Khalid Latif – Perfecting Your Prayer Essentials of Salah (Hanafi) #07
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AI: Transcript ©
So I'm gonna do just really quickly a
review of what we talked about last week,
then we'll move into a
second
part relevant to the actual postures
and performances of the prayer. Thanks, man.
So for those who aren't here last week
and as a recap for those who were,
we talked about conditions
of the prayer. And this is in reference
to ritual
prayer within
Islam. Right? Which is different from
supplicating to God, which you can do in
any language,
pretty much in any place,
in any time, any state.
You don't even have to be Muslim. There's
a verse in the Quran that says,
that say,
your Lord.
Says
like call upon me, make dua to me,
supplicate to me,
I will respond.
And what the explanation of that verse is
is that even if somebody's not Muslim and
they turn to God and engage God in
supplication, God hears the prayer and responds to
the prayer and answers to the prayer. What
we're talking about
is not that kind of prayer. We're talking
about the ritual prayer that takes place 5
times a day in Islam. It's called sala.
And what we talked about last week
were the conditions
of the prayer,
meaning these things have to happen
in order for you to
begin the prayer itself.
Before you commence the prayer,
these things have to be
taken into consideration
and ensured are present. Does that make sense?
So all this is outside
of the prayer,
but you're kind of lining them up to
make sure that
they're checked off before you begin.
So the first thing that we discussed was
that before one prays,
they have to be in a state of
ritual purity.
Meaning,
what we call wudu. This is in English
translated very archaic language, ablution.
But you're like washing up for prayer.
And when you go through the washing up,
which we talked about months ago, I'm happy
to review that with people
who might not have been there when we
did that,
or walk you through it. We can even
do that, like, next week if there's enough
people who, haven't gone through it or it'd
be helpful to them.
But you're essentially
washing
parts of your body,
that are pretty easily accessible.
Right? When you're in a minor state,
what's called ritual impurity.
And you enter into that state
if you use the bathroom.
Right? If you pass wind,
if you've, like slept beyond dozing. So if
one of you, for example,
just kinda
like knocks out for a minute or 2
while I'm talking,
that is not in and of itself enough
of a state of
sleep that you would now have to do
this again. And once you do this, you're
in that state
until something breaks it again. So it's not
that before every prayer you have to do
it, but if you do it once and
you maintain it, then that suffices. Does that
make sense?
And this
is getting us into a place where a
common thread for all of this is you're
starting to just inculcate mindfulness within you. Right?
You're getting to a place of just awareness,
consciousness,
the way that you would be readying yourself
for anything that
had a certain level of importance to it.
This is something that is done
pretty easily once you get the hang of
it, but it's still meant to be done
with presence so that you are starting to
align yourself
not just on a physical level, but on
a metaphysical level. Like, mentally, emotionally, spiritually,
as well as physically aligned towards the prayer.
So that first is that you are going
to essentially wash up for prayer.
2nd, you're going to ensure that
the place you're praying,
your physical body, the clothing
that you have, all these things are also
free of anything
that is deemed to be
ritualistically
impure.
So, for example,
in New York City,
you could have people that would say,
I'm not going to pray on the sidewalk.
It is a sidewalk.
But the default
in Sharia
is that everything is assumed to be clean
unless there's a reason to believe that it's
not clean. Right? So a physical manifestation,
an odor, like discoloration.
These kind of things could allude to something.
But it's not that just because you're walking
on the street of Manhattan,
it means that the sidewalk is dirty. And
you'll find Muslims praying pretty much everywhere all
over. But the place in and of itself
has to be clean. So of the few
places one couldn't pray, like a bathroom, you're
not allowed to perform ritual prayer in. Mostly
because
of the chance that something that's impure like
urine might be present someplace. There's a likelihood
of that. And similarly on clothing, you know,
etcetera.
You're going to cover your nakedness, like when
you're in a state of prayer.
Right? And for men, this is going to
be from
your navel to below your knee.
For women it's everything other than your face,
your hands, and your feet.
And
that becomes a part of it.
You won't see a man like praying in
those clothes. Right? Like the way all of
your dress right now would suffice and that's
kind of what the baseline
understanding should be. But you can again see
kind of the thread of just awareness mindfulness.
You're going to face towards
Mecca, in particular towards the Kaaba. In Arabic
this direction is called
the Qibla.
People have apps on their phone,
you can use compasses.
It's really easy to use the sun. There's
a lot that's very elemental
in its relationship
within Islam.
Right? The idea is not that you're just
constantly stuck in your old world. When we
wash up, we're washing up with water. You
know, our prayer times are based off of
a cyclical pattern of the sun. You can
tell the direction of Mecca
by understanding
kind of where the sun is positionally.
The idea is that you're relating to the
world around you. Right? You're in a place
where you become attuned to kind of nature
and natural elements
and building relationship with things as a mechanism
to deepen an awareness.
The facing towards Mecca
is something that,
in the United States is done northeast,
and
you
have, like, leeway
other than if you're literally standing in Mecca
and the Kaaba is right in front of
you, then there's not really leeway there. Do
you know? Because it's right in front of
you. You know where it is.
But where you're in other spaces,
there's a leeway
of 45 degrees
in either direction.
Because it's gonna be hard
to you know, if I if I literally
have something in front of me, then I
know how to position myself towards it. Right?
But if this thing was 3 rooms over,
and we said, try to face it. You're
gonna do your best to face it, but
there's a good chance that it's not going
to be as precise as when the thing
is right in front of you. Does that
make sense?
The time of the prayer comes in,
meaning you can't pray the prayer
preceding the time of the prayer. We talked
last week about, you know, what times the
prayer actually comes in. These prayer times change
like day to day because they're based off
of a cyclical pattern of the sun.
So, you know, right now, like
our
morning prayer that takes place,
between True Drawn
and Sunrise
is much earlier
than it would be in, like, late December
when the days are shorter. Right? Daylight savings
times kicks in in different ways. Do you
know? And you'll see that throughout the year
and it's also again like interesting to think
out especially for us in the States that
you experience
both daily practices
as well
as seasonal
holidays,
at various junctures in the calendar year
because they're not all gonna happen on a
lunar calendar
at the same time
aligned with a Gregorian calendar. Right? The lunar
calendar is about 11 days earlier
in
terms of its comparison
year to year to the Gregorian calendar.
So when I was in college
and I was 18, Ramadan, for example,
was around Christmas time. Right? Ramadan this year
was in April.
So it's shifting slowly. But you get to
experience these things in different ways,
and kind of adapt and relate to them
in different ways too. And it helps to
not make it monotonous,
do you know, in that sense.
Then you're going to have an intention.
This is all still outside of the prayer.
Right? And the intention is affirming the act
that you're about to undertake.
Right? Citing the
units of prayer. We're gonna talk about these,
the number of cycles that goes into it.
It's kind of categorization
in terms of legality, these kinds of
things. And then you have what's called the
tahrima,
which is an initial invocation.
Then if you've ever seen Muslims pray, you've
prayed yourself,
you know, they do typically,
what's called
a takbir, Allahu Akbar. They'll raise their hands
up and now they're in the state of
prayer. Right?
That's a quick recap of what we talked
about last week. Does all that make sense?
Yes. Any questions? Any thoughts on any of
that?
Yeah?
Sure?
