etcetera.
And then I saw her like a week
later, and she looked really sad, and I
said, what's going on? She said, I looked
up how we celebrate this holiday, and it
said that I gotta sacrifice a goat, and
she said, I don't even know where to
buy a goat, and do I kill this
thing in my apartment?
And she said, I live in a studio,
like, what am I gonna do?
I was like, no, man. Don't don't buy
it. Don't
if anyone tells you, they'll sell you a
goat. It's the last person you should talk
to in your life.
But don't kill anything in your apartment. Also,
you can just have
like, you can pay to have this done.
It doesn't have to be done in a
locale.
It can be done anywhere.
We're running a campaign online
that I think tomorrow we'll send out an
email about.
We're doing a toy drive also. There's a
nurse in our community
who some years ago started,
something that she calls caregiver.
Means, good
in Arabic
and in other languages.
So as a nurse, she sees a lot
of different people who are in positions of
need. So in Ramadan, her month of fasting,
she started a program
to bring
meals for people to break their fast and
the meal before they start their fast, who
are in the hospital with like terminally ill
children.
You know, because they're still fasting, right?
And for this Eve,
she started to bring toys to children who
are hospitalized
because they're still
celebrating a holiday.
And since she started, this is the 8th
year they're doing it. They now do these
toy drives,
in 25 states in the country.
It's really remarkable,
and I think tonight,
there'll be an email going out
about the toy drive and tomorrow about the.
The,
like, you could do for
$75
depending on what country you do it in.
And the more expensive ones are $350.
Not because of just like the animal but
the country that they're in. Right? So
for example,
I think in Mali, it'll be $75.
But if you were to do I think
in Syria, it's $350.
Right? Because
Syria is just a big mess politically,
you know, socially, and may God make things
easy for them there.
But,
you don't have to go buy an animal
and kill it. Right? Well, this is so
we're all on the same page.
Don't do that. If you want to go
perform the slaughtering,
which is something that you can do, what
a person would do is after the day
of Eid,
after the Eid prayer,
they would go to like a farm,
and there's places you can do that
in upstate New York, in Trenton, New Jersey,
in Philadelphia.
I've done it before.
The first time I did it, I was
I think 18 or 19.
I went with my brother and my dad,
and
the animal,
like,
you know, started to kick me and I
said, this is not gonna really be fun
at all. So, yeah, it's what you would
expect it to be if you were trying
to slaughter an animal.
So if that's not your thing, then probably
don't do that.
But you should try to do this.
There are some opinions that say it's an
obligation
to do And the Hanafi School, which is
the school we've been looking at for the
prayer, they say it's a Wajib, like it's
something that's lesser than a Fardhan obligation,
but more than
a
emphatic
recommendation,
a.
And then others would say it's just recommended
to do. Yeah.
So,
is it something
dua or swel you have to say before
you're doing that? Before you do the slaughter?
Yeah. Yeah. So what happens,
the Islamic slaughtering practice,
is called the Dibha.
Right? It also say the Bija.
Like, everyone in New York knows the word
halal because there's street carts, sometimes 2 of
them on every corner, Let alone one on
every corner.
And so there's different opinions on what constitutes
Halal
food.
Pork is categorically prohibited,
and byproducts of pork are categorically prohibited.
Alcohol, for example, also is categorically prohibited.
You would have, like, the carcass of an
animal, you couldn't eat, other things like that.
But in terms of the slaughtering process,
what the Quranic verse says is to not
eat other
do not eat,
of the thing. Essentially, what it says is
that it's had other than the name of
God proclaimed over it.
Right? And so
the method of the slaughter
is done by hand
with a sharpened blade,
and,
it cuts across either at a horizontal,
some people would say a vertical suffices,
but goes across forming arteries in the jugular
that yields immediate cessation of feeling. Right? It's
a very
kinda humane practice
of the practice of a slaughter.
And at the time of the slaughter,
the prayer that is uttered says, Bismillah Allahu
Akbar.
It doesn't say Bismillahir
Rahmanir Rahim,
right, which is the Basmala,
and we read the verse in Fatiha Ar
Rahmanir
because you're still like slaughtering an animal. Right?
And so you could see what the challenge
would be that when you're taking an animal's
life, that you would also be invoking God
from the standpoint of mercy and compassion.
