Khalid Latif – Perfecting Your Prayer The Essentials of Salah According to Hanafi Fiqh
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So let's get started.
So today, we're gonna go through what the
recommended acts are of
the prayer.
To do a quick recap,
we talked about
the Farahid. We've been looking at this text.
If you remember way back when I recommended
people to get a copy of it, the
ascent to felicity
text.
It goes through the conditions,
and
And we went through the
obligations of the prayer
and the
mandatory acts of the prayer, and now we're
on the emphasized.
So in the text,
it gives us, like, a partial list
of what are the recommended.
So here on this site,
it gives a more full list. So it
has all of the things that we still
discussed,
the what are obligatory.
So these are the things as you're
learning to pray. Right? Someone converts to Islam,
it's now mandatory for them to observe, like,
prayers
regularly.
And
so not in general,
but you're working towards the fullest form of
prayer, which are all the obligations,
the
necessary,
and the recommended acts.
But you're starting still with what are the
obligatory,
the
and so we discussed that in detail.
And then in the Hanafi school, you have
the necessary acts.
So the obligatory acts that we talked about
were like the skeleton
of the prayer, and the necessary acts are
the acts that are adding now kind of
the flesh to the the skeleton.
And we're gonna go through the recommended acts,
which are now what are beautifying
kind of the prayer. And this is stuff
that likely, if you've ever seen somebody pray,
you've prayed yourself,
like, you do a lot of these, they're
postures to them. They're kinda mechanics,
and there's some additional things that you're gonna
say in Arabic.
But if you recall what we had said
last week, you wanna focus on
what is in the necessary acts.
If you've learned what's in the recommended, that's
fine. You should add those in, but
if you haven't already
learning
the first chapter,
Surah Fatihah,
which we went through last week, we looked
at
2 short chapters of the Quran,
and.
So,
you know, trying to memorize those.
We spent a good amount of time talking
about the,
the
for people who remember that, if you're here
in person or watching on the live stream.
So these are, like, the necessary things that
you want to
kinda engage,
and learn those, and then moving on to
the recommended, the acts. Does that make sense?
Everybody following kinda where we're at. Right? The
idea isn't
that on day 1,
everybody has to know all of the recommended
acts and the necessary acts and the obligatory
acts. Because to convert to Islam
doesn't mean that you have to have a
prerequisite course of study.
Like, there is literally
companions of the prophet
who converted to Islam,
and after they converted, they partook in a
battle.
And in the battle, they died in the
battle.
And they never prayed a prayer in their
whole life as a Muslim,
but they were still Muslim. Do do you
get what I mean? Does that make sense?
So the acceptance
of Islam is not conditional upon
knowing, like, the rituals and practices of Islam.
And then once somebody
decides to become Muslim
or they might have been born into a
Muslim family
and they've learned Islam
or kind of embraced it at a later
time, you still have to kinda go at
a pace that makes sense as you're learning
it. You want to go through it in
this mode that we've been talking about. And
so we're gonna go through the last part
today, the recommended acts.
And this is a long list of things,
but some of it is gonna be stuff
that,
like, you're already either accustomed to seeing someone
do,
or you build, like, a quick relationship with
because it's got postures to it. It's just
like mechanics.
It's not really like recitation of words. Does
that make sense?
Yeah. Yes. So all of the things that
we talked about already,
this is like building upon it now. Right?
The way you wanna literally conceptualize
a skeleton,
and then on top of the skeleton, the
the obligatory,
we added
the flesh, the the
necessary acts,
and now we're adding the recommended acts, like
what ornaments and beautifies the prayer in and
of itself.
So the first
of the recommended acts is that you're going
to stand straight without moving one's head when
saying the first dakabir.
So what this is in reference to, if
you remember,
we had
like the conditions for the prayer. Right? This
was outside of the prayer what needs to
happen. You gotta be in a state of
wudu and the time of the prayer has
to come. People remember those 6 conditions that
we talked about. One of them was facing
towards Mecca.
Right? Facing in the direction of the Kaaba
in Mecca. So this is assuming that you're
doing that now. Right? So if in this
room, the direction of Mecca is this way,
right, but for the purposes of just demonstration,
I don't have to face that way.
What is happening is you are orienting your
entire body in the direction
of Mecca
and standing straight without moving one's head when
saying the first takbir. So you're in this
like upright standing position getting ready for the
prayer. And then you're going to raise one's
hand parallel to one's ears.
This is something
that as you are in this place of
the takbir,
that's when the Allahu Akbar is happening. Right?
So you'll see different people do this in
different ways. In the Hanafi school,
the ears are the hands are coming parallel
to one's ears.
And,
this is after intention has been made. Right?
So it's not as I'm putting my hands
up, I'm making an intention.
Like you're intending
the act
and as the Takbir comes, you're raising your
hands, Allahu Akbar,
and you're entering into the prayer. Does that
make sense?
Okay.
To face the palm and fingers of one's
hands towards the Qibla. The Qibla is the
direction
of prayer facing Mecca towards the Kaaba.
So all of your body is oriented in
the direction of that. So when you're raising
your hands,
palms and fingers are also facing. Right? So
it's not like I put my hands up
like this. Do you know? Or like I'm
cupping them in some way. Like, everything is
facing in the direction of the Kaaba. Why
is this, like, particular?
Not because the rules are just in a
vacuum. I literally sat down with a woman
earlier today
who is considering
converting to Islam, and she said, all these
Muslims I talked to, I'm trying to learn
about religion
they just keep giving me rules.
Right? And I said, that is, like, the
best thing I've ever heard in my life.
Because that's what the experience is for a
lot of people as they're learning about Islam.
People just give them, like, rules,
and it stops being about God. So this
is a spiritual
exercise,
and you want to think about it as
an exercise
similar to physical exercise.
Right? If any of you do any type
of physical exercising, which you should, you You
don't have to go nuts with it, but
just regularly,
you are exercising your body in whichever which
way you like to do. Or think about
any point in time in your life where
you were exercising. You're in middle school and
they make you exercise and you're miserable about
it, but there's still like a form to
what you're doing. And if you don't follow
the form, it's not that the gain might
not be there, but if it's not done
in the way that it's supposed to be
done, you're not gonna get the maximum potential
you could.
And in some instances, you might actually hurt
yourself,
right, if you're doing something wrong. And so
here,
you want to understand the mechanics
as they're linked to spiritual ascension.
