Mustafa Umar – Islamic Law Fiqh 101 Essentials Of Islamic Practice #6
AI: Summary ©
The importance of concentration and humility in prayer is emphasized, as it is crucial for public health and public health. Prayer is crucial to avoiding distraction, wasting time, and confusion, and is crucial for avoiding severe difficulty during prayer. It is crucial for public health, but not for every situation. Prayer is not a requirement for every situation, but is important to avoid getting distracted and in trouble.
AI: Summary ©
So we left off at, concentration
and humility
in prayer.
And of course this is a very important
topic,
but it's actually not the subject of this
class.
So what we're gonna do is we're gonna
talk a little bit
about it, and then we're gonna move on.
If you want more details
you can, take the class on spirituality,
or you could take the class on, or
you could read the book, the how to
pray book, inshallah, which explains it in more
detail.
So keep in mind that all the rules
that we learn in prayer, it's not for
you to
only focus on the rules. And you think
that, you know what, if I got all
the rules down, my fingers are correct and
my fingers are
spread when I'm grabbing my knees, or they're
together when you grab your knees?
Spread, okay. And what about when you're in,
prostration such as that position?
Spread or
together?
Together, right. So if you got all that
down,
you say you know what, now I got
my prayer down properly.
There's a very important, in fact the most
important part of the prayer, is the spirituality
and the concentration in the prayer. So this
this is the form, if you got the
form down doesn't mean that you got the
prayer down yet. You got the physical part
of the prayer down, but this is actually
the most important part of the prayer. So
it's very something we should never,
neglect actually. So even if you perform everything
physically
it's almost like an example is like a
fruit. The fruit, if you look at it
on the outside,
extremely clean, it looks ripe, everything is nice,
and then you bite into it, it's completely
rotten on the inside.
Sometimes prayer can become exactly the same way.
Outside is perfect. Someone videotaped you and they
looked at every emotion, you got everything 100%.
Check check check check fingers spread, this that
that everything is done. All the words were
said correctly,
but there's no humility, no concentration
in that prayer. So it's very important that
we reflect and we keep in mind that
the the essence of prayer is actually the
the humility, the concentration, the spirituality,
in the prayer. In fact, so much so
that the Prophet, peace be upon him, he
used to emphasize this. So one time he
saw a man, he was praying really fast.
This is unfortunately a very common problem in
our community, is that we pray really really
fast. People literally, they blast through everything and
moving down so fast up and down. He
saw a person who was praying really fast,
and when the person was about to leave
the Masjid he stopped to me and said,
you know what? Go back and pray because
you didn't really pray.
So the man went back over there and
he prayed again really super fast prayer, came
back. The prophet said, no no. Go back
and pray again. You still have not prayed.
So he went back and he prayed again
really super fast the way that he knew
his house. He came back and then the
prophet explained to him. He said, look you
need to slow down. You need to to
have serenity in your movements.
Don't don't rush so fast.
And he also one time he mentioned, people
who pray really really fast, he says like
they're pecking units of prayer.
Like, you know, a bird goes up and
down really quickly just like you're packing it,
like you're going,
that's not the point of prayer. So it's
very important we try to slow down. So
here are a few tips that when you're
praying,
try to act upon some of these tips
to help you increase
your concentration and your presence during the prayer.
So before the prayer, it's very important that
you clear your mind from all other thoughts
and that's one of the things that, you
know, wanna make sure, you know, you mute
everything that's gonna distract you and we talked
about choosing the right location, we talked about
choosing the right,
clothing that's not gonna distract you, the right
carpet that's not gonna distract you, the right
part of the room that's not gonna distract
you, and likewise clear your mind from all
the thoughts. So when you're doing so many
things in the day and you're checking if
you're just reading your text message and then
you start praying all of a sudden immediately,
you're still gonna be thinking about the conversation
you were just having. So you need to
just take a few moments to just kind
of cool things down so that you can
get your thoughts out.
The second thing is if you notice
that, your surroundings are distracting you, it's allowed
for you to close your eyes.
So it's something sometimes people don't feel that
they can't close their eyes. They get distracted
by, you know, some people are doing something
over there and then someone is running around
as a little kid, you know, playing around
over here and you get distracted.
So you're allowed to close your eyes in
order to help you concentrate, and of course
it's better to play in a place where
there's no distractions in the first place.
The third thing
is that you should say every part of
the prayer by actually moving your lips.
So when you're actually doing the prayer, instead
of when you're when you're silent, instead of
just saying in your mind, alhamdulillah rublaalimin your
mind, you actually say it on your lips.
You move your lips. Say it
loud. Even if you're not even letting much
breath out, you just at least move your
lips at minimum.
Or if you hear yourself if you just
whisper just to yourself a little bit, it
actually helps you to concentrate, if that works
for you. Alright. It can actually help you
to concentrate and it helps you to slow
down. So it helps you to stay focused
and it forces you to slow down because
your mind can think faster
than your lips can actually move. So when
you make yourself you force yourself to move
your lips, you automatically slow your prayer down.
So you can't rush it. Right. So otherwise,
there are people, they start yawning. Right? They're
yawning
and they're still doing
and they're yawning and it's still going in
their mind. At the end of the surah
by the time they finish yawning because they
kept on going while they're in the middle
of yawning. If you're moving your lips literally
your yawn is a pause,
right? If you start coughing
you pause because you can't recite anything. But
if you're stuck in your mind you're coughing
and you're still finishing the entire surah.
So this is a this is could be
a a big problem.
So just try to That's one other tip.
Tip number 4
is understand the meaning of what you're saying
in prayer.
And that is how do you do that?
By at least you just read the translation
of the Arabic phrases. At least understand
what the prayer is is is saying. So
this go to the translation of each part
of the prayer and try and reflect upon
it as much as you can. So while
you're saying the Arabic, once you've memorized the
Arabic, while you're saying the Arabic,
you've already read the translation
and you've kind of associated
some of the meanings that this verse has
this meaning, this verse has this meaning. So
make those associations and the more you practice
it, the better you're gonna get at it.
And realistically,
how long does it take to just one
one read through of all the things that
you say in prayer? How long do you
think it takes just to do one read
through an English translation?
What would you say? You know all the
stuff that we say in prayer. We say
we
say we say we say we say we
say we say we say we say we
say we say
If you were to take the English translation
of all of those things we say in
prayer, and you just read it one through
one time, how many minutes you think it
would take?
Less than 10 minutes. Right? Less than 10
minutes. And unfortunately there are Muslims, they've been
praying for 50 years, and they didn't even
bother to take 10 minutes to do one
glance through and understand what they're saying.
They should never we should never fall into
that trap. So one of the difficulties is
that you say, well, where can I find
the translation of all those things?
And, yeah, it it it it's a lot
of people used to ask me this. So
where do I find it? So this is
scattered over in different places and all of
that. But now you have no excuse
because my book, How to Pray, has all
of this stuff. And it's free and it's
on the Internet. So it's there. It's there
available for you. So you can at least
read through it 10 minutes one day, 10
minutes the second day. Let's say you do
10 read throughs in 6 months.
You will start associating the meaning very very
well even if you don't understand a word
of Arabic. Because you're going to the translation
and you're going and associating, well, this verse
I already have memorized is associated with this
English meaning. And you're gonna start making the
association. Even if you just did one run
through a month, you would you would see
a difference in your prayer, because you would
understand what's going on. If I if I
tell you, oh you know what,
Ihdinas Surat Al Mustaqim,
it means praise be to Allah the Lord
of the world. You say, no it doesn't.
No it doesn't. That's not true. So okay.
You at least know what is what and
what is not what. Say, if you say,
Arrahmanir Rahim. Oh, well,
I think that means, guide us to the
straight path. No way.
I've checked the I've read if you just
read it 5 times, even 3 times, you'll
know what is what and you'll know what
is not what. So it it makes a
big difference. So try to reflect upon,
the meaning while you're saying every phrase and
try to put a little pause of reflection.
So while you're reciting, say, Alhamdulillahi
rabbil a'lamimin, stop for a moment and say
what does that actually mean? What am I
doing? Praise belongs to Allah, the Lord of
the worlds? What is that supposed to mean?
And sometimes you're gonna reflect upon a verse
or a statement
more based upon your own circumstances in life.
So if you're thinking, you know what, you've
just done something really bad and you're reciting
the Quran in prayer and you're saying, Alhamdulillahi
rabbil 'alameen, you're not gonna reflect so much
on that. But then you say, Al Rahmaanir
Rahim. Allah is the Compassionate and the Merciful.
You start reflecting on that more because you're
in need of mercy and compassion right now.
So based upon your circumstance you're gonna be
reflecting on different verses and different parts of
the prayer
depending on, you know, your circumstances. So it's
very important to reflect on the prayer itself.
And number 6,
whenever you say the Takbir, whenever you say
Allahu Akbar, in order to make a transition,
you should realize what you're saying is Allah
is the greatest.
Right? And actually,
if you wanted to look at the literal
translation, it means Allah is greater than,
but there's no ending.
The the rest of the sentence is not
complete.
So you fill in the blank and what
it means is Allah is greater than what?
Means it's greater than everything,
but what happens is most people, they well,
a lot of people lose their focus when
they're making the transition.
So if they're really focusing, they're concentrating on
Fatiha and they got everything going down really
good, they concentrated well, and then they say
Allahu Akbar, it's kind of you let your
guard down for a moment, you're like, yeah
I did it. And then all of a
sudden you zone out and you go into
a bowing position because you thought you you
thought you, like, made an accomplishment, which you
did, but you made an accomplishment and you
let your guard down. So if you remember
that Allahu Akbar means Allah is greater than,
if you see your mind starts wandering the
moment you hear Allahu Akbar,
Allah is greater than that thing that you
were thinking about.
If you are thinking about what you're gonna
eat, Allah is greater than that meal. If
you're thinking about my your new car that
you just bought, Allah is greater than your
new car and whatever GPS or whatever it
has in there, Allah is greater than that.
Every time you hear Allahu Akbar think Allah
is greater than the thing that which was
just distracting me away from prayer. So that
can help you to focus,
in
in this in the prayer, inshallah.
Alright. So that's the concentration.
Let's talk about
some of the mistakes in prayer. So getting
back to the law part of prayer. The
mistakes in prayer, there are 2 types. There
are major mistakes
and there are minor mistakes in prayer. So
the major mistakes is that if
are not performed properly,
the prayer will not count and the prayer
has to be repeated.
Because these are the fundamental parts of the
prayer. They're the absolute essential parts of the
prayer. You miss one of them,
your prayer is not gonna count. You need
to stop your prayer. You need to repeat
it one more time. Start again.
So what are those? Number 1, the intention.
Having the intention for prayer. So that means
that
if you think you're praying
if you think you're praying Isha,
completely praying the wrong prayer in the first
place, your mind was just totally gone, you
don't even know what you're praying, then you
have to restart your prayer because you have
to at least know what you're praying.
Number 2,
beginning the prayer with the takbir.
Alright. So if you're beginning your prayer by
saying allahu akbar, when you're raising your hand
you're saying allahu akbar, that part is considered
mandatory. So if you skip that,
which is very rare that you're gonna skip
that, but you if you skip
then your prayer is not gonna be valid.
