Mustafa Khattab – Common Mistakes in Salah 1 1
AI: Summary ©
The importance of affirming actions in Islam is emphasized, as it is crucial for personal gain and avoiding negative consequences. It is also important to pray in the home, not in the car, and not in the bus, and to avoid negative consequences such as negative impacts from praying. Pro praying is necessary to maintain focus and avoid losing it, and to prepare oneself for the next century. It is crucial to avoid praying in the car and focus on the message before praying.
AI: Summary ©
Do when we pray.
Of course, I've given that lecture,
at the Rashid, so I've seen some of
you come to the lecture. But I'll try
to add some new information so you'll find
it, boring.
Of course, before we start, we're gonna
talk briefly about Jain u'l Haggadah
and mechanical Ibadah.
Jain u'l Haggadah,
there's no nothing called mechanical Ibadah in Islam.
I just made up this terminology.
So jaynu and nabeah is the acts of
worship that come from your heart. You do
them purely for the sake of Allah. You
follow the example of the prophet and
they have an impact in your life.
So if you pray,
prayer teaching you teaches you sincerity.
If you fast, fasting teaches you,
patience, for example, and so on and so
forth.
But what is the point when you pray
and you lie?
You fasten the month of Ramadan and you
cheat.
So in this case, this is what I
like to call mikamikaydah.
It's not coming from your heart, and it
doesn't have an impact on your life.
If you look at
the different acts of worship in Islam to
see whether they are genuine or mechanical
just look at yourself, at the way you
do Ibadah.
You're doing
Ibadah routinely,
you fast and go not just because other
people fast.
You pray, and you go to the masjid
to pray because your friends go.
It is not because of you, it is
because you're following other people. So this is
what we call mechanical like that. That doesn't
have an impact on your life. So in
this case,
if your salah is mechanical,
So in this case, if your salah is
mechanical, then your salah is nothing more than
yoga. You know, yoga people, you know, do
this? It's yoga. It is not salah.
We fast in the month of Ramadan mechanically,
and you won't learn anything from fasting, so
the only thing you do is you don't
eat or drink, and you sleep the whole
day. So this is not
fasting. This is what I like to call
hibernation.
You know what bears do in the winter?
This is what they do. They don't eat
or drink. They just fall asleep. Hibernate.
Or when people go and diet,
you
go to
Mecca and Madinah to
to go to Mecca for the Hajj, so
people will call you Hajji, and this is
the only reason you did it, then your
Hajj is nothing more than physical exercise
or
jogging around the beach. Okay? So this is
mechanical worship.
So again, we can't
genuine worship has to come from your heart.
You do it purely for the sake of
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala,
and
it has an impact on your life. And
this is what Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
will keep you away from evil and indecency.
This is what Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala sends
in the Quran.
We will define salah and why it is
important in Islam, then we'll talk about the
mistakes.
Number 1,
you probably heard before that salah comes from
the root word wasalah which is a link.
So salah is a sunnah, is a link
between you and Allah.
If you like to talk to Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala,
then you pray.
Okay? Open communication between you and Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala. And you are given this honor
5 times a day. You can't even talk
to Allah more than 5 times a day
if you want to pray at night or
optional,
prayers.
Why is this Allah so important? I'm gonna
give you a few points then we'll move
on to the mistakes. Number 1,
say for example, after we die,
you have been dead for
a 100000 years, then you wake up, you
open your eyes.
As soon as you wake up your eyes,
the first question you'll get is not your
name. The first question is,
did you pray?
So the prophet says in the Muslim to
Khadid, the first question that you will give
on the day of judgment is your salah,
whether you pray it or not. So if
you pray, everything else will be a piece
of cake.
If you haven't prayed in this dunya vein,
you'll be in a miserable situation, and the
only one is to blame is yourself.
So
if the salah is the first question you
will get, it means that it is the
most important thing in this life. Otherwise, Allah
would be asking about
something else.
The second thing is
the last
words
the last words that came out of the
mouth of the prophet Saksim before he passed
away
was pray,
pray, establish the prayer.