Okay.
So we're gonna talk about a few things
today.
1, we're gonna talk about what are the
obligatory
elements
of the prayer
within
the
Hanafi school, which is
the legal school that we're using
to
discuss
prayer.
And I want you to think about this
in 3 different kind of modes.
And we talked about it somewhat
some months ago. We're talking about prayer.
But just to kind of go into it
a little bit deeper for this class.
And then in the latter half of the
class, we're gonna talk about kind of the
season
that we're in right now.
It's the 1st
day of the 1st month of the new
year on the Islamic calendar. The month is
called Muharram.
And we'll talk a little bit about what
that means to Muslims who are Sunni, Muslims
who are Shia. Right now, at the end
of the hall,
our Shia community is hosting program,
that they'll be doing for the next 10
days nights relevant to Muharram and I'll explain
that in a little bit. Next week, there's
a couple of fasting days that within the
tradition
are observed around Muharram. We'll explain some of
what that is also
relevant to, like, the days that we're in
right now. Just so people can kind of
preemptively start thinking about some of it.
And also, like, what are some of the
actual differences between Sunni Islam, Shia Islam,
and where's their commonality
that fits in
with the definition that all of us are
Muslim.
There's kind of the gross majority very much
in common, but things that are rooted in
authoritative and theological difference that informs like ritualistic
practice that's different. Does that make sense? So
we'll do that in the second half of
the class.
So really quickly just because a few more
people have trickled in, would be great is
if we can take a minute You guys
can just again introduce yourselves to the people
sitting around you. Just so we also start
getting to know each other. And nice thing
about this class is that typically has around
this many people or maybe like another 5
or 10. But it's easy to get to
know people when it's a smaller group of
people. So you take 2 quick minutes just
introduce yourselves to the people sitting around you,
names like kinda, you know, how does your
day go
And then we'll come back and and get
into the next topic. But go ahead. Great.
Should we get started again?
Yeah. People know each other a little bit.
So I want you to think about this
within
3 different frames. Today, we're going to talk
about the obligations,
which are the farad, the farad, the individual
acts.
If these are not present at a minimum
then the prayer isn't valid. Like once you're
in the prayer. Right? Not outside of the
prayer. We just talked about the outer parts
to it.
But this essentially becomes what you want to
conceptualize is like the skeleton of the prayer.
Right? If you were to compare it to
you yourself as a
physical
being, the skeleton in and of itself is
this.
And then you have what we'll talk about
next week, which are the necessary
acts.
They
are not
at the level of obligation.
This is what you have to do as
a minimum. And why we want to do
this is for two reasons. 1,
when you are new to Islam,
whether you were born into it and you're
just trying to rebuild the relationship or you
convert to it.
The prayer in and of itself
is an obligation, the 5 daily prayers. Right?
So if you remember we talked about this
spectrum
of actions
that on one end is what's called fard
or obligatory.
These are those things that have clear
evidence like text
and the meaning is also clear. It's definitive
like both in text and meaning
for it to be considered an obligation.
At the other end of the spectrum
was the word haram, which means
strictly prohibited.
And it's the same basis
that
both text and meaning have to be definitive.
And then there were in the middle what's
called, Mubah.
This means
neutral. And then here you had what is
called
or recommended.
Sorry. My handwriting is terrible.
And then over here you have what's called
or disliked.
These
two inner categories,
they
are
things that are lesser defined
than what is obligatory and prohibited.
And in the Hanafi school they add in
the category of wajib,
which essentially is saying that it's important
but either text or meaning,
one or the other, is probabilistic. It's not
as definitive.
Right? So the performance of 5 daily prayers
is
definitive
in text and meaning.
It's an obligation.
So why we're going through this
is it's super easy
to do
just what are the actual integral
parts
the obligatory
parts of the prayer
Because if somebody converted to Islam
right now,
the prayer becomes
obligatory upon them
after they converted.
So as they're learning the rest of these,
this is the skeleton,
what's necessary you conceptualize
is kind of
everything that goes on top of the skeleton
the flesh
you know, that gives you shape. And then
what's recommended
is kind of that last layer that kind
of beautifies
and ornaments
like what's
there. For a lot of people
what happens
is the minute they become Muslim
they're told
that they have to do this last phase
right from the beginning.
Which that's not how Islam as a religion
works.
You don't have to study Islam
you could if you chose to but you're
not required to study and know
anything
of practice and ritual
when you take like the shahada and you
convert to Islam
So there's not like a 6 month course
that everyone takes in order to convert.
Do you know? You kind of pick it
up as you go along. Do you know
what I mean? There's all kinds of reasons,
like, people will become Muslim.
I've met people who they've been in a
Muslim country and they heard the call to
prayer and it was so beautiful.
They followed it to a mosque and then
from the mosque they, like, heard some people
talking and they said this religion makes sense
to me. I met people who literally are
morticians
that their job was to bury deceased people
and they appreciated the way that Muslim people
treated their dead in comparison to others that
that became an entry point for them.
Others who were like housekeepers in apartment complexes
that saw just how clean
that Muslims clothes were that they were laundering
for them. And when they inquired, you know,
how is it that this is so clean?
They would say that because of those conditions
we talked about.
So
all of those people,
they didn't
sit down and say,
I know how to x, y, and z
ritually before becoming Muslim. And people have, like,
varied journeys. Right? There's going to be people
who you might meet. It might be yourself,
who you, like, came and prayed with a
bunch of people before and tried to figure
out what does this mean and this and
that. That's fine. No one's saying that's wrong
to do, but it's not something that's contingent
upon your conversion.
Right? For one to convert, they don't have
to know how to do it beforehand.
But after they've converted, when the prayer time
comes, they got to pray.
And it's important for a second reason if
you're going to teach somebody how to do
it you want to teach them in a
sequential order. Because if you overwhelm
somebody with what's gonna be this last list,
what we're talking about today is just gonna
be 6 things
and of them
like, most are just about how you stand
and how you bow and how you prostrate.
It's nothing to do with reciting anything.
Right? There's gonna be one point where we
talk about saying something in Arabic that's really
minimal
that suffices
as you are learning
like these other parts to it. Does that
make sense?
Does it? Can somebody say back to me
what I just said so that I know
that what I'm saying actually makes sense? Like,
why are we doing this?
It's the bare minimum.
It's like the most important and the bare
minimum so that when we start praying, we
know
what's actually necessary before getting overwhelmed with everything
else. Great. So this is where you start.
And when you're doing, like, the prayers, and
you don't wanna get into your head and
second guess yourself. Right? That says, well, it
doesn't look the way everybody else's does. You're
going at a pace that makes sense for
you. This is why in this bucket was
the first chapter of the Quran, Surah Fateha,
that we looked at for like 3 or
4 weeks in meaning and what it was
about.
Because how will you know how to recite
it
right from the first day?
You don't speak Arabic.
You've never, like, read Arabic in your life.
The letters are not even all the same,
like, sounds. Right? There's no in
English. There's no
in English. Right? There's no There's no
You know? There's not cognates of all of
these things.
So it creates an entry point that could
be really kind of burdensome
because you want to try to do your
best. But the idea isn't that making it
harder on yourself is somehow better. You kind
of go in a process. And when somebody
is new to Islam,
it's a valid reason to do only this
part.
Right?