So if you let's say you're joining late
and there's the imam, the leader of the
prayer, he's leading the prayer and all of
a sudden you join and you're so you're
so concerned about catching up to exactly where
the people are and they're already in they're
already in prostration. So you go and immediately
you just go straight into prostration.
You didn't start your prayer with Allahu Akbar.
So the prayer is not gonna be considered
valid, so you have to start. Make sure
that you start with Allahu Akbar in the
beginning.
The standing for recitation. So when you're standing
and you're gonna be reciting some Quran, it's
it's it's a necessity
to stand,
unless of course you, you know, you have
an illness, you're not able to stand up,
or you're in an airplane space where it's
very very tight, you're not able to stand
up. It's overlooked in those cases. Right.
Reciting some verses of the Quran is mandatory.
Right. If you completely skip the Quran and
you just say
and then all of a sudden your mind
wanders and you say and you go into
bowing and you skip reading Quran at all,
you have to repeat the prayer. So that's,
another thing. So reciting Quran is mandatory.
Bowing is mandatory.
So if somehow all of a sudden you're
praying, you finish Fatiha, you finish some Surah
and then all of a sudden you say
Allahu Akbar and you go all the way
into prostration
and you totally forgot and skipped the bowing.
You missed the one of the most important
parts of prayer, you have to repeat the
prayer. The intermediate standing,
when you come back after the bowing position,
the ruku position, is also considered mandatory.
Making sure you prostrate twice in every single
unit is also considered mandatory.
Right. So if sometimes
you let's say you were in Sajdah, you
were in prostration
and you started saying, Subhanah Rabi'al A'la
11 times. You're really trying to concentrate by
yourself
and you totally forgot and you thought you
were in the second prostration
and then you got up and you realize,
you know what, I was only in the
first one. You have to prostrate twice in
every unit. So if you skipped one,
your prayer will not count.
You got to restart the prayer again.
Sitting in the final unit of prayer
long enough to reach the declaration of faith,
meaning that you have to do the final
sitting which you can't really conclude the prayer
without that.
And moving the head to the right
at least one time by saying assalamu alaykumu
rahmatullah.
That's minimum. The bare minimum for your prayer
to be valid. I see. Well, why in
the world would you do 1 instead of
2? We're supposed to do 2. Alright. Hypothetically,
just imagine the scenario.
You say, Assalamualaikumahuatullah,
and then you lose your wudu
before you say the second one. So technically
your prayer is valid, and you don't have
to repeat your prayer because you got the
first one down, and the first one is
what's mandatory. So these are is what's mandatory.
Now if any of these essential acts
are skipped during the prayer, let's say you
skipped it completely and you've you only made
one prostration, you made one Sajjad, so what
do you do in that case? Well, if
you're close you should actually return back to
that action when you remember.
So if you remember now all of a
sudden, you know what, you didn't you didn't
make the proper prostration and you're standing up
for the second unit of prayer and you're
like, wait a minute, I only did one
one prostration.
You go back down and you do the
second process. Even though you were standing, you
just go right back down from where you
should have been. So that's one way and,
the second way is you can add another
prostration. If you're already, you know, quite far
you could add another prostration in the next
unit. Right. So that's a possibility as well.
So
if you finish your prayer and you realize
you did not fulfill all of these
then your prayer is not valid and you
need to repeat the prayer as soon as
you realize. If you don't realize and you
just completely
don't remember, inshallah hopefully Allah will not hold
you accountable for that. But you should always
try to ask Allah for forgiveness in whatever
mistakes
that you knowingly or unknowingly have made in
the prayer.
So these are the major mistakes such that
your prayer is not going to be valid.
Then there are minor mistakes.
The minor mistakes
are one of those mistakes which is not
a requirement of prayer.
So if you'd make this mistake your prayer
is still valid, but you will you can
correct
the prayer by adding 2 extra prostrations at
the end, and I'm gonna explain what that
is. Alright.
And these 2 extra prostrations, what they'll do
is they'll make up for the deficiencies in
your in the prayer at the end, and
it's actually gonna humiliate your own ego, which
actually distracted you in prayer. It's kind of
like a punishment for yourself. I got distracted
in prayer. I wasn't focusing properly. I'm gonna
add more worship of Allah
in there at the end. So you add
2 more prostrations.
So here are some of the common mistakes
which require a person to perform these 2
additional prostrations.
So one of
them is delaying any one of the required
acts of the prayer
because they have to be done in the
prescribed order. So if you delay one of
these acts, which we just talked about in
the previous list,
intention, we can't delay your intention, but standing
recitation
of Quran, bowing, intermediate standing, prostrating twice. So
let's say, like I said, you completely forgot
and you prostrated once and then you got
back up.
When you go back down,
you make your prostration and you make it
you you made it up. You you had
2 prostrations
but you didn't do it in the correct
order
because standing should come after the 2 prostrations
not before. So what you do is your
prayer is still valid but, you know, you
have to make up that mistake by adding
2 prostrations at the end of prayer.
So that's one example.
The second is
forgetting to recite other verses of the Quran
after Al Fatiha.
So you're in the beginning of prayer and
you're reciting Al Fatiha.
After you're done with Al Fatiha, you're in
the 2nd unit of prayer, and for some
reason your mind was thinking you're in the
3rd unit of prayer, where you don't need
to recite any any surah or verses after
Al Fatiha. So you say Allahu Akbar and
you go into bowing position, and then you
start saying, Subhanah Rabi'al Azim,
and then you say, oh, wait a minute.
I didn't,
I didn't recite the others verses of the
Quran. So what am I what am I
supposed to do?
So in that case, what do you do?
You go ahead and you continue your prayer
like normal. You don't go back. You continue
your prayer and at the end of the
prayer you're gonna add these 2 extra prostrations
in order to make up, the thing that
you skipped, because it's not an essential part
of the prayer. Right. It's important but it's
not essential.
Right. So that's,
something that becomes
kind of common.
Does it ever happen to anybody?
Okay. It happened it's happened to all of
us.
Alright.
Forgetting
the first sitting
in a 3 or 4 unit prayer by
standing up. So you're in a 3 unit
prayer
and after your second unit of prayer,
what should you have done? You should have
got up after the second prostration and you
should have been sitting. Right, and you're gonna
say, Atahiyyah Tullillah. But what did you do
accidentally?
You forgot where you were and you went
and you stood up for the 3rd unit
of prayer, and you didn't sit and you
didn't do Atahiyyah Tullillah. So what do you
do in that case? Well, in that case,
if you already stood up and you're already
up,
then you keep standing and you continue your
prayer and you make it up by adding
the 2 prostrations at the end.
If you're on your way up and you're
getting up and you've not stood up all
the way, you sit back down quickly
because you've not stood up all the way.
Okay.
And you do your at the heyat and
all of that. Otherwise, you skip it completely.
Why do you skip it? Because it's not
an essential
act of the prayer
And going in order
is considered a priority
over
the atahiyat
intermediate sitting, which you can make up by
performing 2 prostrations.
Okay.
So this will be another common mistake. Any
that happened to anyone before?
The say the same culprits.
We're all in the same boat.
Reciting aloud when you're supposed to be silent
or vice versa when you're in a group
prayer. So you're leading Zohar prayer and you
become the imam, you say, Allahu Akbar
and he starts saying, Alhamdulillah
here. Oh, wait a minute. What am I
doing? Should I should not be reciting out
loud? So when you start reciting out loud,
obviously, so hopefully someone's gonna correct you,
if you're if you're doing that or vice
versa.
So you're delaying, you're delaying, you're praying Maghrib
when you go Allahu Akbar,
and you're sitting there quietly, and you're reciting
the whole Fatiha,
and you're in the next Surah, and then
all of a sudden people are one people
got the real they they figured out that
you're not just, making a long du'a in
the beginning.
They realize that you've totally forgot, so they
correct you and then you start reciting out
loud. So you've delayed now because you totally
forgot, so what you're gonna do is you're
gonna add 2 prostrations at the end.
Okay. We're saying, adding an extra act of
prayer.
Okay. If you add another act of prayer,
so for example, you perform 3 prostrations in
one unit because you thought that you only
had done 1 but you actually did 2,
so you add a third one,
or
you do 2 bowings, for example. So you
say, Sami'allaha, holy man haminda, you get back
up and you go Allahu Akbar, you go
back into bowing ruku again because you totally
forgot you just made ruku. Somehow you zoned
out. This is considered to be an extra
act of prayer. You're gonna make up for
it by making 2 prostrations.
Skipping one of the following
essential acts of prayer. Okay. The first one
was delaying them,
this one is skipping. So if you skip
one of these acts of prayer, so for
example raising the hands at the beginning of
prayer.
So we said saying the Allahu Akbar at
the beginning of prayer is what's absolutely mandatory.
But if you said Allahu Akbar and you
forgot to raise your hands, you can make
that up by performing 2 prostrations.
Reciting al Fatiha.
If you somehow recited a different surah,
you still recited the Quran, you just didn't
recite Fatiha. Somehow you just skipped and you
started reciting the last chapter of the Quran.
That can be made up with 2 prostrations.
Reciting a surah after al Fatihah in the
first and second unit of prayer. So you
skip that. So we talked about that already.
You skip that, you can make it up.
Saying Day Takbir.
So saying Allahu Akbar when you're transitioning from
one action to another,
that's can also be made up with 2
prostrations.
Saying the prescribed words during the intermediate standing.
So saying, sami Allahu limal hamida. Saying, if
you forget that too, you can make it
up. Saying, attahiyat lillahiwasalahuwataiva.
Saying all of the stuff, saying all of
the things when you're sitting can also be
made up as well because it's not a
necessity. What's a necessity is sitting actually.
So but the actual what you say is
something you can actually make up with 2
prostrations
and if you stand up
after the final prostration,
what should you do? So you're praying a
4 unit prayer, you're praying Asr prayer,
and in the in the you're almost done
with prayer. You're just about to say salaam
Okay.
Asar prayer, 4 unit prayer, you're at the
end of it, you raise your finger, you
say
and then you say
and you stand up and you're about to
start reciting Quran again. Which unit are you
in now?
You're in the 5th unit and there is
no 5th unit. So what do you do
in this case? You immediately sit back down
as soon as you remember. K. As soon
as you remember, you sit back down,
and like I said, if you see the
Imam get up, this is the one time
where you don't follow the Imam. You stay
seated
and you start saying SubhanAllah SubhanAllah. Hopefully that
he's gonna get the point. If he doesn't
get the point, you still stay seated because
you're not supposed to follow him in that
mistake there. So,
you sit back down and then you make
you make the extra prostrations.
If you conclude the prayer, right, you finish
the prayer, you're done, and you realize that
you had missed 1 or more units of
prayer. You skip them completely.
What do you do? You stand up immediately
and you perform the ones that you missed,
and at the end of it you add
2 prostrations.
Okay. So you can do that as well.
Immediately,
you don't go and say, okay, I'm gonna
go eat lunch, then I'm gonna come back,
I'm gonna make up that 1 unit. So
you do it immediately.
If you're unsure,
okay, if you're not sure of how many
units you've prayed so far,
this is very common, very very common. So
you're thinking, did I pray 3 or did
I pray 4 now? Did I pray am
I in the second one or am I
in the third one? This is such a
common problem. If you're unsure how many units
you prayed so far and this forgetfulness
rarely happens to you,
right, if it rarely rarely happens to you,
you should stop your prayer and you should
start again.
