Khalid Latif – Perfecting Your Prayer Essentials of Salah (Hanafi) #06
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So,
we were in the last
few weeks just breaking down the first chapter
of the Quran,
Surah Fatiha,
in deep detail,
the meaning of it.
Because we were looking essentially at a concept
oh, that's still written here.
It's great that they clean this board.
Called, Khushurah,
which, you know, you can talk about in
terms of humility,
concentration, focus.
But the idea is that within our prayer,
the ritual in and of itself is not
necessarily seen as an ends but it's a
means to something.
And embedded within it are both outward aspects
and inward aspects. So for a lot of
us, especially when you're exploring Islam, you're a
convert to Islam,
if you're coming back to just learning Islam
again,
we're given the black and white and the
do's and don'ts, but not necessarily those inward
parts to it. Right? So you can learn
how to pray with your body, but in
Islam, you're also learning how to pray with
your heart.
Right? There's that inward kinda component to it.
And one of the inward elements or values
is this thing of kushua, which is focus,
concentration.
This is why we went and did a
deep dive of that first chapter
because
in the Hanafi school, which is the legal
school that we've been looking at,
the recitation of the first chapter, Fatihah
in every cycle of prayer is considered a
necessary,
a Wajib act. And today, we're gonna review
some of the stuff that we talked about
last semester but in the context of prayer.
But if you all can continue
to
engage the meaning, not just the translation but
the meaning.
Right? And there's a nuance difference there because
you can translate words and then you're just
playing them in your head, but doesn't mean
that you're extrapolating
meaning from it. If you miss those classes,
they're all recorded, you can go on our
YouTube channel, they're on our podcast,
where we break down what these words mean,
the nuance of them, not using antiquated language.
Just so you can actually
connect at a deeper level as you're reciting
it. Right? The logic being, if I was
speaking to you all in a language right
now, then nobody in the room
knows how to speak. Right?
I don't know what that language would be.
What's like a random language that probably no
one in the room knows how to speak?
Chinese?
Chinese? Does anyone know how to speak Chinese
in the room?
Right.
Do people know the language?
Right? Speaking speaking. I can't speak English. It's
spoken
in the Maldives.
Right?
Probably most of us don't speak it.
If I was speaking to you in Devehi,
after a few minutes, you just wouldn't be
able to pay attention.
Not for any other reason other than
I'm not communicating in a language
that there's comprehension in. And so the ability
to maintain focus
when someone is just throwing random syllables of
sounds
is very reasonable to say it's hard to
pay attention to it. Do you see what
I mean? Right? So you want to engage
the meaning of it and build a relationship
with the meaning of it,
as best as you can. And simultaneously,
you're memorizing
it,
to start reciting it. Right? And we'll review
some of these things today,
but in the obligatory acts
of
the prayer in the Hanafi school,
why
you don't have to, like, pray in a
different language. You can pray in Arabic even
if you don't know Arabic.
In the Hanafi school, all you have to
be able to recite
is
a single
verse of the Quran in your prayer. It
can be any part of the Quran as
an obligation.
Right? So the shortest verse of the Quran
says, So if you just say that, you
fulfill the obligation.
It doesn't mean that that's what you're gonna
do forever, but as you're learning outside of
the prayer,
you're gonna add elements to it, which is
what we're doing in this class over the
summer.
How's it been going for those of you
who have been trying to memorize the first
chapter?
Yeah.
Where are things at right now? How's that
been as a process?
Has anybody done any of it?
Yeah.
What's that been like? Is it hard? Is
it not hard?
It increases your focus in in prayers, especially,
like, the whole dynamic of prayer changes. You
really wanna take your time and
and you you no longer wanna rush the
thought
to really understand the meaning.
Yeah. And that's one of the things, when
you memorize something,
you can just start spinning it out. Do
you know? Like think about things you've memorized
in your life. Do you know what I
mean? Right now, probably if we threw on
something
that you listened to as a child, all
the words would just kind of flow back.
Right? Or when you were in high school
or maybe some of you are in high
school,
or you know, when you were a little
younger, there's something that you just heard constantly
that that was something you knew the words
to like every lyric in it. It just
comes out instantaneously.
It sticks with you. Right? And this is
a challenge with something that has capacity
to be memorized wrotely.
You can get to a place where you
can just spit it out very very easily.
Do you know? If you ever sit down
with people who were of your age demographic
and they can recite to you, like, the
theme songs of every TV show that they
ever watched
from when they were little kids and they
could do it at a super fast speed.
It's because you're just kind of engrossed and
embedded. Right? You don't wanna treat your prayer
in that way. Do you know what I
mean? But as the words become memorized
and they're just there very kinda concretely, wrotely,
it has that capacity. So pondering, reflecting, contemplating,
and taking it at a pace that's reasonable
just adds to the ability to kinda draw
meaning from it. Right?
Anything else coming up for people or any
questions on any of the stuff we've done
so far?
How's everybody doing?
Great. Yeah?
Sounds sounds great. Yeah. Hey, man.
Okay.
So there's gonna be a couple of things
that we're gonna do today,
and a little bit of it's gonna be
review.
So we've gone through,
like, the first chapter, Fateh You want to
give yourself a deadline
that within the next 2 weeks, that's 14
days,
that you should try to memorize that
and also be in a place where you're
spending a little time with it every day
reflecting on its meaning,
you know? So you're taking something from it,
just engaging it and
there are not so many words to it.
So every day, if you're just engaging a
couple of words,
you'll be able to add on to it
slowly.
And 14 days is actually a long time.
And why we want to do that is
because one of the next things we wanna
jump into is learning some of the other
shorter chapters.
Hey, guys.
So that
you can fulfill the rest of that first
unit of prayer,
which requires reciting,
a long verse or a few short verses,
and we'll look at a couple of other
shorter chapters.
Today, what we wanna get into now is
kinda breaking down some of what becomes
the different aspects of the prayer.
And
some of you were here when we did
this, but just to review
everything that goes into
an action
within
Islam is religion can be broken into
a few different categories,
right? They're
all placed into boxes,
that are categorized
in kind of a legalistic
frame.
And that spectrum
is something
that
we'll look at the words in Arabic and
in English.
So, on this end, you have what's called
Farb,
which is obligatory.