The idea is that you should be doing
this
unless there's a reason not to. And there's
a reason not to because you don't know
how to do it yet. Does that make
sense? Yeah.
So we're gonna go through this.
This is what you're gonna think of as
the skeleton
to the prayer. And then from there, we're
gonna talk next week about what the necessary
actions are, which included what we were talking
about for the last few weeks.
Like the recitation of the first chapter.
And then we'll talk about the recommended.
We'll talk about what are things that are
disliked
in a prayer,
and what are things that, nullify the prayer.
Like, what breaks a prayer.
Does that make sense? And we'll be doing
that over the course of the next 4
to 5 weeks.
Okay.
Great.
So
the first part to what becomes obligatory.
Afard
in your prayer,
some people consider the last condition,
which we had outside of the prayer, as
being
potentially also
understood as the first
necessary, the first obligatory
part of prayer. Does anybody remember what the
last condition was that we had listed here?
Intention.
Yeah. It was after intention.
What did you say? I was thinking of
the spectrum
around So before we had the spectrum,
the list that we went through just to
review from last week Oh, the Taherima?
The Taherima. Right? What was that? Do people
remember?
So Allahu Akbar is one of the things
it could be
but the tahrimah itself
is just like an opening invocation.
Right? It's got to be something
that is essentially
proclaiming
some
kind
of idea of God's greatness.
You know?
In the next kind of sections that we
talk about,
it's gonna be that as you distill it,
you're gonna say Allahu Akbar.
So if you're able to say that that's
fine.
But here
it's considered
like what's entering you into the state of
prayer. So some people see it as a
condition outside what we had listed before. And
some people will say it's like the first
obligatory
part to it. Right?
Both functionally do the same thing
because they're both obligations.
Right? It's either an obligation
that is the last thing that is outside
of the prayer or it's an obligation that
is the first thing that's the first part
of the prayer. Does that make sense? Functionally,
it's the same thing.
This in and of itself now
is still doing what we said it did
last week.
It has the same
letters
as the word you said before what was
that word?
Yeah so you can still see that right
haram
tahrimah.
The idea is what's happening now when you're
entering into the state of prayer
is that you are rendering
in that moment
things that are normally permissible,
impermissible.
So when you're in a state of prayer,
like you're not talking to the person next
to you the way you could talk right
now. You all were introducing yourselves to each
other. Your phone rings. You're not picking up
your phone. Right? So silence it if you
can. But you're not doing actions
that if someone was to see you do
those actions,
they
would understand
you to not be in a state of
prayer. Does that make sense?
So you can't, like, eat while you're praying.
Right? Like someone's leading the prayer. You know,
I tell this to people at the end
of Ramadan. My son is 7 years old
and when we were breaking fast,
he was here some nights and he positioned
like right in front of him a juice
box that he had And whenever he would
go down in the prayer, he would, like,
sip the juice
and I could hear him. Right? And I
knew he was gonna do it. And then
when he did it, it was pretty amazing.
And then at the end of it, he's
looking at me. He's very, like, well satiated
and stuff. He's a little kid. You know?
But, like, we couldn't do that in the
course of the prayer. Right? It's just something
that what you would normally be doing,
you're now not doing that. You know?
And within it, other things that might be
distractions in the course of the prayer.
Was that Luna's?
Yeah. It's Luna.
She didn't wanna come back in here.
So you wanna think that out for yourself.
You know? What are things that are distractions?
And how do you also
avoid,
like,
doing things that fundamentally,
you know,
are not going to work? I had a
roommate who's like, how are y'all doing? Come
in.
One of my roommates before I got married,
he was,
you know, watching one of the NBA finals
games.
And the time for our 4th prayer of
the day came in that has a small
window at sunset. It's called Maghrib.
And as
we were getting, like, into the time, I
was like, hey, we gotta pray. In my
apartment, if any of you all have been
to our apartment, you know, some of you
were there for the brunch that we did
on Sunday. Right? The TV
is like really kind of close to the
direction of prayer. You know? Like, the TV
is here and the prayer direction is this
way. So I was like, hey, let's pray.
And he was like, yeah, let's do it.
And he just muted the television.
Right? And I'm like, man, you gotta turn
the TV off. He's like, no. It's not
a problem. I was like, no. You know?
Because like literally, we'd be standing
and the game would still be going on
in front of us. Do you know what
I mean? So the idea is that you
want to
recognize it as also an entrance into a
state of awareness.
It's a spiritual act. As much as you
you are engaged in something that has mechanics
and ritual to it,
if it's done in the way that it's
intended to be done, just like any exercise,
it'll yield you what is done by the
exercise being performed correctly.
Right?
So you don't want to also create opportunities
for you that are going to render
things
as
potentially
now having you do something that otherwise
would kind of invalidate the prayer. Right? You
can't watch TV while you're praying. Do you
know what I mean? Does that make sense?
Right? You can't
be, like, talking to somebody or eating something
or doing these kinds of things. So this
initial
invocation
at an obligatory level is just you reciting
something
that is glorifying God in some capacity.
And so you could theoretically say other words
also,
but
if you're able to say that Allahu Akbar,
then that is what you're gonna do. Does
that make sense?
And this is done with all those other
conditions that we talked about being in place.
The second
obligatory
act of prayer,
not necessary
or recommended,
this is what's creating the skeleton
that renders validity to the prayer is that
you are going to stand,
if able to,
for
the obligatory
prayers.
So in different types of prayers that you
have, there's some that are voluntary,
right, and some that are obligatory.
So what does that mean?
Right?
Well, 1, somebody might not be physically capable
of standing,
Like,
they don't have the ability to stand.
You know, they could be kind of in
a wheelchair. My father,
now maybe like 6 years ago,
had a severe stroke
that rendered him without the ability to speak
and left him paralyzed
on the right side of his body.
He can't stand for prayer.
Right? There's still a prayer that he would
perform
but it's not going to be the same
as, like, the way that I would pray.
So he's not able to stand for the
obligatory prayers. Right?
If you are perhaps on an airplane, for
example, situationally,
like the parts that you could stand for
you'd need to stand for.
But say there's turbulence. Say they force you
to put on your seat belt. Right?
You are not able to like stand in
your chair. There's no like, room to do
that for whatever reason.
Then that's different.
So standing if you are able to for
the obligatory
prayer.
Standing
in and of itself
is rooted in,
like, your entire
being being upright
and understanding
that
you're in a place
where we're not talking about like other things
that you would typically see Muslims do when
they're praying. Do you know what I mean?
Like what are other things that you have
seen people do
in the course of their standing
in prayer?
You raise their hands. Yeah. What else?
Put your hands someplace. Right? Some people got
them here. Some people got them here. Some
people got them here.
None of that is written here. Do you
get what I'm saying?
Does that make sense?
So you're standing if you're able to for
the obligatory
prayer. In the Hanafi school, for voluntary prayers,
the standing
is not
an obligatory
part to it. So if you're doing extra
prayers, like, you'll see a lot of people
once they're done with your obligatory prayer, they
might just stay, like, kneeling on the ground
and they're on their knees and they just,
like, start their prayer and then they're doing
everything else that they need to do. Right?
But that standing
is
a second
obligation.
So
1, you're just going to begin the prayer.
