Mustafa Umar – Islamic Law Fiqh 101 Essentials Of Islamic Practice #5
AI: Summary ©
The importance of following prayer after every movement is emphasized, as it is necessary for small movements like itching, sneezing, and sneezing. The hesitation should be done at the beginning and end of the prayer, holding hands in lines, and privacy should be protected behind a barrier. Pranks are necessary to fulfill rights and avoid distraction, and leaders should be clear in their actions and not recite the wrong part of the prayer until the prayer is finished. The holy spirit's language is emphasized, and individuals should not recite the wrong part of the prayer until the prayer is finished.
AI: Summary ©
So we talked about prayer last week, and
now we talk about what to do after
prayer. So after the prayer, is finished,
it's actually recommended to remember Allah
and to supplicate to him. So these are
some of the recommended things to do after
you finish your prayer. One of them is
to say, Allahumma
a'ainaala
zikrikah washukrikah wahasni'ibbatik.
Which means, Allah help me to remember you,
to thank you, and to worship you in
the best way.
And this is very appropriate to the prayer.
Right? Because you're asking Allah to help you
to remember him.
And you just did what? You just remembered
Allah. So it's helping you to keep up
the prayers, to thank you, you know, and
also to worship you in the best way
because you just worshipped Allah. So you're actually
asking for help in all the different types
of worship and aspects of worship.
Another thing to say is,
Which means, oh, Allah, you are the source
of peace
and the provider of peace. You are the
possessor of greatness and generosity.
So this is a supplication.
And another thing you can say is, you
glorify Allah 33 times by saying, SubhanAllah.
SubhanAllah,
33 times. And it's very common for people
to count it on their fingers. So what
they do is they count, you know, each,
except your thumb, each of your fingers has
3 spots. Right? When you bend it, you
can see 3 little marks here. So what
you do is you can count on your
fingers.
1,
subhanAllah,
subhanAllah,
subhanAllah,
and it gets when you finish the entire
hand, you have 15. And then you just
do it one more time, again with the
same hand and you get 30.
You just need 3 more and you got
33.
Alright. So you're done. Or you can use,
a counter
or you can use
any way, you wanna do it. And if
you can't do 33, you could do a
little bit less to work your way up
to getting the 33. So you say, subhanAllah,
33 times, Alhamdulillah,
33 times, and then you say, Allahu Akbar,
33 times, which means Allah is glorified, Allah
is praised, Allah is the greatest.
And then,
let's say 33 times, 33 times. And then
you can conclude with La ilaha illallah.
Just there's no God but Allah.
And this is these are just some of
the different things you can do after prayer.
You don't have to do any of them.
You don't have to do all of them.
You can do one and you can do
the other. You can do the other. It's
either way. There's a lot of flexibility in
this. So whatever you can do, you should
do. And there's other things also you can
say, different Surahs that of the Quran that
you can recite and all of that. So
you can learn, more about this by getting
a book on supplication,
a book on Dua and seeing what are
the different supplications that you can do, especially
after prayer, what is the what is the
good thing to say. Okay. So this is
recommended and whenever we get an opportunity, we
should try to take advantage of this and,
say something after the prayer.
The next section is invalidating prayer.
So there are some things which
invalidate and nullify your prayer
if you do them in the middle of
prayer. Why?
Because they represent disrespect
and disregard
for the spiritual state of prayer that you're
actually in.
So you say, well, why can't I just
continue? You know, Allah knows what I'm saying
and, you know, he's knows my prayer. But
this is something which is considered to be
really,
disrespectful to prayer, so you should begin over
again once you do one of these things.
So what nullifies and invalidates your prayer? Okay.
The first thing is,
nullifying any of the prerequisites
of prayer, such as you know, remember we
talked about prerequisites of prayer?
If you invalidate
any one of those, then your prayer is
considered invalid. You should stop.
You should go back and get ready to
prepare prepare for prayer one more time.
So
the prerequisites of prayer, like for example, we
talked about wudu,
is one of the prerequisites.
So if you lose your wudu and you're
in the middle of prayer, you should actually
stop your prayer.
And if you're in the middle of a
crowd or something like that,
just you stop your prayer and you walk
away, and you go to the bathroom, perform
your wudu again, and you come back and
you continue your prayer.
A lot of people probably
get embarrassed and they think you know what
Someone's gonna watch me that I invalidated my
wudu or something like that. Try to get
into the state where you're not gonna be
embarrassed. Nothing embarrassing, you're you're standing in front
of Allah. So if you stop your prayer,
it's no problem. If you if you lose
your wudu for whatever reason, little urine leaked
out or something happened, you go ahead and
just stop your prayer and just walk away.
And it can be hard sometimes, so if
it's hard you can just stop your prayer
and just you could just sit down,
and then just
remain sitting, and people will kind of wonder
for a second what happened to you, but
don't worry what people think. You know why?
Because they should have been focusing on their
own prayer rather than focusing on you losing
your prayer. So don't worry about it. Right?
So just, when you when you lose your
wudu in the middle of prayer, you just
stop the prayer and you you go make
wudu again.
If you turn your chest away from the
qibla, remember we said that one of the
prerequisites is to keep your torso
always geared towards the qibla. So if you
were to turn it away from the qiblah,
away from the direction of prayer, that invalidates
one of the prerequisites
and you'd have to stop your prayer and
you'd have to go and repeat it again.
So in that case, what would you do?
You just stop your prayer and you restart
from the beginning again.
Okay.
And so so that means that if you
study the prerequisites that we talked about in
detail, they were written very specifically.
So what if you turn your head away
in prayer? Does it invalidate your prayer? It
doesn't because you're not turning your torso, your
chest away from the qiblah. So even if
you were to sneeze or something like that
and you go like this, or even if
really your concentration
is some reason messed up and you actually
looked over there. Let's see there was an
emergency situation happening.
Something is really going on, someone is yelling
and screaming,
and then, you know, you look over there
and you figure out, you know, you thought
there's some emergency going on, and then you
find out, you know what, they were just
practicing for a play or something like that,
and you're like, okay, I'm gonna continue my
prayer. It doesn't break your prayer.
Okay. It won't break your prayer, but if
you turn completely around or halfway around or
something then it will.
The second is
saying something which is not a part of
the prayer.
So making any statements which are not part
of the prayer itself.
So that would be in you're not allowed
to talk during prayers. You can't be in
the middle of prayer.
I actually saw one person one time, pulled
out his cell phone it was ringing. He's
like, look I'm in prayer, I'm gonna call
you back. Okay. You can't do that in
the middle of prayer, that actually invalidates your
prayer. So you can't say anything else,
out loud when you're in the middle of
prayer.
That's not part of the prayer. Now what
if you need to signal to someone during
the prayer?
Right. So what do you do if you
need to just give a signal to someone?
So if you see someone, you're sitting there
in the middle of prayer and someone is
trying to call you and say, hey hey
what are you doing man?
You can just you can move your hand
because it doesn't break your prayer. Right? Does
moving your hand break your prayer? No. Right.
So you could you could signal to them
something like this, or you can signal to
them something.
What if you're
praying, let's say, in your own room,
and someone comes and knocks on your room
and your door is locked,
or it's your parents for example, and they're
knocking on your room, what are you doing
in there? And then you're sitting there, you're
praying. And they're like, you know, are you
okay? Did you fall down or something? And
they start getting worried. You need to signal
them. Right? So how do you signal them
in that case?
See, if you look at the definition very
closely, it says, you're not allowed to say
something
that is not part of the prayer.
So what is part of the prayer? The
prayer consists of reading Quran
and praising Allah.
So if you say something that is part
of the prayer, even though that's not the
location for it, that's not when you should
be saying it, it's not considered to be
something which will break your prayer. So if
you raise your voice and you say, SubhanAllah,
which means glory be to Allah, which is
part of the prayer, because it's it's it's
a remembrance of Allah, then in that case
your prayer does not break and the person
can be signaled, hopefully
they also took the class on Islamic law,
so that they know what you mean by
saying SubhanAllah.
The person starts getting worried, you know, maybe
you could recite you could recite a verse
from the Quran or something, so that they
understand what's going on. Hopefully they get the
point,
so that you could just simply say SubhanAllah,
because it's part of the prayer. You can
also signal with your hand briefly if you
need to.
One of the common questions that arises is,
well what if you're,
in prayer and you have such concentration, it's
gonna happen in Ramadan, you're gonna see people
start crying in in prayer. And this is
actually a good thing to cry in prayer
and moaning in the prayer, because when you're
trying to focus in front of Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala, it's a good thing.
But
sometimes
the crying and the moaning can get to
a point where you're actually saying words.
Right?
So when you start saying words
like,
you know, oh Allah, you know, protect me
from this and, you know, oh Allah, I've
done something or some people just naturally comes
out of them. They should not be saying
any other words in addition to that. So
crying and moaning and, you know, weeping and
sobbing and part of the prayer, that's that's
a good thing. But once as long as
it doesn't constitute speaking,
then the prayer is still gonna be valid.
If they start speaking or saying something else
that's not part of the prayer, then it's
gonna become invalidated. Because it's not the time
to be asking, you know, different supplications from
Allah or something like that.
The third thing
is
performing several consecutive movements
which are unnecessary
and not part of the prayer.
If you do that it'll invalidate your prayers.
So if you perform a bunch of consecutive
movements in your prayer which are not necessary
at all,
then it will it will invalidate your prayer.
So for example, what is a what is
a small movement and what is a large
movement? So a small movement is like itching.
Right. So if you have a itch you're
allowed to itch like this. Right.
And if you're,
covering your mouth when you're yawning, so if
you're yawning you can actually cover your mouth.
Right?
Sneezing for example. So when you're about to
sneeze, if you need to, you know,
hold, you know, your shirt or something like
that, that's perfectly fine. That's considered a small
movement.
Muting your phone,
alright, is considered a small movement as well,
especially if you have, like, a hardware vibrate
switch. So you just you reach in your
pocket and you just tack it, and or
you touch it or turn it off or
something. So actually going if your phone is
ringing, this is really common, people's phone starts
ringing, and it's annoying everyone else. It's annoying
the person as well, but they think that
they're not supposed to move at all. Now
you're allowed to move because this is small
motions. You simply just move your hand,
put it in your pocket wherever you can,
and just turn off the thing and bring
your hand back up.
What you don't do is you don't go,
you know, pull out your phone and then
start thinking,
and you start going like this and then
you push the power button. That's a consecutive
movement, that's a lot of movements, right. So
you're just trying to at least silence your
phone somehow. That's considered a small movement.
Blowing your nose,
k. That's something that's kind of necessary. So
if you need to reach in and grab
a tissue and just kind of at least
wipe your nose or something like that real
quick and then you put it back in
your pocket, you can do that. It's a
small motion. But you don't make it into
like a a big, you you know, you
start if you start doing it a lot,
then it's gonna become consecutive motion.
Taking a few steps is even allowed.
So even moving, taking a few steps because
you need to, for some reason, taking a
few steps forward, taking a few steps to
the side. So for example, if you're in
the group prayer, which we're gonna talk about,
if somebody leaves,
you take the steps over and you fill
in the gap. You don't just leave a
gap there. You're allowed to move. Alright? But
obviously you're not gonna, like,
walk, you know, to another location, you know,
from the back of the masjid to the
front of the masjid. That's considered a lot
of, motions, a lot of movements. So you're
allowed to, you're actually allowed to carry children
as well while you're praying.
So while you're in the middle, if you
have a child, you need to pick up
the child, you can actually pick up the
child and you continue your prayer like this,
and when you're going down into prostration, for
example, you can put the child on the
ground in front of you and you can
go down. So that's considered
small motions that are taking place and that's
perfectly fine, you're allowed to do that. But
as long as the motions are not consecutive
and they're not
a lot in a row, right. So you
don't go in,
I don't know, you don't go in what
do people do?