These are acts that are required.
They have to be done.
Right?
And the basis of these
are text
and meaning
that are definitive.
Does that make
sense?
So
we have 5 daily prayers in Islam
because there's text
as well as the meaning of text
that is definitive
in the performance of those 5 prayers.
So somebody says, why do Muslims pray 5
times a day?
Why do they fast in the month of
Ramadan?
Why are they required to perform the pilgrimage
if they have the means to do so?
Why do they give a mandatory charity?
There is a text
corresponding
that its meaning
is concrete,
definitive
and the text is also a definitive text.
Does that make sense?
On the other end of the spectrum,
you have what's called Haram
and this is strictly
prohibited.
This also
has a similar base to it.
For something to be strictly prohibited,
impermissible,
it has to have a clear text
as well as clear meaning to the text.
So don't eat pork
just means don't eat pork.
That's what it means.
What we get as we come closer,
in the middle,
you have what's called muba,
and this just means neutral.
These are things that are just
kind of allowed.
Right?
So,
you know,
the color of this chair,
It's like just whatever. Right? It's neutral.
Then you have
to the left of that,
what is called Mustahub.
This is recommended.
And this has
a break in it
that also has
a word that's called,
and this is a
prophetic
practice.
When you start to get into this realm,
you have either text
or meaning
that can be probabilistic.
It's not as concrete.
Does that make sense?
And its corresponding
category
on this side
is called which
means disliked.
And the similar idea
that either in text or meaning something is
probabilistic.
Why would you have these things?
And what they do in the Hanafi school
is they add in the category
of Wajib
which has that base that it's a lesser
degree of obligation.
So they'll call this necessary
which is what the recitation of Fatihah is
in
the prayer.
It's not seen as an obligation but a
necessary
act
because the idea is that you don't wanna
make a claim that something is
absolutely
obligatory
or absolutely
prohibited
unless you're really sure that it is.
Does that make sense?
And so on this spectrum,
what ends up happening theoretically
is that everything to this side
of the spectrum
can, at some point or another,
fit into
a
box of permissibility,
what we call Haram.
Even if it's something that's disliked,
so long as you're not doing it consistently
or with regularity
because it doesn't fit into the box of
strict prohibition.
And the category of disliked can be broken
into branches too. We don't have to get
into it in too much detail.
But everything is going to fit into one
of these boxes.
In terms of
acts that you undertake,
they're going to fit into one of these
categories. You don't have to learn the Arabic
but people are gonna throw the Arabic at
you.
And you're gonna unfortunately,
which I'm really sorry for, have a lot
of people that don't know what the words
mean,
and they're going to tell you something is
something that it's not.
This word haram,
a lot of Muslims like to use it
all the time.
Right? And they're gonna make you feel like
you're a really bad person
because everything just turns into
a desire to be on the edge of
the spectrum.
Black and white.
Just definitive,
right wrong.
But there's so much more than that that
exists categorically.
Does that make sense?
And when people don't know, like, the technical
definitions or the basis of things, it doesn't
mean that they're still not gonna tell you
something.
And one of the things you want to
know is that there's a lot of different
opinions that exist in different ways. So we're
looking at prayer
through one methodology
that's called the Hanafi school of thought. There's
other schools and people will do certain things
differently.
You just want to see it as kind
of a mode of existence
that respects
differences opinion
and to not get into a place
where religion starts to get
weaponized
in a way
that
really removes God from the equation.
Do you get what I mean? Does that
make sense?
Does it? Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. How do
you,
I find like I I sort of struggle
with this range a bit.
In the sense of I, like, I respect
the demand online, and I'm, like, trying to
look up singular,
you know, views on, like,
dogs.
For example, like,
so many scholars
of different schools say things. Music
are, like, all these different little things
have,
like, comment sections on Instagram. People are just
going back and forth in different ways, and
it's kind of hard.
It's crazy hard. Yeah.
You know,
when you're just kinda getting into
it, not, you know,
trying to choose, like I would say don't
do it that way, right? And it's hard
but what you have as a challenge is
not
like inaccessible
information,
your challenge is the other extreme, you have
oversaturated
access to information.
There's not a way to distill information,
do you know? There's all kinds of people
that write everything online. Do you know what
I mean? I tell my kids this now
because my son is 7, my daughter's 10
and
they don't inherit technology
that like people inherited when I was younger
and kind of went through a process as
technology develops or some of you inherited
at even a younger age, but my kids
are younger than all of you. And sitting
down and explaining to my son or my
daughter that everybody on the Internet doesn't tell
the truth,
you know,
and helping them to understand fundamentally that that's
a concept
or that everything that's written doesn't necessarily take
you into consideration.
Do you know what I mean? And there's
a disconnect from
the time of the Prophet Muhammad peace be
upon him and the way he engages companions.
There are
literal people who come for example. Right? A
man comes to the prophet and says, oh,
messenger of God, can I kiss my wife
while I'm fasting?
And the prophet answers the question and says,
yes.
And another person comes shortly thereafter and says,
can I kiss my wife while I'm fasting?
And to him, he says, no. It's the
same exact question, he's given a different answer.
And one of the companions
is left in a place of, you know,
why does this question have different answers?
Right? And so the prophet contextualizes
and says, to the person he said no
to, this was a younger person who was
recently married.
And
he, you know, at a younger age, him
and his wife, the kiss might lead to
something
that gets continuity
because in our fast, there's
the fast is broken if you have, like,
a deeply physical intimate relationship. If you have
* with someone, you're not allowed to do
that when you're fasting.
So the worry is the kiss will lead
to something else. So to him, he says,
no. And to the older person, he's a
little bit more in control. Right? He's like
an old man, he's It's not gonna go
anywhere beyond that. So to him he says
yes. Right?
You can't fundamentally
have a q and a site online
that answers every question
for you about Islam's relevancy to you. It
just doesn't work that way.
And anybody who tells you otherwise, they're wrong.
There's people who put in their best effort
and you're trying your best,
but it's going to have a gap
for the reason that you're outlining
because some of these things have to be
a little bit more contextualized with specificity.
Right?
And in the journeys that many of you
are on,
whether you're coming back to this, you know,
at a point you were born into it,
you converted at some point in your life,
you're exploring the religion for yourself.