And here again, we didn't say about raising
your hands or anything like that. You're just
indicating a start to the prayer
through this invocation,
and then you're standing if you're able to.
Does that make sense? Any questions on that?
Sure?
Right? Like and you could say, is that,
like, how people do it? We're not talking
about the last phase. We're saying in this
initial phase, as you're getting to it, these
are the obligations that we want to be
able to
make sure are taking place.
Situationally,
can you is it can you is it
possible to pray on an airplane?
Like, if you can't stand up anywhere but,
like, say Yeah. You would pray in your
seat. Okay. And to the best of your
ability, you would pray.
If you can't face towards Mecca Yeah. Then
you would try the best of your ability
to also face towards Mecca.
You gotta pray the prayer in the window
of time that it comes in. Yeah. And
in a few weeks we'll talk about what
do you do when you're traveling because there's
like different rules
about shortening prayers and some people say you
could combine prayers.
So you could pray
together,
together when you're traveling.
But we'll talk about that in detail. You
know? Yeah.
But if you have the ability to stand,
like, you want to stand in your prayer,
like, you're required to stand. So you should
stand. Yeah? And so then the window of
prayer is between
each. Right? Or is it The window of
prayer there's a different window of prayer for
every prayer.
So if we had the horizon,
right, the way
the first prayer of the day starts
is, like, say the sun is here below
the horizon,
and it's getting closer. Like, the light from
the sun is coming up. So at this
point, the sky is like very red and
orange. At this point, it's getting very light.
And when the actual part of the sun
comes above the horizon,
that's when the window of time stops for
that prayer. Does that make sense? So you
have this entire time. Like,
today,
this was probably about an hour
and 40 minutes to pray this prayer.
Right? And the performance of it, you could
do in, like, a few minutes,
especially if you're doing it the way that
we're saying here. Do you know?
The second prayer of the day,
like, starts when the sun begins to descend
from its zenith. This was a little bit
after 1 PM today.
It goes until the 3rd prayer of the
day, which is in the mid afternoon.
And there's 2 opinions on this, like your
shadow is one time its length or twice
its length. And you don't have to know
this, but just to give you an idea
of how it's going.
And this was, like,
around 5 PM or, like, a little after
6 today. So you would have had like
5 hours to do that one, you know?
And then this one goes until the time
of sunset. So, you know, which is around
like 8:20 something. So you have like 3
hours for that. Right? And then
from
that until Isha, which is a little right,
like, around 10 o'clock. That's like a short
window. It's about an hour
and a half still, an hour ish. Right?
And then you could theoretically
pray the last prayer of the day until
the time that this one starts. You'd have
from, like, 10 till 4 something in the
morning,
but better to pray it, like, in the
first half of the night,
than kinda delaying it unnecessarily.
Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah.
So you're gonna stand if you're able to.
Then the third
is you're gonna recite
any
short verse
of the first
two cycles
of an obligatory
prayer.
And every cycle
of a voluntary prayer
Or what we also call, like, a different
category that's called the winter prayer
that we can talk about in a bit.
So what does that mean?
That doesn't mean you have to recite the
first chapter of the Quran, Surafa Ta'a. It
doesn't mean you have to recite
the entire
chapter of a short, like, chapter
or, like, one very long verse.
Those are things that we'll discuss when we
get into the necessary acts and the recommended
acts.
The shortest verse in the Quran
is two words in Arabic.
It says, Thummandadir.
Right? Do you want to repeat after me?
Thumma.
Like, so the way it's pronounced is like
the word theta in Arabic. Right? Theta. If
you wanna say theta.
Theta.
Theta. Theta. Right? So you get the and
theta.
So
is with the and theta.
That's it.
If you just say that,
that's all the Arabic you gotta say in
the prayer,
in that first
wave
of learning.
Does that make
sense?
Some of you in the room
have either been taught or taught others
that you gotta do a lot more than
that in the beginning.
It creates a lot of stress. It creates
a lot of anxiety.
Right? That, you know, am I allowed to
do it this way? Can I read this?
Can I have something playing in my ear
while I'm doing it? Don't, like, feel like
you did anything wrong. Right?
Because you're trying to figure out
if somebody is engaging you either virtually
or in person
that they might know how to pray,
but they might not know how to teach
you how to pray.
Right? As you're going through it in a
pedagogy that makes sense relevant to where you
are. Do you get what I mean? Mhmm.
Does that make sense? Yes.
You also don't wanna get in your own
head.
Right? That says,
but it's not the same
because you're working towards something.
So why, like, we spent a good chunk
of time
breaking down the first chapter,
because it's a necessary. It's the second box
of category.
It's a necessary act, and you wanna, like,
put in reasonable time to learning it and
not just this translation but why we spend
so much time on its meaning.
You get to learn the translation of something,
but still isn't going to invoke like the
meaning of it, you know. And for it
to be like a real spiritual experience
doesn't mean you have to speak Arabic
because you can speak Arabic and you still
might not really get what it means. Right?
Like what is it trying to convey? What
is it going to invoke? If you miss
those sessions, we have them all recorded. They're
on our podcast. They're on our YouTube channel,
and we can go through those as well.
But the base
of this
is that when you're starting,
you're going to just have to say and
recite
any
short verse
of the Quran. Right? And the shortest verse,
it just says
this, Thumma nadir.
Right? It's a complete verse
and that suffices. Does that make sense? Yeah.
Go ahead.
It's not too complicated of a
means and then he looked.
Yeah. So
means then in Arabic.
And
is like
a sight of the eye.
Right? So,
if someone said, they
it would mean like he looks or he
sees. Right?
Tandur means like she looks.
Right? So nadir,
glasses
have like the same root in Arabic. Right?
You're wearing glasses. So you get right? It
just means that he looks. Any other questions?
You you have your hand raised? Yeah. I
just wanted to check. Do we
do the niyyah also?
That was one of the conditions
outside of the prayer. I see. Yeah. So
it's not part of the prayer. This is
like in the prayer now where the obligations.
So those 6 things that we talked about
last week, those are the things that you
need outside of the prayer. Right? Wudu,
clean place to pray,
nothing
like dirty on your body, your clothes,
you're facing towards Mecca,
like the prayer time came in,
you know, those things that we discussed. Yeah.
Yeah.
The word verse, is it also the same
as aya?
Like Yeah. It's just any short aya for
the Quran, like a verse. So the Arabic
word for verse
is aya. Aya means like a sign.
Right? And signs
are like indicators of something deeper. Do you
know? That's the whole idea with this is
that Islam doesn't divorce
religion, spirituality,
and ethics, but it synergizes them. So that
when you're looking at something, you see it
as a signpost for, like, something with a
a deeper meaning. You know, it gives you
an opportunity to find beauty,
in
what surrounds you. Does that make sense? Right?
So that's when Aya is, it's like a
sign.
But a sign not in the sense of,
like, you know, a stop sign or like
a billboard, but, like, it's a sign of
something,
like, indicating something more than just what's most
apparent.
Right? Okay.
Then the 4th
is bowing.
So So if we distinguish
between bowing and standing,
like, standing
in,
like, posture
is such that you're standing in such a
way that if you were standing,
like, straight enough so that your arms wouldn't,
like, touch, like, your knees.
Right?
Bowing,
distinct from standing,
is that your bowing is,
like, movement enough
that your hands are actually then touching your
knees. Does that make sense?