Stop and start again. If this is something
that doesn't happen to you, you repeat your
prayer.
If this is something that happens to you
quite often
and what is quite often mean? I gave
you some criteria. If it happens to you
at least once a year,
k. If it happens at least once a
year, then what you do is you go
with what seems to be most probable.
So you're thinking in your mind, did I
pray 2 or did I pray 3? So
you know what? I'm 80%
sure
that I've paid 3,
but I have 20% doubt.
You go with what's more probable, which is
the 80% and you go ahead and you
say, okay. No. It's it's gotta be 3.
I'm 80% sure it's good enough. I'm gonna
go with the the 3. I assume I
paid 3 instead of 2.
If
if you're quite sure
that you paid 4 units so for example,
if you're quite sure you paid 4 units
but you think maybe I've only paid 3,
you assume you paid 4 because you're pretty
sure about that. So over 50%.
Now if you're 5050
and you really cannot decide because you zoned
out completely, which is a very very common
thing, you you you don't even you can't
even figure out is this the 3rd or
the 4th? I have absolutely no idea. I
I'm trying to recall for a moment. I
can't even recall back. I'm just blank.
I don't know. 5050. What do you do?
You go with the lesser number
and you add the 2 extra prostrations at
the end. You go with the lesser number.
So if you're debating, did I pray 3
or did I pray 4? You assume that
you prayed 3 and you add another unit,
and you just keep on praying as if
you're in the 3rd unit. Why?
Because
if you're debating between 34,
only one of them is is for sure
that you did pray 3.
It's not for sure that you prayed 4.
But it's 100 per even if you had
prayed 4, you at least prayed a minimum
of 3. Right? So because what you do
is you go with what's certain,
because you know you'll pray at least 3,
right, if you're debating between 3 and 4.
You're debating between 12,
you you go with 1. You assume you
prayed 1, and you go ahead and you
add another unit,
assuming that you had only prayed 1. Yeah.
So that's the way, that it works, and,
if you want more details on it, check
out the books. I I wrote an entire
appendix on it. So appendix 1, it talks
about how you determine
certainty and uncertainty and how you apply these
principles. It doesn't only apply it in prayer.
It applies across the board. It applies in
wudu. It applies in fasting.
It applies in so many different cases. So
you should take a look at appendix 1
and it'll give you some general rules which
will help you understand Islamic law in all
other aspects.
The next thing
so what are these two prostrations we're talking
about? So how do you perform these 2,
prostrations
of forgetfulness?
Well, first of all, it's necessary
to perform them. It's not just optional. It's
necessary to perform them at the end of
the prayer.
There's difference of opinion on this but this
this let's go with it's necessary.
If it's for a correctable mistake.
So there are correctable mistakes that we just
saw, and then there are those un non
correctable mistakes, like you completely skip prostration
in your prayer.
That's something that you can't correct. Right? Something
that you have to restart your prayer. So
there's 2 ways to perform this prostration.
One way
is that when you're in the in the
prayer, right,
right near the end of your prayer, right
when you're about to finish your prayer, you
finished your Allahumma sali Allahumma Muhammad. You already
raised your fingers Allahumma sali Allahumma Muhammadu ala
ala Muhammad. You're about to finish. Right before
you say salaam,
what you do is you say Allahu Akbar
and you go into prostration.
Just like you would normally do.
You say the same thing you would normally
say in prostration.
You say, allahu akbar. You sit
like you would in between two prostrations.
You say, allahu akbar. You go back into
your second prostration again.
You say do the same thing. Say allahu
akbar, you sit back up
and you finish your prayer. Assalamu Alaikum wa
Rahmatullah. Assalamu Alaikum wa Rahmatullah. That's it. So
it's it's all you're doing is
right before you say the salaam,
right before you say a salaam alaikum and
move your head, you add 2 prostrations, 2
sajdas in there, and then you finish the
rest of your prayer. So that's one way
to do it. And that's probably the, the
easy way to remember how to do it.
Then there's a second way to do it.
And the second way is
right when you're about to finish your prayer,
instead of before you say this well, actually,
right when you're about to finish your prayer,
you say, Assalamualaikum,
Rahmatullah,
one time
to your right side.
And then you say, Allahu Akbar, and you
go into prostration.
And you say, Allahu Akbar, you get back
up. You say, Allahu Akbar again, you go
down a second time. So what you're doing,
the difference between this one and that one,
is that this one, you're gonna say one
salaam and then do your 2 prostrations.
But there's one more difference.
And then when you get back up,
you start from the beginning
and you start with
and you do the entire thing. And you
do the ashaluwala ilalla Allah and you do
allahumasalayalamuhammad
again from the beginning, and then you finish
your prayer with 2 salams.
Two methods of doing it.
So,
so there's there's 2 of it. There's actually
a third way of doing it too, but
we're not gonna learn the 3rd way. So
there's just know that there's more than one
way. So if you see someone going and
making one salaam, and all of a sudden
they go into prostration,
you know that there's 2 different ways of
doing it. So just keep that in mind.
Okay.
If you made more than one mistake in
prayer,
so you made 2 or 3 or 4
mistakes,
you don't need to go and make 8
prostrations.
So you make 2 mistakes, 3 mistakes, you
still make only one set at the end.
Two prostrations at the end. And the reason
why that is is that you're doing it
because
you made a mistake in prayer, not because
you made a specific number of mistakes in
prayer. The fact that your prayer was a
little bit defective, doesn't matter how many mistakes
there are, they're all correctable mistakes. You only
need to do this one time, one set
at the end.
If you forget
to prostrate
after
making a mistake,
you can still do that after the prayer
is over. So Let's say you just you
you you even forgot to add the prostration,
but you know you made a mistake.
And then 5 minutes later, you realize, you
know what?
I totally forgot to do my 2 prostrations
at the end. You can just go down
on the floor and you can do 2
right there and that's it. You just say
your 2 extra prostration.
If,
where is it?
If the time for the prayer is over,
so you made a mistake in your Zohar
prayer and now the time for prayer has
elapsed and it's Oser time now.
Then you don't need to do these prostrations
anymore, and they're just it's over. Right. So
don't worry about it. You ask Allah for
forgiveness and be more careful next time.
Okay.
Next section,
missing and making up prayer.
Missing prayer and making up prayer.
So it's really important being lazy
in observing
your prayer on time
actually reflects your attitude
to Allah.
It reflects how seriously you take Islam.
So obviously, you know, some people when they
start out you need time to build yourself.
But once you had a sufficient amount of
time you should not try not to be
lazy when it comes to praying on time.
And, you know, this is something which can
afflict,
a lot of people. So they just
get, you know, every other priority in their
life becomes more important than the prayer, and
we should make sure that prayer is a
number one priority. We should not delay it.
We should not say, oh, I'll wait till
the end of time, end of time, and
then sometimes,
it's, you know, I'll just pray it late
or something like that. This is not a
good, habit to have. So you should try
to never miss a single prayer ever,
but
naturally you will
miss some prayers.
So when you do miss 1,
what should you do?
You should make up that prayer
with the feeling of regret, obviously with some
remorse,
as soon as you're able to do so.
It's very important. As soon as you're able
to do so. So if you sleep through
Fajr prayer, which is one of the most
common prayers to miss, what do you do?
As soon as you wake up,
before you eat your breakfast,
before you, you know, do all the, you
know, before you check your emails and everything,
you should make will do and you should
pray that prayer. You should not say, oh,
well, you know, I can pray
before I sleep at night or something like
that. You should not delay that much. You
should pray as soon as you get an
opportunity. If you're in the middle of something,
that's different.
You're
literally late to an appointment,
okay, you can delay a little bit. Go
to your appointment quickly. Once your appointment is
done, go make your will do and you
can make up your prayer. But if you
have nothing else to do and you're just
chilling out,
watch a little TV, check my email or
something, and you missed the prayer that morning,
you should make it up as soon as
possible. So all missed prayers should be made
up immediately and with some feeling of regret.
If you forgot
about a prayer completely so so when you
miss a prayer like this,
you know, you're held responsible
if you did if it's your fault.
So if it's your fault, you just you
got so busy and you neglected and you
forgot to set your alarm and you said,
oh, I'm gonna pray later and then you
forgot. Right? And you and you should have
been more careful. You're gonna be held responsible
for delaying.
If you totally forgot a prayer or you
slept through a prayer, but it wasn't in
your control,
right, you you didn't really have control, like,
literally you were so tired and your alarm
failed.
You couldn't get up. You're not gonna be
held responsible for that. So you're not gonna
be held responsible or accountable for missing that
prayer, but you need to make sure you
try to prevent it from happening again in
the future. So what do you do? If
you are bad with alarms
and the alarm doesn't wake you up for
Fajr, what do you do? Try second alarm.
If it doesn't work, you try 3rd alarm.
If it doesn't work, you get one of
those alarm clocks where when it goes off,
it shoots a little helicopter out and you
have to find that little helicopter in your
room, which is flown somewhere, and you have
to actually put it in the clock, otherwise
it won't turn off. Or you can get
the alarm clock like I have. I don't
use it but I have it. It has
actually a gun and you have to shoot
the target that pops up in order for
the alarm to turn off.
Or you get your next door neighbor to
bang on your door.
Or you get your mom and dad or
your wife or someone to throw water on
your face. You figure out something. You know
those,
what's it called, Rube Goldberg?
Anyone know the Rube Goldberg thing? He makes
these little funny contraptions where like this little
lever pushes this and a little ball rolls,
and then this thing moves around and all
that. Make whatever you want to make.
Something's gotta happen where you gotta wake up
somehow. So it's your responsibility
to figure out what can work. You say
well, you know I'm kind of a deep
sleeper.
If you had
a job interview
that day, you'd figure out a way to
wake up. If you had a final exam
which you're gonna fail your Bachelor's degree,
right, and you have to be there the
final exam, you'd figure out a way way
to wake up. If you had a court
case, you had traffic school, you had to
be in a court of law, otherwise you're
gonna be put in jail, you would figure
out a way to wake up.
Prayer is more important than that. So you
figure out some way to make sure that
you wake up or to make sure that
you don't forget. If you had a really
really important meeting, the most important meeting of
your life, you would never forget that meeting
and this is more important than the meeting
with any human being. So figure out how
you can do it inshallah and if you
need tips, you can ask people who have
the experience
on tips, where to buy these, you know,
target practice alarm clocks and all that stuff.
Amazon has actually a lot of these, different
type of alarm clocks. There's a ton of
them, and there's the ones you have
to solve puzzles.
You have to, like, actually do math problems
or solve a puzzle in order for alarm
to turn off, because it wakes up your
mind then. Right? Some people say that, you
know what? You should as soon as you
wake up a little bit, you should drink
some water. It helps your your body get
up so your mind starts getting up, and
there's so many other things you can do,
you know.
So try and cooperate with one another in
the household especially. So if if it needs
to be,
you throw the water and you're gonna be
really mad at them for the first 15
minutes, but afterwards you're gonna calm down real,
alhamdulillah, at least I've prayed my Fajr on
time. It's good.
So figure that out. If you realize,
that your prayer
was invalid
due to some reason,
for example, you didn't have voodoo,
you also need to make up your prayer.
So this is called makeup prayer. So if
you miss your prayer, you have to make
up make it up as soon as you
remember. If you realize you didn't have voodoo
or you lost your, you know, your prayer
was not valid for whatever reason, you need
to also make up that prayer. You're just
you're just doing this. It's called the makeup
prayer,
and remember
this is only
this only applies when you're certain about it.