So you're in the name of God, God
is most great, it goes at the jugular,
and that's kind of the prayer and the
method of doing it. When you're slaughtering an
animal,
it's not meant to be slaughtered in front
of other animals.
There's a lot of understanding that the animal
has a right over you.
It's treated with care. It's treated with dignity.
This is also supposed to not be an
animal that has any defects to it in
particular
that you wouldn't slaughter an animal that you
wouldn't eat yourself when you're giving it to
someone in need. Right? So if an animal
doesn't have a hoof for example,
it's got some kind of challenge or issue.
It's supposed to be like the best
kinda well aged, you know, kinda
animal when it's being done for the for
the in
particular.
And,
yeah, I mean, so essentially, that's what it
is.
Yeah. It's supposed to have the intention
of the person's name along with it. Yeah.
There's some concessions that are made when you're
thinking about this now globally happening with 2,000,000,000
people.
If, you know, a percentage of them are
engaged in it because they have the financial
means to do it, as well as, you
know, 1,000,000 on Hajj that are doing this.
But it should be done with the name
of the person involved,
when you're doing the slaughtering itself. Yeah. But
when you pay to have it done online,
you're gonna give your name, etcetera.
And this is where the different opinions are
that each person who has the financial means
would do it individually for themselves,
or,
you know, you could do one on behalf
of an entire family or entire household.
Right?
And there's kinda evidences for both. So there's
a prophetic narration where the prophet says, if
you didn't do the Udhiya, like, you're not
intending to do it, don't even come to,
like, the Eid prayer. There's a hadith that
says. Right? And it doesn't mean, like, you
shouldn't come to the Eid prayer, but it's
highlighting the significance
of it. Right? That
this is something you should do. But the
prophet also finished in the Eid prayer, and
there was was 2 animals brought to him
that he slaughtered,
and he did one on behalf of himself
and one on behalf of all those who
didn't have the means to do it themselves.
And so people say,
from that, you could do something with the
intention
of doing it for more than one person.
You know, you do it for your family.
But like you wanna give something. Right? These
two things go hand in hand,
and it's to me like a very beautiful
part of Islam that when I was looking
at trying to understand religion for myself
and looking at various religious communities, spiritual traditions.
The idea of like social equity in Islam
was really powerful.
And you don't have like holidays
without they're being built into the holiday.
A practice that says, make sure everybody gets
to celebrate the holiday. Right? It's not just
about you, it's about everybody involved.
Right?
Okay.
So the day before Eid is called the
day of Arafa.
This is the 9th of Dhul Hijjah. So
for us, this is gonna be next Tuesday
this year.
It's not always on a Tuesday or a
Wednesday. It's just this year. This will be
Tuesday next week
and Wednesday next week. Right?
The day of Arafah
is said to be the most auspicious
day in the Muslim calendar.
On Hajj, what's happening is that all of
the Hajj pilgrims,
they're standing at a place called the plain
of Adafah.
And what they do
is they'll pray the 2 middle prayers of
the day, Lohr and Asr together.
And then they just find a spot on
this plane and all they do is they
make Dua, they pray to God, they supplicate
to God.
It's called the Arafa.
In Arabic,
there are different ways to say the word
no.
Right? So knowledge,
concrete knowledge
is called the elim
in Arabic.
Right? So if I say
2 plus 2 equals 4,
you might know that concretely. Right? Let's not
use all of you. Let's use my 7
year old. I go to my 7 year
old, hey man, do you understand
that 2 times 2 equals 4? And you
say, yes, Baba. Like I know 2 times
2 equals 4.
And if I say
and that's elam, that's knowledge.
And if I say, show me you understand
it.
Like show me you comprehend it.
And if he can show me, he comprehends
it, and he has comprehension
and understanding,
that's called Fehm.
It's different from Elim. Like you could know
something, but they had no idea like what
it is. Right? Do you know what I
mean? But if you get it, that's called
Fahm.
There's a verse in the Quran
that says, oh mankind,
we made you from a male and a
female into nations and tribes so that you
might know one another.
And the knowing that it talks about
is rooted in this kind of knowing. It
says
Right? So you can hear the same letters.
Right?
That's an intimate knowing.
It's an
experiential knowledge.
It's an acquaintanceship.
And the day of Arafah
is
essentially about
a Islamic
concept that's called, Ma'arifah.
That's like a knowing of God, but an
intimate knowing of God. Do you know what
I mean?