Yeah.
In Arabic this is called ruku.
So there's a bowing element to this.
Then
you have
what's the prostration
element.
Sorry. Did anybody have any questions on the
bowing part to it?
Yeah.
I have a question on the previous part
about the,
the gray air windows.
Does it mean if you wake up after
sunrise
that you miss the day? Yeah. You have
to make it up, and we'll talk up
how to make up a prayer.
But
because it's an obligatory
act,
like, you still have to do it even
if you've done it late.
So you would make it up if you
slept through it. But they don't add up.
So, like, let's say,
you slept in half of the
If you slept till the door time? Not
a stretch. That would be so amazing. I
would expect that. Like, man, I don't even
know the last time I slept that long.
Oh my god. Yeah. Go ahead. Say you
miss and then you
miss the whole Sure.
So if you miss prayers,
right,
say you miss,
there's a distinction between missing,
like,
more than 5 and less than 5.
Does that make sense? So if I missed
Fajr,
I should pray Fajr before I prayed Duhr.
And if I missed
Fajr and Dhuhr,
I'd have to pray those before I pray
Asr,
right? You kinda get the logic.
If I miss any 5,
I don't have to pray those before
like, say you miss now more than these,
you don't then have to pray them before
you pray the next one, but you still
are obligated to make them up.
Does Does that make sense? And then there's
different scenarios. Right? Like say you missed Fajr
and you came in and all of us
were praying dour, and you prayed dour with
us, and then you make up fajr after.
But you gotta make up your prayers.
Like, they're seen
as things that you are required to do.
And
it's something that,
the requirement extends.
Like it's seen as like a debt, essentially.
That you would you would do them. Yeah.
I have a question about prime during the
for making a query during the forbidden time.
Before you repeat it. So let's say
I miss a burger Yeah. And
also comes in.
I would have to make a burger before
I pray Esther but, like, technically, you're not
supposed to pray another bird. I don't know.
There's nothing between, like,
So do I still pray about her between
to
make it up, or do I just make
up about her
after? If you were praying Assur,
why would you pray it before you prayed
to your heart?
Like, if you had to pray,
right, why wouldn't you do that first? Even
if you missed it. Just be, because also
time came in. So I wasn't sure if,
like, because also time came in, I if
that's the first thing I do is pronounce
it. And then
still make up the har or like You
should pray the har first.
Like, because you have a window of time
to pray.
Right? So why the question is there is
because once you've prayed Asr,
there's no prayers after you've prayed Asr time.
Right?
It's like it's a time that's prohibited to
pray.
There's like a few times that one's not
supposed to pray. When the sun is at
its highest,
and the time that a part of the
sun is risen from the horizon until it's
fully risen.
And after Asar
till like, once you've prayed Asar, there's no
prayer until motherfucker.
I thought it was just, like, the time
of Asar comes in.
That's it. No more.
I didn't realize it was, like, you have
until, like, even if it's, like, the last
few
minutes of Asar. Yeah. So you should pray
before you prayed Asar. That means something. Yeah.
Right? That would be. Right?
Yeah. It's a makeup prayer. Like you're praying
it late. In Arabic, the word is called,
and you would just make them up. Like
and say you had like years of prayers
that you had to make up. You would
just estimate them. Right? So what you want
to do is kind of like pair up
with all the prayers,
you know,
when you pray like you're fudger of today,
then pray like fudger that you missed from
5 years ago. Right? As long as you're
working towards something,
then after a few years, you would have
caught them up. Does that make sense? If
you go to a few years. Yeah.
Okay. So
prostration,
and
then you have
the final like kind of sitting.
And the length of the final sitting
is
something
that
you would be sitting for for like a
duration
of, you know, like 10 seconds, 15 seconds.
Right?
What are some of the things that you
see missing from here? If you've ever seen
like a Muslim person pray or you yourself
have prayed before
in like a typical prayer?
Like, the finger
at some point. Yeah. Right? So you raise
your finger,
and we'll talk about that. And there's like
certain things that you say called it the.
Right?
It's not written up here. You see?
Yeah. What else?
What was that? So this is prostration is
such that. Right? And you're just doing this,
like, in the course of the prayer. Yeah.
The salaams. Yep.
The salaams.
The salaams. Right? That's right. So when you're
here,
like, you just end the prayer by doing
something that's outside of your prayer.
Do you know? So you like most people
when they're like finishing their prayer what you
would normally do is turn your head to
the right and the left.
You give what's called salaam.
But
in
like the basic structure
of what is obligatory,
that's not a part of it. Right? How
you would end the prayer that's just by
doing something that's an act outside of the
prayer. You know? Like just get up, you
know, grab your phone, do this, do that.
You know what I mean? Yeah. But it's
not like
I don't want to say that it's easy
in the sense
that there's not still like mechanics and stuff
that goes to it.
But it's very different
from
adding
everything else that we said will be added.
The necessary acts which is like kind of
the flesh to the body. The recommended acts
which is what kind of beautifies and gives
kind of more of an ornamentation to it.
Right? This is really just about you're getting
acquainted with it
and you're doing what is required of you
because the prayer
on its time
and even if you're praying it late, but
you're still praying it Like it's still 5
that you gotta get done in the day,
you know.
And you don't want to not do them
because it's overwhelming to say, I don't know
how to do it in its final form
yet. Like that's what you're working towards. Do
you get what I mean?
And it's a lot more manageable
when what you're getting accustomed to is just
like the positions of it and the postures
to it. And then we start adding things
to it. Do you know what I mean?
And so one of the things that is
in the next category
that is the necessary acts, the wajib,
is the recitation of the first chapter. Surufatiha
which you should be working on right now
and thinking like how do I add that
to the prayer? Do you know what I
mean? Right? And then you're just like building
upon it each
kind of day, week, month, and then you
get the hang of it like in a
way that's more systematic.
And it's helpful because you don't want like
anxiety to be a motivation.
Like pressure can do certain things. Right? Like
we're at a university,
you know,
all of us have probably gone to some
level of education.
I don't know how many of you are
like procrastinators or not. I wrote my honors
thesis when I graduated from my undergrad
like 2 weeks after graduation. Right? Clearly not
like a a good student. Do you know?
But fundamentally,
like, for some people when the deadline is
there the next day,
the adrenaline kicks in and they just, like,
get it done. Do you know?
It's not gonna work that way when you're
trying to engage in an act
that is meant to bring you spiritual rest
and inward balance and contentment.
You don't want the onset to be something
that says
like, hey, this religion doesn't make sense for
me because I'm not Arab.
And why is God making me somehow
now suddenly
overnight
know all of this?
And I don't even know what the words
mean.
But the idea is like you don't have
to know all of those things overnight. Do
you get what I'm saying?
Right?
And it allows for there to be then
a progression that's gradual
that outside of the prayer you start to
learn those things that we're gonna go into
a little bit more detail
in the coming week,
and break down a little bit more. So
that there is that much more of like
a sense of presence as well as kind
of systematic engagement. So So what you want
to do is what we talked about last
week and we reviewed right at the beginning,
the conditions of the prayer. Right? What do
you need
like, before you start to pray? You know,
you get, like, your will do. And when
you're making will do, take out, like,
a piece of paper. This is what I
gotta wash up. This is what I gotta
do this and do that. There's no shame
in it, you know, as you get acquainted
to it. With COVID,
I herniated 2 discs in my neck. Right?