Right? This is kind of the form of
the prayer
that you have not a paranoia about but
a meticulousness
so that it's still rendering consciousness because it's
super easy. Right? I'm 40 years old. You
know what I mean? I was born in
a Muslim family
where I've been praying for a long period
of time. It's super easy when the mechanics
become instinctive
for you to just start getting lazy with
it and lax with it. You know, you're
not standing there in a way that it's
like I'm half asleep, it's fudger times, throw
like something up in the air, I'm doing
things. You're very deliberate to create consciousness
and you're orienting your entire body in the
direction
of prayer
so that it's rendering now in this form
like
what will yield the highest potential
of inward transformation.
That's the goal of the spiritual exercise to
impact
inward. Right? Because when you're praying,
you can't compel God. Right? That's not the
point of the prayer, to change God. The
prayer itself doesn't change. The mechanics, they are
the same throughout every time we pray it.
So it's meant to inculcate change within the
practitioner of the prayer. In order to do
that, you gotta follow the mechanics.
How do you get stronger? By like doing
it with consistency.
So why is 5 times in a day
that you're doing this thing. So somebody,
like, takes one jog and doesn't run again
for the next 20 years of their life,
and then they try to jog and they
can't move, well it's because you did it
once in 20 years, right? You know, even
if you did it once in a month
or once in a year, it's gonna be
based off of what you're putting into it.
So the consistency of it, getting used to
the form and the mechanics,
and then as the mechanics become
more kinda concise,
you start to elevate in the yield
of what the exercise intends. Do you get
what I mean? So somebody tells you, well,
this is just how we do it. That's
not how it works. Do you know? There's
a reason why we do it this way.
And the reason is that in Islam,
the understanding is that God is telling us
the best way to worship him, and that
the purpose of that worship
is to be able to build that inward
contentment,
that inward balance. Does that make sense?
Yeah? Yeah. So you're gonna face the palm
and the fingers of your hands
towards Mecca. If you have some kind of
like
physical
reason as to why these things are not
possible, is the exception to the rule. You
don't force yourself
to do. Less is why we said, for
example,
like in the obligatory
acts of an obligatory prayer is you have
to stand in the prayer if you have
the ability to stand. If someone cannot stand,
they don't like force themselves
to somehow stand.
They just do what they have the physical
capacity to do. Does that make sense?
For the direction, let's just say if we're
using sometimes the phone keyblas are always, like,
showing different directions if we do it according
to that but it's not accurate. Is that
acceptable?
Yeah. Because the only time you gotta be
head on is when you're standing in front
of the Kaaba.
Right? If you're in Mecca and it's right
in front of you and you're still praying
the wrong direction, then there's something off. You
know what I mean? Right?
But with reasonable understanding,
when you go in different parts of the
world,
you're gonna have a potential for it to
be a little bit off. But you wanna
acquaint yourself with is also like the sun,
right? So the sun is setting
West which is here, Right? If we know
that West is there
and that means then East is this way.
Right?
Right?
The answer is yes. Yes. Right? So there's
West and East, so it means like North
is this direction, and so Northeast is going
to be here. Right? So if you came
in here and you saw somebody praying that
way and their compass said, I'm gonna pray
that way,
just by virtue of the sun,
that's not
possibly northeast.
Do you know what I mean? That's why
like you don't wanna just confine yourself
to
a technological
apparatus
because there's a big part of this that
teaches us to have an elemental relationship with
the environment around us. Right? Look at the
sun, learn how to do some of these
things. We're going to New Mexico next
week, on a retreat that I'm leading with
some with, Sheikh Dawood Yacine. We're gonna be
out in nature a lot. There's some of
the things we're gonna try to help people
see, right? But you could do it yourself
too. Go stand in the middle of the
park and just look at the sun at
the time that you were praying and be
like, oh, like that's what it looks like
when it's time.
Right? Look at your shadow because this is
what things are based off of, like the
length of one shadow
in relation to the cycle of the sun.
And so that's what it means, like when
it says your shadow is one times its
length, two times its length for the 3rd
prayer of the day, the Asar prayer. Do
you know what I'm saying? Does that make
sense? Okay. When raising the hands for the
takbir
to leave one's fingers as they are without
spreading them apart or joining them together, she's
bringing your hands up. Right? Whatever kinda natural
format, bring them in.
For a man to place the right hand
over the left hand below one's navel
by placing the palm of his hand
of his right hand over the back of
his left hand, clasping the rings the wrist
with the pinky finger and thumb. So we
talked about this previously,
but in some opinions,
like, there's no distinction between the form of
a man's prayer and a woman's prayer. And
in some opinions,
that a woman's prayer is slightly different,
more out of a sense of optimality
rooted in just the surroundings around you. Right?
So for example,
like, if we were praying in the park
for a man,
you are going to bow
in such a way where you're kinda standing,
your back is flat, etcetera.
But bowing by definition
is that you lower yourself enough that your
hands can touch your knees. And so, the
concern
if a woman is in the middle of
a public place and she's going through all
these motions in that mode,
it sets her up for in a potentially
unsafe situation.
Right? And so there's more of a sense
of, well, how are you protecting yourself in
some of these postures? So that's where some
of these distinctions are made and there's different
opinions on it. But does that make sense?
Right? And there's people who ask these questions
too like, you know, if I'm praying alone
because you you you have to pray the
prayer in Islam in the window of time
that the prayer is supposed to be prayed
in. That means, like, if you're outside
and it's time to pray, unless there's, like,
definitive understanding
that this is going to be detrimental
to you and, like, your life, like, there's
physical danger, that's different. But
you're kinda understanding the way that all of
this works is not devoid of reality. You
know, like you're in a place where you're
still kind of aware of your surroundings. So
here,
what it's saying is that the position that
you would put your hands in
is below your your belly button.
These three fingers
are resting
on the top of your left arm
and your pinky and your thumb
are clasping the arm.
Does it make sense?
Right? And there's a lot of people that
you're gonna see that their hands are in
different positions when they pray. You can put
your hands to your side. You'll have some
people who have their hands kind of across
their chest.
Right? There's not like
a designated
only way to do this, you know? So
in the Hanafi school, this is what the
recommendations are.
You keep your feet 4 fingers apart. So
what does that mean? Right? Like,
you know, I'm standing up. I'm not gonna
fall. Oh my god.