And on the day of Adafah, it's just
you standing talking to God.
Like the way you would talk to somebody
for hours.
You know, if you've ever had that kind
of relationship with anybody, and all you wanna
do is just talk to them. You're just
standing and you're just talking to God
engaged, and there's millions of people.
We're gonna be there on the plane of
out of, they're just pouring their hearts out
on everything
that is going on inside of them.
So
what we would do
who are not on Hajj
is it's a day that is highly recommended
to fast.
So if you have the physical capacity to
fast,
then you should fast on the day of
Arafah.
So if you're adult, meaning post pubescent,
you're Muslim, you're sane, it's not an obligation.
And the same
rules apply,
A
menstruating woman would not fast
just like she wouldn't fast in Ramadan.
If you're ill, you're sick, whether that's kind
of chronic or something that is just kind
of momentary,
you know, you wouldn't do that.
But
the rest of us would be fasting, right?
If you're also a little kid, right? You
don't have fast. You know what I mean?
And the fast is the same, you should
take a meal before
the time of fudger,
pre dawn meal.
If you don't take that meal, it doesn't
mean that you did something wrong. You could
still fast.
We're gonna have a meal
to break fast on here,
on that Tuesday night that you all should
come to.
And prior to, at like 6 or 6:30,
we'll have
like a talk, but also we'll get people
together and make like a communal dua, communal
prayer.
Because that's like what out of us about.
It's a day that is the day that
is, like, very recommended to also
just do what's called du'a, like engage in
supplication.
Doesn't have to be in Arabic, can mean
any language. This is you talking to God
and anybody can do it. Right? Regardless, you
don't need to have wudu, you don't have
to be like sitting in a mosque, you
don't have to be a quote unquote religious
figure.
Everybody
is entitled to talk to God.
The day of Arafah is the most important
day
on the Islamic calendar
that you want to,
make a note of it
and kind of engage it in that way.
Yeah.
So I was gonna ask you. You said
the out of so like you said, when
people suffocate,
you're getting to know God. Right? So
I'm trying to understand, like, you know, the
relationship of, like, me talking to God and
that somehow I'm getting to know God through
that.
So could you, like, explain that?
Because if you're gonna ask of anybody, like,
who else would you ask of? Do you
know? So if you said to me, like,
Khaled, can I have something from you? I
like you. I'll be like, yeah. Sure. Here
you go, man. Right? But there's an understanding
that you might ask of me something because
we've known each other for so long that
you might not ask of somebody else sitting
in the room that you've never met before.
Simply off of the variable
of like intimacy.
Right? Not just awareness
because each one of us knows that the
rest of us is sitting in this room.
Do you know what I mean? Right? You
all have
consciousness of that.
But there's not an intimate understanding
that would allow for me to engage you
in that way.
And on the day of Arafah, what's happening
is we're just working our way backwards through
the days and I'll tell you what's happening
with the other parts for people who are
on Hajj.
All these people will have been in Mecca
for some time.
They'll Some of them have performed a smaller
pilgrimage during that time is called the Umrah.
They're getting acquainted and leaving like the remnants
of the rest of things that are worldly,
and it's allowing for like a more focused
standpoint.
So in Ramadan, for example, at the end
of the month, you remember we talked about
a night that was called Laylatul Qadr, the
night of power, the night of destiny.
All these other spiritual vehicles arguably are getting
you ready
for these last 10 nights of Ramadan. The
fast isn't about an empty stomach, it's about
a full heart, right? You're nourishing
like celestial parts of yourself.
Gaining in awareness and consciousness,
you know? And you can see beyond the
physicality of it, people start to have a
transformative
understanding of themselves
and are able to do different things that
they can't do during the rest of the
year.
Or not that they can't do, but they're
not necessarily
aware that they are able to do it.
It's the same idea. You're building up to
this day of out of.
Right? There's 9 days
before the day of
Eid. And so it's not in a vacuum.
Other things are happening at that time. And
now you're in this place that has a
lot
of blessing to it.
Everybody around you is doing the same thing.
This is why the fasting in these 9
days of Dhur Hijjah are a little tougher
than in Ramadan
because in Ramadan,
1, like all the people in a non
Muslim world in New York City, like, everybody
knows this Ramadan for the most part. Do
you know what I mean? Most people are
gonna have no idea. They're like, you're fasting
again? What's wrong with you? Like, you don't
fast now, you fast in Ramadan.