Our community is really big. We had a
lot of things going on. I also was
just like very sedentary, not taking care of
myself so well, Carrying a lot of people's
trauma. My body was like literally collapsing on
itself.
When I herniated these discs like this part
of my shoulders swelled up to here. I
I had to reteach myself how to use
my left hand.
It was, like, pretty
interesting of an experience.
And when I was going to physical therapy,
because it was COVID,
everyone wasn't allowed to go to physical therapy.
And we had members of our community who
are physical therapists,
who allowed me to, like, come into their
practices and offices.
But the only people who were going to
hospitals and physical therapists office and these kinds
of things at that time were like the
people who are most immunocompromised.
You know? So I'd walk in to this
physical therapy office and it was me and
like
15
really old white ladies.
And the physical therapist would hand me a
weight that was like this neon pink
1 pound weight
and this old 80 year old woman next
to me is like got like a 5
pound weight in her hand. And she's looking
at me like I'm the most miserable thing
in the world.
And my physical therapist said if you want,
you know, we could be in a private
room. I was like, no, man. I'm good.
I'm not gonna let this old bully woman
put me down. Right? Because just because I'm
at a certain place doesn't mean that that's
where I'm gonna be.
And this is just where I'm at right
now, and that's fine. You know?
And you don't have to think about it
in any other way that
I am somehow lacking or inadequate.
How would you possibly know a language that
you've never spoken before?
Let alone, like, just
spit it out fluidly in these ways. Do
do you get what I'm saying? Do you
want to have a sense of compassion towards
yourself
and recognition
that, like, it's
made with sensibility
to get you from point a to point
b.
So equip yourself with the conditions that we
talked about last week and recapped before this
and start to do this
in these timings
as you're getting acquainted
and kind of learning the other things that
we're gonna be going through.
Okay. So I want to take just 10
quick minutes before we wrap up,
to talk about kind of the season that
we're in right now.
So there is an Islamic calendar,
that is a lunar based calendar.
And the 1st month on that calendar
is the month that we're in right now.
It's called the month of Muharram.
Fun fact, I was born on the first
of Muharram.
And
I don't know how many lunar years old
I am right now.
Probably like a million.
But,
Muharram
has a couple of different meanings
to
different,
groupings of Muslims.
For the Shia community, it's a very somber
kind of grieving period.
And we'll talk about it in a bit,
but the base of it is a very
tragic incident
that every Muslim,
like, no matter where they're from recognizes
as a deeply tragic incident.
There's Sunni, there's Shia, They come from any
part of the world. Like, historically,
every Muslim has said
this is an atrocious act. It's a deeply
unifying
concept
because
everyone agrees to it. There's an instance that
takes place
at a location called Karbala
where
the prevailing authorities
essentially
massacre
the family members of the prophet Muhammad, peace
be upon him,
inclusive
of his grandson,
Hussein,
and I said,
I'm gonna be pleased with him.
And we'll talk about that in like 3
minutes.
But what you're gonna see here at our
center,
we're a very large community and also very
diverse.
And many mosques
in, like, the whole world, let alone in
New York City,
tend to not just be, like, ethnocentric,
very culturally hegemonic.
Right? For some of
you who are like exploring Islam,
you
might have converted at some point
recently or like years ago. If you've ever
experienced like other communities
whether they're very welcoming or not they tend
to like have more of a sociological
connection.
Right? Everyone is from a similar
kind of ethnic background, cultural background. You know?
New York City is built like this. You
have a Chinatown, a little Italy, these kinds
of things. Right? So you'll
find 200 mosques in New York.
There'll be like Sudanese mosque, a Malaysian mosque,
there'll be Bengali mosque, Yemeni mosque, like, you
know, all these different kinds of things. In
our space, we have people that come from
everywhere. Right? Like, if you literally look at
you all. Right? Like everyone in this room
is very different from everyone else in the
rest of the room in different ways. Right?
And beyond cultural, racial, ethnic, socio economic diversity,
we also have a community that's very diverse
in terms of
theology,
in terms of like legal understandings.
So you'll have both Sunnis and Shias
that come to our center.
And beyond that,
you also have the unique
aspect that on our staff, you have like
someone like myself,
who is a practicing Sunni Muslim, We have
Sheikh Fayaz Jafar,
who's a trained Shia scholar.
And
we have had at other points other people
on our staff that we have roles that
probably in the next year we'll try to
fill. But it's very purposefully done. Do you
know? Like I started working here when I
was 25
and then Amira, who some of you have
met, is our associate director, is out of
maternity leave right now. We hired her probably
like 8 years after I started working here.
Then we started hiring other people.
But for me,
there's an understanding that, you know, I have
to pay for my weaknesses.
Right? I can't
claim to be representative of all the diverse
groupings of people that come to our center.
So we had Sheikh Saheb Webb was working
here. Sheikh Aisha Prime was working here. Sheikh
Fahad Jafar. He'll say, why you hire these
people? Well, 1, I want, like, the best
people to serve our community because I love
our community.
But 2,
I'm not black. I'm not a convert. I'm
not Shia. There's so many things that I'm
fundamentally not. I need these voices at a
table as we're, like, making decisions on things,
but also representation
as well as opportunity for engagement.
And so you're gonna see in the next
kinda
week and a half, nightly our shia community
and the prayer room is gonna be hosting,
what's,
our Muhammedjilas
program. The word majjilas
just means like a gathering. Right?
It literally is like a place where people
are seated, you know, if we were to
translate it most literally. But they're gonna be
recounting
the narrative of the tragedy of Karbala
that takes place,
and leading up to the 10th of Muharram,
which is,
where
they will have in the morning of 10th,
a service that probably has many more people.
It's very somber,
dealing
with kind of everything culminating to the murder
of the grandson of the prophet of God.
And,
then on 11th, they'll have, like, a closing
majlis in the night too as well as
on 10th night. And
you should feel comfortable in going,
to it, you know, whether you are Muslim
or not, whether you identify
as Sunni or Shia, whether you even know
like which one you identify with or not.
Just to be able to kinda
engage and understand the experience.
This is somber
kind of gathering. So what you'll see is
that people who are typically there, you know,
they're wearing like darker clothes.
And
you'd find in,
the shared community,
they wouldn't be doing in these days, like,
things that are celebratory.
You know, there's no weddings like, you know,
birthdays, etcetera. These kinds of things. Right? It's
a very somber grieving period.
In the Sunni tradition,
Tarballah is also
given
like,
deep recognition and deference towards. So what happens,
to give you, like, a quick history 101,
when the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,
passes away, there's not a, in the Sunni
understanding, an outlined authoritative
structure that is defined.
In the Shia tradition, the understanding is that
the authority should be passed on to Ali,
who is
the son of the prophet's uncle Abu Taib.
Ali is also married to the prophet's daughter
Fatima. There's many Sunnis who thought Ali should
also be in charge. There's people who thought
like a variety of people should be in
charge. In the Sunni tradition,
the
successor
ship is given to a man by the
name of Abu Bakr, who becomes the 1st
Sunni caliph of Islam. Whereas Ali is the
first
like
imam
of the Shia tradition. So in the Shia
community,
they don't use the title imam for their
religious leaders because it's reserved for particular
individuals,
who are seen to be
the rightful authoritative
successors to the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon
him. Does that make sense? Right? So like
when you see Sheikh Fayaz Jafar, you're not
gonna call him Imam Fayaz
just as a matter of terminology.