You want to do it in a way
that systematic.
You know what I mean? So while we're
talking about prayer is because prayer is like
a very important integral, you know? So learn
about your prayer,
right,
and
adopt the Quranic Council that says,
like, when you don't know something, then just
go and ask somebody who knows, you know.
And I'm happy to talk to you about
anything you want. If I don't know like
an answer,
I have a ton of people I could
refer you to, but this is where the
internet becomes actually really sticky
because it gives you a lot of information
without context,
and it also isn't necessarily always stuff that
was written with you in mind. Do you
get what I'm saying? Does that make sense?
And one of the most important things that
comes out of what you're saying, it's okay
to say this really hard.
Like, it's really tough to navigate all of
this.
It's not an easy thing to decipher
because when you literally have a computer in
your pocket and you can look up anything,
and all these things are gonna come and
spit information back at you,
it becomes hard to say, how do I
know which one is what makes sense?
Does that make sense?
One of the things that you want to
understand
is that
haram
is always necessarily
haram.
Do you get what I mean?
Meaning,
suggest because something is permissible,
doesn't mean you have to do it.
Right? You're allowed to eat chicken.
Doesn't mean you have to do it, but
you can't eat pork.
Do you understand?
There's a difference in the sense that the
2 don't balance each other out, right? The
way that you can engage them. Permissibility
doesn't equate to normativity.
So just because it can be done a
certain way doesn't mean that's the only way
for it to be done.
The default is
that in pretty much all acts that are
mundane,
everything is permissible
unless somebody can tell you there's a reason
that it's impermissible.
The onus is on someone to be able
to explain to you why is music not
x, y, or z. Why is a dog
x, y, or z. And there's a plethora
of,
opinions on this. Right? And nobody can deny
that. There is.
On the other end of it, not in
mundane acts, but in devotional acts.
The default is that it is considered
impermissible
unless there's a reason that one can prove
that it's permissible.
Right? So why we pray in Islam the
way we pray these 5 daily prayers
is based off of evidences, not just I
think I feel. Do you get what I
mean?
And the ratio between in the mundane, what
is permissible and impermissible,
is like a 1,000 to 1.
So for every one thing that you can't
do, you can't eat pork, but you can
eat like everything else.
Do you know?
You can't drink wine
but you can drink like millions of different
juices. Do you know what I mean? And
that's literally like the way the ratio kind
of functions itself. Do you know? But
principally, this
and this
has like basis to it. What you want
to do is just try your best, right?
And when we talked about this, you know,
my Monday night, Halukkah, that some of you
come to, this is where the idea is,
like, you talk to people of knowledge.
It's not always like religious scholars, right? Like
I wasn't feeling so well last week.
I appreciate some of you reached out. I
think at this class last week, I was
breathing really heavily and then that night, I
actually like couldn't breathe at all when I
was sleeping. So on Thursday, I ended up
going to the doctor and they sent me
to the hospital
ER where I sat for a bit.
I'm doing well now. But when I was,
like trying to figure out what's wrong with
me,
everybody had an answer for what was wrong
to me, you know. I was talking to
someone, they were like, you know, you sound
like you're out of breath, and I was
like, yeah, I'm having strain breathing. They're like,
oh, it's probably your allergies, right? Or maybe
you ate something.
And I said, how do you know? Like
I wasn't trying to be rude, I was
like, what? Like how do you know, right?
You're not a doctor, you know what I
mean?
And for me,
you know, a couple weeks ago, a good
friend of mine who was a little older
than me, he passed away, we buried him
in California.
There were a lot of different things kind
of like floating in my head. So the
doctor
at the urgent care was like go to
the ER and I was like, yeah, I'm
gonna go to the ER. Why would I
not?
I'm gonna go ask the doctors who are
trained.
That's what the verse means, right? Ask people
who know. It doesn't just mean ask the
religious scholar.
In Islam, interdisciplinary
modes of engagement are also really important
in being able to
create like legal rulings.
Do you know? So if somebody is gonna
talk to you about mental wellness for example,
they need to not just be somebody who
knows like ritual and theology
but also has a background in mental health.
If somebody is going to talk to you
about any discipline or any area of expertise,
you would engage people across like areas of
expertise. Do you know what I mean? Do
other people have this issue when they're navigating
stuff online?
Yes. So what what do you do?
Close the app? Mhmm. Oh, great.
What app is it that you're closing? Instagram.
Instagram.
Yeah. Don't
look, your hearts are precious
regardless of where your religious journeys take you,
you don't want to
engage your celestial self
through sound bite information.
Do you know?
And you're just going at a pace that
makes sense. So when there's so much information
you can absorb, it doesn't mean that all
of it is at the time that you
need to absorb it, right? There's a structure
to learning also
and learn the things that are more integral
and kind of just go at a pace
that makes sense and talk to people, right?
Ask people what it is that that's there.
Somebody had their hand raised. Do you have
your hand raised? No.
I was just gonna say, like, when I
look something online,
I usually go, like, to different events or,
like, must and ask about it just to
confirm,
if it's right or wrong.
So it looks like one way just to
confirm that, one of the top is right.
Hold on.
Yeah. And if you have somebody that you
can ask those questions of, that's great. And
that's the whole idea. Right? Like, you talk
to somebody
who knows.
And being able to understand,
like, how might they relate to you coming
from your culture, coming from, you know, your
heritage, you're new to Islam.
Right? Somebody who's gonna also be empathetic and
they're listening. You know, they know you enough
because in that example that I gave, the
prophet knows where these people are coming from.
He's not throwing just like random information at
them. He knows and is seeing them as
a whole individual.
It's not like a drive by like Q
and A. Do you know what I mean?
So you you have to see yourself as
somebody that's worth more than that. Do you
know what I'm saying? Does that make sense?
So everything is gonna fit into one of
these boxes.
Obligatory,
necessary,
recommended,
neutral,
disliked,
strictly prohibited.
And
we are focusing
right now
in the prayer section
on like necessary acts
because to perform prayer
in the Hanafi school,
the obligatory acts, they're all pretty simple, right?
It's just going through the postures,
having a final sitting
and reciting
just one short verse of the Quran
and that suffices. Do people pray that way?