If there was anything more important in Islam
than the salah, then the prophet would have
chosen to seal his life and seal his
message with that thing.
But he chose to finish his life, will
seal his life
by reminding us about Salah. It means it
is very very important.
Number 3,
if someone doesn't pray
we know that the scholars of Islam say,
if someone prays,
like you go to the Masjid, the Jannah
and pray
for every good do deed you do in
Islam, like fasting and prayers and charity, anything
else, if if you get a 100 rewards
for every good deed you do, the prophet
is getting a a 100 rewards
because he is the one who conveyed the
message and he taught us how to pray
and fast and do the different things. So
for every good deed you do, the prophet
will gain a similar reward like yours. So
in this case, if you don't pray
and you deprive yourself of the reward, you
are also preventing the reward
from the prophet's Haslam.
Okay?
So you have to be mindful of this.
And
this is not the way to show gratitude
to the prophet salami for conveying the message,
traveling 1,000 of miles,
being persecuted for so many years, and some
of this Sahaba, they got killed, tried to
convey the message to us. And all we
do is just you you sit down and
play games or watch movies, and the salah
is over and you don't even pray. This
is not the way to appreciate
the hardships
and the pain
and the difficulties that the Sahaba and the
prophet
have been through to convey the message to
us.
Also, we know that
salah is the only act of worship
that was given to the prohanas and the
heavens in Jannah.
Anything else,
fasting,
Hajj, zakat, everything was conveyed to the
And I like to give this example. Say,
for example,
I work for,
Adam Ashman, and I live in Toronto.
So, for example, if he wants me to
do something which just send me an email
or send me a fax,
do this and this.
If it's something more important than
average things that I usually do, they will
give me a call.
If it is something very very important, he
would either come to me by himself
or he will ask me to take the
1st flight and go to him in Edin.
Okay? Irub Arba.
So this is what happened in the case
of salal. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala didn't send
Jibreel to the prophet to order him to
pray. No. He brought the prophet
all the way
from Makkah to the heavens to get the
order to pray.
Everybody knows that the first order to pray
came with 50 salaam.
So we were supposed to pray 50 times
a day, not 5. Okay?
In the Usid e kareem, the prophet was
coming down with the order to pray 5
50 times, then he came across who?
The children of Israel got them. They ordered
to pray 3 times a day and most
of them didn't even even pray. What are
you talking about? Fifty prayers. It's not gonna
work. And he went back to Allah, and
he spoke. And at the end of the
story,
Allah told him to pray 5 times a
day.
And if you pray 5, you will give
them a word of 50.
So if you
pray 5 times a day, you'll give them
a word of praying 50 times a day.
We are told
in the adith of the prophet
that the closest
the closest you can get to Allah
is when you pray. When you put your
face on the ground and you pray to
Allah
that this is the closest you get to
him, which means if you have a du'a,
if you have a prayer and you wanted
to be accepted, now this is the best
time to make your prayer or make your
du'a, and Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will answer
your du'a.
The next point, salah is the only act
of worship that is not waste.
There are a couple of situations,
especially for women,
if they have their monthly thing or they
just gave birth to the baby, they're not
they, they don't have to pray. And even
after they, you know, they get back to
normal, they don't have to make up their
prayers.
But
for men, for example, or
the other ladies or at other times, they
don't there there are no givers for salami.
So we are told, for example, if someone
has a back problem, they can't press it
and die. If they can't, they can't lie
on their side. If they can't, they can't
just pray with their necks. If they can't,
they can't just pray with your eyes.
You close your eyes halfway, this is rakur.
All the way down, this is sujood. Some
of these fellows say even
for example, if you are run over by
a truck, you're already cast from hip to
toe, you can't move a muscle, you pray
in your heart.
You close your heart, halfway, this is a
record.
All the way down, there's a sujood. No.
No. Anyway,
there's no way to record the salah.
Salah is a way to show gratitude to
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala for everything He has
given you, for the different organs you have.
You know,
about 4 years ago, one of my friends
in Egypt, his dad had to do a
liver,
transplant, and that cost him, if I remember
correctly, about $200,000.