The word imam in the Shia tradition means
something very different than it does in the
Sunni tradition. So as the Sunni kind of
understanding goes, you know, Abu Bakr
is the caliph and then there is
Umar ibn Al Khattab,
and under his caliphate there's a lot of
kind of growth, etcetera, historically.
Then you have a 3rd caliph by the
name of Uthman ibn Affan, and then you
have a 4th that is Ali ibn Abi
Talib,
who is the first,
like, imam of the Shia tradition.
After Ali
passes,
you have
his son,
Hassan,
who is going to be the caliph.
And another person by the name of Muawiya,
who
becomes now the ruler
and has an abdicates
his right to authority,
in exchange
for
the provision
that there would be no harm done
to any of the members of the prophet
Muhammad's family.
And when Muawiyah
is in charge historically,
this is something that is kind of carried
forth on. He has a son by the
name of Yazid.
And in the Sunni tradition,
right, Yazid
is not seen as somebody
who really has the ability to take on
this authoritative leadership.
Right? He basically is like an idiot. You
know? He, like, avid, like, alcohol drinker.
He has, like, pet monkeys that he dresses
up and has them dance in front of
them. You know?
When
Yazid
is now
engaged in this kind of new model of
authority that is dynastic
and he doesn't have this capacity,
the
other grandson of the prophet Mohammed
Hussain,
he refuses
to pledge loyalty to him.
There are others who do, like, take
oath of allegiance to his leadership, etcetera.
And Hussain the
grandson of the prophet,
he
goes from Medina to Mecca. And then there's
people in a city called Kufa,
who, you know, we know is modern day
Iraq. Right? Which is where Karbala is.
They say come to us. We're also not
going to,
like, have allegiance
to this person.
And
he goes to Kufa
and essentially,
it's not going into too much detail. And
if you come to Jomana on Friday, I'll
talk about it in more detail. And when
I tell you, like, what happens in the
city tradition, we have some fasting days,
prior to the fast breaking, which we'll do
next Thursday Friday. We'll probably talk about this
in more detail. When he gets to Kufa,
the people say they'll support him. And
in reality, what happens,
there's like this overwhelming
kinda presence
of the dynastic
leadership of Yazid.
And so the Kufins, they say to,
Imam Hussain
that our hearts are with you but our
swords are against you. Right?
And now you have
the prophet's
remaining family members,
you know, with Mount Hussein
and they get stationed in this place of
Karbala and
they're essentially, like,
attacking
them. But nobody is like daring to do
anything because the prophets grants them. You know,
you have narrations in the prophetic tradition
where the prophet
would,
like,
again and again, like, express the love he
had for his grandchild,
you know, and give a deep insight into
just how beloved
his family was to them.
And then they eventually get to a place
where somebody
who is in the army of Zizid that
is a known
kinda transgressor against the community,
you know,
takes like this first shot.
And in a very brutal kind of
interaction,
they end up,
decapitating the prophet's grandson
and sending his head to Damascus,
you know, is kind of a, you know,
is what it is.
The lessons that kind of come from this
are rooted from a Sunni tradition standpoint
in how Sunni Muslims observe the tenth of
Muharram.
Where in Medina,
the prophet Muhammad comes upon a group of
Jewish people
and he sees them fasting on the 10th
of Muharram. And he asked, why are you
fasting on this day? And they said that
this was the day that Moses
was and the children of Israel, you know,
they were emancipated from the tyranny of pharaoh.
Right? It's the day of the Exodus.
So the prophet says, like, we have more
of a right to Moses than you do.
And he tells people to fast. He says
next year,
right,
fast either the day before it also in
the day or the day after. A couple
a day with it it to make it
a unique practice,
from other religious traditions that might fast on
that day.
And so,
the recommendation is to fast on that
day, and to fast the day before, the
day after. And what the tradition says, it's
an expiation,
of,
like, sins for,
the year
in and of itself.
And there's other narrations that say that on
this day of 10th of Muharram,
you know, this was the day that Adam
returned back to
to God,
after eating from the tree that he wasn't
supposed to eat from. Right? He makes like
a sincere return to God acknowledging his mistake.
There's no concept of original sin in Islam.
Right? Each individual is held accountable for their
own, but Adam is like the first human.
His human tendencies.
This is a
day that it says the flood of Noah,
you know, was stopped like the storm that
was creating this flood. Right? There's other instances
that come up. So how do these things
relate?
The sacrifice
and, kind of, martyrdom
of Hussein
is seen from the lens of social justice
and a sense of just like commitment to
what is right and good,
to be like the just most exemplary thing
that you could think of. Because you wanna
conceptualize.
Right? Here's one person that's now standing in
front of an entire army and is being
told, like, let go of everything you hold
as a virtue and value.
There's a verse in one of the shorter
chapters of the Quran that says,
that we made humanity in the most beautiful
of forms. And then the next verse says
and we let them fall to the lowest
below. But it creates a paradoxical
understanding of the human that within each of
us is the capacity
to be both an agent of real goodness
as well as an agent of real ugliness.
And you have now a extreme juxtaposition
of real beauty from the kind of
standing of Hussein
at Karbala
and real ugliness
at the standpoint of those who were motivated
by greed and materialism and all of these
things.
And so there's a deep recognition of taking
a lot of lessons from this from the
standpoint of, you know, principles,
values, social justice,
etcetera.
As well as the recognition that in Islam,
the idea is that you're living for something
bigger than this world.
And so where and how
the understanding
is that you find something
that is so worth living for
that you're not willing to let go of
it.
Even if it costs you, like, literally
everything that you have in your full, like,
physical capacity.
You know what I mean?
And so he's living for something that is
so big to him that he's willing to
die for it.
Right? And we'll go into it in more
detail,
but this is what you're gonna see our
Shia community kind of recounting
the narrative that kinda gets to it. It's
a very kinda somber experience, especially as you
get into the latter half of these 10
days.
And,
we will be having for the community more
broadly,
within the city tradition,
next Thursday Friday, like, fast breaking meals that
you're more than welcome to join and come.
We'll keep the building open so that people
can participate. And then,
we won't have lunch next Friday,
because we'll be encouraging people to fast,
as we would normally have lunch.
But that's essentially what are kind of some
of the key parts to this. This month
of Muharram
is also said to be one of 4
sacred months.
Right? So within the Islamic calendar, there's 4
sacred months that we're given insight on. The
Muharram is one of them. In the Sunni
tradition, like like fasting in this month just
in general is something
that is recommended to do.
Fasting, if you're capable of doing it, it's
just seen as like a spiritual exercise that
Muslims are encouraged to do. Not because it's
about kind of, emptying of the stomach, but
it's about a fullness of the heart. Right?
Like you're not
limiting nourishment. You're just
nourishing now parts of yourself that get neglected
in other ways. Ramadan is an obligatory
fast, but these are recommended fasts.
And within it, like, just engaging in other
kind of good acts etcetera etcetera.
But it's the 1st
month on the list of calendar and other
things that we'll talk about in more detail.