No, they don't
like in general
but
when there's a reason to, right? You're new
to it, you're learning it, You're still fulfilling
the obligation
and we're adding to it as we go
along. Does anybody have any other questions on
this? I know I went through it really
fast,
just because we did this a few months
ago in more detail
but anything that doesn't make sense, it's also
totally fine. We can go at a slower
pace on it.
Yeah.
Like in the prayer? Yeah. We're gonna talk
about it all. But in the Hanafi school,
in the Farahid,
the obligatory acts of prayer,
you only have to read
like any short verse of the Quran. It
doesn't have to be Fatihah. Yeah. So the
shortest verse says,
If you just said that, that suffices.
Yeah.
So any questions on these boxes, these categories?
The way that this builds itself up is
not like in a very
kind
of homogeneous way.
It doesn't work that way
because
you have very few obligations and very few
pro prohibitions,
and there's a lot in the middle that
is gray because we're so diverse and different
from each other. Right? Imagine if each one
of you in this room
had to lose your sense of individualism
and identity,
right? To be Muslim is to not commit
cultural apostasy of some kind, Right? You become
linked now
to your own innate identities,
and it influences the way kinda religion
manifests
and custom
and culture
impacts the way kinda things are practiced.
Do you know?
And so these are the words that we're
gonna be using
as we kinda go through the elements of
prayer
and talk about them in a little bit
more detail.
So I know some of you were here
when we
talked about this some months ago,
and feel free to chime in.
So we're gonna look first at the conditions
of prayer, and the book that we had
told people, if you have it, it's called
Ascent to Felicity.
If you don't have the book, you could
also pull up a PDF online of it,
where we'll go through it. And this section
is on
page 74,
the conditions of prayer.
In
Arabic,
the word for condition
is called
And these are things that exist outside of
prayer, meaning these things need to happen
and be in place
in order for the prayer to be performed.
So if they're not in place,
then the prayer
Yeah. Like a in
if you speak Urdu in Hindi, it's the
same word.
What do you mean to make the
Ascent to Felicity.
Yeah. And you could take a minute if
people wanna pull it up.
You find it online, but also it's not
a big deal. We're gonna write these things
up on the board. Yeah.
So
what this means is if you don't have
these things
at the onset of the prayer,
the validity of the prayer is not met.
Validity
meaning, like, there's mechanics, there's prerequisites.
The acceptance of something is between God and
the person.
But in order for one to
deem it valid,
the mechanics that are outlined, they have to
be in place
based off of the categories. So the obligatory
ones, if those aren't there, it doesn't work.
So this is not
a
inside of the prayer
group that we're gonna talk about. This is
what's happening before you start to pray. Does
that make sense? Yeah.
So first
condition
is that you have to be
in a state
of
ritual purity.
And this
means
you're free
from
what's called minor
or major
impurity.
So what does that mean?
This is what we call, like, being in
a state of wudu.
And we, like, talked about wudu
for,
I think, like, 5 weeks,
you know, to people remember. Right? Does anybody
any of you here for that? Some of
you were here. Right? Yeah. We talked about
it for a while. Right? So what we'll
do
is the way that you're washing up for
prayer.
So if somebody says, I'm gonna pray, but
I'm not making my will do. We're not
gonna go through the steps of it right
now. I can do that with you all
at some point, but I'm just gonna outline
what these conditions are.
This is
a
necessary condition, like, you have to have wudu
in order to make your ritual prayer. Yeah.
I think you spoke about wudu. My only
question about wudu is You can ask anything.
Oh. Yeah. Does it have to follow that
order?
No.
Not in the Hanafi school.
So in the Hanafi school, we'll do is
not seen as a devotional act.
So intention is not necessary,
the order is not. The verse that we
looked at in the Quran
for wudu, just a quick recap,
it doesn't include the mouth or the nose.
So what are recommended acts in wudu in
the Hanafi school
are
the rinsing of the mouth, the nose,
the number of times you will wash a
body part,
and the order of it.
The other things are obligatory.
Right? So the washing of the face,
the arms up to and including the elbows,
the head. So the face
constitutes from the top of the forehead
to underneath your chin and earlobe to earlobe.
It's the face.
You're gonna go up to
your
elbow,
including it, so above it.
And when you watch, water has to get
on every part of the body.
So you're for example, if you fold your
arm in, like water can miss right here.
So you'll open this up and wash in
here, both
arms. The head, you're wiping over the head.
Right? Taken from it. So if you put
water on your hands, you can take these
three fingers,
and you're gonna rub them over your head,
and you take this finger put it on
the inner side of your ear,
and then you take your thumb, and you
rub it on the outer part of your
ear, right? Because it's all new water. You
see?
So if
Does that make sense?
Yeah? And then your feet, you're gonna
put your,
go through every,
like toe on your foot and wash up
to your ankle
on both feet,
and that constitutes
a valid will do.
Yeah.
Can you just take a shower?
Yeah. You can just take a shower
and that counts.
And in the Hanafi school, if you take
a shower and you don't make the intention
for wudu, you still have wudu
because intention is not a necessary
act for wudu in the Hanafi school.
Yeah. So is that why when he makes
the it's only like
Yeah. Because it's also just, like, more of
a symbolic thing. Right? Because you're taking the
dirt and you're kinda going through it in
a spiritual kind of way. Yeah. Yeah.
So if you're taking, like, a shower and,
you didn't like,
like, what's going on your mouth or your
nose, is that
do you have to go back and just
No. Because those are recommended parts to it.
Right? And why do you want to know
these things?
Right? Is because certain things are situational,
and we talked about this a lot in
detail. For example,
in different schools of thought, what's the minimum
you have to do of your head varies.
In the Hanafi School, it's a 4th of
your head. In some schools, you literally just
have to do a portion of your hair,
right? So
you can be,
a woman who wears a headscarf, and you're
in a middle of a workplace
that is not conducive to Islamic practice,
and you're all kinda scarfed up,
and you don't wanna, like, unravel and unravel
again, so you just can stick your hand
underneath it. Do Do you know what I
mean?
But knowing the Fiqh is helpful
because it allows for you to be able
to adapt in certain situations.
Do you know? That's why we wanna take
these things slowly and do a deep dive
into them, so that there's not just about
like
learning Islam, but there's a philosophy to learning.