You know, I'm not, like, in a place
where my legs are this spread apart.
You know what I'm saying? You're not like
there's no man spreading in your prayer. You
know? Like you're in a place where your
body's comfortable,
it's not in a place of like restriction.
It's gonna be varied from person to person
because we have difficult physical stature, do you
know?
But the idea is that
you are at a comfortable distance,
right? Kinda
shoulder width at as as best as you
can.
And so you're gonna have like a little
bit of distance between your feet. Does it
make sense? Yeah.
Now
before you recite the,
there is
a recitation
that we'll try to either get to this
week or next week, it's called the thana.
This is a recommended
recitation,
the thana,
that you're going to recite
in that first unit of prayer,
that is just an invocation, a glorification
of God.
After that,
you recite what is called the
in Arabic.
Some of you have probably heard that before.
It says,
right? I seek refuge
with the law from Satan the accursed,
and
it's something that you're reciting just to yourself,
like, silently. You don't have to say it
out loud.
Yeah.
Does anybody have any questions so far? Because
we're gonna go through, like, 30 of these
in the recommended part. Yeah.
Yeah. So you're gonna for the men, put
your hands underneath your navel,
and for the women, it's gonna be more
underneath kinda your chest area, protecting your chest.
Yeah.
Okay.
Any other questions on any of what we
went through so far? Would you mind doing
that on the on the chair so that
people,
in the last few weeks? Yeah. I'll do
it again. Any other questions people have?
Yeah. Go ahead.
Yeah.
I'll make we'll go through the remaining parts
and if you missed any of the sessions
before
where we went through in the other sections,
the Arabic,
they're all on the podcast
and on the YouTube channel, and I'm happy
to meet with people 1 on 1 to
go through it also,
any of that. But just so people are
aware, again, if you're just, like, learning it,
you're connecting to it,
in the obligatory
parts of the prayer.
Wow. These entire crew just walked in here.
Look.
What a cool group of guys. Look at
that.
Here are the obligatory
acts. Right? And then the text we were
looking at,
You have the integrals of it,
and
what the
what the
minimum Arabic you're gonna be reciting
is just,
any recitation of the Quran even if only
1 verse in any two cycles of the
obligatory prayer
and all of the cycles of the with
their involuntary
prayers
unless one is a follower in a congregation,
etcetera. Right? So what we were saying was,
like, the shortest verse of the Quran
says,
and then he looked.
You just have to recite that in Arabic
at a minimum as you're learning these other
things outside of the prayer. Does that make
sense? Yeah. Does that make sense?
Yeah. So what we've been doing is putting
up on the board
the Arabic, the transliteration,
and the language, the translation of it, and
going through each word piece by piece. And
we'll do that with these remaining parts to
it once we go through the whole list
so that we have all of that. And
if you missed any of the previous sessions,
all of that is up
on our YouTube channel. So the visual is
there and on the podcast, the audio is
there. Yeah. From the ones we did before.
Okay. Great.
To recite the at
the beginning of every before
beginning.
So you're gonna say,
like, to yourself again,
and then recite the
and then to say, I mean, silently.
Right? And there's different opinions on this too,
like, you might have seen people pray or
you yourself when you're in prayer and someone
has recited the,
the first chapter of the Quran,
then everyone altogether
out loud says,
and,
some people will say that you just say
the to yourself silently.
Then the Hanafi school, you say it silently.
Somebody's saying it differently,
like, it's totally fine. You know?
It's a thing that they have different opinions
on. Yeah. When you're praying by yourself, are
there any prayers that you're supposed to say
out loud?
If you're praying alone, you're not gonna say
it out loud the way, like, we are
talking right now. Do you know? But you're
still reciting to yourself
to the extent that if, like, somebody was
standing right here next to you, they could
still hear you a little bit. You know?
So it's not just done
kind of in your head. Do you know?
Like you're still reciting it kind of at
a very low soft whisper on your tongue.
Does that make sense? Yeah. And are any
supposed to be silent?
Silent the silent and out loud
is distinguished when you're praying in congregation.
So the first,
4th, and 5th prayers of the day are
said out loud in that way that, like,
all of these things are recited out loud.
And then the second and third prayer of
the day, like,
the motions
as you pronounce
the Takbeer, the Allahu Akbar, to move from,
like, movement to movement,
those are done out loud, but the recitations
are not done out loud. Right? You think
about this also, there's different reasons as to
why one can understand this, but contextualize it
in,
you know,
a time when there's, like, no lights and
electricity and these kinds of things. So you're
praying fajr, and it's really dark outside.
Right? You're praying Maghrib sunset prayer. It's starting
to get dark. It's just starting to get
dark. And so as these movements are kind
of being seen
in the daylight,
time,
It's, like, as bright as it is right
now. Right? Versus, like, at other times of
the day, there's a little bit more,
there's absence of of light from, like, the
you get you get what I mean? Yeah.
Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah.
I have a question. Yeah.
So after Tuck here, is it, like, specific
for men and women on the hand placement?
It's not an obligation.
Right? This is what we're talking about right
now. It's not an obligation.
The position of it in the Hanafi school
is, like, what we just discussed.
But in other schools, the position is different,
and they have basis for this. There's different
evidences.
For you all, which you want to take
away is 2 things. In the Hanafi school,
it's below your navel for a man and
below your chest for a woman,
and
2, if you see somebody do it differently
or somebody gets in your face, which I
would apologize. Right?
Whether you were born into Islam,
definitely if you're a convert to Islam, you're
gonna meet Muslims who are really annoying people.
I don't know how else to tell you
that. They will look at you and they
will
tell you things in absolutes that are not
absolutes.
Right? So you just have to be ready
for it so it doesn't, like, rile you
up. So if you walk into a place
and, you know,
somebody's,
like, everybody's got their hands, like, in a
place and you're accustomed to doing it differently,
that's okay. And you don't have to feel
like you're doing something wrong, There's just different
ways of doing it. And why it's also
important to understand
is because in your respective journeys of exploring
Islam as a religion,
you have
the difficulty
of not having
a lack of access to information,
but overt access to information. You could go
Google anything online and then get, like, a
ton of different stuff back to you. This
is one of the things that people are
just gonna do it differently. You know? And
there's certain times when, like, it's actually helpful.
Right? Like, there has been times when,
in Ramadan, it's our month of fasting.