Yeah. Don't turn your head, don't start making
like, you know, some kind of sign language
to the person in front of you or
something like that. Don't do any of these
consecutive long movements. Otherwise, that'll invalidate your prayer
and then you have to restart the prayer,
but small movements are okay. Okay.
And the last thing is
laughing out loud. So if you laugh
out loud while you're in the middle of
prayer, which obviously you should not be laughing
in prayer because you're supposed to be focusing,
but if you start laughing for some reason,
you remember a joke or whatever reason happened,
then if you laugh loud enough so that
your neighbor can actually hear you.
Right? So if you smile,
for example, and you're thinking about something and
your mind is gone and you start smiling,
but no no sound comes out. You just
bring yourself back,
into the prayer and you continue.
If you make a sound, little chuckle or
something that the person next to you would
have been able to hear you, then you've
actually broken your prayer. Because so contrary to
the purpose of prayer, you should stop your
prayer and you should restart your prayer again.
Okay.
So
now what do you do if there's so
these are the things which invalidate your prayer.
Anything else will not break your prayer,
no matter what happens.
Somebody walks in front of you, it doesn't
break your prayer. Somebody throws something at you,
it doesn't break your prayer.
If,
I don't know. I can't think of anything,
but this is an exhaustive list. So if
someone comes and says, well, well, does this
break the prayer? If it doesn't fall in
that category, no, it doesn't. What about this
one? If it's not in that list, it
doesn't break your prayer. Okay? That's the only
things that break your prayer. If there's a
need to break your prayer for some reason,
what do you do? If you really need
to let's say you turn around and you
saw that someone is in trouble and you
need to help them. What do you do?
How do you stop the prayer? You just
stop
and you leave.
You don't have to say salaam or anything,
you just simply stop and you walk away,
you know. And you go and you do
whatever whatever it is that you need to
do.
There are some times where it's actually recommended
to break your prayer and stop your prayer
in the middle. And that is when someone
is in danger.
If you see someone in danger you need
to help them and you say, well, you
know,
priority goes to praying to Allah.
And person is getting, you know, person is
getting their purse stolen or something. And you're
saying, well, you know what, I'm gonna just
I'm gonna pray for them right after this
prayer. That, you know, hopefully, you know, Allah
restores the purse back to that lady who's
getting the purse stolen from her. That's not
that's a wrong way of thinking, and someone
can fall into that way of thinking. It's
a wrong way of thinking. So the priority
in this case is you stop your prayer,
you go and you help that person, and
then you come back and you can finish
your prayer. So that's a time where it's
recommended to break your prayer. Your your possessions
are being stolen. So your own thing and
this is quite common. So, like, students who
pray on campus, they put their backpack down
in front of them, and then they're sitting
in the middle of prayer, and then they
see someone coming, they're about to steal, they
see the cell phone in their bag. They're
going to steal their cell phone because they
know that they're praying. You don't sit there
and say, okay, you know what? This is
a test from Allah for me. Am I
gonna focus in my prayer or am I
gonna worry about my phone being stolen?
Don't let someone steal your phone. So you
can stop your prayer, grab your phone bring
it back and then you can continue your
prayer. So it's not about that you know
you MashaAllah, you're such a pious person that
you're gonna even let your stuff get stolen
and it won't break you from your prayer.
If you know and you see your stuff
getting stolen,
you break your prayer and you go and
you stop that person.
Some even if something is burning, right. So
you left the pizza in the oven, right,
or perhaps something healthier, and if something is
cooking in the oven and you forgot to
put the timer or you can smell aid,
it's going off. It's it's about to burn.
The timer is going off and I'm only
in the second second unit of 4 unit
prayer. I got 2 more units to go.
You know what? If the food burns, it
burns. No alarm, no nothing but the food
is gonna burn, that's fine. I could always
get more food. No. In this case there's
no point in burning the food. You stop
your prayer, you get the food out and
then you go back and you repeat your
prayer again.
And if you really really need to go
to the bathroom you need to relieve yourself,
you also break your prayer. So all of
a sudden, you know, you're in the middle
of tarawih prayers, the long prayers at night
in Ramadan, and then the imam starts going
really long and you're like, I really really
need to go to the bathroom but I'm
already in the middle of prayer. What do
you do? You can break your prayer, just
walk away, go to the bathroom,
get prepared again for prayer and come back
and finish the prayer. Even if you miss
1 or 2, whatever, it's fine. So the
point is how much concentration you're gonna have
when you really need to go to the
bathroom in the first place. So these are
things where it's recommended,
actually, to stop your prayer in these cases.
If you don't,
you don't. You lost your backpack?
Okay. That's fine. But it's recommended that you
do.
So these are the things which break prayer.
Then there's disliked actions in prayer. So things
which are disliked but they don't break your
prayer. So what are things which are disliked?
These are things which you should try not
to do them, as much as possible.
Number 1,
doing anything which is gonna distract you
from concentrating in prayer. For example, looking around.
Obviously you're not concentrating in prayer if you're
looking around, so don't look around. And it's
a big problem actually, you find always there's
always unfortunately some people who you walk in
the Masjid and literally they're standing there praying,
and you walk in and you see them
looking at you. They start staring at someone,
why are you staring at me? You're supposed
to be in your prayer, what are you
doing? It means this person doesn't understand the
the concept of focusing in the prayer,
unnecessarily
moving around,
playing with your hands, you know, making hand
gestures and cracking your knuckles,
or playing with your beard. Some people will
go and they start playing playing with their
hair or something like that. You'll find people
do all sorts of weird things, you know.
And month of Ramadan is coming next month.
You're gonna see all of this in Ramadan.
So you're gonna see people, they get sitting
in the Tarawee, and then they start getting
tired so they start stretching, and they're moving
back and forth. You see people moving around,
people doing all sorts of weird movements, they're
not supposed to be doing that. It doesn't
invalidate their prayer, so they say, oh, well
my prayer is valid, but it's really really
disliked. What are you doing that in the
middle of prayer? You should be focused and
concentrating in the prayer. So it doesn't break
your prayer, that's true. But it's extremely disliked.
So it falls in that category of what
we called as what?
Anyone remember the category of what is dislike?
The Arabic term for it?
Makru. Right. The thing which is disliked. And
if you stay away from something which is
disliked, what happens?
You get you get rewarded for that. Exactly.
You get rewarded for staying away from that.
So that's,
doing things which will distract you from concentrating.
The second is praying when you're in a
hurry.
It's dislike to pray when you're in a
hurry, when you're in a rush. So for
example, if you really need to go to
the bathroom,
it's it's common
debate, it's a common fight that people encounter.
You know what? I have wudu,
I need to go to the bathroom though,
but then I go to the bathroom I
have to make wudu again.
I could save so much time if I
just do the prayer now instead of having
to redo my wudu. You save like literally
60 seconds of your life thinking that you're
prioritizing,
but in your mind it's like, wow, I'm
gonna save like 90 seconds maybe, you know,
if I have to do my wudu again.
So you know what, let me just pray,
even though I really need to go, kind
of, and I'm gonna go ahead and, you
know, I I don't have to do a
wudu again for this one. But it's dislike
to do that because you're in a hurry,
you're not gonna be focusing when you need
to relieve yourself. So that's,
that's dislike.
Also, when you're really really hungry and there's
food nearby. So you have not eaten lunch
and then all of a sudden, you know,
someone has just cooked really, you know, like
good food and once this food gets cold
it's not gonna have the same taste anymore
and you're like what should I do? I
should pray? Should we eat or should we
pray? If you're really hungry such that such
that's gonna be distracting you in your prayer,
then it's better you go and you eat
first
and then you pray afterwards. So that you
don't get distracted. Otherwise, you're gonna be thinking
about the food, you're gonna be your stomach
is gonna be growling. You don't want to
do that. Or if you're really really tired,
same thing if you're really really tired you
should just go and sleep for an hour
or something, wake up if you have enough
time for the prayer, and then you go
ahead and continue your prayer.
So that's 2. Number 3,
wearing improper clothes,
which you would not wear in front of
other people. So wearing something which is considered
improper
is disliked in prayer, because Allah is more
deserving of, you know, your respect.
So praying in, for example, your
pajamas, which you would never go in front
of other people, is considered to be disliked.
To pray in at least something where you
would feel comfortable appearing in public. Not like
in a fancy gathering, you don't have to
put on a suit for your prayer or
tuxedo or something, but something that you would
feel comfortable around other people. So if you
have one of those,
you know, one of those pajamas with, like,
the weird designs or something, you'd you'd be
embarrassed that if someone actually saw you in
those things. It's better not to pray in
those things, but to change it to just
something
regular, which, you know, you would feel more
comfortable praying in that. I mean, people, you'd
feel comfortable if people were to see you
in that as well, because Allah also deserves
that sense of respect.
Right. The next one is, if you're in
a place
which distracts you. It's a dislike to be
in any place which will distract you, such
as praying on a carpet which has like
a lot of designs on it. K. Now
this is obviously very controversial point
because most of the places we go to,
they all have a bunch of designs.
But it's best to have less designs. So
you know the prayer carpets that you get
or something like that? If you find that
the prayer carpet,
the design of the carpet is starting to
distract you, it's better to try and substitute
it out for one of those plain prayer
carpets.
Right? Which for some reason they're very hard
to find. You say, why are they hard
to find, by the way? They just are,
Everyone just want, they want the Kaaba in
front of them, little picture of the Kaaba
or something like that. If you find that
it's distracting you, right, if it's helping you
for concentration somehow then that's fine. If it's
distracting you away, this considered to be something
that's disliked, or if you're wearing clothing where
it's gonna start distracting you, you think, you
know, you have a brand name
something and you're you're getting focusing on that,
it's gonna distract you. So this is from
the Prophet, peace be upon him. So he
wore one time clothing which he started distract
he started thinking about it, it has some
pleated, you know, design on it and he
started distracting him. He took it off and
said, I'm not gonna wear this again during
prayer. I don't I don't wanna wear this
thing because it distracted me from my prayer.
So being in a place where there's a
lot of distractions.
Right? You should try to avoid being in
a place where there's some design on the
wall in front of you and you're gonna
start focusing or thinking about that. So try
to find a place which is
as plain or as simple as you can
get, so that you you don't your mind
doesn't wander and drift around in the prayer.
So that's what you should be focusing on.
And then,
lastly, praying in a dirty or a dangerous
place is considered disliked. It's common sense obviously,
but at the same time
dirty or dangerous. So for example,
praying near a dumpster where the trash is
being thrown or something like that, and you
say, well,
I it smells like rotten milk.
Okay. But
it's neither
feces nor vomit, nor urine, nor pus, nor
blood. The list that we mentioned about things
which are impure in Islam. Right?
But at the same time this is still
like, you know, this is not,
the best place to be praying in. Right?
So praying in a place was kind of
dirty or maybe there there would be some
trash or some some something that shouldn't be
there, that's considered dislike.
Praying in a bathroom
is something which is disliked for the same
reason,
but it doesn't mean that it's prohibited.
Right. It means that it's disliked and you
should avoid praying inside the bathroom because that's
the place where, you know, all the feces
and everything is being, you know, discarded.
But there are some
exceptional cases, perhaps, where someone could pray inside
a bathroom. Whereas, for example, a new Muslim
who has not told their parents
that they're Muslim, and literally it's to the
point where there's there's hostility in the house,
and they can't find a single other place
to pray without being, you know,
without being, like, you know, confronted or something
like that, there's a possibility because it's not
invalid.
It just really dislike to pray. And praying
on a public road, which I think is
common sense. Right? You don't wanna pray pray
in an area where people are gonna be,
you know, driving through or you have to
stop traffic or something like that, which
seems like common sense, but sometimes the Muslims,
they feel that
very rarely, but there are some people who
feel that, you know what, you can just
block the traffic over here and they can
wait. It's their problem or whatever it is.