You're certain that you you, you know, you
you didn't have your wudu or something, it
should not be based on doubts.
So some people really become obsessive compulsive about
this and they start thinking, well, I think
maybe I felt something.
Maybe I lost my wudu. I'm gonna repeat
it again. And then, again, they go and
pray and then, I think, you know, I
don't have a feel I have a feeling
maybe my wudu was not properly intact or
so. I'm gonna go pray again. Some peep
actually, you'd be surprised.
More than just some people fall into this
trap. So this should not be based on
just doubts.
But if you're sure, you're pretty sure that
you lost your wudu or whatever it is,
you need to repeat your prayers. So see
appendix 1 again for doubt and certainty issues.
It's very very important appendix to check out.
Okay. So it's actually recommended to make the
azan and make the a comma for a
missed prayer as well. K. So that is
recommended.
However, if you missed more than one prayer,
then you only need to make one azaan,
and you make a comma for the rest
of them. It's recommended for the missed prayers.
The prayers must be made up in order
that you've
missed, unless you miss more than 5 prayers.
So if you miss, let's say you miss
Zohar prayer and Asar prayer, and now it's
Maghrib time. You make sure to make them
up in order. Right. So that's important.
Okay. Yeah. So make them make them up
in order. Don't pray Assur first and Zohar,
obviously, unless you miss more than 5 prayers.
If you miss more than 5 prayers, you
can't even remember. You missed, like, a whole
week of prayer, for example. You try to
make up all of it, then you don't
have to go in order Fajr and then
Zuhr and then Asr then Maghrib, then again
Fajr of day 2 and then Fajr. So
you don't have to do in that case.
It's recommended to pray in order if you
can remember, but if you can't remember, that's
fine. You try and specify the missed prayers
as much as possible,
and keep in mind the the there's another
issue. Actually, I should have added this into
the book.
So when you're making a prayer,
let's say you missed the Asr prayer and
now it's Maghrib time.
So you should always try to pray in
order. So you should pray the Asr and
make up your Asr before you pray the
Maghrib prayer, with one exception. And that is
if you happen to be see a group
of people start praying and there's not gonna
be a second group of people praying afterwards,
then it's better to join the group and
then make up your prayer afterwards because you're
not gonna miss the group. So catching the
group is more important in this case. Okay.
Someone who's been raised in a non practicing
Muslim family
or been raised in a society
such that they were not taught how to
pray properly
or they were not really told about the
importance and the necessity of prayer
doesn't need to make up for all those
years of missed prayers that they've skipped,
but instead they should just ask Allah for
forgiveness.
So there's 2 opinion amongst scholars here. One
of them is you literally have to make
up for all those missed prayers. So if
you you if you were born in a
Muslim family
and, you know, you prayed for, like, a
little while then you stopped
10 years, and then all of a sudden
you decide, okay, I'm coming back to Islam.
I'm gonna do it now. You have to
make up 10 years worth of prayers. So
that's one opinion,
and the second opinion is that, you don't
need to make it up, especially
if you didn't really realize the significance of
prayer. You were never really taught properly because
unfortunately
in many parts of the Muslim world,
they're taught that prayer is
like a good thing.
It's it's nice if you do it,
but if you don't, you don't you don't,
you know,
the if you if you're it's not a
problem. There's many many parts of the world,
unfortunately,
many many parts of the world that have
have really neglected prayer.
Has anyone has anyone witnessed? Have you anyone
met people like that? Many many have. Right?
And and we're talking about it's not just
one region. Alright? I used to think it's
only like India, Pakistan, or something like
that. It's not.
Literally same problem in Malaysia, same problem in
Egypt, same problem in Africa, same it's scattered
throughout
the entire world, unfortunately.
So there are just certain, you know, people
who kind of
they're they're obviously they're Muslim and they come
Friday prayer is like
clear cut for everyone. You'd never miss a
Friday prayer but they don't realize that the
Friday prayer
attending the Friday prayer and the other prayers
are on the same level that you you
you gotta pray no matter what. It's not
just a Friday prayer that you have to
pray. So that's something that you should keep
in mind. So if someone was raised like
that and
now all of a sudden they have to
start making up 10 years of prayer as
soon as they decide, you know, what why
do I have really have to be accountable
for that? Now if someone intentionally
went away
so you know I don't want I just
I don't wanna practice Islam anymore, and they
go away for 3 months and then they
come back, kind of as a penalty if
they make up the 3 months it's better
for them, you know, because they intention they
already knew the importance of prayer. They knew
what they were doing. They were intentionally being
rebellious and all of that. So if they
make up the prayer that'll be good for
them. Otherwise, they ask Allah for forgiveness and
inshallah he'll forgive.
Okay.
Let's start with Jummah prayer and then we'll
take a break soon inshallah.
So Friday is the Jummah prayer.
The importance of praying in a group, we
already talked about the importance of praying in
a group. Whenever you can, it's important, should
be done.
But there's always gonna be some times throughout
the week
where people are gonna be occupied
and they cannot make it to the mosque.
They cannot make it in a group at
the same time. So if you think about
it,
someone
in some community
is always gonna be missing
at least a prayer here, a prayer there
in a group because of their job, because
of their occupation, because of something.
So the Friday prayer, the Jummah prayer, is
something to serve two purposes. 1, to get
all the Muslims
together in one prayer, in one locality, at
the exact same time. So while they take
off time from work, they put down, you
know, they they, you know, all the other
tasks that they're doing, They can stop all
of that and they can make sure that
they're coming for the Friday prayer. It also
serves
as a time where people gather together not
only to pray, but they gather together to
socialize a little bit. So there is a
socialization
aspect in the Friday prayer.
Unfortunately,
we don't get to
enjoy
the socialization aspect as much because Friday is
not a holiday
in America.
Some parts of the Muslim world it is
a holiday. Like in Pakistan it's holiday. Right?
Is it a holiday?
Or So I don't know if they had
one time they didn't have Fridays on Monday.
Oh,
not anymore. Yeah. So,
like, maybe Arabia is a holiday on Friday.
Right? So for for most people. Yeah. Jordan?
Jordan is like kind of like a holiday
as well. So there are quite a few
countries out there that they kind of have
like a half day or something or at
least at least like 3 or 4 hours
is a holiday,
you know, for that for that time on
Friday. So everyone every Muslim can go and,
you know, take their time and they can
socialize and they can have some lunch afterwards
and they can do this, they can do
that. So that's something that unfortunately, it's tough
in America
because you literally gotta leave work, go and
you literally gotta come right back to work.
So you miss the socialization part which is
part of the day actually. It's actually part
of that. So people should be meeting
each other. They're gonna find out who's sick
in the community, who's in need of something,
and they're gonna be praying together at the
same time. Now Friday is considered the best
day of the week for Muslims, and it's
a distinguishing
mark for Muslims.
Because you have, for example, the Jews they
observe Saturday, the Sabbath. So that's a distinguishing
mark for them. The Christians
observe Sunday.
Alright. Which is why
Saturday Sunday is a holiday in America. They
have this Judeo Christian,
tradition.
So or whatever other reason they have. So
it's, it's also a time to be reminded
about your duties as a Muslim and to
be conscious of Allah by listening to sermons.
So it's a it's a time for education
as well. You listen to the sermon, you
get reminded about Allah, you maybe learn something
new, you remember to renew your commitment to
Islam, something that we need on a regular
basis. On a we on a we need
on a daily basis but this is like
the minimum on a weekly basis. You got
so busy 1 week, you at least get
something in the week, some kind of reminder
that you need for yourself.
So who must attend? Who's absolutely
mandated to attend? It's all adult males.
So all adult males must attend the Friday
prayer. They don't have any excuse. The only
excuse they will have is if they're traveling,
if they're sick,
or they're gonna encounter some severe difficulty
if they had to attend the prayer. There's
only 3 excuses. So someone's not traveling and
they're not sick and they're not encountering some
severe difficulty,
they should not be missing. So what does
that mean? That means that actually
if
high school
youth
can take time off
on Friday,
it's better for them because they as long
as they're not gonna get kicked out of
school or the school will allow it or
something they should take time off. College students
on the other hand generally don't have much
of an excuse, but I have a footnote
here which I think is
which is it?
Yes. So first of all,
if you're sick, right,
or you're traveling,
or you have some emergency
thing going on,
what do you do if you can't make
it to the masjid to pray Jummah? You
pray your Zohar prayer instead because the the
Jummah is a substitute for Zohar prayer. So
when you when it's time for Jummah, you're
not gonna pray Zohar that day. You're just
gonna pray Jummah prayer. But if you can't
make it for Jum'ah prayer, you're gonna pray
Zohar prayer as 4 units like you normally
would.
Now
what is
considered to be,
a major difficult
If there's snow,
right, and it's heavy snow, such that it's
very difficult to even get to where you're
trying to go, or it's really really heavy
rain,
right, and it's kinda dangerous on the roads,
it's slippery. Not like the light rain we
get in California, but like a heavy rain
and it's actually gonna be a problem. Then
that's an excuse,
especially if you're in, like, a village where
it's very muddy and you have to walk
or something like that. We generally don't have
that problem here, at least where we live.
Very few people have that problem. But if
case is a major storm or something, you
don't have to attend the Jammat and you
can stay at home and you can pray
the Zohar prayer. So you don't have to
put your yourself in danger or something like
that. The second is when it's a student
at school or something like that, a student
who has, let's say,
a class,
right, first of all they should try not
to take classes at that time, but second
of all if they have a class,
what they can do is that day they
can ask the professor, hey. Can I, just
record your class with the mp 3 player
and I can listen to it later on?
Usually, they can skip out on the prayer
even if they have to. Let's say they
have a exam final exam scheduled that day.
They can also go and they can ask
their professor that you can delay it or
something. Let's say there's an employee and there's
an urgent meeting that, you know, that there's
a meeting every Friday and they need to
attend that meeting. They should have some courage
and ask first of all if they can
change that meeting time or something. But if
it's an urgent meeting and they're gonna lose
their job,
do you go to a school and your
teacher is discriminating against you or he just
doesn't like you or doesn't want to change
the policy, says no, I don't care. If
you don't come on Friday for your final
exam, you're gonna fail your entire class. Then
obviously that's gonna make life very difficult for
you, so you can be excused and you
can go ahead and praise Zohar in that
case.
But remember, you gotta try your best,
to try and figure out a way around
it. So I'm I'm mentioning that in detail
because some students
and some employees, they get a little bit
lazies. Oh, I don't feel comfortable asking my
boss. Why not?
You have a right, in California to do
something for your religious, practice. So you should
you should at least ask. You're not likely
to get fired,
and even if you do, by the way,
you can always
get reinstated. So in fact, I had a
friend of mine. He worked for, interestingly, the
Irvine company,
and he
it was actually partly his mistake because he
got hired at the company and he didn't
tell them before he got hired that he
would like to have he didn't even tell
them in the week that he would like
to have Friday off until Friday comes.
And then on Friday so it's his mistake.
On Friday he tells him, you know what?
I'm gonna be taking off from this time
to this time. Extended lunch break for religious
reasons.
You can't do that. We have a very
important company meeting. So well, it's my religious
obligation. I have to do it. So well,
couldn't you have let us know in advance?