So and they had to sell their cars
and everything. They were broke,
and they're dead. That's the way a month
later up to the surgery. So this is
one order here, buddy. Now we're talking about
your kidney, a 100,000,
Your heart, half a $1,000,000.
Your eyes, your feet, your nose, everything you
have. And
everything you have in in your body is
worth
1,000,000 of dollars,
We're in the was sent to Khabeem from
the prophet
that he used to pray at night
so much so that his feet would get
swollen,
and Aishwamdevadr
would say, no problem, Allah. You don't have
to do this. Everything is forgiven.
He would say, should I not be a
grateful servant to Allah? So he was praying
to show gratitude to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Okay.
What about the person who doesn't pray? Okay.
I'm gonna give you
a very
small
analogy,
and I'll give you a candidate if you
get this one right.
You read in the Quran
that
the shaitan,
the devil, refused to make sujood to have
Alaihi Salam.
The shaitan was asked to pray to Adam,
make sujood, and he refused. Because of the
arrogance, he was created for mud, he was
created for fire, and you know the story.
But if he had been asked to pray
to Allah subhanahu wa'ala, he would have refused.
Now
the person who doesn't pray, Allah
asks him to pray 5 times a day,
and he refuses.
The shaykhad will then refuse, but the person
who doesn't pray, refuses.
Which one is
better? Technically, the shaytad or the guy who
doesn't pray?
Okay. Thanks.
You read in the Quran about
The people who neglect their salah will go
to this valley in the hill fire called
Rayy. And the scholars say,
the verses are not talking about the people
who don't pray. The verses are talking about
the people who delay the salah until the
time is over.
So you have to be careful about this.
It is not talking about the people who
don't pray at all. It is talking about
the people who delay the salah.
So what about the people who pray at
all?
And and and a more terrible punishment
in summer and summer is in the basement
of the nifar. Allah is
So the people in the basement of the
hellfire in Saqam, which is the worst place
and Allah or where they have been asked,
why are you here in the in the
bottom or the the the basement of the
hellfire? They say, number 1,
we didn't pray.
So 2 different punishments.
Irzad was sent to Khadiz in Bukhari,
then the prophet was sitting in the masjid,
and this guy, one of the Sahaba, he
came in who don't know his name, and
he prayed to rakas,
and
he prayed faster than light.
You know what faster than light is? Very
fast. And we see this all the time.
So
the prophet told him to go back and
pray because he haven't prayed.
Mechanical
prayer.
He
went back and he prayed, and he came
back to the prophet and he told him,
go back and pray because he haven't prayed.
For the 3rd time, he went and prayed,
and the prophet told him, you haven't prayed
genuinely.
You prayed. You kinda go and go back
and pray. So the man said after the
the 3rd trial, told prophet Allah, by the
one who sent you with the truth, I
can't do any better than this. This is
the best I can do.
Teach me. Now the prophet started to teach
him, when you stand up, stand with humility
and focus, you make buku, and so do
do like this, and the prophet
taught him till the end of the kameen.
They,
there's a guy,
a famous singer. I don't listen to music,
but there's this guy. His name is James
Brown. How many of you have heard of
James Brown? Very famous. Back in the 19
seventies.
Because here's the thing,
when you watch a boring movie like Gun
With the Wind or a boring hockey game,
okay,
for 2 or 3 hours, you never blink.
But as soon as that you you stand
on the carpet to pray for for, what,
3 minutes, You start yawning,
looking outside the window, looking at your watch,
scratching your head, digging into your nose. Something
bad happens.
So we are watching the boring movie. You
feel good.
We pray.
I got ants in my pants. I can't
pray.
And imagine if you're standing before your boss
or the principal at the school, and and
they're talking to you about something very serious,
and you're not paying attention or looking outside
the window or
thinking about something else,
I think the least they can do is
to throw them out of the window.
What about Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala? You're standing
in front of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala for
2 minutes to pray, and you are not
giving him your full attention.
Right? And this is not the proper respect.
If you are standing in front of the
queen of England or the king of England,
okay, you pay the proper attention, bash Allah,
in order to get their autograph and take
pictures with them, but you are standing before
the king of all kings,
and you're scratching your head and digging in
your nose. What is this, man? Come on.