There's a recommended
act
that is just seclusion to the mosque in
the last 10 nights of Ramadan.
Right? You're in a spiritual retreat, and it's
amazing, And the mosques are filled with people.
It's not about being away from people, it's
about being away from distractions,
and a lot of people will stay up
late at night to pray. The first time
I did this, I was 18 years old.
I was a freshman at NYU in college,
and Ramadan was around Christmas time that year.
Right? I'll tell you how old I am
as a person.
And
there was
a lot of,
young people in the mosque doing this spiritual
retreat because of the winter holidays times. You
know? So doing this for, like,
10 nights in a row
is great because you're not absorbing anything negative.
Right? For 10 days,
no lying, nobody's yelling, nobody's cursing in your
face, nobody's being mean or angry. So you're
not consuming negativity,
you're not watching, like, stuff that's gonna create,
like, visual
consumption,
listening to anything
that's negative, but also it's just positive. Right?
Like, people are literally cooking food for you
to break your fast on, you know, people
are
like greeting each other with greetings of peace.
You're hearing like a lot of Quran and
like this kind of stuff, and so we're
like waking up at 2 o'clock in the
morning to pray. Sometimes we don't even go
to sleep, and I was 18 I've never
done this in my life before. It was
fun, but I got exhausted.
And so I got to a point where
after I'm, like, praying,
you know, and I'm typically at my hands
here, I'm, like, so tired.
And this guy is reading
so long,
you know. I didn't know, I was like
drop my hands to the side, and I'm
just standing there like this because I didn't
have any energy to put my hands up
anymore.
But this is a valid posture in the
standing of your prayer.
If you don't know that,
then you can hate on yourself
like standing like this. Or if you saw
somebody standing like this, which is typical in
the Maliki school, right? Which is one of
the 4 main schools
in Sunni Islam, and in the Jafri school,
which is a Shia school
of Islam,
you have people who stand with their hands
on the side. Right?
And you don't wanna walk in and see
somebody like that and be like, why is
this guy doing this? Do you know? It's
it's all, like, it works. Do you get
what I mean? Does that make sense? Yeah.
Okay.
So
to say I mean silently after.
Right? So once it's done,
and then you'll hear in some mosques, like,
everybody,
Amin. Right? It's fine. It's one way people
do it. In a Hanafi school, you don't
do it out loud.
Allah knows best. It's okay.
Number 11,
to recite long chapters of the Quran
in the Fajr and Duhr prayer,
medium length chapters
in Asir
and Isha,
and short chapters in Maghreb.
Right? And there's different reasons for this also,
and this is just a recommendation.
But when they're teaching you to lead to
the prayer, for example.
Right? You wanna think.
You're waking up in your house and fudgers
at, like, 4 o'clock in the morning, in
the middle of the summer.
Everybody is not in the 1st row of
prayer right at 4 AM. There's people who
are waking up, like, because they're hearing the
prayer started. They're coming a little bit late.
Right? So the person who is leading the
prayer
also is conscious of the people following behind
them in prayer.
So it's not the time to, like, show
off in your prayer. Do you know what
I mean? You come here on Fridays and
people ask, well, why do you read, like,
short chapters in the prayer? Because if you're
here on Fridays, there's 800 people here,
there's people with like babies,
there's mothers who are trying to just not
have to decide that I can't go to
Jummah
because
my kid is gonna be making too much
noise or I'm gonna be worried.
So you're reflecting of the congregation.
Right? People are coming
in the middle of the day just like
you go to work. They're coming from work.
They're closing up shop. So the chapters are
a little longer so that people can join
in on the prayer. In the sunset prayer,
the window of time is shorter. Right? So
you're not reading something
that is unnecessarily
long. But here,
this is not again an obligation.
So you read like what you know, and
if you know shorter chapters, you read the
shorter chapters.
Does does that make sense?
Yeah.
Okay.
To lengthen the first rakah, the first unit
of
the obligatory
of fudger only.
Right? So same kind of idea. It's recommended,
but you're extending so that people are joining
in in the first cycle of prayer. You
know? They're able to be a part of
it.
If you
catch, like, the bowing
of the first cycle,
then you've caught that first cycle of prayer.
You don't have to, like, do another
unit of prayer, and we're gonna talk about
this in more detail. Right? But the person
leading the prayer,
they are gonna also be taught how to
lead the prayer
in terms of, like, these kind of things.
So as I was saying also, you're mindful
of, like, babies. There's elderly people in praying
behind you. You know? Somebody's like 85 years
old, 90 years old. Right? I know I'm
like a
miserable
specimen of a human being. That at 18,
I can't even hold my arms up for
that long. I gotta put them to my
side. But think about, like, a 85 year
old person
who they're standing behind you. You don't need
to
lead a a a a unit of prayer
that's, like, 35 minutes long. Right? Have some
mercy on the poor guy. You know what
I'm saying? Right? Where people are, like, new
to it, you know? Like, you have a
community like our community that's very diverse, and
there's many people who are new to prayer,
new to Islam. We're not gonna start them
off on a marathon. You know what I
mean? Does that make sense? Right? Yeah.
So you're thinking too, like, hey. All these
people are gonna join in,
so let's make sure we're trying to have
the first one long. But if the first
one is really long and that's out of
kinda
necessity or helping people to join in, then
the second one doesn't have to be that
long.
Make sense? Yeah. Yeah.
To say
3 times in the,
the bowing position.
So when you go now from the standing
to the bowing,
in that bowing position,
this is something you're going to say
in Arabic,
like, glory
be
to my rub, my lord. We talked about
the word rub a lot in in terms
of what it means, like it's not just
lord. Right? But what's the definition of rub
that rub is al Malik. He's the one
that's the owner, the master of things. He's
say, he's the one that is making the
decisions. Right? Like, I could own something. It
doesn't mean I get to decide how it
used. Right? My daughter, she's literally sending me
pictures
from home, from, like, things that they're doing
on the TV. They don't own the TV.
I own the TV. But they're deciding how
the TV is being used. So you see
the distinction
between one that owns something and one that
decides how it's utilized. Right? Even when I
go home, we're not watching anything that I
wanna watch. You know? It's just whatever they
wanna do. Right? But god
is both the owner
and, like, the kinda
the the master, the one that decides. He's
he's the caretaker,
the nurturer,
the one that's, like, cultivating you. Right? There's
a prayer in the Quran that's for your
parents that says
that be merciful to them as they did
nurture me and raise me when I was
young.