Well, you know, I'm letting you know now.
I gotta go. So can't you start from
next week? No. I have to go now.
I said okay. Fine. If you go, you're
fired then. And he went. So Alhamdulillah he
went. I mean he has a he has
the care for Islam,
but he went and he got fired.
So what happened? He he went to civil
rights, Muslim civil rights group
and they fought for his case,
and he won after 2 weeks,
and he was reinstated,
and they had to pay him for the
previous 2 weeks as well. So it's true
that they should allow him to take that
time off. Of course, he should have been
a little bit smarter, but it means that
you have some rights. If this guy could
win this case, my point is if you
do things the right way,
you'll be okay generally as well. So just
keep that in mind.
So Friday prayer.
What are the conditions? The timing of Friday
prayer,
is exactly the same time
as the Lohr prayer and it should be
prayed it must be prayed within this time
frame. Now there is some difference of opinion
regarding the time frame.
K. There are some scholars who say it
could be a little bit before this or
even a little bit after this. So, like,
in our masjid, for example, because we have
2 Jumas, we're actually taking that other opinion,
which is not the opinion that you're learning
in this class. So if you learn in
this class all of a sudden, it has
to be in the Zohrab prayer and then
you come at 12:30 for Jum'ah this Friday
and you say, oh, what the heck is
going on here? You guys are teaching this
and doing this. There is another opinion. So
just keep that in mind. Alright.
In order
to have a Friday prayer, so it has
to be in the right time. So you're
not gonna pray it for your time. You're
not gonna pray at Maghrib time. That's absolutely
not allowed, but generally has to be in
Zohar time or there's some opinion where you
could pray before, you could pray a little
bit after.
You have in order for Friday prayer, you
have to have at least 3 people present.
And that includes the Imams. At least 3
people. So you can't if you have you
and your friend or somewhere
and you're at college and you say look,
we can pray outside of our class. You
give the Khutba and I'm gonna listen to
you. And trust me I'm gonna pay really
good attention because I'm the only listener.
You can't do that because you have to
have minimum of 3 people. So you can
go ahead and do the prayer if you
have 3 people.
You can where can you pray
this Friday prayer? You can pray in any
mosque, any building, even any open area. So
you can pray anywhere. Just like you can
pray a normal prayer, it doesn't have to
be in a specific area or a specific
masjid. That's a common misconception. It doesn't have
to be. So how do you conduct the
Friday prayer? So you should select an imam,
obviously.
Just like
group prayer, you select an imam. So here
you select an imam as well. The imam
is gonna be delivering 2 sermons and he's
gonna be leading the prayers.
So this is how they're supposed to do
it. So you choose the right person.
The first azan
is called at least a few minutes before
the sermon begins. So what happens is, few
minutes, kind of like you would normally do
for Zohar time, you call the azan for
the time of the prayer. So since the
Jummah prayer is the Zohar time prayer as
well, according to all mostly opinions, then you
call you you make the call for prayer,
during that time. Then the Imam,
afterwards, when he's ready to start, he's gonna
stand up, he's gonna face the congregation, he's
gonna face the people,
and he's gonna greet them, say Assalamualaikum,
and then he's gonna sit down.
So he just gets up, greets them, sits
back down,
and then someone will start calling the call
to prayer near the imam. So somewhere he's
gonna be standing near the imam, he's gonna
make the the second call to prayer. K.
So there's a first call to prayer in
the jummah and then there's a second one
as well. So he makes a second call
to prayer, he calls the azan the second
time
and then the imam is already sitting down,
he's ready to start, he stands
up and he starts delivering the first sermon.
So the first sermon is delivered by praising
Allah,
by saying Alhamdulillah
or Ashukrulillah
or any type of wording that's praising Allah
and praying for the prophet
and has to be done in Arabic.
So you can say Alhamdulillah,
say Assalah to Assalamu Ala Rasulillah,
You just sent peace and blessings upon the
prophet,
or you can say it in a different
way. Well, as long as it's, that part
is in Arabic
and you just praise Allah in any way,
however long or short it is, and you,
send peace and salutations on the prophet, that's
sufficient.
The rest of the sermon
can be in the local language
and it should include some type of admonition
to people and reminding them to be devout,
dedicated, sincere Muslims.
So that's it. You just have to make
sure that the rest of it has some
message for the people. It's gonna benefit them
and remind them about
Allah and remind them about it being being
a good Muslim.
So that's the first sermon. When the first
sermon is complete,
the Imam will sit down
for a moment and
the time he should be sitting down is
about the same time
where you would be sitting
between 2 prostrations when you're praying.
So that's about the length. And then he
gets back up,
no takbir, no Allahuaghbir, nothing. He just stands
back up and he starts delivering the 2nd
sermon.
The 2nd sermon has to be like the
first sermon. You have to praise Allah again.
You have to send peace upon the prophet,
and
you can also you can keep on adding
more,
admonition. You can give another lecture and it's
recommended that you follow it with a general
supplication, like a supplication,
a dua
for the believers and help the people who
are sick or help us or whatever it
is. Any type of supplication.
Once the second sermon is finished,
the imam will give a signal
that the prayer is about to, you know,
start. The sermons are done, the prayer is
about to start. And you'll see that the
imam usually says at the end,
So
means stand up for prayer. Let's get the
prayer started.
So once once that's ready,
then the person who is giving the azan
is gonna call the iqamah, and they're gonna
say the iqamah, the Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar,
the fast right before the prayer is gonna
start.
And the imam leads the people in a
2 unit prayer,
and this 2 unit prayer is actually gonna
be out loud.
Even though it's daytime and it's like Zohr
time, it's gonna be 2 units, but it's
gonna be out loud. So it's gonna be
very similar,
Exactly like which prayer of the 5 prayers?
Fajr prayer. Fajr prayer.
2 units out loud, Fajr prayer. Alright.
And it's recited out loud like Fajr because
of the large amount of people. We talked
a little bit about the reasoning behind it,
potential reasoning.
And this suffices for the Zohar prayer. So
whoever
joined the imam
before he completed the entire prayer does not
need to pray Zohar prayer.
So if
you if you come late to the prayer,
you come late to Jummah, you miss everything
and the imam is about to finish the
prayer, he's about to say salaam and you
start your prayer. You say you join him,
Allahu Akbar and you join, you sit down.
You caught the prayer,
you go ahead and what what are you
gonna do? Once he finishes the prayer, he
says, Assalamu Alaikum Rasool Allah. What do you
gotta do?
You stand up. Alright. And how many units
you're gonna make up? 2 units. Exactly.
If you
were the guy who came after that guy
and the Imam said, Assalamualaikumu
rahmatullahi,
and then you decide, okay I'm gonna start
now. You say, allahu akbar. You can't join
him anymore, you missed the prayer. What do
you gotta pray?
You pray Zuhr prayer 4 because you missed
the Jummah prayer already. You got to pray
4 and a Zohar prayer, the intention is
Zohar prayer. You missed the Jummah prayer completely.
That's why it's very important to take into
consideration traffic. Take into consideration
our parking lot size or your masjid's parking
lot size or whatever it is. Take all
of that stuff into consideration when you're trying
to come, and you should not be that
late anyways to Jummah. Some people have become
into the habit, they just come for the
prayer of Jummah. But Jummah is not just
a prayer. Jummah is the sermons and the
prayer as well. So you should be there
beforehand and there's a lot of blessings of,
attending and, of course, it's for your own
benefit too. So,
when it comes to delivering the sermons,
there's a lot of
flexibility
in how you deliver the sermons.
Right. The only requirements
are you have to have words praising Allah
and praying for the Prophet.
That's the only real requirements of the sermon,
and it's recommended that the Imam does not
make the sermons too long,
since there might be people who have things
to do and appointments and all of that
stuff.
So that's, something recommended.
What is the etiquette of the Friday prayer?
So it's recommended on Friday, highly recommended by
the way, not just recommended, but highly recommended
to take a bath on Friday, to make
a hussa, to take a shower or a
bath or something
before you come and attend the Friday prayer.
It's also recommended,
highly
recommended,
to not eat any garlic
or any onions
or anything else which is gonna emit like
a strong odor
because people are gonna be around you, they're
gonna be disturbed by this. So you should
try not to eat onions or garlic especially
on a Friday before coming for prayer
because it's people are gonna
because even if you brush your teeth and
all that, these are the two things where
the breath still, you know, you can still
smell it.
And in this
on this note,
you have to keep in mind that smoking
cigarettes
is actually prohibited in Islam.
So cigarettes, you would say that, you know
what,
their the odor is even worse. Not only
does it smell bad,
but it actually harms someone and causes cancer
to the person who's gonna be smelling, even
if you smoked 2 hours ago. It's on
your jacket. It's called third hand smoking. It
causes cancer to the person who's next to
you as well. It's been proven now recently.
So it's very important we realize that we
shouldn't be smoking either, which goes without saying,
but smoking is actually prohibited in Islam according
to the severe health effects that it has.
But if a Muslim decides to smoke anyways,
he says, you know, I don't care I'm
gonna do it anyways, They should never allow
that to affect the other people who are
coming to the masjid and be harmed by
that third hand smoke. So if you're gonna
do it anyways,
make sure that you never do that before
Friday prayer or when you're coming to the
masjid because people are gonna be bothered by
that and it's gonna disturb them. Yeah.
Before you arrive at the Masjid, it's also
recommended to brush your teeth
for the same reason.
Highly recommended to brush your teeth and also
recommended to wear perfume that day. So to
put on nice,
cologne scent or something like that perfume.
Friday is also a very good day to
cut your nails and to remove unwanted body
hair, which we're gonna cover in actually in
Islamic law
102 class. We cover that.
Probably next year I'm gonna
change that chapter and put it into the
1 zero one class, but for now you're
gonna have to wait. So we actually have
to, as a Muslim, we're supposed to be
cutting our nails. Let me just give you
a quick hint. You're supposed to be cutting
your nails and removing unwanted body hair, which
is the underarm hair,
the and the pubic hair for males and
females both. You should be doing it. It's
recommended to remove it every week,
and if you can't, you should never let
it grow more than 40 days. This is
directly from the profit. 40 days is the
maximum.
So your toenails, your fingernails,
your underarm hair and your pubic hair should
be trimmed or, like, trimmed very very small
or cut and shaved off completely,
at least
minimum
every 40 days, and that's why Friday is
a very good time to do it if
you can do on a regular basis. So
it's recommended to do that as well, especially
the nails, because and and that's for cleanliness
reasons because that dirt gets caught up in
the nails.
Toenail, same thing, and the bacteria and stuff
collects under the underarm hair and the pubic
hair and everything. So it's very important that
we follow these practices in Islam as well,
and that's mandatory. So if you exceed 40
days, it's sinful.
So never exceed 40 days.
Let's see.
No one's okay.
No one is allowed to talk during the
sermon.
So while the sermon is going on,
no one is allowed to talk and it
is sinful to talk while the Jummah sermon
is going on. Right. So it's this very
very important because so everyone can concentrate. That's
why it's been established that way.
So you should be very cautious about this.
Someone comes
and even says salaam to you, you're not
obligated to respond to their salaam, even though
normally you are.
Somebody comes say, hey, how are you doing?