That that should not be done. You should
never pray in a public area
where you're blocking people's traffic. You try to
find a place where you're not gonna be
distracting other people. Public area has nothing wrong
with playing in a praying in a public
area, but not to impair other individuals or
put yourself in harm. So it's it's good
to keep in mind. But even if you
did it, it would be disliked. It wouldn't
invalidate your prayer.
So let's move on to group prayer.
Alright. What we call, prayer in jama'ah.
Alright. Group prayer or congregational prayer is something
which has really been urged upon for Muslims.
Group prayer is considered to be a very
important thing,
and what it does is strengthen the strengthens
the bonds between the Muslims. So when they're
praying together it kind of creates this,
you know, love for one another and it
actually brings the spirit of unity,
the spirit of cooperation amongst Muslims.
So praying next to each other, even if
you have a grudge against someone or you
weren't feeling good, you're still praying to the
person right next to you, and you're all
standing in front of Allah, and you're all
in the same status. So it's actually has
a very if you look at the group
prayer, the prayer itself,
especially when it's performed in a group, it
has a synchronous,
almost like a military type of precision that's
there. Everyone is bowing at the same time.
Everyone is standing up again at the same
time. Everyone is going back into prostration at
the same time. And it also teaches
a number of things. One of them, it
teaches a Muslim to be disciplined,
which is very important. You can't just be,
well,
you know, the people who lack discipline, I
don't feel like doing it. Well, you're in
the group prayer, you're in the you're in
bowing, I'll get up later. No, you're gonna
get up when the even the leader gets
up. So you follow the leader and you
go in that synchronous style. So it teaches
discipline,
it teaches organization.
Right? Muslims are lined up in rows and
the rows are straight.
Right? And there's no gaps in between the
rows. That shows you organization. It's supposed to
teach them organization in their life.
Some people get it in the prayer, unfortunately
they don't take it out, but they should
be learning it and taking it out in
the rest of their life. That organization is
there.
And it also teaches them to follow qualified
leadership.
Because if people don't learn to follow qualified
leadership and everyone wants to just do their
own thing, you have anarchy in a community.
And this is the group prayer actually develops
this. So when the Imam goes down
and he goes into bowing you don't say
well, I'm not gonna go into bowing just
because he went into bowing. I'll go into
bowing when I feel like going into bowing.
That's a very common perception that people have
outside of prayer.
Right? When they want to do their own,
become very individualistic.
But this kind of gets you in the
mode that, hey, this person has been appointed
over you as being in charge. When they
make the motion forward, you're gonna follow them
as well. So it helps to develop,
some of these characteristics.
Alright. Muslims,
are strongly encouraged
to build
mosques, build masajid as well. To pray in
the masajid and to build masajid or mosques.
So why? Because the whole point the main
point of the mosque is the group prayer.
So you can perform the it shows you
the importance of the mosque
is connected with the importance of praying in
a group. So it's considered a very important
thing. So the mus the the mosque, of
course, doesn't only serve as a gathering place
of Muslims to pray together, it also serves
as a symbol of Islam, that Islam is
present in this society,
and that's something that's very important.
It's very important to have these symbols in
a society to establish that Islam is here
and the Muslims are here and they're here
to stay. And that's why certain countries are
trying to ban,
building mosques or building minarets like Switzerland, the
mosque ban, and these other places. And even
in America it's, you know, people are trying
to take
every Masjid that's being built to court and
makes them excuse why this Masjid shouldn't go
up and they go and protest against the
Masjid and all of that stuff, is because
they understand this part. So Muslims should also
understand this part. Building mosque is is a
great thing, not only because of the group
prayer which is the important part, but also
is a symbol. So it's, we should understand
that part, the importance of a Masjid or
importance of a mosque.
So who should pray in a group?
Okay. Who should pray in a group? And
look at the word should. So should means,
in this case, it's recommended, doesn't mean that
it's required. So who should pray?
All adult males are strongly encouraged to pray
every single one of their 5 prayers inside
the mosque.
Every single one of their prayers, they're strongly
encouraged to do so,
or
at least in a group with other Muslims.
So if they can't go to the mosque,
the second best thing is to make sure
you're not praying alone but you're in a
group. Even with one other person or 2
other people but you're praying in a group.
So it should not get into this mentality
that, oh, you know what?
I'm gonna pray after 5 minutes. You you
go ahead and then I'm gonna go pray
on my own after 5 minutes. And then
the other guy goes, yeah yeah, I'm also
gonna pray 5 minutes after you. So you
go ahead and you do your thing.
It's very very encouraged to actually make sure
you pray in that group. So this is
this is something that we should not neglect
or take lightly.
So,
so it's strongly encouraged. If someone intends
to pray in a group
but is not able to due to some
excuse,
right, their car is not working or they're
sick or they have to be, at a
doctor's office or something like that, but you
really have the intention to be there, then
Insha'Allah,
you know, Allah willing, you will get the
same reward
as if you were praying in the group.
This is the most common question, right? We
work 9 to 5
in an office building
and you can't make it out to the
mosque, but you want to be there to
make it out to the mosque but you
can't. You can't make it to those other
prayers. It's just not feasible for you. You
say, you know what? If I if it's
strongly encouraged I should be there in the
mosque,
I can't possibly be there. If you really
have the intention and you really would have
done it had the mosque been a little
bit closer and you had a lunch break
or something, you will get the reward as
if you were in that group or in
that mosque. Or if you have no one
in your office who is a Muslim and
you end up praying by yourself because you
have no one else around you, InshaAllah, God
willing, you will get the reward as if
you were praying in that place. Right. You
have a doctor's appointment,
happens to be around the time nighttime, where
you're supposed to be, in the mosque.
If you can't make it to the mosque,
you have the intention that, you know what,
I wanted to be there but I couldn't
be there. Insha'Allah you'll get the intention for
being there. Right.
If someone noise, intensity prayer.
The following
are valid excuses for missing a group prayer.
So what is a good excuse, actually, for
missing a prayer?
In in a group or in a masjid.
In a masjid or in a group. What
is a valid excuse?
A person is sick.
So a person is sick, that's a valid
excuse for them, because 1, they're tired and
ill, they have to recover, and 2, they
might get the other people sick. They're very
very sick, then they should avoid being in
a group. They should remain a little bit
in isolation, so they don't get other people
sick.
Number 2, when the weather is extreme. So
let's say it might cause an illness.
It's so extreme that really you might get
sick if you go out. Right? But if
it's the weather is light,
right, what you find is in in seasons,
in wintertime you find that less people come
to the mosque.
But not because they're literally in danger of
getting sick, it's just uncomfortable. Right? It's just,
you know, it's a little bit too cold
in the winter time in December.
Right? So it's it's a hassle to put
on the jacket and jump in the car,
heat up your car, and then drive. But
that's not a valid excuse for for skipping.
Not that it's mandatory,
but it's still not considered a valid excuse
for skipping this. And in the summers, oh
it's so early, you know. It's like a
5 o'clock in the morning that's very very
early. That's not considered a valid excuse for
skipping. So you have to have a good
valid excuse for for skipping prayer,
in a group.
Number 3.
There's heavy rain, there's mud or there's traffic,
which makes it difficult to reach the mosque.
So this is a very common problem for
people who live in urban societies,
is that the amount of traffic that's gonna
be there in order for you to get
to the mosque is so much that it
really takes a very long amount of time.
And if you were to keep going for
every single prayer let's say it's summer vacation,
you're not even working, but if if your
if the mosque literally with traffic is, like,
you know, 25, 30 minutes away, you drive
25, 30 minutes there, 25, 30 minutes back,
and the next 20 5, 30 minutes there,
25, 30 minutes back, most of your day
is gone just in commuting.
So it becomes a problem. So that would
be perhaps a valid excuse for skipping the,
congregational prayer, and you could pray in a
group with the people around you.
There's danger to a person's family or their
property, so that could be a reason you
can skip.
And there's no other
Muslims nearby that are willing to pray in
a group.
And when I say that are willing,
this is a common problem. It's not that
there's no nearby Muslims. So if you walk
up to that Muslim and say, you know,
would you like to pray together? Oh no
brother, don't worry, I'm gonna pray later.
Whether he prays later or not that's fine,
but it's not now you've done your responsibility.
You've tried to reach out and say, look
it's better if we pray in a group.
No no no no. I'm I'm gonna pray
later. Okay. What can you do? This is
a valid excuse for you,
to pray by yourself.
Otherwise it's highly highly encouraged to pray in
a group,
rather than praying by yourself.
Women and children. Now where we said this
is highly highly recommended
for adult males,
but what about women and what about children?
So women and children, they should not be
discouraged from attending the mosque either. So they
should be encouraged to attend the mosque whenever
there's a opportunity,
especially if there's, you know, some things going
on in the mosque or something like that.
Unless there's some actual reason
that makes it preferable for them to stay
at home.
For example,
if there's a if you're living in a
dangerous area or a dangerous environment where there's
actual danger where if the woman were to
come to the mosque something would happen on
the way or on the path, or something
like that, then it might be preferable for
them to stay at home. Otherwise, they should
not be discouraged or stopped,
from attending the mosque as well. This is
a statement of the prophet.
So this is a group prayer,
and the group prayer also has something what
we call the azan or the call to
prayer, and the iqama which is the call
to initiate the prayer, the call to commence
the prayer.
So calling to prayer has something which has
been instituted
to remind people and to alert Muslims that
it's time to pray.
Especially in a society where not everyone has
a watch on their on their arm or
they don't have a clock everywhere to be
watching, you know, what time the prayer is.
So this is something which is,
you know, used in societies to alert everyone
else that it's time for the prayer. The
prayer time has arrived and we're gonna be
starting the prayer very soon.
So what
do we use in Islam?
So instead of using a horn
like the Jews, the Jews actually,
you know, very few Jews do it now
but they used to use a horn where
they blow through which indicates their prayer time.
The Christians used to use a bell and
still in some places they still use, you
know, those giant bells
in certain churches.
Instead of using those things,
the human voice is actually used in Islam
in order to call people for prayer. And
the azaan, what's it's called the azaan, it's
to notify people that the time for prayer
has entered now. So either you're gonna come
to the mosque or you can start go
you can pray, you know, wherever you happen
to be. And the Iqamah
is the signal that the prayer is about
to start immediately. So you need to stop
whatever you're doing and you need to make
it,
to the prayer.
Both of these, the, the azan and the
Iqamah, they're connected,
and they're recommended for the 5 daily prayers.
So it's the 5 prayers that they're recommended
for, and they're also recommended for the Friday
prayer, which we're gonna talk we're gonna talk
about, but not for any other prayer.
So when we learn about there's a funeral
prayer,
there's an Eid prayer,
there's,
there's a drought prayer. There's other prayers that
are that we actually learn outside of these
prayers.
The Azan and the eppama is only for
the 5 prayers and the Friday prayer, not
for anything else. Right. Because this is where
the largest group is gonna
be. So, it the it's a signal for
the prayers that it's gonna start,
and this actually applies whether or not you're
praying alone or you're praying in a group.
So if you're praying alone or you're praying
in a group it's still recommended
to perform the Azaan
and to perform the Ihama.
Okay. And the one exception is that if
you live in a society or you live
in an area where there is a mosque
not too far away and you know that
the azaan has already been called in that
mosque,
then you don't need to go and repeat
a second one. Right. Because you know it's
already been called in your locality. So you
don't need to call it again and this
is a difference of opinion,
amongst scholars.
So what is the azan and how do
you call the azan? The azan
must be called after the time for prayer
has entered.
You cannot call the azan before that time
for that prayer. So you will look at
the prayer time, so for example the Zohr
prayer.
The time once the time enters you can
you can call the azan anytime
in that time frame. And obviously you want
to do it at the beginning of the
time so that people who are gonna be
praying, you know, somewhere in that time, they're
getting the prayer, you know, done.
You can't call it before.
The person
who's calling the Adhan should stand, they should
remain standing,
they should face the direction of prayer which
is the Qiblah, should be facing in that
direction,
and it's recommended,
for them to place their index fingers in
their ears while they're doing the call. Either
both
or one,
or if they don't they could just keep
their hands to their sides. But this is
common to help project their voice actually.