Right? So it just creates different challenges.
But now, when you're on the plane of
Arafah, you're also dressed like everybody else.
Like everybody's there for the same purpose.
Right? It's creating like a group
kinda cohesiveness that also just yields a different
type of focus and attentiveness.
Do you get what I mean? And that's
where now the opportunity
for you to not
like build intimacy,
but to recognize
what was always there to begin with. Right?
The Muslim poet, Rumi, he says,
your goal is to not seek out love,
to seek out beauty.
Your goal is to simply find
all those things that you have built within
yourself
that
make it hard for you to see it.
You know? Because like Allah is always there
to begin with. What gets in the way?
Do you know what I mean? And in
that place, on the day of Adafah,
the
pilgrims,
it's just that much more apparent.
Right? It's undeniable.
You see?
And when you go and you experience it,
it's one of those things that you have
to, like, go through in order to understand.
Do you know?
To that to that extent. But for us
here, it's a fasting day. So you should
try to fast on that day.
The Udhiya
is performed
after the Eid prayer on 10th
and and can also be done on the
11th 12th of the Hejia.
And some people would even allow for it
to be done on 13th.
You can pay to have it done before,
which you should,
but say you missed it or you forgot,
you should still try to give
on one of these other days because it'll
still be distributed to people. Right? Arguably
through 13th.
So this is the 9th of Lulhijah.
And then what happens for the rest of
us,
you're gonna have
from the first
till the 8th
of the Lhijjah
are these remaining
kinda
meritorious
blessed days.
Right? If you have the ability to fast,
like it's recommended to fast. It's a recommendation.
It's not an obligation.
You give
acts of charity.
You're helping people. Volunteerism.
These days to do good things.
The assumption embedded within this,
is that there are days to do good
things.
So by principle of logic,
it's also days that you don't want to
do things that are not good.
Especially on the day of Arafa,
as well as on the day of 8th.
The minimum understanding of things is like you
wanna fulfill your obligations.
And for some people, it's a little bit
tougher than others. Right? But these are not
days that you want to like miss
your 5 daily prayers. These are not days
that you want to willfully engage
in gossiping or backbiting. It's not days to
like lie and cheat
and do things that are
all year round problematic,
but you're creating a consciousness
like a certain sense of awareness to yourself.
So how did they do this on Hajj?
Is everybody okay so far? I know I'm
saying a lot of different things.
Any questions?
Yeah. Nobody can be tired
because I just flew from Portland, Oregon to
be here, and none of you came from
Oregon.
Went on the crazy plane ride that I
just went
Did you find a good halal restaurant over
there? Oh, man. I was so tired.
As you know, because like, I don't know
if it's gonna be. I'm old, but
I I so I'll give you an example.
Right? I went to Portland,
and I left my house yesterday.
My flight was at 6 something in the
morning, you know?
And
I flew
and I've didn't really like realize. I had
a layover in Salt Lake City
for 2 hours and then got to Portland.
And then when I got to Portland, even
though I left my house at 6, and
I've been on Blaine for now 8 or
9 hours to get there, It was still
only like 11 o'clock in the morning in
Portland. Right?
And then sunset is much later than here.
So when I left from here, I was
like, oh, I'll just fast,
you know. But
with a combination of everything,
I would have broken my fast past midnight
in New York City. Do you know? Plus,
like, the combination of, like, flights and dehydration
and whatever else.
And I'm an idiot. Right? So I don't
really always take good care of myself. So
I hadn't really planned in advance. Had I
thought about it more so,
I would have probably, like, done more in
terms of just drinking,
like, water
before
dawn, etcetera.
So I didn't fast yesterday. Right?
It's not a problem. That's why I'm saying,
like, there's situations that might come up. You
don't wanna
get so kind of embedded in the idea
that if it's not done, it's the worst
thing in the world.
It's still just a recommended fast. And even
in Ramadan,
when you're traveling, it's one of the things
that if you can fast, you should.
But if you're not able to, traveling becomes
like a reason for an exemption to it.
Does that make sense? Yeah. So
really quickly, what I'm gonna run you through
is what would happen for the people who
are on Hajj.
So on the 8th of Dhul Hijjah,
what's happening is
all of the pilgrims,
they go to a place called Mina.