Don't respond to them. You keep on focusing
on the,
sermon. So you it's it's that serious of
a thing. Right? So those people who are
that obviously, if you're not supposed to talk,
you're not supposed to be, like, chatting on
your cell phone either. Right? Or whatever it
may be. So it's very very important you
listen to the sermon. Now some people will
say, well, oh, well, what if the sermon
is boring or something? Well, you know what?
This is your test in patience
for the week,
and you can complain to the administration and
say, you know what? We need something. We
need a a person, an imam who's gonna
give a a sermon, which is, you know,
much better. So you can go ahead and
you can do that. And this is mainly
for the online people because at Masjid Omar
Farooq, we, of course, have awesome sermons. Right?
Hope hopefully.
So,
you could do that as well. Because that's
a common complaint. So, well, I don't wanna
be quiet because it's so boring, and I
don't like to come early because this and
that and that. Okay. You know what? Very
simple solution.
Very and you say, well, there's no other
imams in the community who can give a
good sermon. It's a very simple solution.
Join the College of Islamic Studies, get your
AA degree in Islamic Studies, and then we'll
actually teach you in the last class how
to publicly speak. You can go ahead and
give the sermon for all the online people,
as well as you guys. So, alhamdulillah. So
it's problem solved. Alright. So there's always be
proactive. So no one's allowed to talk during
the sermon.
If you see someone else talking,
you still shouldn't say, hey, you be quiet.
You're not supposed to be talking because that
counts as talking. You're not allowed to say
that either. So what should you do? But
you're allowed to gesture to them. So if
you see someone talking or something, you can
just give them a little gesture or something
like that. In fact, Abdullah ibn Amr, one
of the companions of the Prophet, he saw
one time, he saw someone talking during the
sermon and he knows that he's not supposed
to talk. So he took like, you know,
they were standing, they were outside praying. So
he took some of these little pebbles and
started throwing rocks at the guy. So
so maybe you don't have to do that
but you can do something. So you could
actually even though you can't talk, it doesn't
mean that you sit there and the guy
is talking, you're getting annoyed, you know. Why
is this person talking? But I can't say
anything to them. If I could say something,
I would tell you to be quiet but
I can't. It doesn't mean you can't gesture.
You can gesture. You can be like
and the guy's like, what? What? What? What?
What?
Just
what? What's going on? You can't talk to
them but you can gesture them. Okay?
Let
me see someone.
It's not allowed for anyone to conduct business
transactions during the sermon time, during the khudd
during the Jummah time. When the Jummah is
going on, you're not allowed to conduct business.
So if you're supposed to be praying that
Jummah, let's say you only have 1 Jummah
prayer, 1 sermon or 1 Jummah prayer in
your masjid,
No one should be standing outside who's supposed
to be inside and they're gonna be selling
some books or selling some food or something
like that. Everyone's got to be inside. So
it's very very important and that's directly based
on the Quran. Allah says that you leave
off your trade and you're selling and you
go for the Friday prayer.
It's recommended to pray 4 units
after the Friday prayer,
or it's also 2 units. So you could
pray either 2 units or 4 units after
the Friday prayer, which is considered recommended once
done. Any number of units can be prayed
before the sermon begins. You could pray 2
or you can pray 4 or you could
pray whatever.
However, once the Imam
begins the sermon, once the sermon has started,
it's actually disliked to start praying.
Okay.
Now, this is obviously the difference of opinion.
So there are some scholars who have said
Imam Shafa is one of the scholars who
says,
if you walk in late for the prayer,
you should start praying anyways.
So you walk in, the sermon is going
on,
you say Allah Akbar and you start doing
2 units of prayer
in order to greet the masjid, which is
called the
greeting the masjid prayer. So when you walk
into a masjid, it's recommended you pray 2
units of prayer for the first time you
walk in. So Imam Shafaa'i, he said,
even if the sermon is going on, you're
gonna go ahead and you're gonna start that
prayer anyways. The other scholars, most of the
other scholars, they said no. You're not supposed
to do that. In fact, it's disliked to
even pray. You walk in and you sit
down immediately and you start listening to the
sermon.
So
my the reason why I really,
prefer this opinion
is because I know the amount of concentration
that people can have during a prayer, while
the sermon is going on, it's gonna really
really impair their concentration.
So the prayer is usually one of the
weakest prayers that they've ever performed because they're
trying to especially if they if they're trying
to listen to the sermon and they hear
something interesting, they're completely distracted, and you're not
supposed to be praying while you're being distracted.
So that's one of the reasons why I
really feel that this opinion is,
it's better to be practiced.
Otherwise, the the value of your prayer is
generally not gonna be at the same level.
So that's something to keep in mind. But,
of course, keep in mind there is a
difference of opinion. So there is, you know,
some people are very strong about the other
opinion as well, and if you don't, if
you walk into a masjid and you sit
down they may even look at you and
like,
what the heck is this guy doing? They
can't talk to you though, right? Because the
sermon is going on, But they're looking at
you and they're like, why is this person
come and just sit down?
Right. So this guy doesn't know. This guy
doesn't know what the Imam Shafi'i's opinion was.
Right. But he knows the other scholars opinion.
So we're taking that opinion,
in this class. So I'm I'm this is
I'm very
rarely do I have a strong stance on
some opinions, but here I have a very
strong stance for the purpose of concentration only.
K?
Prayer when you're injured or ill. We have
that today too. Okay. Prayer when you're injured.
So if you're injured, you're seriously injured, you're
not able to stand up,
you're allowed to sit down
and perform your prayer,
but you have to make sure that you're
doing your bowing and your prostration
fully.
So what does that mean exactly?
That means is if you're injured, okay, let's
say you have some injury, you're gonna be
sitting on a chair or you're gonna be
sitting on the floor.
Right. But if the injury is restricted
such that you can only not stand, standing
is the only problem,
but you can actually get up from your
chair
and you could go straight into bowing position.
If you're able to do that, you have
to do full bowing position. If you're able
to go on the floor and perform prostration,
you have to get on the floor and
you have to perform prostration.
So this is, I think, is very rare
though. Right? Because usually when people have some
problem where they can't stand, usually they can't
bow either because bowing requires some type of
standing, half standing or something. But in case
there's a problem
with
only you standing,
you have to do everything but the standing
part. Alright. So just keep that in mind.
But usually, if you're not even able to
fully bow,
you can't do the you can't do the
prostration or the sajdah correctly or fully because
you have some injury, your back is hurting,
you have this problem or whatever it is,
then you don't even, you don't need to
stand and you perform the bowing and the
prostration through gestures.
So how does that work? So literally
let me show you what that's like.
So you're sitting on a chair.
Right?
So when you're sitting on a chair, you're
praying oh, let's say you can stand. Let's
say you can't stand, you can't perform it.
You're sitting and doing your prayer, you're gonna
make a gesture for bowing like this.
Right? And you're gonna make a gesture for
prostration
like this.
You know? Or you could go like this
or you could go like this, either one.
As long as
the prostration
gesture
is lower than the bowing.
So just make sure that you bend more
when it comes to the,
prostration, because obviously you're supposed to be lower
in that position. K.
So so here's the the little caveat.
So if you're unable to bow,
if you read this text very carefully, there's
some little hidden things in there. If you're
unable to bow or prostrate,
you're not able to bow or prostrate fully,
then you don't even need to stand.
So what that means is
that if you have a problem with going
down on the floor and you can't bow
or prostrate, and you say, but I can
stand. So I'm gonna stand for most of
my prayer,
and then I'm gonna go ahead and do
my other things on the chair, and do
my other motions. You don't have to. You
can, but you're not required to do that.
K?
You could do that through gestures.
Now remember, you you you must bow down
lower when you're doing the prostration
gesture. So that's a requirement, it has to
be lower.
If you can't even sit down,
okay, you can't even sit down and you
have an injury, you can't, you're allowed to
lie down and pray with gestures.
Right. So while you're lying down, how do
you lie down? How do you pray with
gestures? You have 2 options.
Either you lie on your back,
right, and your feet are gonna be facing
the Qibla, facing the direction of the Kaaba.
Which means that, you know, you if you
have a pillow, let's say you're on a
hospital bed. May Allah protect us. But you're
on a hospital bed, you put a pillow
up. If your feet are facing the Qibla,
your your face is actually somewhat towards the
Qibla as well. Right? So one way is
to lie on your back
and your face is towards the direction of
the qiblah, kind of. Right? And what you're
gonna do is you're gonna pray it with
gestures. So you're gonna be holding your hands
like this while you're lying down and you're
gonna maybe move your head like this for
bowing
and then you come back up and then
you move your head a little bit lower
for prostration
and that's it while you're lying on a
bed. So you can do that. Alright. If
you have,
if you you do whatever you can. If
you can barely even move your neck, you
can't move your neck much, you can just
move your neck a little bit like this.
And you can just do gestures,
as much as you can.
That's one option. The second option is you
lie on your side
with your face towards the qiblah. So another
way is you lie on your side,
on your right side, and you're gonna be
looking towards the Qibla this way. So whichever
one is more convenient for you, whichever one
you can do,
as long as you're facing the direction of
the the Qibla, the the Kaaba.
So prayer
remains an obligation
as long as you're conscious.
As long as you're conscious, you still have
to pray. If you can barely move, you
just pray through gestures or you could pray
even with your eye movements. Just move your
eyes as a movement and that'll be sufficient.
Or even if you can't move your eyes,
let's say you're completely paralyzed, you pray in
your heart. But if you're totally unconscious, obviously,
you're not going to be held responsible for
praying. That means that that's how important prayer
is.
Doesn't matter
what state you're in, what condition you're in,
it's still required for you to continue to
pray. And probably in that case it's more
important for you to actually pray.
If you find that it's painful, you're in
a hospital bed or something, it's very painful
for someone to move you into the direction
of the prayer, into the direction of Mecca.
And you'd you know, if you if they
were gonna try and help you move, it's
really really painful, you don't want to move,
you don't even have to face the direction.
You could face any direction that you're already
in, and you could pray that way anyways.
Whoever is unconscious
for 5 prayers or less
has to make them up after waking up.
So if you got knocked out, you missed
2 prayers, you wake up, you make up
those 2 prayers.
If you're out for longer than that, you
don't need to make up the prayers. So
if you go into a coma or something
for 3 days and then you come out
of the coma, you don't need to make
up those 3 days of prayers. Right? But
if you just faint or something for, like,
2 prayers, 3 prayers, you should make them
up if it's less than 5.
Okay.
So that's prayer while ill.
Do we have traveling? We have traveling. Okay.
Prayer while traveling.
So traveling
is considered to be a hardship for most
people
because it's physically exhausting.
It also disturbs people's eating patterns, their sleeping
patterns.
Even though we have such
luxurious means of transportation today, especially in the
past, traveling used to be really really tiring.
Imagine sitting on a camel or on a
donkey or something like that for a long
period of time, it's very very exhausting. Even
today, people sit on airplanes, very exhausting for
them. Sitting on a bus, going cross country,
it's very exhausting as well. So it's it's
not that easy. So it's it disturbs everything
in your life.
So in order to make life easier,
Allah has prescribed
special concessions for people who are traveling,
and only for only for people who are
traveling.
So the in the concessions that are included,
we've already learned some of them so far.
So what have we learned so far? When
it comes to wiping over socks,
what is different about a traveler when you're
traveling?
72 hours instead of
instead of 24 hour period. Okay.
What about,
well, we didn't we didn't talk about Shurah.