So when they do that
they are facing the qiblah and they're gonna
say it as loud as they possibly can.
They're gonna say the following words, they're gonna
say it loudly,
and they're gonna say in kind of a
melodic voice. So it's almost like you're saying
it in a nice way. So you say,
Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, 2 times, which means
Allah is the greatest, Allah is the greatest,
and then again, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar. Allah
is the greatest, Allah is the greatest.
I
declare that there is no God besides
Allah.
Again, the second time, I declare that there's
no god besides Allah.
And let me just pause for a moment.
So some people here, when they when they
say this, they say,
annala illaha illallah. But actually this an has
a sukoon on it. So it's actually an
and la, and when you say an la
and you combine them together, you do what's
called idram, or you you merge the 2
together, it becomes allah.
Even though it's annla, because the noon
and the lam come from the same part
of the tongue. See, ashadu Allah ilaha illallah,
ashadu al ashadu Allah ilaha illallah twice, and
then ashadu anna Muhammadan
Rasulullah.
Say, I declare that Muhammad is the Messenger
of Allah. Ashadu anna Muhammadan Rasulullah.
I declare that Muhammad is the Messenger of
Allah. Haya Allah salah,
come to prayer. Haya Allah, Haya Allah Falah,
come to success,
twice.
Come to prayer, come to prayer. Come to
prayer. Come to prayer. Come to success. Come
to success.
Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar. Allah is the greatest.
Allah is the greatest.
There
is no God besides Allah. So this is
the way in which you call the azaan
and you say it out loud, you say,
Allahu Akbar, Allahu
Akbar,
and you continue that way. And it's something
that which, you know, rings out
around
throughout the world. And it's interesting because if
you take,
if you take a time zone and you
look at the Muslim world, even where the
maj even where Muslims are majority, if you
look at for example,
look at West as Morocco,
and you look at as East as China.
Right? What happens is if you look at
the time
that the prayers
the the prayer, you know, the timings of
prayer throughout the times, the 5 times of
prayer, by the people who are in Morocco,
the time zone that they're in, there's someone
in Morocco who's calling the Azaan at some
point in time. Right? Within that prayer time.
What happens is, at the same time if
you move all the way East,
someone
around China,
around Arabia or something is calling the Azaan
for a different prayer time. And then this
person is doing the next prayer afterwards, he's
he's one prayer ahead of them, which means
the Azaan today is actually ringing around the
entire world 24 hours a day.
Somewhere in the world, someone is calling the
azan 24 hours a day, non stop, every
single day without a single break,
which is amazing. It's really amazing if you
think about it.
So that's the azan.
So that's called highly it's recommended to do.
So what does that what does that mean?
It's recommended to do
and you walk into the mosque,
right, and you see the little sign that
we made, which flips the prayer the the
call for prayer has been called, it's not
been called. You walk in, you see you
know what?
No one made it. No one called you,
Hassan.
And you look at the time
and it it's already it should you know,
prayer should have started 2 minutes ago. Everyone
came late.
And one guy's like you know what?
Look I just left my work right now.
I have a taxi, I drive a taxi,
I need to get back to work, we
need to pray now. What should we do?
Can you skip the azaan or should you
go and say no no no no one
called the Azaan, we have to call the
Azaan.
What do you do in this case?
You skip it because it's recommended.
Alright. So it's not absolutely required. It's a
great thing to do whenever you get the
opportunity, whenever you can. But if you can't,
you can skip it and it's not gonna
be like your prayer is invalid, your prayer
doesn't count or something like that. So it's
important to understand,
that it's the the category in which it's
classified in is recommend.
Then there's the iqama.
The iqama is called right before the group
prayer is gonna begin. So right before the
group prayer is about to begin, you say
the iqama.
The iqama
should only be performed when the person who's
gonna be leading the prayer is actually ready.
You don't just go this is a really
common mistake that people make. They just start
making the Iqama
and they go, okay,
now who's gonna lead the prayer? Can you
lead the prayer? Can you lead the prayer?
Where where the guy who go is gonna
lead the prayer? Don't call the Iqama
until the one who's gonna lead the prayer
has been appointed,
has been selected, and they give the signal
and they're ready. Right? So that's very important.
So only do that once the prayer is
actually ready to begin. Otherwise,
there's not supposed to be a gap between
the Iqamah call and the starting of the
prayer. If the people are not ready, then
you you just been a gap. There shouldn't
be a gap.
So it's a sign of respect to make
sure person who's gonna be leading is chosen
and he's giving the signal that it's gonna
be starting.
The wording of the iqama
is the same as the azan,
except that after you say,
after,
accept that after after you say come to
pray, hayalalfala,
you add the following, and that is So
there's actually 2 or 3 different ways to
make the azaan, this is one of them.
One of the ways is to do exactly
the same as the azaan and you simply
add these two phrases in and that's it.
The second way to make it is to
add these two phrases,
but you take all the other phrases that
were there and you bring them down to
half.
Both of them were done during the time
of the prophet, so there's nothing wrong with
that.
It's better not to pause between the statements
in the iqamah,
and you should actually say it quickly. So
the difference between the azan and the iqam
is that in the azan you pause between
the statements. You say, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar,
pause.
Allahu Akbar,
pause. Ashanduwala,
Ilaha Illa Allah,
pause. When it comes to the Ikamah, you're
not supposed to have that pause.
And you're not doing that pause, that longer
pause that you have. So that's the difference
between the azaan and the iqamah, and also
in terms of the number of times you
say things.
So you add this and you say, addukhamatil
salah, addukhamatil salah, addukhamatil salah, addukhamatil salah,
addukhamatil
salah,
which means the prayer has stood up. We
need to we're about to start, everyone is
ready for prayer, everyone is standing, the prayer
is about to go.
So that's the azaan and that's the iqama.
When you're listening to the azaan, right, when
when someone is hearing the actual azaan,
there's it's actually recommended
for them to remain quiet,
right, and to respond by repeating each phrase
after it's
said. So every to every phrase that's said,
you're supposed to repeat the same phrase in
the first part. So when it says when
the person who's calling says, Allahu Akbar Allahu
Akbar,
you're supposed to repeat the same thing just
to yourself. Say, Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar.
You don't say,
because they're the one who's calling. Instead you
say the statement, which is
which means no one really has power or
might besides Allah.
So when the person says,
same thing.
No one has power or might besides Allah.
So you repeat the same thing except in
these two statements where you say
Alright. So this is,
I think something is missing here. Okay.
So this is, this is what you do
when you're listening to the Izaan.
When it comes to
the Fajr prayer, Yeah. I think this has
been missed. There's one one addition when it
comes to Fajr prayer. In the morning prayer,
when you're doing the azan,
alright, is this in the slide or no?
It was the It it was in the
slide?
Did I skip it?
Going back. Oh, Fajr prayer. Okay. It was
there.
Let's see. Ah, okay. I just skipped that.
So one thing about the azan is that
when you're calling the azan for the Fajr
prayer, you're gonna add 2 more statements.
Right. Two more statements. And you're gonna say,
Assalatuhayrum
minan Noom. Assalatuhayrum
minan Noom. Which means prayer is better than
sleep.
And you can understand why this is being
done because you imagine you're in a Muslim
village or city
and everyone is actually hearing your call
and you're making the azaan while everyone most
people are sleeping.
So you add this
right before the end, after you say, haya
Alal Falah, haya Alal Falah, you say,
It's recommended to add this in, which means
prayer is better than sleep. So the people
who are kind of getting woken up, this
is like their alarm clock. They're kind of
waking up and then they're like, I don't
know, I can sleep a little bit more.
You remind them prayer is better than sleep.
So they go, oh, you know what? That's
a good question. Let me get up and
let me get up get prepared for the
prayer. So this should be added, in the
Fajr prayer.
Now when you're hearing that,
right, when you're hearing that there's,
2 opinions amongst scholars. 1 is to simply
repeat that and say, yeah. Assalatuhayram
minanam when you hear it. You say, yeah,
you know, the guy's right, you just repeat
what he says. Another is the scol some
scholars they say, you should say, Sadakhta wa
bararta, which means you've spoken the truth and
you've been honest, you know, you're absolutely right.
And it's almost the same meaning,
because there's nothing clear from the Prophet exactly,
you know, what to say. So it could
be this or it could be that. They
have the same meaning.
So either of them will be fine.
After the azan is finished, you've been listening
to it, right, and it's finished,
you there's actually a special,
supplication that you make and you're making the
special prayer for the Prophet
after you hear the azan. And that is,
Which means,
oh, Allah, lord of this comprehensive
invitation
and enduring prayer,
grant Muhammad a place near you and an
exalted station.
Bestow on him the praiseworthy
status
that you have promised him.
So what you're basically doing is you're making
a special prayer for the prophet to raise
him and asking Allah to elevate him to
a special status, because the prophet is the
one who taught us all of these prayers.
He taught us everything. He sacrificed so much
on our behalf, so we make a special
prayer for him. And of course this benefits
us as well. Right? When he makes we
make a special prayer for him, he comes
back and benefits us,
in addition to benefiting him. So
this is the azan
and this is the iqamah,
and it's good to,
you know, kind of get used to this.
It's good to respond to this, but again
it's recommended.
It again it's something which is recommended. So
listening to it, all of that is recommended.
Now one of the common questions that you
get is, what if you're in the middle
of
reading Quran?
Alright. Or in the middle of a class
or in the middle of some important phone
conversation or something like that.
Do you have to hang up the phone
or do you have to stop recitation? Do
you have to stop reading or something? Well
let's take a look at what your circumstances.
If it's just some casual conversation that you're
having,
right, and there's there's no religious benefit to
it, then in that case what it it's
recommended to do what? It's recommended to say,
you know, I'm gonna call you back later.
And you hang up the phone, you listen
to the azaan,
and you repeat the words, make the supplication,
and you call the person back afterwards.
If it's something which has a religious benefit,
like you're reading Quran and then the someone
starts calling the azaan,
In that case what do you do? Well,
if you're in the middle, let's say you're
practicing
your Quran and you need to finish reading
this much because it's part of the daily
amount that you read, and it's gonna actually
distract you and the azaan is going on.
So what you're doing is something religiously, Islamically
beneficial.
And the calling and responding to the azan
is something Islamically beneficial as well. So when
you have two things, you actually have the
option.
If you wanna continue reading, you can continue
reading, you don't have to respond.
If you wanna stop reading and you wanna
respond, you can respond. Since both of them
are actually
good deeds and they're both in the same
category,
reading the Quran is recommended.
Responding to the azan is recommended.
So since they both fall in the same
category, you have a choice which one you
wanna do. K. If one of them was
required,
a requirement for example, like, let's say you're
praying a required prayer for some reason. You're
making up one of the prayers or something
like that and it's a requirement.
In that case,
the priority goes to what's the requirement, not
to what's recommended.
Right. So this is the way you, kind
of, balance these things out.
Okay. Let's start with this section, and then
we can take a short break, inshallah.
So
in a prayer, in a group prayer, there's
gonna be an Imam
who's the leader of the prayer.
So Imam in this context means the person
who's leading the prayer. It doesn't mean Imam
in the other sense like Muslim leader or
Muslim scholar or something.
Anyone can just pretty much be put forward,
as the Imam in a in a group.
So there's the Imam, and then there are
the followers, who are gonna be behind the
Imam.
So one person is gonna be chosen to
lead this group,
of people, and they're known as the Imam.
The rest of the people following them,
are are the followers and what they're gonna
do is they're gonna form lines
behind the Imam. So the Imam is gonna
stand in the middle in the front and
they're gonna form lines
behind the Imam,
you know, horizontally.
And they're gonna be standing side by side
with their shoulders touching. So they're gonna be
straight lines, no gap in between, especially in
the shoulders here.
Now what is the point of this? Right?