That's the same word for rub, like, of
nurturing and raising the way a good parent,
like, raises a child. Right? And may we
all be good parents to our children
and may we all have parents that are
good to us as well. So that's what
the
means. Right? Means
the giver of blessing.
Right? It's the one that is the healer
of all things. So when you're saying glory
be to my rub, you're invoking all of
those things.
Means, like, the great.
You know? So to give you an idea
of what it means in terms of its
magnitude of greatness,
like the Quran is described as being Adhim.
The day of judgment when we stand in
front of God to be taken into account
for our actions, that's said to be Adeen.
The character of the prophet Muhammad, peace be
upon him, is described as being,
like it's great in its capacity.
And so you're calling upon God as being
great in that way
while you're in this bowing position.
14
of the recommended acts, you're going to hold
the knees
with the hands
in the bowing position,
spreading the fingers
for
the men. Right? And why is this distinct
for men and women? The same idea. Like,
the men are going to go from the
standing
into a bowing,
and it would allow for you to be
able to hold your knees and grasp them
in that way. For the woman who's in
prayer,
more of kind of a protection. And, again,
this isn't about validity.
It's about the optimal kind of posture. Right?
That there are people who would say there's
no difference between a man and woman's praying.
But here, like, if someone is a little
bit more kinda constricted
praying in public,
for her own caution and safety, and she's
not bowing fully,
but just to the extent that the hands
are touching the knees, that's gonna be a
little bit harder to, like, do a full
grasp of, like, one's knees in that way.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
When you're, like, bowing, are you supposed to
make a, like, a proper l shape or,
like, if your back is arching, but you're
still, like, holding your knees?
The bowing at a minimum just is requiring
you to be able to be lowered enough
that you're holding your knees. Right? But the
optimal position is that you are, like, straight
in the posture. And as you're going through
these postures,
right, the idea isn't to be, like, rigid.
But when you're in the standing, you're in
a place where you're, like, breathing,
you know, like you're calm. And then you
move from one posture to the next, and
you're kinda breathing. You're relaxed in that posture.
You get settled into it. It's not like
creating tension.
Right? Because you're praying. You know what I
mean? It's not like you it's not like
I'm gonna be like, have fun in your
prayer. Right? It's not like the idea of
it as a spiritual exercise, but It's also
not meant to be something that creates, like,
inward agitation,
you know. It's supposed to be a state
where you have tranquility.
Do you you you know what I'm saying?
Right? And so you try to the best
of your ability,
but it's also an exercise, you know, like,
I was talking to this guy on Monday
who came to
the halukkah we do at our apartment right
now because the building closed at 8. Some
of you have been there. And even when
some people come and sit with us after
Jummah, they take their. Some of you have
done this. I mean, you took your out
of here. I'm always just sitting on my
knees. Right? And there's some people, they just
don't sit in that position,
you know? So you have to be reasonable
with yourself.
You're getting accustomed to it. And so this
poor guy on Monday is talking to me,
and he's trying to sit on his knees
as, like, I'm sitting on my knees. I
was like, don't like, you don't need to
do this. He's like, no. I can do
it. And I was like, no, man. Like,
it's not it's just we're just sitting. There's
not anything to it. You know?
And then eventually, he, like, leaned back and
got more comfortable, and I was like, yeah.
Be in that position.
So if you
are not used to standing straight,
right, and this is a challenge, like, a
lot of us are constantly sitting at a
desk.
Right?
All these things that you read that are
presented to you mindlessly,
that you can reflect upon, where people are
creating, like, hunches in their back because they're
constantly in an unhealthy way, like, sedentary in
ways that you're not supposed to be. You
know? It's gonna be literally hard to stand
in certain ways. If you've never, like,
gone into a bowing or prostrating
position in your life,
It's not like a thing that just is
gonna come easy. Right? Just like any position.
If anybody
has gone through
any type of, like, stretching
or, you know, you've been massaged the first
time ever. Right? It's like you just gotta
get used to certain things. Right? So you
want to kinda give yourself also
some room to build a relationship with the
postures.
Does that make sense?
Yeah. So
you're gonna grasp the knees,
you keep the legs straight when you are
in the bowing position.
So meaning,
like, you're not, like, kicking your legs. Right?
Everything's about stillness. My kids,
you know, when I pray with them, my
daughter's gotten a lot better at it.
My son still I don't even know. Sometimes
we're, like, praying, and he'll jump in to
pray with us. We don't force him to
pray, but he'll come, and then we go
down
to prostrate. And after you prostrate, you're supposed
to come and sit and kneel. He just
stays down there for a while. Right? Doesn't
get up, and then sometimes he just stays
standing up. I'm like, what are you doing?
He's like, I gotta get back up anyway.
Like, I'm just gonna meet you up here
when you guys come back. I'm like, alright,
man. Like, do do what you wanna do.
But you're keeping your legs straight, right? So
when my son, who just turned 8, he's
an 8 year old, he's not like a
grown man, he's a kid, Right? And he's
standing,
he's trying his best, but he's, like, jumping
around, he's, like, kicking his feet. Everything is
about staying kind of in this
kind of direction towards Mecca,
you know? Your legs, your chest, like, your
feet, your toes,
You're trying to be in that place
where that element of having control over your
physical body
becomes
a integral part to being able to then
render that kinda spiritual
increase. Do you know what I mean? So
you're not, like, moving around, and then if
you're praying with someone, you wanna be mindful
of that. So if you're praying next to
somebody who's, kinda, like, rocking in their prayer,
or they're, like, cracking their toes while they're
praying, you know, or, like, what's crazy
is when you're standing next to someone
and they start tickling your foot with their
pinky toe. Right? I don't know if any
of you have ever experienced that. I have
experienced that. It is the most awkward thing
to be in a place. As some grown
man, you don't even know who he is.
He's tickling your foot with his foot, and
it's because he's not standing in a comfortable
way. He isn't allowed for himself to be
at peace in the posture.
Right? You just gotta, like, get yourself to
a place where you're comfortable with the posture.
Do you know? And some of that's gonna
come over time. So here, like, you keep
the leg straight in the bowing position.
You keep your back flat when you're bowing
as was asked before,
and you make sure that the head is
level
with your rear end. Right? Why is this
made distinct?