What about the Friday prayer? What's the concession?
Yeah, you don't have to pray the Friday
prayer, you can pray Zohar prayer instead. You
don't have to go and find the Masjid
if you're traveling. You don't have to, you
know, go off your route or something. You
can go ahead and pray Zohar prayer.
So the other things we didn't talk about,
we're gonna talk about shortening prayers right now.
You can actually shorten your prayers while you're
traveling, and when we talk about fasting,
you can actually skip your fasting and postpone
your fast in the month of Ramadan when
you're traveling. So there's a lot of concessions
that a traveler will get to make their
life a little bit easier because there's a
difficulty involved and Allah does not want people
to undergo unnecessary difficulty. That's not the purpose
of Islam. So to make life easier for
us, we're allowed to relax some things, right.
So what do we get? Shortening prayer while
traveling.
So when you are classified
as being a traveler,
right, all your 4 unit prayers
are reduced to 2 unit prayers.
K. So how many 4 unit prayers do
we have?
We have 3. Zohar.
What else?
Asar and
Aisha. So we have 3 4 unit prayers.
Those 3 4 unit prayers are shortened from
being 4 units to 2 units when you're
traveling.
So you start praying 2 instead of you
praying 4.
What about
Fajr prayer? It's 2. Do we cut it
in half and make it 1? Hi. Are
you excited? No.
We don't.
So we leave it at 2. What about
the Maghrib prayer? Do we make it 1
and a half? No. No. We don't make
it 1 and a half. You can't you
can't have a half unit prayer. Right? So
you leave it at 3. No. It would
be like a half. Yeah. That would be
interesting.
So let's see.
So this makes it easier for you to
finish your prayers even though you're not neglecting
your prayers. You're still praying to Allah, a
little bit easier for you. Now when you
make the intention
to start traveling,
what you're gonna do is you're gonna begin
by shortening your prayers
as soon as you leave your city.
So while you're going on a journey, you're
traveling to some, you know, far off place,
You're about to leave on a journey, right.
As soon as you make the intention to
travel,
and you're setting out, you start begin you
you you start shortening your prayers as soon
as you leave your city. So what does
that mean? That means that
you're planning on traveling to China.
You're about to board an airplane.
Right. You need to drive to the airport.
Okay. Now
the airport
is like 40 minutes from your house driving
time. K. It's like let's say, it's it's
about 40 miles away from your house.
So once you pack up your bags, you
put your bags in the car stuff and
you decide, you know what?
Can I start
shortening my prayer right now even though I'm
not actually traveling yet? I'm at home.
No. You can't. You can't start shortening because
you've not started your journey yet. Okay. I've
not started my journey because I'm still at
home. So now you start your journey and
you start traveling
and you make it to the airport.
While you're at the airport, the airport is
only 40
miles from your house. If you were to
drive to the airport
just because they have if you were to
drive to the airport to pick up your
in laws
are you considered a traveler?
No. The airports you're not you're not traveling
to the airport. You're driving to the airport.
It's it's not that far from you. So
since you've not technically
traveled very far, but you're at the airport,
you're not really that far, you know, on
your journey, are you allowed to start? And
the answer is yes.
If you have the intention
of traveling to China, for example,
because you're you're intending to have a long
distance you're gonna be traveling, you've started on
your journey.
As long as you've started on your journey
and you've crossed your own city,
your journey has begun.
If you decide all of a sudden, we're
gonna go ahead and
we're gonna start our journey and you leave
your house and you go to the nearest
gas station which is down the street.
And you say, well technically we started our
journey. Right? So let's go ahead and pray
at the gas station and we're gonna shorten
our prayers.
You can't do that. Why? Because you're literally
next door. You could just go back home,
enjoy the convenience of your own home. You've
not really started your journey yet. So it's
considered that you started your journey once you
bypass your own city that you live in.
Once you cross your own city and you're
on your way for a long journey, you're
considered a traveler from that moment on and
you can start. So if you need to
get gas on the way and you've already
been driving for 20 30 minutes,
you can go ahead and start shortening your
prayers at that gas station or wherever it
is. Okay.
So this,
concession, this reduction of prayer going from 4
to 2, it will last
until you return to your city, until you
come back to your city. So when you're
on your way back home,
if you enter into your city and then
you stop by the masjid
of your local city, right, and your home
is like 10:20 minutes away
and you walk into the Masjid and you
say, well technically we've not returned home yet
because we stopped by the Masjid to pray.
Do you shorten your prayers? No, because you're
back in your city, right. So you technically
you return home. So your home is your
city right now. So you're back home, you
don't shorten your prayers,
And this is a very common, you know,
thing that people do. So they come and
they delay and they delay and they delay
their prayer, and then they come back, and
they're right about to arrive at home. So
before we arrive at home, let's just stop
by somewhere and pray on the way so
that we can get the prayers a little
bit shorter or something. That's not a good
practice to have.
So, this lasts until you come back to
your city
or
until you enter
an area that a destination
where you plan on staying there for a
significant amount of time.
You plan on remaining there. So let's say,
for example, you're going to China, but you
have a stopover
in London,
and you're gonna be chilling out in London
for a few weeks,
but your ultimate destination is China.
So if you're sitting there in London, technically
you're not a traveler anymore. Right? Because you're
you're staying there for quite a while. You
have a you know, you're gonna be having
a place to stay. You're gonna be having
all these things. So in that in that
case, you're not really considered a traveler. So
how many days do you have to stay
in a place
in order for you to be considered a
resident now and you're not a traveler? So
there's a difference between a resident and a
traveler. So how many days do you actually
need
to have the intention of staying in a
place?
Well, scholars have differed
and there's not so much clear cut. So
the the estimation is somewhere between 4 20
days.
Between 4 If you intend to stay between
4 20 days in one place, then that's
the
that's when you become a person who's not
a traveler anymore, so you don't shorten prayers
anymore. Okay. Now what should you do if
I'm not telling you which opinion to follow?
So really I think the best thing is
the traveler needs to decide
which
range
to go with
based on how much hardship is really involved,
in their in their travel. So, like, for
me, for example, to be honest with you,
when I travel, you know, cross country or
something like that, if I stop by if
I stop one day or 2 days and
I have a nice hotel or something,
I consider myself I'm I'm in comfort and
I'm in luxury,
and, I can go ahead and don't need
to shorten my prayers. But especially while I'm
on the way, I'm traveling, I'm in the
airport or something like that, that's definitely
in the middle of travel. You shorten your
prayers. So you have to make that decision,
yourself,
and it's recommended to not set this limit,
greater than 15 days because that's the
Hanafi schools opinion, which is actually the most
liberal of all the the 4 schools on
this issue. So try to try to stick
between 4 to 15 days. That's my advice.
Try not to say more than 15 days.
So if you're gonna be staying in a
place for that period of time, you go
ahead and you make the intention for that.
Alright.
If,
if you're unsure of how long you're gonna
be staying and you predict that you might
leave any day,
you can keep on shortening your prayer even
if it lasts for a few months. So
you're in a you're you're stuck in London,
and there's no airplane back to your hometown.
And you're waiting. You say, you know what?
Maybe tomorrow's the next flight.
You go ahead and shorten. Then the next
day, you didn't get the flight. You said,
maybe tomorrow's the next day. Tomorrow's might be
the next flight, and you don't get your
flight. And you keep on shortening and shortening
for an entire month.
Technically, you were staying, but you had this
uncertainty. You didn't know that you were gonna
stay that long. So you can keep on
shortening for as long as you need to,
if you don't know how long you're actually
gonna be staying and it's not the circumstances
not within in your hands.
Alright. If a traveler,
a person who's traveling,
is praying behind an Imam who's a resident,
meaning the Imam is not traveling.
Right. What's gonna happen?
The you're supposed to be praying 2 for
Zohar. Right? Let's say you're praying Zohar. You're
a traveler. You just travel to China and
the Imam in China of the Masjid, you
go to the Masjid and you're going for
Zohar prayer. The Imam is gonna pray how
many units?
4. And you're supposed to pray how many
units by yourself?
2. So if you're praying behind the imam,
what do you do? You pray 4 and
you follow the imam. You you don't you
don't just stop after 2. You go ahead
and you make the intention. You're you're following
the imam.
You're gonna pray 4 units, not even though
you were supposed to pray 2.
If the Imam is a traveler, you go
to China
and the Imam is so nice or the
Imam didn't show up that day or something
and you're asked to lead the prayer. You're
a traveler. You're supposed to pray how many
for Zohr prayer?
2. So you're leading the prayer,
but the Chinese Muslims of that Masjid are
supposed to pray how many?
4. Now what do they do? So you're
leading the prayer, they come in, they're praying
behind you, you're still gonna pray 2 because
you're supposed to pray 2. So you pray
2 and you finish your prayer. And what
they're gonna do is they're gonna stand up
and they're gonna make up 2 more because
they're supposed to be praying 4.
And now you already know how to make
up those 2 extra units.
So that's it. That's the way it works.
It's recommended
that the Imam
make an announcement
that they are a traveler
before the prayer and after the prayer so
that no one gets confused, and this is
very important practice. So you should
this will distinguish,
a CIS student from a non CIS student.
You should be very careful. So if you're
gonna be leading a prayer, make sure that
you make an announcement before the prayer so
the people know, right, that you're out from
out of town, you're a traveler, and you're
gonna be praying too so that they know
what's going on so they don't get confused.
Right? And after the prayer is done, you
also make an announcement and you do it
immediately. Yeah? You don't say, Assalamu Alaikum WaRahmatullahi.
And then you start doing your zikr, and
then afterwards,
oh, by the way, guys, I just wanna
let you know that I was a traveler.
Let them know immediately. So the moment you're
done, Assalamu Alaikum Rahmatullah.
Assalamu Alaikum Rahmatullah. You turn around and you
tell the people, I'm a traveler, so complete
your prayers. Whoever is not a traveler, please
stand up and complete your prayers because I'm
traveling.
And the reason why that is, you say,
well wait a minute, if you already made
the announcement in the beginning, why make the
announcement in the end again?
Some people join late and if they join
late, they're gonna be confused because if they
join late and they pray
one unit of prayer with you, they're gonna
be wondering what's going on, right, when you
finish. Like, what what's what's happening? So it's
very important,
for you to do that. Alright.
It's recommended, but it's it's highly recommended.
If you miss a prayer while you're traveling,
what do you do? It's considered to be
like a debt.
So in a debt, what do you do?
You make up the debt the way that
it was due.
Alright. There's no interest and there's no reduction
in the debt. So that means that you
make it up as 2 units even if
you come back home. So you are traveling,
you missed Asr prayer and you come back
home it's Maghrib time. Right. And now you've
returned back. You need to make up your
Asr prayer,
but you're home now. So you're not traveling.
So do you pray 2 or you pray
4?
2.
Because
you owed 2 units of prayer
and there's no increase or decrease. No interest
and no discount.
So whatever you owed Allah at that time,
you owed him 2 units of prayer, you're
gonna still use 2 units of prayer. If
you missed a prayer
while you were at home,
You missed Zohar prayer and then you go
on a journey, start traveling, and now it's
Asar time. And you say, well, I'm gonna
pray Asar 2 units, but I need to
make up my Zohar prayer first. How many
units of Zohar are you gonna pray?
4. Exactly.
Right. There's no no discount on that. Right.