There's a wisdom behind this. It shows that,
first of all, there's a lesson in humility
of standing side by side in lines and
a lesson in equality where no one has
any privileged position.
Doesn't matter what your race is,
doesn't matter how much money you have, it
doesn't matter what social status you have, Everyone
is gonna be standing side by side, and
this is a practice which had been going
on for 1400 years. Right? The slave next
to the king,
black next to the white, the Arab next
to the non Arab, the rich guy next
to the poor guy, they're all gonna stand
next to each other. There are there are
no reserved spots
for people. So you know what? This little
cat this little line right here, first line
is the rich people and the second line
is the poor people and the third line
is there's nothing like that. Right?
The only place where you'd find something like
that is if, you know, there's a assistant
Imam who would serve as a backup, in
case something happens to the Imam, and he
would be right behind. We'll talk about that.
Other than that, there are no special places
for anyone.
So this is a really great sign and
this is something which it's actually revolutionary. The
more you if you the more you reflect
on this
throughout history, you you think this is probably
the one of the most revolutionary
things that's ever happened, probably in the history
of political or social movements in the world.
Nothing comes even close to this, because you
don't find this anywhere else.
Everyone in the same place line to line
standing up, you rarely rarely would ever find
anything close to this in any society in
the past.
So
if there are women or there are children
present
they're gonna form their own lines,
with the lines of the children coming after
the men and the lines of the women
coming after the children.
K. Now obviously the reason for that is
done for reasons of modesty.
Right? Because,
the position that you go into prayer and
the the the the type of, you know,
your your rear end is sticking out in
the middle of prayer and everything, it's gonna
cause a distraction for both people. So it's
better that in this case there's a there's
a the separation, they have their own lines
so that neither distracts the other one from
prayer, because this is a sacred, you know,
time where you're supposed to be concentrating.
And also it helps to keep an eye
on the children. So if you have the
woman behind and you have the children in
front, the children were in the back,
you know what the children are gonna do.
Right? So it's a good good actually to
keep an eye on the children.
If a child though stands
in the line with the adults,
it's allowed.
And since they're children and we talked about
the definition of what a child is, right?
So what's the definition of child inshallah?
Yeah. Not 15, not menstruation, not had a
*, or all those requirements that we
talked about. Right?
So anyone who's a child, since they're a
child,
they could potentially stand
either in the men's rows or in the
women's rows. It doesn't matter. Because since they're
a child, they can stand in either one.
It's not a problem.
Okay. So that's how you make the lines.
Right. If there are only 2 people who
are praying together,
so you only have one other person with
you,
right, then what do you do? How do
you make lines? Alright. So that's the question.
You don't make a line, so you don't
tell the other guy, you know what, you
make your own little line by yourself behind
me. So if you're the one who's leading,
they're actually gonna pray side by side next
to each other. So the follower
is gonna stand to the right of the
imam.
So the imam is on the left side
and the person who's following is gonna be
on the right side.
Okay.
With both of them in one line. So
they're both in the same line. Right. Some
scholars say that the person should take, like,
a little bit step back, just a little
bit behind, that's perfectly fine as well. Otherwise,
they could just stand right next to each
other in one line. There's nothing wrong with
that.
Let's see.
Okay. However,
if there's 1 male and 1 female praying
together,
alright, then if they're gonna be side by
side, that's gonna be a problem, that's gonna
be a distraction.
Potentially, it could be,
you know,
a trial for them because there might be
some attraction or something. So in that case,
the female will pray behind,
the male.
So where is it? With both of them,
1 male and female,
they'll stand behind him in a in a
separate row. Okay. So they'll she'll be that's
the only time where a woman will be
in her own row behind the guy. So
this happens actually this is actually quite common.
What what that means is that you can
actually lead a sister in prayer.
Right. So if there's a guy and this
happens on a lot of college campuses.
So everyone's going, it's time for prayer and
all of a sudden we're about to start
and we're waiting for some guys. They're making
their wudu and they're not here yet, but
we need to start the prayer now. What
do we do in that case? The one
guy can actually start the prayer and the
sister can be in the back and she
could just be one person. So this is
actually allowed. It's a common question that I
get,
regularly.
If
only women decide to pray in a group.
So if if it's only women and they're
gonna be praying in a group, then the
female Imam, right, it's allowed to have a
female Imam who's gonna stand in the middle
of the row and she's gonna lead the
entire prayer. But she's gonna stand in the
middle of the row rather than moving forward.
Right? Standing one person forward. So she's gonna
be in the middle of the row and
she's gonna lead from the middle of the
row,
being in the first row. Okay. So this
is the way the females lead and that's
the way that the,
companions,
did this.
No line should consist of only one person.
Okay. So it's it's best to try to
avoid having a line which has just one
person. So let's say you have 3 rows
behind the Ima. 1 row, 2 row, 3
rows, and then that last guy comes and
he's stuck by himself in the back. So
what should he do? In that case,
he has a number of options. Okay.
Option 1 is,
before standing there, if he can grab someone
from the side or something like that and
kind of pull them back from the corner,
you should go he can go ahead and
pull them back and now he has someone
there with him that's gonna be praying. That's
one option.
Second option is if you know that someone
is gonna be coming
or you hope that someone is gonna be
coming, you can go ahead and pray by
yourself if you're kind of stuck there's no
other space for you, right. But it's recommended
whenever you get an opportunity
to try not to be praying by yourself.
But if you're if you have to, you
have to, you're stuck that way.
If there's only one woman present,
then
then obviously in this case she's gonna stay
in her own line. She's not gonna join
in the congregation of the men.
There should be no so these we're talking
about lines again. There should be no unnecessary
gaps or barriers between these lines.
Right.
An example of a necessary gap would be
like a public walkway,
right, or a street where people shouldn't be
praying in in the first place. So for
example,
when it comes to,
praying in Makkah, for example,
people fill the entire streets all over in
the month of Ramadan during the time of
Hajj. The streets are full. So obviously,
once they're getting further and further and further,
if there's actual street which has cars on
it, they that's a that's a needed gap.
So you can go ahead and pray behind
that street. You're still considered to be part
of this group.
Right. But when it comes to, for example,
some people say, I'm gonna pray in my
hotel room.
Right. So they want to pray from their
hotel room and they wanna be they have
a microphone and they want to pray in
the hotel room and still be part of
that group. Even though there's a huge gap
in between and they wanna be part of
that group. That's a that's that's problematic because
there's no need for that barrier. They could
have simply just walked out and joined the
group over there. So that becomes a a
problem.
So there should be no gap between the,
the rows
unless there's a needed gap, unless it's a
necessity or something like that.
The follower
who's the followers who are praying behind the
Imam, they must be performing the same prayer
as the Imam.
Okay. Now there's a little bit difference of
opinion about this. Some scholars say they don't
have to, but
they generally should be having the same prayer
obviously.
If the person already prayed that prayer, he
can pray it again with the Imam, and
it'll count as that prayer. So let's say
you walked in for a Zohar prayer and
you already did your prayer and then all
of a sudden 30 minutes later you're sitting
in the masjid reading Quran and then you
see that some people get together and they
start praying. So you can go and join
them again and pray a second time. Even
though you already did your prayer, now your
prayer that you're praying is optional prayer. It's
not a mandatory prayer, but you can go
ahead and join them anyways with the intention
of an optional prayer. That's perfectly fine. But
what you shouldn't be doing is is that
if some guy decides that, you know what,
he's just gonna pray,
you know,
he's just gonna pray 2 units of prayer
at Fajr time because he wants to thank
Allah for something that happened.
And then you say, oh, don't worry, I
need to pray my Fajr too. So you
go ahead and you lead me and I'm
gonna pray my Fajr behind you. Shouldn't be
like that because the person who's leading the
prayer should either be performing a prayer, which
is a mandatory prayer,
or and the person behind them should be
performing the same prayer, or something which is
an optional prayer. That's perfectly fine, but not
vice versa.
Okay.
So
how the prayer is actually gonna be led.
So the imam begins
by
reminding the people to straighten their lines,
and ensuring that the lines are even before
commencing the prayer. So it's the imam's responsibility
when they're starting that to make sure that
they turn around and they check the lines,
and they make sure that there's no gaps
in the lines, make sure that the lines
are straight,
to make sure everything is even before they
start the prayer. So whose responsibility is that?
It's the imam's responsibility.
So if you're ever
appointed to lead the prayer, make sure you
do your responsibility.
So you don't just get up there and
you start leading, you just start leading the
prayer. You actually have to make sure and
check everything. It's your job. So if you
see that the lines are not correct, you
need to let people know for a number
of reasons. Why? Because you're the imam, you're
the leader. Number 2, you have a better
vision from the front. You can actually see
what's going on, and people will listen to
what you're saying, rather than some random person
who's saying something. So make sure that if
you're the imam, you are doing your job,
and you're making sure all the lines are
straight.
Then the imam begins,
begins the prayer, with, you know, Allahu Akbar
as normal. Everyone is following
and the following parts of the prayer are
said out loud in all prayers.
So the first,
every single takbir, every time you say Allahu
Akbar, it's said out loud. So every time
the imam says Allahu Akbar, transition Allahu Akbar,
all of these are out loud
and saying the statement, samirallahulimanhamida,
which is part of the prayer,
is also out loud
and the concluding salaam, Assalamu Alaikum UHmatullah, Assalamu
Alaikum UHmatullah, is also out loud. So these
three parts of the prayer are said out
loud
during all the prayers. Okay?
During the Fajr prayer, the Maghrib prayer, and
the Isha prayer, basically the prayers that don't
take place during the day, that take place
during the night time when the sun is
not up.
In these prayers, the imam also recites
all the verses from the Quran out loud,
during the first two units of prayer only.
So in the Fajr prayer,
there's how many there's only 2 units. Right?
So every time the Imam is reciting Quran,
you're gonna recite out loud.
In the Zohr prayer,
are you gonna recite
out loud the first two units or no?
No. Why?
Because they're silent ones. What about the Asr
prayer?
Silent. Okay. The Maghrib prayer, how many how
many units is the imam gonna recite out
loud?
The first two only. Right? And what is
he gonna recite?
The Quran. The the Quran. Every verse of
the Quran that he's reciting is gonna be
done when he's standing.
Right? And then the last prayer, the Isha
prayer,
with how many units he's gonna say out
loud?
The first two. Right? Okay. So that's it.
The first two.
Usually it's a common question to say, well,
what's the reason for that? Why these prayers?
The reason could probably be the prophet didn't
explain, but probably the reason is most people
don't work during these hours. Right? So,
most people don't work during the Fajr time,
during the Maghrib time, during the Isha time.
So usually you find that the congregation is
larger.
Right? And during the Friday prayer, when people
are have to take off from work, it's
a larger congregation as well. Even though it's
during the daytime, it's still out loud. So
it usually has to do with the general,
size of the congregation. That could be one
of the wisdoms. Allah knows best.
The people behind the imam are gonna be
listening attentively to the verses that are being
recited. So what you're supposed to be doing
while the imam is reciting, you're supposed to
be sitting there, you're supposed to be listening
and reflecting
upon the verses.
The rest of the prayer,
is gonna be silent.
So when the imam says, Allahu Akbar goes
into bowing position,
he's saying, Subhanah
Rabi'al Azim,
and you're saying, Subhanah Rabi'al Azim, but it's
silent. You do your own thing, and he
does his own thing.
So when you're actually saying it, you can
whisper loud enough to just hear yourself, but
you shouldn't say it out loud.
Everyone should be following the leader in the
movements of prayer. So everyone follows the imam
or the leader of the prayer. When the
imam goes down, you go down. When imam
comes up, you go up. You follow,
the leader in the sense of the prayer.
If the imam says something,
out loud,
when the imam says something out loud, it
counts for the follower and it doesn't need
to be repeated.
So what that means is when the Imam
is reciting the Fatiha, say, Alhamdulillahi
rubi aalameen, you don't have to recite the
Fatiha behind the Imam. You're simply listening.