This is not the proper way to stand
before Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Plus,
how much time does it take you to
pray?
3 up to 5 minutes? And Allah gave
you 24 hours a day and all he
is asking from you is
5 times
by 4 minutes, that's 24 minutes.
24 minutes in the 24 hours. So technically,
you have
30 to, what, 23 and a half hours
a day for yourself and half an hour
for Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Even less than
half an hour, and some people are not
willing to give that much to Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala.
Our biggest problem when we pray is to
keep our focus in Islam. Most of us,
we we lose our focus because as soon
you start to pray, you start to think
about
the damn bills.
You start to think about your boss. You
start to think about your wife and your
kids and how miserable your life is and
your wife made your life a living *.
So you start to think about all that
stuff when you pray. Right?
Outside the salah, no yawning, no thinking about
this stuff, no thinking about vacations
to Los Angeles, nothing.
All these ideas, they come to you as
soon as you start on the you stand
on the curb.
The prophet salallahu alaihi wa sallam says in
the authentic hadith,
the Sayyid Jaba,
that
you get the reward in salah according to
the time you focus in the sun. If
you focus half of the time, you get
half of the reward.
90% of the time, you get 90% of
the reward. If you focus 0
of the time, then 0 reward. This is
what the Hadith says.
What you need to do before the salah
is to
prepare yourself for the next salah. So say,
for example, we just finished salah Tovah,
you hope in your heart that Allah
will give you life till the next salah
that you come and pray.
And the prophet says in the haveith, if
this is what you do, if this is
your attention, you will give the
time between both and us as if you
stood in salah the whole time. You'll give
the word, the counter is
is going on between the 2 salah.
And of course,
and
Some people, they just delay
because they have words and everything.
And before
the salah, they come in the last minute,
they go to the bathroom,
they, urinate standing up, and they paint the
whole thing in yellow. We go to the
washrooms and we see everything.
Then they go and watch and quickly, and
they forget half of the organs. They just
wash one hand and they forget the other.
You see?
They wash
3 feet and they forget the 4th foot.
Number
2,
kashuah and the salah, when you start this
is
what we do at the beginning. Now this
is the the the the wisdom
time. When you raise your hands up like
this, you're gonna start. You're gonna start. You're
gonna start. You're gonna start. You're gonna start.
You're gonna start. You're gonna start. You're gonna
start. You're gonna start. This is what we
do at the beginning. Now this is
the wisdom behind. When you raise your hands
up like this,
it's symbolic
of throwing the world behind your back.
Everything is behind you, now you have Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala in front of you.
There is this
guy, his name is Sahathe al Asam,
and
they asked him, subhanallah, you pray so beautifully
with fushua and humility and focus, how do
you maintain the fushua and the salah?
And the Salat, the bridge between the Hellfar
and Jannah is under my feet. And the
Angel of Death is over my head ready
to take my soul.
And after I pray, I'm not sure if
my salah is accepted or thrown back on
my face. So So this is how he
intends for Shur'an salah. He's not like the
other guy
that I told you about before,
who was standing in the Rashid and Mashallah,
there are 2 guys sitting behind him and
he was praying
slowly and nicely.
So the guy said, Masha'allah, look at him.
He he prayed so beautifully.
So the guy is standing like this, and
he looked at them, and you know what?
I'm fasting too.
Not only I'm praying nicely, but I'm fasting
too, in case you don't know.
Of course, after you finish
the salah, if you have time, you can
pray
the sunun, the oafil of prayers. And the
reason the Quran says salah is is because
if you make a mistake in the obligatory
salaam or if it is not accepted for
any reason, then Allah will pick up for
the obligatory salaam through the option
salaahu.
And don't listen to the shaitan.
Shaitan, if you have the intention to to
make salah, shaitan can never prevent you from
praying.
But what the shaitan does basically, shaitan will
let you pray, but he will mess up
your salah. So you will lose all all
your rewards.
You didn't get enough sleep. Now you're praying.