Again, for men and women, it's not about
validity, but the kinda optimal if you're in
a public space, cautiousness,
etcetera,
is that if you're bending
where the minimum for the bowing is you're
touching your knees, and you don't have to
bend fully over. Right? So if you're praying
in Washington Square Park and there's all these
people around you and you're just not comfortable
going into that kind of mode of bowing
because now everybody can see you in that
position. This is the idea. Do you see
what I mean? Okay.
The inner sides of the arms to be
away from the ribs.
Here, like, the idea is that you're having,
like, separation
from your like, your body is, like, more
open than kinda kinda constricted and narrowed,
to recite
when rising from.
So from the bowing
to this
the idea here in all of these, like,
invocations
is that in each movement from posture to
posture,
there's some type of invocation.
Does that make sense?
Right? So it's happening in the duration
of, like like, during this thing. Do you
know?
If you're following somebody in prayer,
you're following them in their movements.
So you're not preceding them in the movement
because then you're not following them.
Does that make sense?
So when the person leading the prayer makes
this statement,
as they have completed this statement,
you are then going to move, like, in
accord yourself,
and people around you will have, like, different
points when they're moving.
Some will start to move as soon as
they hear the person say something. Right? Some
will start to move as soon as they've
heard the person complete something. Some might move
because they see, like, the person has completed,
and that's an important thing, like, the visualization
of this. Because if you're praying with a
100000 people
and there's no microphone system, the people all
the way in the back, they only know
what's going on by seeing what's happening in
the movements for the people in front of
them. Right? Or there's Muslims who are deaf,
you know,
they can't hear anything.
So they're going based off of movements. As
much as people are going off of hearing,
because there's Muslims who are blind.
Do you get what I'm saying?
Right?
So this is another statement that you're gonna
be making.
God here is the one who is praising
him,
when you're rising from the bowing,
and
you're gonna now, like, be in a place
where
the pause that's being,
recommended here. Is so, again, like, there's stillness.
Right? But the stillness is also
so that these are seen as distinct postures.
Do you get what I mean? So it's
not like one just long fluid
like movement,
you know, but they're discernible
like movements separate from each other. Like here's
a bowing and here's a standing,
and it's not just like one quick like
motion.
Do you you get what I mean?
Yeah? Are you sure? So you're gonna stay
there for a little bit. Right? Like in
our tradition,
there's, you know, narrations that say,
don't pray like a rooster, you're just pecking
at the ground going really fast, you know?
You'll find, like, some release through your prayer,
like, stillness in it. Yeah. Go ahead. So,
I have a question about that. So in
order to make the first cycle or whatever
cycle you're on, the minimum is to is
to make the vowels. It's to make it
to the vowels when you're joining a congregation.
So,
so in this case,
is it more important to
to have, like, humility in your first stance
and miss the second
and miss the bowing rather than go go
straight into the prayer and going to the
bowing? Like,
But it's not like, even in the nature
of, like, getting to the prayer if you're
late, if you're praying in congregation,
you're not supposed to, like, run to it
or rush yourself. Right?
Because to create anxiety
as you're trying to build ease,
like these things don't they don't match up
well. You know? Right?
So, you know, I'm not I'm not gonna,
like, like, yell at somebody
and then
expect them to just be happy. Right?
So
if you're creating
agitation
as you're going,
you know, so you you ease yourself into
it. But you don't wanna create like
rules where there's no rules. Do you know
what I mean? The intention can be super
easy. You have to make an intention before
you enter into the prayer. It's a devotional
act. The intention be something as simple as
my intention
is the same intention as the person leading
the prayer. Right? And you do the takkabir
and you join in and then you've joined,
You know? It can take you like 4
seconds. Do you know what I mean? But
hecticness is not like what the idea is.
When the prophet would tell
Bilal, who was his close companion,
Abyssinian man, what we know is modern day
Ethiopia,
He was the Muazin, the one who made
the call to prayer
on behalf of the prophet when they're praying.
And he would say to Bilal,
like, when he would ask permission to make
the call to prayer,
sometimes the prophet would say to him,
they're like, bring us,
like comfort through this, you know, bring us
ease, bring us relaxation,
you know. It's not it's not supposed to
create hecticness. Right? And then situationally,
you wanna also be able to try your
best. Because what are you gonna do, you
know, if you're praying, you're the only Muslim
in your office, and you're some of us,
it's really easy. I can't tell you what
it's like for some of you to be
you because my job is to be Muslim.
And my office is here, and I have
a prayer room right there,
and there's like rooms where I could wash
up for prayer. So, you know, and even
when I'm not where I'm at, you know,
I'm a little more obnoxious than most people
are. So somebody says something to me, they're
not gonna not expect it. But you could
be in a office place
and you don't know how to ask somebody
for a place to pray or they might
be a jerk to you and not give
you what is, like,
constitutionally your right to have.
And so you might look for an empty
office and you're always worried, like, who's coming
behind me? That's why you wanna know, like,
all of these things too because what the
prayer might experientially be like when you're trying
to find an empty classroom or in between
classes or in between meetings
might not be the same experientially
as, like, when you're back at home at
night or you're, like, in a safe space
that you're surrounded by people who kinda get
and understand you. Do you do you see
what I'm saying? Does that make sense?
Yeah. Okay. So you're now in this place
where you're standing,
and you're going to recite
another invocation
that has some different variations to it. So
this says,
Some people will say just
and some people will say
This is something that is also said silently.
You know?
You might hear some people say it loudly,
but the idea again is that you're going
through this and there's invocations
in the various postures and as you're moving
through them.
21,
when making the prostration,
you place the knees on the surface first.
Right? So in the Hanafi school, you don't
go down with your hands first, you go
down with your knees first. Some people go
down with their hands first. There's just different
ways of doing it.
So in the Hanafi school, you're gonna go
down,
with your knees first on the surface, then
your hands,
and then lastly, the face,
and then lifting these parts
in the reverse
order. So the reverse would be the face,
then the hands, and then the knees. Right?
So some people when they get up, they're
pushing themselves
off of the ground. Right? And their hands
are the last things to come up. Right?
And others,
like, are
just getting themselves up straight from their legs.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Yeah. One question. When you're in the subsets,
there's a lot
of discussion on how your feet should be
placed in your subsets. Yeah. We're gonna get
to that right now.
Yeah.
But go ahead. Keep going. Yeah. I just
want to know what that feet placement is.