When the Imam says Allahu Akbar,
you don't even have to say the Allahu
Akbar, you simply follow the imam. Right? When
the imam says Sami Allahu Liman Hamida
out loud, you don't have to recite Sami
you don't have to say Sami Allahu Liman
Hamida, because what the imam said counts for
you as well. K. You reflect upon it.
It's not intuitive. Otherwise,
you the the one who's following is supposed
to be saying the other parts of the
prayer while the imam is silent. So while
the imam is silent, you're supposed to be
saying the other parts of the prayer. You
don't just sit there silently and say, well,
he's handling it for me. You're actually gonna
be saying it yourself.
Okay.
And this is actually, the opinion of Imam
Malik. Okay. So we've taken a different opinion,
from the Hanafi school, on this point.
The follower must not precede the imam or
lag behind the imam. So you should not
be going in advance, and you should not
be going, forward either. So if someone proceeds
or lags behind more than one movement in
the prayer, the prayer is considered to be
invalid. So that means when the the Imam
is praying, right, and then the Imam, you
he finishes recitation of the Quran, and you
know he's about to go into bowing position
and you go and you beat him and
you go into bowing position first. You're not
supposed to do that.
And you wait till he says Allahu Akbar
and wait till he moves into bowing position
and then you're moving. You don't beat him
in his motion. So you you should never
it's not so much the motion, it's
you should never start your motion
before the imam has started his motion. And
you should never finish your motion before the
imam has finished his motion.
If you're in the middle of the motion,
the Imam has already started the motion,
right, and
he's not arrived at his destination, you can
start your motion as well. As long as
you don't beat that per the Imam in
their destination
or in their beginning of the motion. Okay.
So hopefully that makes sense.
But if you
lag a little bit behind,
let's say the Imams were saying really fast
or you're finishing your fatiha and and you're
trying to concentrate, and the imam has already
gone, Allahu Akbar, and he's gone into bowing
position, he's in ruku position. And you're finishing
your fatiha, you wanna just you have one
verse left. You just wanna finish it up.
You're you're saying the last thing, and
the imam's already going and bowing.
You wanna finish it up
as long as you're not more than one
movement behind the Imam. So you the Imam
already made it into his bowing position, Ruqquah,
and he's saying, subhanahu rabi al Azim, and
you're finishing your last verse.
You can finish up that last verse,
but
if the Imam then stands up and says,
and you're still standing,
you're more than one motion behind him. So
if the Imam is bowing and you're standing
and you're finishing your last verse, you're one
motion behind
him. If he gets up,
you're 2 motions behind him. So if you
get more than one motion behind him, your
prayer is invalidated and you need to start
over your prayer because you weren't following your
Imam.
But if you're just one motion behind you're
you're still okay.
Right. So
and sometimes you find Imams who recite really
fast, you end up getting behind. They recite
Surah Fatiha like really really fast and they
go Allahuq when you're trying to finish your
your Fatiha. So what should you do in
that case? Alright. And we'll we'll talk well
actually we'll talk about that. So
if,
you proceed or you lie if you beat
the imam and you go into bowing first,
your prayer is also broken. You need to
repeat your prayer again. You restart your prayer
one more time.
So you should be following the Imam. Following
the Imam means following close by,
right. Not beating him, not following, like, you
know, 5 minutes later or a minute later
or something.
If the imam moves to the next part
of the prayer
before you finished what you're doing,
you should also do so because following the
imam takes precedence.
So you've not even finished. Right? Your imam
is in bowing position
and you're saying, subhanahrabi
al aazim, you didn't even get a chance
to finish 3 times and they went up
sami'allahu alimahamunhamin.
Or they're saying, you know, you're reciting Surah
Fatiha, you've not even finished.
And you know that the guy, you know,
you won't even have time to finish and
he's already gone into a bowing position. So
what should you do in this point in
time?
The some some imams go really really fast.
And you say, I haven't even finished repeating
what I'm say I haven't finished saying what
I'm supposed to say. Should you say what
you're supposed to say or should you follow
the imam?
You follow the imam,
right, at this point in time. And you
find the imam is going really really fast,
after the prayer is done, what should you
do?
Never make that person imam again, if he's
going too fast.
So that person not gonna be imam anymore.
Right? You're going too fast and, you know,
no one can keep up with you. You
need to slow down so you don't let
them be the imam again afterwards. So what
you do is, in the in the prayer
though, you follow the imam. Even if you've
literally not even finished, You're, Alhamdulillahirabbilahalameen,
Ar Rahmanir Rahim, and the Imam with Allahu
Akbar.
You follow the Imam and you go into
bowing position. Alright. So it doesn't matter if
you finished or you've not finished.
Right. So,
because following the imam takes precedence. It's a
very important part of the prayer. If the
imam makes a mistake,
in the prayer
and performs
2 additional prostrations have we learned the 2
prostrations yet?
No, we didn't. No. Okay. So this part
shouldn't have come here yet. We'll we'll we'll
talk about that later.
You should also do so. Follow-up makes a
mistake.
If the imam is injured, so when do
when do you not follow the imam?
You should all we said we should always
follow the imam. Right? When do you not
follow the imam? If the imam or the
leader of the prayer
is injured and has to sit down
in a chair, you obviously don't follow them
in the sitting down. You you don't all
sit down in a chair as well. Right.
So you let the imam go ahead and
do that, you stand anyways.
The followers remain standing. If the imam forgets
to sit down in the final sitting of
the prayer so imagine it's a 4 unit
prayer
and at the end the Imam is supposed
to sit down and conclude,
and accidentally
stands up for the 5th unit of prayer.
That's the only time you don't follow the
Imam. So if the Imam is increasing something
of the prayer,
you don't follow him and you stay seated
and you're gonna alert alert
the person to sit back down. So you
don't actually follow him. And if he's not
sitting back down, you just stay seated anyways.
That's the one
rare time that it ever happens.
Rarely rarely it happens, but it can happen.
So you
don't
follow. The imam should when leading the prayer,
you should lengthen the recitation of the first
unit a little bit more than the second
unit.
So when you're leading prayer, the first one
should be a little bit longer than the
second one. So if you recite like 20
verses from some Surah in the first,
you shouldn't recite like 50 verses
in the second unit of prayer. And the
reason for that is the reason why you
make it a little bit longer in the
first, so that people who are coming a
little bit late, they can catch the prayer
as well. So you make it a little
bit longer for them.
The imam should not prolong the recitation,
or any other actions of the prayer which
make it difficult for people,
who need to work or then to have
back problems or something like that. So one
you shouldn't recite so long. If you recite
really really long people need to go and
tend to other business, they need to go
back to work or something. If you recite
such a long prayer it's gonna inconvenience other
people, you're not supposed to do that. It's
disliked.
If you're keeping
one of the positions, let's say, you know,
the Imam decides, you know what? I want
to say remember we said we you can
say Subhanahu rabbil a'ala more than 3 times
as long as it's a odd number.
So all of a sudden the Imam decides,
you know what? I really feel like I
wanna connect with Allah now. I'm gonna say
it 21 times. And you go down into,
prostration and you just keep on saying Subhanah
radiyaal.
You have to take into consideration.
There may be people who are praying behind
you, they have a back problem. They can't
stay for such a long time like you
are in that in that prostration position. So
as an imam you have a responsibility.
You have to make sure you're fulfilling the
rights of the other people and you don't
lengthen something so much so it's gonna be
burdensome on other people.
So you have a very big responsibility
there.
If there's a child who's crying,
you hear a child is crying or some
event that's happening which is gonna be distracting
someone else, you should actually shorten your prayer,
shorten the recitation of your prayer so that
the other person doesn't get bothered. So if
there's a child for example that's crying and
crying and crying, you know something is going
on, who do you think is gonna outside
of all the people who get distracted, who's
gonna be the most distracted?
Congregation.
Besides the congregation?
You
The mommy. Right? The mother is gonna be
the most distracted because they may think something's
going on with my child. Right? So now
as a as a mercy for the parent
and for the child, the child needs care
as well and everything, you shorten the recitation.
So if you had planned
to recite 50 verses
and you had already started,
you shorten it down. Bring it down to
20, bring it down to 10, bring it
down to something when you hear something is
going on so you you finish it.
So it's it's it's important to know. So
leading a prayer is a great responsibility. If
you don't know these things,
then
you'll just keep on carrying on or you
do whatever you feel like doing and you
don't take the rest of the congregation into
consideration. So these are all responsibilities,
that an Imam, has. If something else is
gonna be distracting, if you hear that, you
know what,
there's
police,
have come to the mosque for some reason
or something, That's the time where you shorten
the recitation. You should take all of these
factors into consideration.
Alright. If the prayer
of the imam
is incorrect
according to his own opinion, now we talked
about difference of opinion. Remember there are difference
of opinion, how much hair you're supposed to
wipe, how much of your head you're supposed
to wipe, for example.
So if the prayer of the Imam
is considered incorrect
according to his own opinion, the opinion that
he's following. So for example,
if he believes
his own opinion is you're supposed to wipe
your entire head,
you have to as a mandatory prerequisite,
and he only wiped part of his head.
Right? If it's invalid according to his own
position,
then the the the prayer
of the followers is also invalid.
So if his if his prayer is considered
invalidated,
then the people who are following him, their
prayer is also considered to be invalid. Right?
However,
if the Imam considers
his own prayer to be valid, let's say
he believes that wiping over part of the
head is sufficient for wudu,
and you take the opinion of Imam Malik
who says that you have to wipe over
the entire head, otherwise your wudu is not
valid.
You are allowed and you should pray behind
that imam, and you should not consider your
own prayer to be invalid.
Because your when your opinion is different and
they have a legitimate opinion, you're allowed to
go ahead and pray behind that person, even
though you don't hold the same opinion.
It's perfectly fine that you do so. Okay.
So then the prayer of the falls, is
gonna be valid. If the Imam needs to
leave,
right, if the Imam for some reason needs
to leave prayer in the middle in the
they're in the middle of leading the prayer,
or if the Imam loses
his wudu,
what should he do? He should turn around
and he should find the most qualified person
who's behind him to actually lead the prayer
and kind of signal to him, gesture to
him,
I I'm going, you're gonna lead the prayer.
And that's the only time why it's very
important to have the right people and qualified
people
standing behind the imam directly behind the imam
in prayer. Because in case they need to
leave for some reason they can turn around
and they can find that specific person who
they know is qualified to lead the prayer.
And they can just appoint that person and
that person is gonna start leading the prayer.
Right. So what does that person do? That
person will continue as the Imam
exactly where the Imam had left off. So
if he's in the middle of in the
middle of Surah Fatiha,
Alhamdulillahi rabbilalaminarrahmanur
Rahim, and Imam realizes stops, turns around,
appoints this guy, just gives him a signal
or something, the guy gets the point because
he, you know, hopefully he knows what he's
doing, gets the point, that person continues.
Right?
And they continue from exactly
where they left off.
So if the guy is standing,
he should move forward a little bit and
remember you're allowed to walk a little bit.
You take a few steps, move forward and
now you're in the position of the imam.
If he's not able to, let's say you're
in prostration position.
Right?
It's gonna be difficult to kind of crawl
forward
while you're incarcerated. So what do you do?
You finish that movement right there, say, Allahu
Akbar. Alright. Sit back up. Allahu Akbar. Once
you've stood back up then you can move
forward. If you don't move forward, you just
lead from exactly where you are, in the
middle of the row and you go ahead
and you lead anyways.
So,
so that's it.
When the first imam comes back, let's say
he made his wudu or something, he comes
back, he's not gonna take over the prayer
again. He's gonna rejoin the entire group as
a follower now and the prayer continues as
normal and there's the prayer is not broken.
So this is another big responsibility of 2
people.
Responsibility of the imam to know what to
do if he loses his wudu, or for
some other reason he has to leave, or
he starts bleeding, or something happens.
And it's a responsibility
of the one who you're appointing.