And when you go online or you just
talk to somebody who's Muslim,
they might just throw the end result at
you and not get you to a place
that helps you know how to maneuver in
situations. Does that make sense? Right?
Yeah, go ahead.
Women should not wear acrylic nails because that
invalidates their wound.
As long as whatever you're wearing doesn't prevent
water from getting to every part, right? So
I'm wearing like a ring right now. I'd
have to remove the ring,
you know? I got on some beads. I
take off the beads
because the water has to hit every part
of the skin,
right? So if somebody has a barrier of
anything,
right? That then prevents water from getting to
something, then the wudu is not complete.
But if it's something that's water permeable,
then that's a different
circumstance.
Do you see?
So the notion is to understand the principle,
you can't have a barrier. Like my shirt,
I can't wash over the shirt because it's
creating a barrier.
Right? So that's the same idea conceptually.
Does that make sense? Yeah. So
in order for
you to stand in prayer, you gotta be
in a state of will do.
So this is the first condition
outside of the prayer.
You need to be in this state
of purity, ritual purity.
Minor
impurity,
you use the restroom, you woke up from
a long sleep,
you weren't just dozing,
you know, things like that, you pass wind,
major impurity,
you're coming out of a menstrual cycle.
If you have like a nocturnal emission,
you know, some type of like sexual
experience
that would then require doing what's called a
which is a shower
that essentially incorporates the will do,
as well
as like a,
shower,
on top of that, that has, like, a
process to it. That's condition number 1. Any
other questions on that?
So condition number 2,
there can't be anything that
is
filthy
on
your clothes,
body,
or place of prayer.
And so what constitutes filth?
Like urine,
alcohol,
things like this.
There's narrations in our tradition that say, the
entire world is a mosque, like a place
of prayer.
And there's narrations that also qualify this that
say the entire world is a place of
prayer
except
like bathrooms
and graveyards.
Right? So for example, it might make logical
sense why someone couldn't pray where there's a
toilet.
Right?
In and of itself, there's a chance that
there might be, like, urine somewhere on the
ground or something to that effect.
So you can pretty much pray any place,
but in terms of location, you want to
make sure that it's clean.
The default understanding
is
that everything is clean
unless there's a reason to believe that it's
not clean.
So you can walk through the streets of
Manhattan
and you can see Muslim people praying everywhere.
There's Muslim people that pray on top of
their taxi cabs, there's Muslim people that pray
now they do, right? There's people that pray,
you know, in the parks, on the sidewalks,
there's people that pray like all over the
place.
And someone could say, oh, it's New York.
It's gross. Like this and that.
But there's unless there's a reason
that you know that it's not clean, the
default is that things are clean.
Does that make sense?
So you could go. When you have a
prayer mat,
it's not seen as
a sacred object
in Islam.
Right? It's not a sanctified
object.
Essentially, what you're doing with the mat is
you're just carrying something that you know is
definitively
clean.
And you put it down, and then where
you're gonna be praying is like a clean
place to pray.
Does that make sense?
So that place of prayer,
your body has to also be
clean of anything filthy.
Right? So you can't have things on your
physical
being
and your clothing
as well.
Right? And there's kinda parameters
around this,
but there are things that are taken seriously.
So this is why
at
our tradition, you have like
not just the utilization for example of toilet
paper when you go to the bathroom because
it's not fully removing
but you use water as kind of a
cleansing agent to be able to remove excrement
fully from your body. Do you know?
So condition number 2,
that there's nothing
like dirty, impure
on anything
of your being or the place that you're
going to be praying in as well.
And you wanna try your best, Right? In
some of these situations and it can get
tricky especially for people
who they're the only Muslim in their family.
Their family doesn't know that they're Muslim, you
know? And we wanna think about this within
reason, and this is another reason why you
don't wanna look up on the internet certain
things or just kinda speak off the top
of your head because you're gonna have to
try your best in certain situations
and circumstances.
And for some people, when you're in a
Manhattan apartment
where everybody is on top of each other
and you don't want your family to know
that you're Muslim,
like the only place you can go by
default to pray and still be safe is
gonna be, like, in a bathroom. Do you
know? Does that make sense?
And so these definitive statements become really hard,
like, yeah, you shouldn't be praying in the
bathroom. That's the default.
But sometimes there's
kinda context that people are listening to what
you're saying.
And just because they hear you say it,
they're gonna take it as, well, then I
just maybe shouldn't pray at all. Do you
get what I mean? Right? And it's like,
no, man. Like, you gotta talk to the
person and really hear hear where they're at.
Does that make sense?
Yeah. Go ahead. So we're turning to, like,
feels like if someone is pulling on, they
can't
afford to, like, have food clothes or
If your clothes are dirty, like, say, I,
you know, haven't washed my shirt in a
week or something. That's not what it is.
But if somebody got something that was considered
ritually impure,
say, there was urine on my shirt, you
know, like
or you know, something similar, all you do
is wash it off.
I don't have to like throw away my
shirt. It doesn't have to be laundered.
The recommended
like practice is to have water flow over
that spot
like at least, you know, a handful of
times, 3 times to 7 times. If you
do it once fully, like that's suffices also,
but you just rinse it off. Do you
know what I mean?
Does that make sense? Yeah. But it has
nothing to do with like social class or
socioeconomic
background or anything like that. You know? Yeah.
You mentioned alcohol.
What about alcohol and the other perfumes? You
know? What's your opinion on that?
It depends on what the source of the
alcohol is.
Right? And if there's alcohol that's made of
wine,
sorry, of grapes, like fermented grapes and dates,
Those in the Hanafi school are categorically different
from other types of alcohols and synthetic alcohols
and these kinds of things. Yeah.
If you come to Jummah on Friday, I
don't know if you guys read Jummah last
Friday. We were talking about, like, 4 hadith
that are foundational hadith,
from a text that's called the Sunan of
Abu Dawood
where it's got like tons of hadith in
it but the author says, if you know
these 4 hadith from this book, like they
sufficed you for everything.
And one of those says, the halal is
clear and the haram is clear and in
between them are doubtful things
that many people don't know about. Right? And
we'll talk about some of this more in
that. There's things of doubt. It's better to
to leave them. But if they're actually doubtful,
you know?
Okay.
The third is
you cover
what
is called your aura.