So prior to it, you have Muslims from
all over the world who are coming and
like literally
taking everything. When I went
for Umrah, Umrah is a smaller pilgrimage. It
could be done in like 3 days. The
Hajj is done over multiple days.
My friends and I went about
in June of last year.
And Hajj is
last year was 11 days later
than what it is now.
Does that make sense? So it's 11 days
earlier every year. So you can do the
math. Right? It would have been in July.
So we're there late May, early June, and
we walked into the mosque, and there is,
some Indonesian
people in the mosque, and they had asked
us, you know, where are we from? We
said, we're from America.
They said, oh, how was it for you
getting here? And we said it was super
easy. You know, we filled out forms online,
got our visa, health insurance, all this kind
of stuff,
booked our own hotels. It took us like
20 minutes.
Then we said to this elderly Indonesian man,
how is it for you?
And he said, it was so easy. He
said, I applied 11 years ago for the
lottery to go for Hajj.
And this year my name actually came up.
Right?
And
for the purpose of what we're talking about,
it was
a month
and a half before this.
That he had gotten there to be ready
for this.
You see?
That's when people start to come
to get ready
for what's gonna be taking place
4 or 5 weeks later. You know, 6
weeks later. Right? As soon as you have
the means, means very much what that means.
Does that make sense?
So they're all coming,
they've come from everywhere, they're getting settled in.
And then on the 8th of the
which for us is gonna be Monday next
week,
people start to go and settle into Mina.
Mina is like this tent city
that
if you walk through it, it's really remarkable
as people settle in.
Especially
after the day of Eid, which I'll talk
about when we get to the 10th of
the Uzza.
But all they're gonna do on that first
day is
just pray their prayers in the tent.
There's a lot of time that you now
are more conscious of when you're on this
journey.
One, because of the sheer number of people.
If you're in a bus or you're walking
on foot,
everything just takes hours to do even short
distances
because there's so many people.
People typically in MENA
will
be
with other friends, family members, people of their
own country.
The way that the tent city is built
is based off the country you get your
visa from.
There'll be people who are giving like talks,
religious guidance,
you know, these kinds of things.
And what happens in this is that
people
have,
prior to, entered into what's called
E Haram. It's got the words like the
letters that are the same as Haram in
it, right?
If you've ever seen the pilgrims like pictures,
men are all dressed in white like 2
piece towels.
Women, their ehram is their regular clothes but
quite often they're also wearing like white or
you know black but it's really whatever their
clothes are. This essentially
is
not just clothing, but it's a state of
being. It's a mindset.
And what this means is that you're essentially
entering into a state where what is permissible
is now impermissible.
So they're not
cutting their nails. They're not
like grooming themselves in any way. You
can't
consciously or unconsciously be like, you know, pulling
on hair off of your face, taking eyebrows
out, right? It's also a time when you're
not wearing
any scented deodorants,
perfumes,
soaps.
You can take a shower in the sense
of like water
but no shampoos,
nothing of that nature.
And that's gonna last
until after the sacrifice on the day of
eve is done.
So for a good two and a half
days,
people are in this state.
It's also about being in a place where
you're not yelling, fighting, getting frustrated.
But the whole idea is that you are
realizing
that you are in control of you.
So you are choosing your choices. It's not
your emotions that are choosing your choices,
Right? You are
very purposely
in a place of
presence
and awareness
that the state brings you in.
You don't do this, like, when you're not
on a hudge.
Does that make sense? So what people would
do is prior into entering the state,
there are,
take like a shower in which you would
use soap and all these kinds of things.
Right? Put on perfumes and whatever else.
Groom,
get ready,
you know, because you're now dressing essentially to
be with God.
Right? And so you want to get yourself
as ready as best as you can. But
once you're in this state,
like, you're in this for a few days
on Hajj. On the Umrah, you're in it
just for the duration of the umrah.
Yeah. Go ahead. Sorry. When I did umrah
last year in December, they said you can
use
You can use unscented things.
Yeah. And if you find stuff that's unscented,
that's fine.
But you can't use things with scent on
them. Right?
But the idea is that what's permissible is
being made impermissible. So normally,
you could use these things but in this
state, you can't.
On the 8th of Lo Dejejo when you're
going in Mina,
people are in this state now. And what
they're doing in Mina is they're praying their
prayers. They're kinda getting acclimated
to it.
Then, what happens on 9th
of the Lhijah
is you go
to Arafa.