So the the guy know otherwise, you know
what? Sometimes really you find it. Imam turns
around and he goes to the other guy
and the other guy he's sitting in the
prayer and he's like, what are you doing?
You know what just happened? He just lost
his prayer. Right? Why did his prayer invalidate?
Because he talked. You're not allowed to talk.
Because what are you doing? So that guy
obviously cannot be Imam anymore because he's just
out of prayer. So you go to the
other guy, say, you know what, you lead
the prayer. The guy's like, what
what are you doing? So imagine you have
a whole line of people behind you and
you see that Imam turned around you try
to appoint them and they're all looking at
you like, what are you doing?
The entire prayer is messed up because no
one has any idea what's going on. Right?
So so it's very important that even if
you're not the imam, you should at least
have some knowledge to understand what to do
in case the imam loses his wudu
in the middle of prayer. So it's it's
really important, it's a great responsibility for everyone
to know these things.
If someone loses his wudu, like we we
talked about already, if there's a follower who
loses wudu, he should stop praying and he
should go ahead and leave.
If there's too many rows and there's no
exits or something like that, what do you
do? You can't you can't get out, you're
blocked, you can't squeeze between people. If you
can squeeze, great. If you can't squeeze between
people, what do you do? You just sit
down and you don't get embarrassed or anything
and you just wait till people are done
and you go and you repeat your prayer.
When the prayer is finished,
the Imam should move a little bit from
his place. So you notice that whenever a
person's leading prayer, once they finish, Assalamu Alaikum
Wa Rahmatullahi.
They should move a little bit from where
they are so that no one gets the
impression that someone walks in, they still think
it looks like the imam is still praying.
That's why you move a little to the
side, turn around a little bit or something
like that. So no one gets the impression
someone walks in and think, oh, the prayer
is still going on. Because let's say you
didn't see the salaam and you walked in
and you think, oh, look, the prayer is
still going on. If no one else moved,
now you don't know that the prayer is
on or is not on. So someone might
get confused. So it's it's good to move
a little bit.
Who is most deserving to lead the prayer?
Right. Who deserves to lead the prayer the
most? Right. So number 1, the first this
is the order of priority.
Number 1, the official leader of the Muslims.
If there is one in the community, there's
an official leader
or an official leader of the mosque, he's
the first person who has the,
priority of leading the prayers and that's his,
you know, status and responsibility of leading.
The second
is the one who's most knowledgeable about the
rules of prayer.
Right. All the rules of prayer, meaning
if children are not crying what do you
do?
Making sure the first unit recitation is longer
than the other one. How to if you
lose your will do, how are you gonna
appoint somebody else? These are all responsibilities, which
actually most people don't know all of them.
So the person who's gonna be most qualified
to lead the prayer is gonna be the
one who's most knowledgeable about the rules of
prayer. That includes everything in terms of reciting
the Quran properly with Tajweed.
Where to start, where to stop, how to,
you know, put your you know, how to
where where to lengthen the vowels and everything.
All the things relating to prayer, that's the
person who's gonna be the next person in
charge of who should be leading the prayer.
And unfortunately, this is a really big problem
in our society.
It's that it's so hard to find even
a person who's
got all the rules, the understanding, as well
as the recitation of the Quran down, who's
even qualified to lead the prayer. In terms
of everything, in terms of going up, making
sure the lines are straightened before they start.
Many people, they skip out all of these
things. It's their responsibility
to know all of these things. So the
the next person is the person who's most
knowledgeable. K. So that's number 2. 3rd priority
is the one who's most knowledgeable in risk
in how to recite the Quran. So let's
say someone doesn't know what to do in
terms of leading the prayer so much,
but they know how to recite the Quran
properly. Right. The the second category is both,
knowing what to do in prayer and reciting
the Quran correctly. The third is, if you
don't really know what to do, at least
you can recite Quran properly. You can pronounce
the wording correctly, so you're not changing the
wordings around or something.
The 4th priority
is the one who has the most Quran
memorized.
Alright. Because there are people who have the
Quran memorized but they don't know the other
rulings of the prayer. Right. So the person
who has the most Quran memorized,
and the 5th one is the person who's
known to be the most pious.
Right. Which is you you never know who's
the most pious, but you kind of
feel, you know, this person is a very
pious person, we'll put them forward. Right? And
that's where and and then and then you
figure out. Usually you're never gonna get to,
like, number 4 or number 5.
If you do, everyone happens to be equally
knowledgeable
or perhaps equally ignorant, right, and they all
happen to be in the same category then
you have to figure out well who do
you put first? That's where this this idea
of, oh, the elder person goes first, or
the person with the longest beard goes first,
or the person of the there's all these
different things of figuring out, okay, who's gonna
go first? That only happens if everyone is,
like, at equal level. Nowadays, it rarely rarely
happens if everyone's at an equal level. In
the days of the companions, it used to
be it used to come up because everyone
was almost at an equal level of what
to do, how much Quran to recite, how
much this, how much that. In our society
it's, kind of, the opposite. It's everyone's at
equal level of ignorance, kind of. It's like,
okay, we just need to find one guy
who knows what to do. Just one person.
Does it they know a little bit more?
Okay. Let's put that person in front. Right.
So
Insha'Allah we can actually get back to the
way that the companions were, where we're actually
trying to figure out everyone's equal.
Okay. Now who should be put in a
superior position because they all got it down.
So Insha'Allah we'll get to that point.
A person who's employed by a mosque
to lead
has first preference in that mosque.
Alright. So this is really interesting.
So the official leader of Muslims
supposed to have number one priority.
But if there's an official leader of Muslims
and there's a person who is specifically in
that mosque, like the imam or the specific
guy who's supposed to lead in that mosque,
that person gets precedence over the official leader
of the Muslims.
So even if there's a Khalifa,
a head of head of the Muslim state,
and there's a local scholar or imam who's
known to be the person of that mosque,
that person gets precedence over this other person
who comes in. Right? So that's number 1.
And number 2,
a person in his own house,
in his own house has preference over other
people, as long as he knows that meets
the minimum criteria.
So let's say the imam of the mosque
or the Muslim leader goes and visits someone
in their own home.
Right? And that person is qualified, he knows
the rules of prayer and everything, he's in
the second category,
he will have priority to lead in his
own house over the other person. Because it's
his domain, he's allowed to lead, he gets
number one priority.
But remember, this list is about priorities. Any
one
of these people,
even though they're more qualified, they can allow
a person who's less qualified to go in
advance and lead instead, as long as they
have the minimum qualifications. They're allowed to allow
them to go ahead anyways.
Alright.
Correcting a mistake in prayer.
So if the imam
makes a mistake in prayer while leading,
one of the followers should actually raise their
voice and say, SubhanAllah.
Right? Because SubhanAllah is from the remembrance of
Allah, it doesn't break your prayer and it
indicates to the person you just made a
mistake.
Okay? But when it comes to the women,
it's actually recommended that they, instead of saying
subhanAllah, they should clap their hand.
They should clap their right hand over their
left hand loud enough for the imam to
hear. Usually,
it's because the if there's a large congregation,
they're not gonna be able to even make
the sound reach there. Right? But if there's
a large enough congregation,
you're hoping that some of the men have
an idea of what's going on and one
of them somewhere in the row is gonna
actually make a
SubhanAllah statement. So you're supposed to actually correct
the person but I wanna make it very
clear that you should only correct someone if
you really know for sure that the person
made a mistake. If you don't know that
they made a mistake and you're thinking, well,
you know, I think it should have been
like this, don't mess up and confuse people
if you don't know what you're saying.
When the imam realizes their his mistake, he
should fix it
and he's gonna perform 2 additional prostrations, which
is what's known as the makeup, which we're
gonna talk about.
So
an imam is reciting Quran
and he makes a mistake in the Quran,
right, or let's let's say he's not let
let's say,
he's supposed to go into bowing and he
says, allahu akbar and he goes into prostration
instead. Someone should say, subhanAllah,
to notify him that he's doing that. Let's
say he's,
he's in the second unit of prayer and
he's supposed to sit down after the 2
prostrations. Right? Instead he starts getting up for
the 3rd and he forgets to sit down.
Someone in the congregation should say, subhanAllah,
to notify him that you know what, you're
doing the wrong thing. So that the Imam
hears that and say, oh, you know what,
I was debating in my mind was I
in the second or the third? And then
he realizes someone said, SubhanAllah, okay I was
in the second actually, I should sit back
down. So you you correct someone while they're,
while they're leading the prayers. You say, SubhanAllah,
to correct them.
If the imam makes a mistake while reciting
the Quran,
then one of the followers
may correct him by reciting that part of
the verse out loud. So if the imam
makes a mistake and he's saying, Alhamdulillahi
rubilaaalamin
and he makes a mistake, says a different
word,
That person should say the correct word or
repeat the verse one more time so that
the Imam will remember, okay, this is exactly
what,
you know, I made a mistake.
The Imam should understand that he's actually being
corrected
and he should repeat the part where he
made the mistake. That again, that's why it's
very important to choose the right person to
lead the prayer. Otherwise someone recites the verse
in the Quran and they're gonna be thinking,
did someone just say something? You know, so
it's it's a problem. So why would someone
be reciting a verse out loud only if
they're correcting you? Right. And that's why people
who are in the followers, they should try
not to
make too many sounds. Otherwise, sometimes when the
imam is leading, he may think someone is
trying to signal or gesture to him,
and
and they're actually not. Right?
Let's see what else.
If the imam pauses
during recitation of the Quran,
and it's clear that, you know what, this
person cannot remember the next verse, then one
of the followers can remind him by reciting
that verse. So if the imam is reciting,
Alhamdulillahi
rabbilalamin
Ar Rahman Ar Rahim,
and then and then he repeats again, Ar
Rahmanir Rahim,
and he can't remember what the next verse
is, the follower can go ahead
and give him the verse by saying it
out loud and he remembers.
Be very careful about this though. Okay? Sometimes
the imam is reciting Quran,
Alhamdulillahi rabbilalamin
ar rahmanar Rahim,
and has like a sore throat or starts
choking
or, you know, and needs to yawn or
something. And then all of a sudden people
start throwing the verse out at him. It's
not that he forgot.
He's simply taking a pause. So just,
just understand
the cues when the person actually needs help
or when they don't need help. Right. So
it's very common for people to just throw
it out there. You're not supposed to do
that unless he's really really stuck.
Alright.
And then the last part we'll cover today
is joining the prayer late. K. And this
is a little bit tricky, so you gotta
pay attention. Alright.
So if you come to the group prayer
and you're late,
first of all you should not rush.
You should walk normally. Walk at a normal
pace. You can walk you don't walk slowly,
but you don't start like rushing and running
and stuff like that. Alright. Because then you'd
you'd get tired and it's okay, you can
join the group late, it's not a problem.
If you join the group after the prayer
has already begun,
okay, what do you do? You raise your
hands up, you say, Allahu Akbar, and you
join the Imam at exactly the same position
that they're at. So if the Imam is
already in prostration, you just say, Allahu Akbar,
and you go directly into that position where
the Imam is supposed to be.
You don't need to wait till they stand
up or something like that, you join them
exactly where they are.
If you join the imam
before he rises up from bowing,
you catch the imam in the bowing position
where he's saying, Subhanu Rabi'al Azim,
you actually caught that unit of the prayer.
It's considered that you actually made that unit.
So if the imam is in this let's
say you missed the first unit. Imam is
in the second unit, he did his Fatiha,
he did his Quran recitation,
now he's in bowing and he's saying subhanahu
rabbil 'azim, and you come and you just
happen to catch it right there and you
say, allahu akbar, and you join at the
bowing position.
You have caught that second unit of prayer,
you don't have to make it up. So
you're only gonna have to make up 1
unit of prayer. Cause when you miss prayer
and you come late, you have to make
up the units that you missed.