This is the Arabic word,
but it's essentially like
the parts of your body that you are
required to have covered at a minimum in
your prayer.
For men,
it is
from your navel to below your knees,
and for women, it's everything other than your
face and your hands and your feet.
And
within that,
like, you wouldn't have a man show up
to pray
with just like the lower part of their
body covered, you know. Like if I come
to Juman on Friday
and all I got has a towel wrapped
around my waist, I'm pretty sure somebody's gonna
have a problem with it. Do you know
what I mean? But we're talking about within
the prayer,
there are parts of the body that have
to be covered,
and you're getting yourself ready.
The common thread through all of this
is that you're building
a presence
prior to getting into prayer,
right? The same way we're saying,
you can read the first chapter differently if
you know what it means, and you're gonna
go through it a little bit more slow.
So in each of these things, it's not
like a checkbox that's meant to create anxiety,
it's a checkbox that's meant to create consciousness,
right? Did I wash up for the prayer?
Are my clothes like clean? I'm gonna go
stand in front of God. Do you know?
Like, what's the state that I'm standing in
front of God in? Right? Is everything kinda
dressed the way that it needs to be
dressed?
And it's not to kinda
anthropomorphize
one's relationship with God, but think about how
it is that you
would look to
dress
in anticipation of any
event or occasion
that you know already has
its own criteria for expectation
of a dress code.
You walk into
a gala, they're gonna expect you to be
wearing something. It's a wedding day, you're gonna
be expected to wear something. You're gonna go
to a funeral. You're not gonna show up
to a funeral
in a tank top and a pair of
pink shorts, right? It's gonna be disrespectful
to the event. Do you know what I
mean? And if you try to do something
that just doesn't make sense
out of deference to the occasion,
somebody is gonna say to you, why are
you dressed like that?
Do you know? Like do you know what
you're going to do?
Right?
So similarly,
the idea is as we're going through these
5 or 6 conditions,
they're meant to create consciousness.
Regardless of how it is that you choose
to dress outside of your prayer,
you want to be on top of this
within the course of your prayer.
At a minimum,
what happens
is if more than
a quarter of a limb
that is meant to be covered in the
course of a prayer becomes uncovered,
then the prayer itself
doesn't have validity.
Does that make sense?
Which also goes on the other end, you
don't wanna be the Haram police. There's somebody
standing in prayer, and you're like pulling on
their clothes,
and measuring this and that. Right?
Now if you have multiple
things that are supposed to be covered that
are not like beyond a quarter,
but the sum total of them
exceeds now a quarter of what is
the minimal,
like, sized limb of covering, then that also
becomes a problem.
Does that make sense?
So, you know, just be ready to pray
when you gotta pray. And if you gotta
carry clothes with you, then carry some clothes
with you to cover yourself up. You know?
Yeah. So just to be clear,
everything from right here
to a little bit below the
knee needs to be covered. The minimum for
a man is from below the navel to
below the knee. In my arms.
Yeah. But you should be covered, like, with
a shirt and everything. The challenge that most
men have, right, generalization
is that their backsides fall out of their
pants, you know? So wear a belt. Do
you know what I mean? If you come
to Jomana on Friday, right, or you ever
come to pray when there's
No. I said, where does that happen? Where
does it happen? Oh my god, man. I
wish I could unsee the things that I'm
seeing. Where does it happen? It happens
every single place you can imagine.
Right? And this is a challenge because religion
tends to be a boys club,
you know. Most Muslim men are only identifiably
understood to be Muslim because they walk next
to a woman who's wearing a scarf on
her head. There's hijab for men as much
as there's hijab for women in Islam.
And within this, like again, how you choose
to dress outside
of prayer
like is a different conversation. In the course
of your prayer, you wanna make sure that
you're covered up the way that is meant
to be covered.
And within that, not think about it in
terms of minimums.
But what becomes challenging for many men is
that
when they bend over, like their pants are
rolling down and their backsides get exposed, and
it happens a lot for people. So if
you wear a belt, get a t shirt,
tuck it into your pants. Right?
This is why like culturally you see in
many Muslim communities,
Indian subcontinent,
the Gulf,
Indonesia, Malaysia,
a lot of African countries,
like shirts go down
past the waist for men,
right? Because
you don't have any idea, right? I'm wearing
these black skinny jeans right now, you know,
which probably
somebody like me does not need to be
wearing them, but I got a long shirt
on. So when I pray, doesn't matter if
something's rising up or down because it's covered.
Right? And in our culture, you see it
embedded. If you go to Philly
and you see African American culture is very
influenced and hip hop culture is very influenced
by
Islam in terms of the way dress has
kind of manifested in a lot of different
ways. And it's adopted from these ideals.
Right? From, you know, how it is that
you're covering yourself in these ways. So in
the course of your prayer for men, just
make sure, like, this is a big challenge
for men. Like, you're not exposing,
like, your backside in any way. Yeah. Sorry.
Just just making sure I can pray with,
like, push my sleeves. You can wear a
t shirt. I mean, you can wear it.
Yeah. And also, this is, do you ever
take your demerall's
style? Me? Yeah. I do. I don't wear
it 24 hours a day. Yeah.
And I wear it I take it off,
but
for, you know, in in my understanding, right,
they say,
like the prophet Muhammad
was never without his head uncovered
other than
when he would go on pilgrimage,
he would be dressed in,
these 2, like, white unstitched garments.
And they said the companions of the prophet
were never without their head uncovered in prayer.
You know, it's a sign of humility.
It's not an obligation though. Do you know
what I mean?
Right? But the bigger thing, right,
if you're a man and you get one
of these on, but your butt's falling out
of your pants, like that's screwing up your
prayer. Do you get what I mean? So
invest in a belt,
like pull up your pants. Does that make
sense? Yeah.
Okay.
And for women,
it's the same concept.
You're gonna have everything
covered,
other than the face,
hands and feet.
There's,
and that's also
kinda despite what you're kinda dressed outside,
it's a separate conversation in the course of
the prayer.
Like, you're covering,
the parts of the body also, and it's
a precondition
of the prayer. You know? And you wanna
think about it in terms of just, like,
the event, the occasion. Do you know what
I mean? Like, what is it that I'm
really getting myself ready for here?
And
what is kind of the criteria, the dress
code of the event?