So following the Fajr prayer
of 9th in Mina,
people set out to the plain of Arafa
and they're gonna pray, Dohar and Asr there.
And then from there,
after,
they're gonna go to a place called
Musdalifa,
the Haggis, the pilgrims, they sleep there overnight.
And they're gathering stones
because one of the rituals that they're gonna
have
in the Abrahamic narrative, right? When the prophet
Abraham
is going to
now slaughter to sacrifice his son
in the Abrahamic narrative.
Shaitan, the devil comes to stop him 3
times. In each time, prophet Abraham throws stones
at him. Right? And the idea
for us to replicate these acts, we're replicating
the acts of Abraham,
his son Ishmael, his wife Hagar,
and embodying those,
through the rights of the Hajj. And so
in Muzdalifa,
you just sleep there and you're also gathering
the stones that you're gonna throw
at these structures that are meant to be
representative
of Shaytan.
Then
from there,
on 10th,
after Fudger,
you're going back to Mina.
You're gonna have like everything we talked about
because the 10th is the day of Eid
also for the Hajjis,
And after
they have, like, slaughtered their animals,
they can shave their they for men, they
would shave their heads. When we would cut
a portion of their hair, you can now
remove a part of your ehram. So you
can put back on your regular clothes.
And what's
really remarkable
is at that point,
when you walk through Mina, this tent city,
it's like very Lord of the Rings esque.
You know, it's like tents are built
just in
1,000. They're built into the mountains.
But as you walk through the tent city,
because it's divided by the country you get
your visa from, you see just how deep
Islam is as a religion.
Because you're in the tents where people are
from the gulf, and men are dressed in
like white robes, women in black, just being
Arabic,
you know, grilled meats, whatever. You go to
the Indonesian, Malaysian tents, there's more color to
their clothes,
language is different,
different spices to the foods, Indian subcontinent,
you know,
the shirts go beneath the knees and not
all the way to the ankles, and there's
more spice and different languages.
African tense, there's a lot of purples and
golds and vibrancy,
also unique languages and foods, and you can
apply pretty much to every country in the
world because there's Muslims in every country in
the world. And as you walk through these
tents, you see that Islam in China looks
Chinese, and Islam
in Sudan looks Sudanese, and Islam in,
you know,
every place like embodies the culture in which
it's attached to.
And what happens for us is we get
people from all of those tents in our
tents,
right? Because America is not
a homogeneous Muslim community.
Black, white, brown, immigrant, indigenous,
converts, children of converts,
people of every class, race, ethnicity.
And when all those people go back to
their countries where they have to figure out
how to make it work and they're very
similar
in those outward senses,
We come here and we have to make
it work and we're all very different.
But you can just see how beautifully deep
Islam is as a religion
walking through this tent. And if you've ever
read, like, the autobiography of Malcolm x, you've
not read it, you've watched, like, the movie
with Denzel Washington.
This is what he's talking about.
Right? He gets to
Mecca,
and he says, I've never seen this in
my life before.
It's not something that he's ever experienced,
especially in a way where there's collegiality
amongst people of difference.
You know, there's a certain connecting point
because what's happening
is not an erasure of identity, but an
embracement of identity.
And the connection is rooted
in this shared aspect of faith.
That God is the creator of all of
us. And when there's a God centric understanding
that we exist in a sphere of interdependence,
and so on that 10th day, there's a
partial removal of the e Haram, and you
just see how beautifully deep Islam is experientially.
You know?
And you're seeing it having experienced this too.
Do you know what I mean? So think
about, like, how different the world is when
you go on vacation,
and you've rested and you're away from like,
annoying people at work and annoying people in
family and annoying people that surround you. Everything
just feels nice and you can like, oh,
the bird sounds so nice as opposed to
like, shut up bird. I need to sleep.
Right?
So it has transformative
experience
inside of you. So you're going through a
spiritually transformational
experience,
and it's not that you get to a
place where
you're seeing something you haven't seen before. Sometimes
that is, but you're seeing it differently. Right?
It means something different to you. Do you
get what I mean?
From here, you're gonna have, like, remaining rituals,
11th and 12th,
13th where people will still stay stationed in
Mina,
and then that wraps up the Hajj.
And,
it's a lot of time
where you're
not just, you know,
kinda taking clothes and, like, medicines, but what
they say,
very consistently regardless of what part of the
world you're coming from, you gotta pack a
lot of patients with you,
because it's just gonna take a while to,
like, get certain things done. It's not complicated
to do. Right? It's an act that every
Muslim has to do if they have the
means to do it.