So how do you know when you've caught
the unit with the Imam or not? It's
if you catch him by bowing time. If
he gets up, he says, samiAllahulima
hamida and then you join, you say Allahu
Akbar, and you're you're with the imam, you
miss the second unit of prayer. So now
you have to make up 2 units of
prayer because you missed 2 units. So that's
how you know. Alright. So,
you've caught that unit of prayer.
When the prayer is about to end, right,
so how do you make up these units
of prayer? When the prayer is about to
end, let the Imam finish the prayer by
saying Assalamu Alaikum Warahmatullahi.
When the Imam is finished with the prayer
or even just one time, even if he
says, Assalamu alaikum marhamtulla and he's starting the
second one, you can go ahead, you don't
follow him, you don't say the salaam.
So now you don't say the salaam and
what you're gonna do is you're gonna get
up and you're gonna say, allahu akbar, and
you're gonna stand up in order to finish
your makeup units that you need to perform.
Even though the entire group is finishing,
you came late, so you're gonna stand up.
Alright. So this is the way it's gonna
work. So you let the imam finish,
you remain seated when he's done, say, Allahu
Akbar, you stand up, and now you're gonna
make up the missed units of prayer. If
you missed 2 units, you're gonna make up
2 units. If you missed 3 units, you're
gonna make up 3. If you missed 4
units of a 4 unit prayer, you're gonna
make up all 4.
Right? It's almost like praying from scratch from
the beginning and you're gonna be doing this
by yourself. Everyone else is gonna be doing
what?
Their
zikr or the sunnah or subhanAllah or doing
something else. You're gonna be doing it by
yourself, but you still join in the group
prayer.
So now you need to the first thing
you need to do is you need to
figure out
how many units,
do you need to
complete.
Right. How many units do you actually have
to, finish?
So it's not difficult to calculate, but this,
it's not difficult to figure out. So if
you're in Fajr prayer,
Fajr has 2 how many units?
2. Okay. So if you catch the Imam
in the first bowing,
how many units you have to make up?
0. You don't have to make up anything.
You say Salam Alaikum with the Imam.
If you caught the Imam in the
prostration position of the first unit, how many
have to make up? 1. 1. If you
caught him in the,
final sitting where he was raising his finger
and saying, ashaduallaha illa Allah. How many you
gotta make up?
Both. Exactly. You gotta make up 2. So
very easy to determine.
What's not easy to determine
is now that you stood up and you're
gonna pray 2 or you're gonna pray 3
or you're gonna make up 4 or 1
or whatever it is, what's not easy to
determine is when do you recite
al Fatiha in another Surah and when do
you recite only another Surah? Number 1. That's
the one variable you need to figure out.
Because remember you're only supposed to recite,
additional verses of the Quran
in the first two units of prayer. Right?
Not in the second two units of prayer.
Not in the 3rd and the 4th. So
now you're kind of mixed up in terms
of, are you considered to be in your
first unit
or are you technically
you prayed with the the Imam did 2.
Do you count that? Do you not count
that? That's one variable you need to figure
out. The second variable you need to figure
out is when do you sit,
in the prayer for the intermediate sitting, the
tashahood and all of that. So when do
you do that? So this is how you
figure it out. You figure it out, number
1.
The amount of units you make up, that's
easy. You just calculate how many you prayed
with the imam, how many you caught, subtract
the number of units from the prayer, you
got it. Number 2, when should you recite
verses of the Quran after Al Fatihah? So
this is a little bit tricky. So the
way you do it is, you should always
recite additional verses
in the first two makeup units only.
You only do it in the first two
makeup units because that's what you missed. Right?
So if you're praying
the Zuhr prayer,
okay, and you caught 1 unit with the
Imam, how many you're making up?
3. You're making up 3. In the first
two
you're gonna recite Fatiha and some other verses
of Quran. In the 3rd unit
you're only gonna recite
Surah Fatiha only and you don't recite additional
Quran afterwards.
If you're praying Isha and you missed all
4,
but you joined the group but you missed
all 4, when you're making it up you're
making up 4 now. Right? In the first
two units, you're gonna pray, you're gonna recite
more Quran after Fatiha. In the second 2,
you're not going to. Okay?
Alright. So that that's pretty easy as well.
Right?
Now the difficult part is,
when do you perform the first sitting? Okay.
So if you're in a 3 unit prayer
or a 4 unit prayer, right, the way
you perform the first sitting is,
you should perform the first sitting after you
perform an even number of units.
So this is where it becomes tricky.
When do you normally sit? For the the
first sitting is
after
the final sitting is the one where you
sit down and you say
and you say and you say and you
say and you say
When you don't say salaam and you just
say ashaduallaha illa Allahu and then you get
back up for the continuing the prayer, that's
called the intermediate sitting.
When do you perform that intermediate sitting when
you're making up units of prayer? You're gonna
do it after an even number of units.
Because in the 2 unit prayer,
there is no intermediate sitting. In a 3
unit prayer, where is the intermediate sitting?
After 2. In a 4 unit prayer, where
is the intermediate sitting?
After 2 in the second one. Right? So
the rule is you're going to sit after
you've performed 2 units of prayer,
or an even number of units of prayer,
which is 2. Right? Now here's the way
you do it. Do you include the units
that you prayed with the Imam or do
you not include?
That's the real question, that's what this variable
is. So it should include the units that
you prayed with the imam, and that's where
people get confused and they get tricky. So
what you do is you add the total
numbers of units that you prayed alone,
along with the units that you prayed with
the imam, and you determine what's gonna happen.
So let's take a few samples now.
If you,
you come for Maghrib prayer.
Maghrib prayer is how many units?
3. Okay.
You caught 1 unit with the imam.
You have to make up how many?
You gotta make up 2. Okay. So now
what you do is you're gonna stand up,
right, you're gonna recite Fatiha.
Are you gonna recite more verses now or
no?
Yes you are because it's your first makeup
unit,
first makeup unit. So you're gonna recite.
Now you're gonna go into you're gonna go
into prostration and everything. Now you're gonna decide,
are you supposed to sit or stand up
and then recite Fatiha and more Surahs? What
do you do?
You're gonna sit. Why? Because you prayed 1
with the imam and you just prayed one
makeup on your own, that's even number.
So you're gonna sit down, you're gonna say
attahiatulillahi,
you're gonna do the shahada, shaduallaylala,
and then you're gonna get back up now.
And you're gonna get back up, now you're
gonna recite al Fatiha.
Are you gonna recite more verses of the
Quran?
Yes, you are.
Because
this is your second makeup unit,
and in your first two makeup units
you will recite more verses of Quran after
Fatiha.
But so so this is this is the
trick in the rule, this is the confusion
that people have.
When you're determining whether or not to recite
verses after Fatiha,
you,
you don't take into consideration
what you prayed with the imam.
When you're deciding whether to sit for the
intermediate sitting,
you take into consideration
the units that you prayed with the imam.
Okay. If you remember that principle this will
all make sense. Right. So what you do,
let's let's look at it again.
Maghrib prayer. You caught 1 unit
with the Imam. You're making up 2.
Right? So you got 1 with the Imam
and you're making up 2 on your own.
So what do you do? You're gonna stand
up after the Imam says salaam, he's done.
Okay.
Now you're you're making up 2, you got
1. Now you stand up for your second
one. This is your second unit of prayer
that you're praying now. You're gonna recite al
Fatiha?
Are you gonna recite more more
verses? What is the reason why you're gonna
recite more verses?
That's not that's not the reasoning though.
Because this is your this is your first
makeup unit,
right,
and in your first and second makeup unit
you're gonna recite more verses.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. It it'll
take a while. Right. So you got that.
Now you're gonna go and sit down. You're
gonna decide should I sit down or should
I not sit down?
When you're deciding should I sit down or
should I stand up for my 3rd unit
immediately?
Do I sit intermediate sitting or do I
actually stand up for the 3rd unit? How
do you determine that? Well, you look and
you say, look, I prayed 1 with the
imam and I prayed 1 makeup myself.
That's 2. That's an even number. So now
I need to sit down.
So you sit down, you do the tahayat,
you do the shahada, then you stand up.
You still got one more left. You stand
up and now you're in your 3rd unit.
So it's your it's your 3rd unit of
the prayer,
and what number makeup unit is is it?
It's a second makeup unit because you're making
up 2. That's a 3rd unit of Maghrib
prayer, but it's the 2nd makeup unit that
you're doing. Since it's the 2nd makeup unit
that you're doing, do you recite verses after
you you you do fatah?
Yes.
So don't get confused and say, well, but
it's the 3rd unit of prayer. And in
the 3rd unit of prayer you're not supposed
to recite verses. That's correct. But it's your
second makeup unit. Therefore you will recite verses
because you didn't so that's what you were
kind of what you were saying. The logic
goes back to because you did you weren't
there with the imam when he recited the
first two.
That's why you're making it up.
Alright. So that's it. So that's all you
gotta do, you're good to go. Let's take
a second scenario.
Yeah. Then you go down to final tashawhood,
finish the prayer like normal. The rest of
it is just normal. Right? So let's say
you're Makruh prayer.
Okay? And
you catch
2 units with the Imam.
Wait. Do we say that? No. You catch
1 unit with the imam. No. No. We
just did 1 and we make up 2.
You catch 2 with the imam, you gotta
make up 1.
So what do you do in this case?
Imam says salam, you stand up, What do
you
do? Read Al Fatiha and
and a surah. Right? You read more Quran
and then
just go and you finish your prayer because
you're in your last unit anyways. Easy.
What if you're in Zohar prayer? Four units.
Okay.
And So that's considered doing shadow. Yeah. Yeah.
That's just a shadow. Yeah. Yeah. That's it.
Only the intermediate sitting is is the the
difficulty. Do these things. You also do that
when you
just 1. You do. No. No. No. This
then it becomes a final sitting. Because you're
making up 1, you're you're concluding the prayer.
So it's not intermediate sitting anymore, it's a
final sitting. It's only one of them. Right.
So let's say your Zohar prayer, 4 unit
prayer.
Okay. Let's do take a few samples. 4
unit prayer,
you missed,
you missed 3 units. If you missed 4,
you just pray you just get up and
you pray like you're praying Zohar from the
beginning. That's easy. Right? What if you miss,
you miss 3?
Okay. You miss 3 with the Imam. So
let's take a look at what we're gonna
do. So now,
you gotta make up how many? 3. You're
making up 3. You prayed with the Imam?
1. Okay. So now you're gonna stand up,
you're gonna recite al Fatiha.
Are you gonna recite more surahs or no?
Yes. Or more verses? Yes. You recite more
verses. Okay. Good.
Now we're gonna sit back down, we're gonna
do the prostration, do the normal prayer and
everything. Now we're trying to decide do we
do intermediate sitting or not?
Okay. Because we counted 1 with the imam
and 1 by ourself, we're gonna sit right
there. Alright. Then we're gonna say, Allahu Akbar,
we're gonna stand back up.
Alright. We're gonna recite Fatiha.
Are we gonna recite more Surahs or no?
More verses? Yes. We're gonna recite more verses.
Then we're gonna go down as normal and
then you say, okay wait, do I need
another intermediate sitting?
Which one are you at? You're at 3
now. So you're gonna stand back up directly.
Now you're gonna recite Fatiha
with this more verses or no?
Just the Fatiha. Just the Fatiha only. Then
when you say, Allahu Akbar, go back down,
conclude the prayer. We got that down. Right?
Alright. Now you 2. Right? So you missed
2 in Zohar prayer. You gotta make up
2. So you got 2 and you make
up 2. What do you do? Say, Allahu
Akbar, you get up? Fatiha, more verses or
no?
Yes. Go back down into prostration.
Intermediate sitting or stand up?
Stand up. Stand up. Fatiha, more verses or
no?
Yes, more verses.
And then you conclude the prayer. Easy, right?
You've missed 1, you gotta make up 1
and you caught 3.
K. What do you do?
Set Alawak or stand up. Fatiha,
verses or no?
Yes, verses. Can you finish the prayer? Easy.
You got it. Right?
Okay. Good.
So we're done inshallah. For today