Okay.
Then, 4th,
the condition
is
you're facing
towards
the Kaaba,
which is Mecca.
So
technology can help in a lot of different
ways with this, but it also can be
something that's pretty
not so good.
We could probably have everybody open up a
compass on their phone, and majority of you
would have a compass that kind of aligns
properly,
but some of you would also have them
be just kinda all over the place. Right?
So this religion
also has us
very much deeply connected to things that are
elemental. Right? You make water with will do.
You know, our prayers are based off of
a cyclical pattern
of the
sun. You can tell direction literally from, like,
the place of the sun in the horizon.
So where and how
you can
very easily, if you don't know where you
are, you try your best.
Like, the sun is
either
Which which is it? Is the sun rising
or setting in the west?
The sun's in the wind. The sun rise
rises then in the east. Right?
So it's gonna be going on a cycle.
So if you know the sun is coming
up
until noon time
from one end, and it's going down
post noon till sunset the other way, then
you know what East and West is. Right?
West is gonna be there
and East is gonna be there.
So North is this way, so Northeast is
like this which is why we're praying like
this in the room.
Right? In the United States, the direction towards
Mecca is Northeast,
and you could get to like specific degree
marks.
When you're not in front of the Kaaba
and Mecca,
there's a leeway
of 45 degrees in either direction.
Right? You're just trying your best.
So you don't have to be spot on
every single time that you're going to do
this. And you go to some Masjid because
of the leeway
and they're restricted
by space constraints,
they
position
slightly off
the exact direction in order
to have
kind of the structure of the congregation be
built out a little bit more feasibly.
Do you know?
In Manhattan,
you know, an easy way is to just
think your face uptown and you kinda angle
to the right. Right? Because streets are going,
south to north and avenues are going west
to east. No. Avenues are going south to
north and streets are going west to east.
Right?
And so that kinda helps.
But you're facing towards
the Kaaba, you're facing towards Mecca.
And, you know, if you don't know how
to figure it out, you ask somebody. Right?
If nobody knows, you just try your best.
If you're in a place where you have
constraints
and you just have no way of doing
it, you still pray the prayer in its
time.
Does that make sense? Yeah. So this is
the next,
condition.
You're facing towards Mecca.
5,
the time of prayer has come in.
So what that means is
you are not able to pray a prayer
before the time the prayer commences.
Does it make sense?
But there's windows of time.
So the number of students I sit with
at NYU for example,
who are 1st year students, 2nd year students,
and they are freaked out of their minds
because they have to now adapt a new
structure. Someone graduates and they go to work
for the first time, or people use language
very irresponsibly, and they'll say, it's better to
do x.
That better doesn't mean obligatory.
Do you get what I mean?
So you have
like an entire
cyclical pattern of the sun.
Say this is the horizon.
So the first prayer of the day
is called Fedr.
And if we were to look at this
from the standpoint
of
degree marks,
There's a time
where
there's like
the sun is approaching the horizon. Right? And
you should go watch the sunrise so you
can think about this in this way. Do
you know what I mean? And if you
can't see the sunrise from where you are
in the boroughs,
go on a, like, trip. We'll take everybody
upstate. And we'll just watch the sunrise.
You know? So as the sun is getting
closer to the horizon,
what are the first colors that you're seeing
come above the horizon
in a sunrise?
Red.
Red. Right? So when you start to see
redness
above the horizon,
like the time of fudger is starting.
Does that make sense?
Right?
Now,
was it getting closer to the horizon?
How does this sky start to change color?
Yellow. And then what happens?
Like, what color is the sky right now?
It's white. It's white. Right? Yeah. So you're
going from red, orange, yellow to white.
That's the entire time of Fudger.
Fudger stops when a portion of the sun
is visible above the horizon.
At that point in time, you cannot pray
until the sun is completely above the horizon.
So you have this whole window of time
to pray fajr.
It doesn't have to be prayed right at
the minute that it starts. You have an
entire window of time to pray the Fudger
prayer. Does that make
sense? So when you look on an app,
and there's prayer
times, it'll give you a time for fudger
starting,
and it'll give you the time for sunrise.
You're praying in between that window.
You then have
the second prayer of the day is called
Dhuhr.
So when the sun
is coming down from its zenith,
this is when the goers starts.
So
right before
and after, when it's immediately
above,
like
straight up, that's a time that you're also
not supposed to pray. It's called the Zawal
time. And just a few minutes before and
a few minutes after. So today,
like, if Dolhurst starts at 102,
you wouldn't pray at, like, 12
56,
1250
ish, or sorry. That's too much time. You
wouldn't pray at, like, 1257
or so, give or take. Right?
You start to pray after the time comes.
And some people make this mistake. If you
come to Jummah on Friday,
right, the time for is the time that
Jummah starts. People walk in, they just start
praying in that time that you're not supposed
to be praying.
This goes until
the time of Asar,
which is,
in the Hanafi school, there's 2 opinions.
There's
the
twice the length of your shadow
or one time the length of your shadow.
Most people pray at one time the length
of your shadow. It's earlier time and twice
the length is a little later in the
afternoon.
Then
you have from thehir till the time your
shadow is twice its length to pray
Right? So today,
that would be
from 1 o'clock in the afternoon
until almost 5 o'clock if you do the
earlier time until after 6 o'clock if you
do the later time. Right? You can see
where somebody would get stressed out if they
thought I could only play it right at
the very first minute.
Do you get what I'm saying?
This is where better is like an arbitrary
term,
you know, because people have a lot of
different things going on. So you just pray
it within the window of time
that it has to be prayed.
And then the 4th prayer of the day
so this is where we have Asar,
here's Zohar,
And then you have sunset
is the Maghrib time that goes until
the time of Isha,
which is night,
and you have these windows again to pray
these times.
So the time of the prayer has to
come in
for the prayers
validity, its performance. Right? So you can't pray
over here
because it's not the her time yet. It's
gotta be after the time has come in.
Does that make sense?
Yeah?
Yeah. Go ahead. I read one something online
that it said, like,
and Oscar could be prayed together and then
upgrade the ship.
Like, conditions.
Like, if you can't make that a certain
time, you can combine it. You can combine
the prayers if you're traveling.