Yeah. So when we get down, we'll talk
more about the feet.
Then you're gonna go
22.
When you're going from the prostration,
and rising from it, you're gonna say a
takbir.
You place the head between the hands, 23
in the prostration.
Whilst in the prostration,
you're going to say this invocation,
the glory be to my lord, the most
high. Right? And you wanna think about this
now in terms of postures
because in the bowing,
what did we say?
Do you remember?
Right? And now you're in the posture
So
the distinction is in the bowing, you're saying
most high,
most great,
and in
the prostration, you're saying most high. Right? But
think about it from the standpoint of even
the physicality of the prayer, probably when you're
bowing to somebody.
Right? And what does that denote
in terms of an actual posture
towards the kind of majesty of the one
you're bowing to? And when you're in prostration,
it's like a ultimate sign of humility.
In Islam,
you're only, like, bowing and prostrating to God.
You know? That's the only one that's worthy
of that, like,
sign of just
respect and submission.
So you're literally
in prostration
and not like a physically
low
point.
Right? Or sorry. Not like in a in
a humility low point. It's not degrading.
Right? It's a position of honor. But if
you're physically in where you could be at
your lowest and you're calling upon god as
being the most high.
Do you see kinda like the correlation between
these two things? Right?
So you're gonna in the prostration,
you know, glory be to my lord, the
most high.
For men, you're going
to be in a place where, again, there's,
like, kinda more expansiveness,
not restrictiveness,
And it's different again.
Not again for validity, but just kind of
the optimality of the situation
that for women, it's a little more covered.
But there's also opinions that there's no difference
between a man and women's prayer. So in
25, you're gonna keep the stomach away from
the thighs, the elbows away from the side,
and forearms away from the ground. Right? Meaning,
like,
your body parts are not touching the other
body parts. You know?
Your heels will be kept together when you're
in a place of prostration.
So when you're going down to prostrate,
you're bringing your feet together, not spread apart.
And the toes are gonna also be kinda
still bent in the direction,
like facing the Kaaba.
So you're you're not, like,
you're not laying your foot flat, but you're,
like, resting on your toes. Does that make
sense? Right? Like, if anybody ever ran track
when they were at any point in their
life, has anybody ever done that?
Track and field?
You have?
Yeah. So, yeah, you're, like, in a running
stance.
Right? And your foot is kinda
arched on its toes. That's, like, how your
foot is when you're
in prayer, like, in those positions. Like, things
are facing towards,
towards, like, Mecca.
For men, you're gonna spread the left foot
and raise the right foot, making the toes
face
towards Mecca,
and the hand should be placed on the
thighs. So this is when you're, like, in
a kneeling position. We're gonna also go through
all these postures. I'm just going through the
list right now. Right? So don't, like, worry
about it.
And you're gonna, 28,
raise the index finger of the right hand
when saying the
words
of the
and lowering it when you say.
So in the Hanafi school, right, what's gonna
happen
is, like,
that part that we talked about is being
a necessary act, the in
the part that says,
you're gonna raise your finger
at
the Right? So the finger is raised at
the point of negation.
There is nothing worthy of worship
and then it's lowered,
at the point of affirmation
except Allah.
Does that make sense? So it's really quick.
You're gonna see other people doing this thing.
Right? They might be waving their finger the
whole time. Some people put it up at
one point and don't put it down the
rest of it. You know, there's different ways
of doing it. It's just one finger that
goes up. I think I said this last
time, but my kids were like following us
in prayer when they were little. They were
just doing whatever we did. And then at
some point, they started putting like 2 fingers
up, and then they were putting, like, all
of them up. In words,
like, what are you doing, man? And they're
like, you put up 1, so we thought
putting up all of them would be better.
I was like, that's interesting, but that's not
how it goes, you know. And you can
think. Right? If you've ever seen my babies
who are amazing, you know, and they're super
cute and they're sitting next to me while
we're praying, and they're not like normal distractions.
My son will be like putting his face
in my face, he's like smacking me on
my rear end while I'm praying. And so
it's not that he's just putting his hands
up like this on his thighs. He's, like,
coming, like, towards me, like, going like this
and that and, like, magic fingers in my
face. I'm like, no, man. So just one
finger up.
You recite yeah. Go ahead.
Some people are gonna put it in a
fist
and like, a clenched fist.
What you're gonna do
is you're gonna bring kinda your thumb
to touch,
like, your middle finger
and just raise your right hand,
your right
kind of pointer finger,
and then you bring it back down.
Yeah.
Make sense?
Okay.
You're gonna recite what's called the
Ibrahim after the
in the last setting
of the prayer. So this is like a
prayer on the prophet Muhammad
and his family and the prophet Abraham and
his family.
And then in 30,
you're gonna follow it by reading
a Dua supplication
using words found in the Quran or the
Hadith.
The Dua should not be in the words
of common people.
So a lot of people will make a
Dua that says,
that, oh my lord,
give to me in the world, like, goodness,
things of beauty.
And in the next world, like beauty,
and protect me from,
like,
the fire. Right?
And that's just a dua that's taken straight
out of the Quran. It's a supplication from
the Quran.
It's not a dua that's saying after you
recite on the prophet Muhammad,
like these peace and blessings on the prophet
Abraham and their family, that you're gonna make
a dua that says, like, give me a
nice house.
You know, or I really want this job
or this car. There's a time and place
for that, but in this one, you're gonna
especially do this.
You're going to give your salaams at the
end,
by saying it to the right first and
then to the left.
32, when saying salaam for the imam to
make attention for all the people,
angels, and the following
him for the one praying behind him to
make an intention for the imam together with
the people, for the one praying alone
to make an intention of the angels only.
33,
the salaam of the imam and those praying
behind him should be simultaneously.
The latecomer
in Salah should wait for the imam to
finish Islam first
and then stand up to finish the remaining.
So if you missed a cycle of prayer,
which we'll talk about in the coming weeks,
right, you're going to wait for the person
leading the prayer to give
those, like, last salaams before you stand up
to finish the part of the prayer that
you made.
Okay. So you see this as, like, 34
things in it. Right? In addition to,
like, the dozen or so that go into
the necessary acts, and then the 6th that
go into the fard, the obligatory,
and then the 6 that go into the
conditions outside of the prayer. Right? That's a
lot of stuff. You know? Yeah. Go ahead.