I just wanna give you like a base
overview to it.
And then the last thing I'm gonna say
that kinda can offer just more of a
generic sense of understanding.
Theologically to be Muslim, and we've talked about
this before, there's 3 fundamental
beliefs that you look at.
There's a very pure monotheism
in Islam,
like one God and that's it.
And the understanding of this God is essentially
different from other monotheistic religions.
Right? In Islam,
the knowledge of God that we have is
a negative knowledge. Right? We know who God
is by knowing who God is not.
You know? There's a verse in the Quran
that says,
There's not anything that's like a likeness to
him.
And so there's no anthropomorphizing
of God in any capacity in Islam. Right?
God is distinct from his creation in every
which way,
but that's one theology. So if somebody says,
I'm Muslim but I don't believe in God.
Or I'm Muslim but I believe in more
than one God. Right? You might not like
go in somebody's face and be like, you're
not a real Muslim. But
they're not within the categorical definition of what
makes a Muslim theologically.
What makes somebody a practitioner of a religion
is the theology.
Right? As much as like
people can be culturally this, in some places
you can be ethnically, like Jewish, for example.
But what you buy into when you practice
a religion is the theology.
Right? And so the foundational theology of Islam
is first rooted in a pure monotheism.
The second theology here is a finality
of prophethood
in the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.
So somebody said,
I'm Muslim, but I don't believe that Muhammad
is a prophet or a Muslim, but I
believe there's a prophet after the prophet Muhammad.
You could say, well, that's something that would
be problematic.
And then 3rd, you have
the
belief in an afterlife.
Right? There's no concept of an afterlife in
a Mecca in Arabia.
Right? And even here, in a supremacist society,
right, an anti black society,
like deeply secularized.
It's not that it's godless in the sense
that there's no discussions with God,
But it's secularization
is such that it instills within the psyche
of those who are embedded in it and
its structure that there's nothing that's after this.
Like this is just a
live in such a way where you're only
thinking about accountability
within the sense of what's present here and
now. Right? It's not telling you, like, hey,
there's something that is beyond this world and
there's a proportionality of this world to the
world that comes beyond this one.
This is what
Muslims believe.
Now when you branch it down
to
Shia and Sunni,
this is still embodied
within
that overarching understanding of what makes somebody Muslim.
Does that make sense?
So here you would have now, like, belief
in what's called the Imamate.
Right?
Like that those successors that we're talking about.
Right? Sunnis believe in
the righteousness
of all the companions.
And this then
informs, like practice,
is basically saying these are the people that
we think were authoritative.
These are people that we think are authoritative.
So they're not gonna consider each person in
the same way. Does that make sense?
Right?
But the gross majority of everything is the
same. Everybody's praying towards Mecca. There's 5 prayers
in a day. You're fasting in Ramadan. There's
pilgrimage
to, you know, Mecca.
There is charity. There's like
all of these things. The same Quran. Do
you do you get what I'm saying?
But you'll see, like, practice come
up differently.
You'll see people who don't know, like, why
they are what they are. You'll see, like,
sociological
kind of tendencies more so than kind of
theological
understandings of what renders identity.
The Shia community is a gross minority within
a minority.
Right? Just like any minority experience on a
practical level,
you know, you have
a lot that defaults towards the majority and
what's privileged that's there. You know what I
mean? There's also like a great learning opportunity
for our community to see
just how we kind of coincide and can
kind of engage one another side by side.
So if you have chance, like, go to
some of the programs. They're gonna start with
dinner at 6 every day.
And then at around 7 ish,
a little after 7, we'll get into,
like, the content of the program. We are
keeping the building open till 10 because of
those programs.
But,
in the prayer room, that's gonna be happening
till 10 o'clock. So if you end up
sticking around
and you have a prayer that comes in,
in the Sunni tradition, the time for begins,
probably about,
like, 15 to 20 minutes earlier than in
the Shia tradition.
And so you can just pray a prayer,
you know, in one of the other rooms
while the program is still going on.
But, like, participate
if you'd like.
And if you're able to
and,
you know, you're getting fast next week, we'll
have iftar on Thursday Friday.
And we'll do that likely upstairs here on
Thursday on the 5th floor. And on Friday,
we'll probably do it on the 10th floor
of the building next door.
Yeah. Go ahead. So is the day that
we're supposed to fast the 11th or 10th
of Muharram? The 10th of Muharram Okay. Is
the day that the prophet saw
the Jewish people in Medina fasting
at a commemoration of the exodus
of the children of Israel. Okay. Yeah. And
then he said,
next year,
like, if when we observe this again,
we should couple it with another fasting day
to distinguish the practice from the practice that
they found.
Right? So either the day before or the
day after. So because our building is closed
the day after
on Saturday in the summer, we're gonna just
do it on Thursday Friday.
We typically would normally just do it on
10th.
But just to encourage people to try to
fast like a day in conjunction with it.
Okay. We'll do it on Thursday and Friday.
But Friday Saturday would also be fine. Friday
Saturday would also work. Okay. And also if
you only do Friday, that would work too.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Well, first off,
that was I would have said that beer.
Like, that was
that was beautiful. Like, when I was said.
I grew up in a mixed house. I
was I was a sushi
growing up.
So I made a conscious decision when I
got older to learn a little bit more.
I followed more of a
Islam.
But that that was I just wanted to
say it, like, that was very, very nice.
Oh, man. Thank you. That's very kind. Because
my father would've
appreciated. My father was Shia. So this is
this is this is like he didn't really,
I think
Sheikh Fayaz said this once that some people
at times they might identify first as being
shia before being Muslim.
So my father, like, eating the samosa
and doing a lot of Shia things in
Muharram,
this was like his Islam. Like, he
really valued
Muharram and, like, telling me not to watch
wrestling and Muharram for sports.
So thank you for
saying all that. That was that was nice.
Great. Thank you for bringing these. If you
didn't get one, feel free to please
grab some before I eat all of them.
And there's also one over there.
There's also dinner still
from
the program.
So even if you don't stick around, if
you wanna grab some food, it's in the
other classroom on the other side of the
lounge. I think they got Chinese food tonight.
It'll be, like, various different cuisines. Similar to
if you were here in Ramadan, we had
Iftar.
You know, the Italian food,
like, Mediterranean,
soul food, different things.
Yeah.
Yeah. Go ahead. I just remember,
I think it was maybe 2 or 3
holidays ago or
classes ago, we were mentioning whiteboards and
So part of this class normally is that
we would do the Arabic letters also.
So
thank you, Kiara, for getting these. If you
wanna grab
1 on your way out,
and
just bring it week to week,
and we'll resume with those next week as
well. There's the markers and the erasers with
them.
So fancy. I know. You do.
Yeah. Hopefully, you guys can benefit from it.
Great. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Go ahead.
I have one more question on the expiation
part.
So, Erica, right, that was expiation
for the year before and the year after.
If you passed on 10th,
that's just It's just 1 year. Okay. Yeah.
It's different from auto, but Okay. But it's
still a good thing to do.
I I know. I just asked to, like,
understand Yeah. Yeah. Technicalities.
Yeah. And when you go home or on
your phone, you can just look up, you
know, the significance of the 10th of the
day of.
It'll be like hadith and things that come
up to you.
Yeah. Great.
Okay. Thank
you, guys.