There are some opinions that say if there's,
like, immense hardship,
then you can combine prayers also.
But the hardship has to be something
that is kinda ascertained,
in conjunction with, like, advice from somebody who's
a religious scholar. Do you know?
Yeah.
But those are things that are there. Like,
I was in
Canada,
and there's parts of Canada, for example, where,
like,
comes in
at
11 something,
and ish shows that, like, midnight and fudgers
at 2 in the morning. You know? And
there's, like, times of the year where it's
just perpetual sunlight or perpetual darkness in some
parts of the world. People have to kind
of adapt. You know what I mean?
And so they have religious scholars there
who say because
of, like, people's work schedules and need for
sleep and whatever else,
that they'll pray Isha and Maghrib together
just for those 2 months in the summer
where that time is constrained. Right? But they're,
like, coming together on a consensus
with it. You know? So there is room
for these kinds of things,
but individually, you'd wanna talk to somebody who
who kinda knows. You know? Yeah. You had
your hand raised?
What's?
Is like in its literal sense, it means
just standing
and what people refer to is like like
a optional night prayer where you stand.
It's like an extra prayer.
It just means, like, praying extra stuff at
night.
Yeah.
Then
you have what's called the intention
And the intention is what distinguishes
the prayer you're about to perform.
So you're making the intention for the prayer.
Right? So we'll talk about these more in
detail next week, but for example, in the
Fajr prayer, you have 2 cycles
of recommended prayers, sunnah prayers, and 2 cycles
of obligatory, farth prayers.
The only difference
in the performance of those prayers
is the intention.
In one cycle, you're going to say, I
intend to pray
2 units
of recommended prayer
for Fajr,
and finishing the intention. Right? For your sake
facing
Mecca, make it easy for me and accept
it from me. Intention can be done in
English, doesn't have to be done in Arabic,
and it's expressed,
the place of intentions
on the tongue and in the heart. Right?
We wanna start bringing presence and all of
it still, like you can see a thread
of just consciousness going through this. Right?
Making sure I'm washed up, there's nothing dirty
on me, I'm dressed properly.
I'm facing towards Mecca.
The time is there, and now I'm affirming
why I'm going to do what I'm going
to do before I do it. And
that intention,
is not considered a part of the prayer.
It is
prior to its outside of the prayer.
And then you have the last
component
which is called the harima
and it's gonna be on this list and
next week when we talk about the obligatory
acts of prayer, which will be a much
quicker conversation.
It'll be also the first one on that
because some people consider it to be
a
condition
for the validity of the prayers commencing, and
some people consider it to be
a obligatory act of the prayer. But in
both instances, it's an obligation.
This is an opening invitation,
you know,
where,
you're saying like the you'll see people when
they pray, they'll do like the initial Allahu
Akbar.
Right? That's the.
It has the word,
like, the letters for haram in it.
Right? Which what did we say the word
haram means? Strictly
prohibited. Strictly prohibited. Right? So what's happening when
you do this
is you're now making things that are permissible
impermissible.
So you're entering into the prayer with this,
and you're basically saying, hey,
in general, it's okay for me to talk
on my phone,
but in my prayer, it's not permissible for
me to talk on my phone.
In my prayer, I'm facing only towards Mecca.
I'm not moving around.
Right? In my prayer, I'm not talking to
anybody next to me, I'm only talking to
God.
So embedded in the word is the idea
that you're rendering certain things now
that you could normally do, you won't do
them in the course of the prayer. And
all of these are things that are happening
before you start the prayer. These are conditions,
Shrut,
of the prayer itself.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Okay.
So let's take a pause here.
What you wanna do
is work on Fatihah
between this week and next week, it's memorization.
And
what we wanna also do is if you
have any questions on wudu,
bring them for next week whether you were
here when we reviewed it in detail like
some months ago or not.
And,
if you haven't already,
try to build a relationship with the timings
of the prayer.
Just like the windows of time,
acquaint yourself with them.
Right? This is a really important part of
the prayer. It's called the
sanctity of time.
Right? And there's
a understanding spiritually the same way we talked
about focus, kushurah.
In Islam,
the way that we worship is outlined through
direct
understanding
from God and God's messenger.
So,
I couldn't tell you why
these are the best times to pray these
prayers,
but they're fundamentally
the best time to pray them because this
is when God said to pray the prayers.
And if you're doing them outside
of those timings, then you're cutting yourself off
from the blessing of those timings,
and the transformational nature of the prayer
kinda gets left out. Right? So
it also shouldn't take a while to do
the prayer as such.
In that initial stage
that we've talked about the obligations
which doesn't have you go through every single
step of it,
but you wanna be ready for it. Do
you know what I mean? You start to
think, right? Between this week and next week,
what are things that come up for you
that make it hard? Do you know? That
we can talk out here like we did,
you know, some months ago.
Like how can you anticipate
being in a state of will do? It
doesn't mean you have to make will do
every time you pray.
If there's nothing that broke your will do,
then you could have will do the whole
entire day if you needed to, right? And
you start to think from the standpoint of
like, this spiritual exercise
is nourishment for my inner self, the way
food is nourishment for my physical self. Let
me not think about these two things separate
from each other, but how does my physical
and metaphysical relate to one another? You know?
So if I know it's hard for me
to make will do at work, then maybe
what I eat at breakfast isn't something that's
gonna have me
breaking my wudu like when I'm in the
office. Do you know?
I can time like my meals. I'm a
little bit more strategic in my routine. Do
you get what I mean? Right?
But you're putting like an idea that in
Islam, which you get out of something
is heavily connected to like what you're putting
into it, you know. You can see what
something's a priority based off of your kind
of overall engagement in that capacity.
So think about it and try to build
a relationship with the time and come with
like scenarios, questions,
and then we'll start going through the obligatory
acts
and the necessary acts, and
look at 2 short chapters
of the Quran. Also, we'll break it down
the way we broke down fatiha
and start to go through some of the
meanings
of the other words that we're saying in
the different positions. Right? Like, what are the
words mean when we're in the bowing position?
You know, what is the words mean when
we're in the prostrating positions? Does that make
sense?
Okay. Oh, and if you can come on
Friday, it's fried chicken Friday, for Joma. So
come and have lunch with us too. But,
otherwise, we'll see everyone next week.
Thank you.