You didn't focus for a single second in
the salah. You are not gonna get a
reward. Why are you praying anyway? You're wasting
your time.
My advice to you,
because
I love you so much, you're like a
brother to me from another month, what you
can do, you stop praying for now.
Go to, you know,
take a course, you know, on how to
make salah.
6 months, get some training, go to the
shaykh, and they'll teach you how to pray.
Then, inshallah, when you master salah, very good,
now you're gonna pray.
A living mouse is better than a dead
lion. So I please pray and try to
improve.
Now, inshallah, I will show you some,
pictures.
If you spot the mistake in the slide,
then we'll give you a hint.
How about this guy?
Yes?
What?
Okay. The guy
is looking at the sky.
If this is what you do, you will
lose your focus in the sun because if
this happens,
you look at the fan in the house
and it's turning, you lose your focus.
Lose your
focus. Or
if you look at the sky, there are
planes and burns and stuff, you lose your
focus.
If you look at the wall like this
and you have a picture of your wife
or your husband on the wall, now you
start to think about your miserable life
and why on earth did I marry this
man or this lady, then you will lose
your focus in the salah. And the prophet
says,
what you need to do
is to look at the place where he
makes his own, And this is the best
way to maintain for sure in the salah.
Sometimes, when I finish, yeah, I mean, the
the salah and the masjid, and I give
a short talk,
then as as I start to leave, people
stand up to pray sunnah.
And sometimes,
there is this one guy, you know, he's
standing like this and he's doing like this.
And I thought he was standing there to
shake my hand or he has a question
for me. And the guy is praying
and he's very happy when he's moving his
head, like, come on, man.
Come on.
If you are not able to,
to continue, for sure,
Yeah. Watching the game. Yeah. Watching the
game.
Okay.
Okay.
Some of the guys,
they are lazy.
They don't want to the Masjid to go
to the Masjid and pray. You wanna pray
in the house because there's a game, a
venue,
because there's a soccer game or a hockey
game.
So what they do, basically, they pray and
watch the players play at the same time.
So every time there's an out or a
foul or something, you get like they're doing
like this in the salah. If
there's a goal, hit in the salah.
They can't focus. All you need to do
is turn it off
3 minutes to pray. You
Okay. Say, for example, you wake up at
Fashr, 4:30 in the morning.
Go and you make wudu,
you change your clothes, you take your car
keys,
take your car, go to the masjid,
enter the masjid. All this is an intention.
You don't do all that stuff to go
to the masjid to watch a movie. Okay?
You're coming to make salah. The same is
also true for fasting in the month of
Ramadan. Okay? You woke up before Rosh, you
make some, Christmas or some hummus
or matouba or a chicken soba or beef
sukha, cake, all that stuff.
You don't do this to give it to
your neighbors. You do this to eat for
Sahul. So this by itself is an intention,
and you don't have to say it out
loud.
Keep it in your heart.
How about this guy?
Yes? He's looking around? He's what? He's looking
around.
He's what? He's looking around.
No.
He's in the washroom. Yes. Exactly.
We're told in the Hadith,
If you are hungry
and it is time for salah,
what should you do first? Eat. Eat first.
If so I'm not scared of that.
If you can't hold it anymore
and you can't focus in the salah, then
go
and make wudu or relieve yourself and come
back for the salah. Otherwise,
you would not focus for a single second
in the salah. Okay.
So it is better to free yourself of
any need before you come to the salah
and pray. If you are hungry
I know a lot of people, including myself,
if I'm hungry, I can't focus.
Okay. So imagine if I'm
standing behind the Imam al Salah and he's
talking about Jannah and he's talking about them
birds and,
beef, sukha, and all the beautiful food in
Jannah and all the fruits.
He's reciting all these verses and I'm hungry
behind him. Of course, I'm gonna be thinking
about all that stuff. Okay?
So
eat first before you're done and pray.
Okay.
You have to do a call in a
certain way. Some people do a call like
this. Some people do a call like this.
Some people do it like this.
The best way to do it is
to imagine that your expensive,
iMac,
we put this iMac or iPad on your
back when you print. If you kneel down
more than