Things that everybody
has to do
or entitled to have access to
tend to be very simple to do.
Right? But like I said in the beginning
of our class,
you're not required to know how to do
it
until
it's actually
something that you're doing.
So most people, they get very kinda anxious
because they don't know how to do it
unless they're doing it. Do you see what
I mean?
So our hope is that they're kinda going
now back on the decision they made last
year to nationalize the process.
They're letting groups go again. So if that
happens, you know, we'll start taking groups again.
And then maybe we'll all be able to
go together at some point.
But this is kind of what's happening
for the people who are there while we're
here.
Right?
It's really, like, amazing experience to to go
go through.
Okay.
Oh, man. 718.
So quick recap,
right? If you can fast these days, fast.
If you can't, it's okay. The recommended days.
But you wanna try your best. This is
what Yeah. Go ahead. You fast on Arafat,
does that clear your sins for a year?
What the narration say is that the day
of Arafat,
it wipes out sins from the year prior
as well as the year that's forthcoming.
Right? These would constitute, like, minor sins.
Right?
But, like, anything that's getting wiped is good,
you know?
But that's what it is essentially. Right? And
what is like the impact of that like
literal
kind of erasure from records,
you know,
Islamic tradition, theology,
posits that there's 2 angels that sit on
your shoulders, for example, at all times, writing
down your deeds. Right? Good, bad, otherwise.
And so
the idea is that,
from the Hadith, the prophet Muhammad, peace be
upon him, says that on the day of
Adafah, like, fasting Adafah wipes out
the sins from the year prior as well
as, like, forthcoming.
Yeah.
Any other questions? Yeah. You,
you said a point earlier and, I
Not in the Hanafi school. So in the
Hanafi
school, like, the spectrum that's there
has
on one end
and haram on the other.
And in the middle, it's muba, which means
neutral.
And then there's makru,
which is disliked.
And mustahab which is recommended.
And the Hanafi school, this gets broken into
Danzihi
and Taherimi.
And
there
is an added category here of wajib.
And so for something to be far, their
haram, it has to have
definitive text and definitive meaning.
And why in the Hanafi school they add
these categories is because there's a hesitancy to
say something is actually
obligatory or prohibited
unless it's, like, absolutely
understood that way.
So they
put in
and break
into 2 categories.
So
is less obligatory than a but
more so than
something that's recommended
or, you know, like a
emphasized prophetic practice,
where the text,
the meaning
can be somewhat probabilistic.
Does that make sense?
It only applies to the Hanafi School? In
the Hanafi School, there's 7 categories
that actions can be put in. In the
other schools, there's 5.
Yeah. So they
would
be here
than that. And so
the act of
the is a recommended act in the other
three schools.
It's not a Wajib.
Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. Sorry. It doesn't maybe quick. So
the Hajj itself is actually, like, 3 days
technically? Or is it 5 days. 5, 6
days. Yeah. But after 10th,
you can change your clothes Okay. Into, like,
regular clothes. You can start using, like, scented
products again, these kinds of things. Yeah. But
you're still on Hajj at that time.
Yeah.
So quick question. So why don't we go
through Huddl,
like, I guess, a week ago? Yeah. What's
the minimum you can go, like, because of
work and whatnot?
What is there a minimum you can go?
Is there, like, 5, 6 days? Like, logistically,
what will the Saudi government allow for you
to do?
Yeah. I guess what's real. Yeah. What's realistic?
I don't know. I know people who left
today, this morning. Oh, nice.
And they'll come back
on 16th of the.
Right?
So, you know, when we were taking a
trip,
we had a package that was 11 days
long,
I think, but I don't know what it'll
be going forward.
Yeah. They're still trying to, like, work out
the kinks on it and stuff.
Did anybody practice the letters?
The first four letters?
Adafbatatha.
Oh, man. I really wanted to.
You really wanted to.
What does that mean?
Oh, god.
I really wanna write these letters to them.
Man,
I just wanted to.
So try to do it. Right? It's important
because you don't wanna get caught
in us like adding more to it.
And it's
really amazing
when you're actually able to, at the end
of it, go through the process of reading
something on your own.
So those first four letters, let's try to
get those down, and then we'll add more
to it next time.