Yeah. There's some people who say, like, in
between
the prostrating and kinda kneeling position,
you would make a prayer that says,
like, forgive me, like you said.
But it's not in the Hanafi school, like,
something that you have to do.
Yeah. But what most people are given when
they're learning their prayer
is all of this, like, all at once.
You know? So even for us to just
read this list together
of 34 items, in addition to all the
stuff that came before
that we've talked about over the course of
a month and a half, 2 months.
Right? That's a lot.
So that's why you wanna do it kinda
section by section, and then just get accustomed
to it
as you're going through it. A lot of
it you're doing already
because or you will do because you start
to follow people and you learn the mechanics
and things. But you wanna, like, kind of
fine tune it and make it precise.
Does that make sense?
Yeah. Okay. So what I wanna do
is,
have us, like, practice a bit because it's
a lot of postures today,
and however people are comfortable in doing that,
you can actually stand up and do it
or do it in your place,
or,
you can just watch me do it.
But
so we're kind of going through the mechanics
in a way that we're, like, able to
visually see how that goes. Yeah. Do you
have a question?
No. No? Yeah. Okay.
And then what we'll do in the remaining
couple of weeks
is go through these remaining portions
of,
like, what's left to learn in Arabic,
the Sanah,
the
the Ibrahim,
the dua that you make, the prayer
after that in the last sitting,
and
that'll be, like, it in terms of, like,
the Arabic parts.
Does that make sense? Yeah. Does anybody have
any questions on any of this?
Yeah. So, again, like, you wanna start with
this part,
the obligatory that we went through a lot.
Right? And then the text we were looking
at,
or that I recommended to people, it's on
page 76, like, what it is that you're
gonna be going through,
and work your way towards,
like, this final complete, like, mode of this.
Do you know? It's a spiritual exercise. Right?
So you're building a relationship with it.
You have to do this in the
places
that we said, the conditions of it were
there before.
The conditions, the
of the prayer,
you know, being in a state of ritual
purity, etcetera.
But when this
5th one, the entrance of the prayer time,
like, that prayer time,
you are required to pray the prayer in
its prayer time.
Like, you're you are going to do that.
That's the aim. It's not that you pray
it late. Somebody sleeps through a prayer, like,
fudger, it's hard. You're just getting used to
a new structure in your life, and we'll
talk about that in the coming weeks too,
like, what do you do in these scenarios,
but it's not something that you're opting to
just do later
unless there's, like, a reason. And what are
the kind of reasons?
If I'm like a doctor performing surgery on
somebody,
and me leaving the surgery
is going to be detrimental
to the life of the patient,
then I can, like, delay my prayer, for
example.
Do you do you see what I mean?
That's not like the same as,
what sometimes people forego their prayer for. Do
you know?
And so that's why, like, as you're learning
it, knowing the obligations
and what goes into the obligations
for people who are new to Islam,
They're new to, like, learning their prayer. They're
getting back into it if they were born
into it, or you just became Muslim,
and you're trying to learn it and figure
it out. You still have to pray
in the window of time,
but you don't have to do,
like, its final form right from the beginning
as you're learning it. So all these things
that we just went through, those are the
last bucket of things, and they're in their
recommended
practices of the prayer. That's not what you
have to do from day 1 as you're
learning it. You just gotta do those, like,
obligations
and then add on the necessary acts, and
then you add on the recommended acts. Does
that make sense? Is everybody clear on that?
Yes?
Okay. I wanna be mindful of the time,
and I don't wanna, like, delay people, especially,
because the building is gonna close,
around
time. I wanna give people enough time to
get home. So we've gone through this list.
We'll go through, like, the postures and the
remaining Arabic parts,
next time.
Couple of quick announcements.
On Friday,
we're gonna do a kickoff event for
a Latino Muslim group that we're starting at
the Islamic Center,
and
it'll be at 6 PM,
this Friday.
So if you identify
as Latino or you know somebody who does,
please come around for it. It's not a
space that exists in many Muslim communities.
Just like we have a black Muslim initiative.
We have a converts group.
We have other kind of programs that we
look to create as entry points into the
community.
We're looking to start this for our Latino
identifying community,
whether you are exploring Islam,
you're a convert, you were born into a
Muslim family,
which there are Latino Muslims who were born
into Muslim families. I had dinner last night
with a friend of mine,
whose name is Ismael Ocasio,
and his parents,
both Muslim.
Someone converted at some point in his life,
but he is
as a generation of Islam and his family,
and his siblings.
People who are born into it, and they're
Latino. Right? So it's a boring thing to
understand, like, everybody
is not always a convert if they're not,
like, Arab or South Asian. Do you know
what I mean? Does that make sense? But
also people are. So this Friday,
6 PM,
if you know somebody or you yourself wanna
come, we already have about 50 people who
have RSVP'd.
So it'd be, like, a good group. If
you ever come to the conversations bunches that
we do,
we'll probably set it up like that in
some way,
just as a space for people to kinda
talk to each other, and also for us
to get feedback at some point to hear
from people, like, what are you hoping to
get from this group?
You know, what are kind of things that
we can be helpful with,
you know, from the standpoint of,
like, culture,
language,
just educational resources, these kinds of things.
And our next conversations brunch will be probably
in mid September at some point, and we'll
have a full calendar
of, like, the coming months out in,
after tomorrow.
We have a staff meeting, so we'll put
that out.
So that's for people who are exploring Islam,
people who are,
recent converts, people who converted a while ago,
as well as, like, family members, partners, and
people who identify in either of those categories.
So they can also understand what the convert
experience is like.
So definitely come out to those things, and
then we'll continue
this class,
in some kind of topic
going into
September onwards,
but how we kinda move forward. If people
have feedback on it,
you know, let us know,
but we'll we'll kinda continue to build off
of it. Is there anything else you wanted
to tell people or have? I wanna mention
Alexander's.
On Monday, we're gonna have
a
program
that's part of a professional development series that
we're starting at the Islamic Center.
Alexander Almonte, who some of you know,
he
is a member of our conversations group,
and
also,
is been really instrumental in building out a
lot of professional resources,
for various communities, including,
Latino community more broadly.
He did a program or a couple of
programs for us in Ramadan,
and people love them. So that'll be on
Monday at 6 o'clock in the prayer room.
If you wanna come out,
it'll be and we'll advertise it later today.
Yeah.
Okay. Alright. So we'll see everybody next week
then
on Wednesday.