So you're gonna go ahead and pray it
that way.
What is the minimum distance for traveling? So
how do you define what a journey is?
Alright. So this has been a lot of,
debate,
in books of Islamic law among scholars and
everything, and I think the opinion that I've
taken in this class is that there's no
specific definition of what a journey is.
There's no specific mileage or specific anything.
You have to decide and judge
what you consider a journey or a traveling
is,
according to the mode of transportation,
according to the difficulty you're gonna you're gonna
undergo, and according to the circumstances you're in.
And this is actually the opinion of Sheikh
Ibn Taymiyyah and some other scholars as well.
So scholars have tried to set certain limits
just to make life easier for people, so
they don't have to really think about it.
But the problem with that is that the
means of transportation have changed in the last
century drastically.
We have airplanes and we have cars now,
which go way faster than anything has ever
been in the past and there's so many
variables to consider,
right, when you're traveling. The variable is a
plane. If you travel by a plane, you
travel by ship, you travel by car,
that all makes a difference in how much
difficulty you're gonna experience.
If you're traveling in traffic
compared to no traffic, that's gonna make a
world of difference. Like LA traffic is very
interesting, right. So it's gonna make a world
of difference on how much difficulty whether you're
gonna pull off the freeway, you're not gonna
pull off the freeway. So it's best I
recommend nowadays is not set restrictions,
but let people try to determine whether they're
traveling or not. So how do you figure
it out?
Here's a good way to determine if you're
traveling.
Right. So you have to figure out, am
I classified
according to common sense
as being a traveler or not? So I
gave you the example.
If you drive to the airport to pick
up your friends. Right. Do you say, well,
I'm going on a journey
to pick up I'm going on a journey
to the airport to pick up my relatives
and then come I'm returning back from a
journey.
Don't say it's a journey. Right? So it's
it's
here are some following things. So,
if most of these apply,
then you're probably considered a traveler. Not all
of them, not just one of them, most
of them apply. Number 1. You've traveled at
least 50 miles.
One way.
Okay. So you travel one way 50 miles.
Number 2.
You would actually describe yourself to someone else
when you're talking to them that you're traveling.
So for example, when you tell someone, well,
I work 80 miles away.
Your job is 80 miles and there are
many people who actually work 80 miles and
they drive every day 80 miles one way,
80 miles back. So when you're going, you're
telling someone, you say, oh, well, you you
you actually drive that many miles? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I go on a journey of 80
miles and I return back home from my
journey. You wouldn't say that. You say I
commute 80 miles to work and I commute
back. You don't you don't describe that situation
as I'm setting out on a journey. Right?
So that's second way.
Number 3, you generally you're gonna pack your
bags
some supplies
for the journey ahead of you. If you're
driving 80 miles to work, you don't pack
your, you know, suitcase or something like that
and I need a pair of clothes and
everything so you're not traveling.
You let your neighbors generally know that you're
going on a journey. Now you say, you
know, I'm leaving for a while.
You don't say, I'm leaving, by the way,
for work this morning. It's 80 miles. I
wanna let you know. I'll be back. Please
take care of my plants and, you know,
make sure everything is fine. And you've left
your city or your county of residence
and you've crossed into another city or another
county.
Right. So you have to make sure that
you're because sometimes,
you know, there's so many let's say you're
stuck in traffic.
It can take you sometimes 3 hours to
get to one location, but you're literally in
the same county. You haven't even really caught
cross county lines. There's so much traffic. You're
not really considered a traveler.
Traffic is horrible, but you're not traveling really.
So it takes a lot of time or
you traverse a lot of miles, but you're
not really traveling. So here are some guidelines
and you at the end of the day,
you gotta figure out whether you're considered a
traveler or not. And, you know, if you're
if you're in doubt,
it's always better to
on the side of
you consider yourself traveling or not traveling.
Not traveling, which is very similar if you're
confused about another issue you on the side
of when it comes to menstruation.
When you're when you're we're deciding whether you're
in menstruation or it's abnormal bleeding, it's better
to on the side of which one?
But which one which one leads you to
pray?
Abnormal. You say it's abnormal bleeding. So it's
better to on the side of saying this
is abnormal bleeding and you go ahead and
you pray. Alright.
What about air travel?
Is that here too? Yeah. So we Michelle,
we got a lot to cover. So air
travel.
When you're traveling on an airplane
or even on a train, for example,
it's better to delay the prayer
if you're gonna reach your destination
before the time of prayer is over. So
that's what's recommended. So you have a 1
hour flight and you know you're gonna reach
in time, it's better not to play on
the air pray on the airplane. When you
arrive, you can pray in the airport, and
you're gonna be fine. It's better not to
pray on an airplane when the time of
prayer is still gonna be there, that is
a short flight.
Okay. But there's a few factors which may
dictate concessions.
So if you have to pray because
you can't fit it in in that time,
what do you do? Well, number 1, you
have you have 3 issues that you need
to deal with when you're traveling on airplane.
Number 1, you need to figure out where
you're gonna pray. There's no space on the
airplane. Number 2, you have to determine the
right direction of the qiblah.
And number 3, you have to calculate the
timing for the prayer. So how do you
deal with these 3 variables? So there's 3
things you need to figure out.
Finding space to pray,
if there's not enough space to perform the
prayer
or if you're not allowed to stand in
those areas,
and usually if it's a small plane or
normal plane, you're not actually allowed to be
standing in the aisle ways and walkways and
stuff like that,
then in that case,
you should pray in your seat
and you should gesture for bowing and prostration
just like an injured person.
You stay in your seat and you make
the gestures like we talked about.
Determining the right direction. So if you do
have space
to bow and to prostrate, like, for example,
you have a Masjid on the plane or
you're in 1st class or
you're the pilot's friend or whatever it is.
Right? You have space, then you actually have
to try to determine the direction of prayer.
The question is why? If you're sitting down
in your seat, why don't you have to
determine the direction of prayer?
Because you you can't move. Right? So you
can't pray sideways in your chair. So let's
say the direction of prayer was this and
you figured out it was this way.
Especially in economy, you're not gonna be able
to, like, sit like this and you really
make your prayer much. Right? So you're you're
not burdened with trying to figure out, like,
you're a little bit this way, a little
bit that way. You can scoot a little
bit, but you don't have to do that.
So but if you have space, you gotta
try to determine the direction of prayer
and how could you do that. We ask
a flight attendant
and usually the flight attendant, I'll tell you
from experience, says I have no idea. So
then you say, can you please ask the
pilot? Because the pilot better know what direction
we're going in. Otherwise, we're in big trouble.
Right? So they can go ahead and ask
the pilot and figure out what direction you're
in. Or if you're on one of those,
if you ever flown,
let me think. What is it? Emirates
Virgin Atlantic TV screens, and one of the
channels shows you the direction you're traveling in.
So that makes your life a lot easier,
or other ones which have the in flight
entertainment system.
So you figure out what the direction is
and you go ahead and you
face that direction and you pray in that
direction.
Assuming that if if you're in an airplane,
airplane is not gonna be making very sharp
turns. So you go ahead and you pray
in that direction. If you're on a boat,
the boat is gonna be moving around and
making turns. If you know that the boat
is turning around in different ways, you're actually
gonna be moving with the direction if you
know the direction of
the prayer. Let's say for example you're on
a boat and the boat is taking off.
Hypothetically, it's a rare situation where you're going,
and you know that you're supposed to be
praying the direction of Qibla, it happens to
be towards the land. And all of a
sudden the boat starts moving this way, and
you see the land moving. So you're actually
gonna be moving in the direction, other direction,
and adjusting according to the qibla, if you
can. If you can.
If there's no space you can just go
ahead and pray in any direction that your
seat happens to be facing because you can't
turn around at that time. Okay. Now how
do you calculate the time for prayer? So
this is actually the real tricky part. How
do you calculate the time for prayer? Well,
to be honest, it's not that difficult to
determine 3 of the prayers,
and that is the Fajr prayer, you can
kind of figure it out just by looking
out the window.
Alright. The Maghrib prayer, you can figure it
out by looking out the window.
And the Isha prayer, you can figure out
by looking out the window. So what do
you look for in Fajr prayer?
Yeah. But you're not gonna be able to
see the little thread of light when you're
in the sky. What what what would you
be seeing generally?
If you see the sun, you miss Fajr
prayer.
Right?
So what should you be looking for?
You look for any
faint traces of light.
Right? You look for any type of faint
traces of light but not sunrise
after post sunrise light.
Like,
the it's starting the darkness is starting to
go away and lighten up. That's where you
fajr prayer. Right? So you can figure that
out. You just spend one day without traveling,
and you watch the whole fajr time, and
you'll you'll get it. You'll say, okay. That's
what I'm supposed to look for. And then
when the sunrise comes, you say, oh, that's
what the sky looks like when the sun
is risen, when there's actually sunrise. You know
exactly what to look for. You just do
it one day as an experiment and you'll
figure it out. Mulga repair, what do you
look for?
You look for but you're not gonna see
the sun setting
from your window. Right? Or something like that.
What are you actually gonna be looking for?
You're looking for the colors, the shades. So
you're gonna be seeing red so that you
know that you know the sun is probably
set and it's it's starting to become red
and red and the white glow is starting
to come. That's when you know Maghrib time
has come in. And then Isha prayer, what
do you look for?
You just look for darkness. Right? So when
it's dark, it's Isha time.
You got that part down. The difficult thing
will be
is figuring out the Zohar prayer and the
Asar prayer. Right. So how would you figure
that out? Well, there's a few ways. Either
you could ask the flight attendant to check
for you what time zone you're in, and
you could look up the prayer times for
that region,
or you could actually look at your little
map and figure out which region are you
in and figure it out. There's a Malaysian
company that actually did something really cool. There's
a website there where you put in your
flight
number
and they already have all the flights calculated
for you. Put your flight number in and
they already know where you're gonna be at
what time and they give you a list
of prayer times. You can print it out
and take it with you and say, this
is the on your watch, your
your, port of port of what do you
call it? Not destination, your port of
port of departure. Yeah. Your departure location,
you it'll tell you according to your clock,
this time to this time is the Zohr
prayer when you're gonna be over this region
and this time to this time is this
prayer when you're gonna be over this region.
It's amazing,
So they're I think they're developing an app
right now.
Once that gets,
you know, on on its ground, it's gonna
solve the problem for everyone. You won't need
to worry about that. And while you're waiting
for them, if they haven't done it properly
yet, this is a great app idea.
If you do this app, I guarantee I'll
pay a dollar. I'll pay I'll pay $5
for this app. So if you develop the
app, I guarantee I can convince at least
another 500 people or so to pay. So
you just made
$25100
if you developed the app.
So if you guys should consider,
doing something like that.
So it would be really awesome. Even if
you just calculate even if you just put
a a port of destination
port of,
you know, departure and destination
and you put the hours of how many
your flight because every flight ticket tells you
that And you figure out the flight route
and you just give them the approximate times,
this would be an amazing service. And the
thing is it's not difficult. Like, this is
difficult to ask the flight attendant and figure
it out and all that. I have a
feeling that within 5 years, when this app
becomes popular,
this is gonna be, like, why didn't we
have this 10 years ago? Why did the
Muslims take so long to develop this? It's
like zabiha.com
and these apps. Right? You don't have any
problem finding a halal restaurant anywhere now. This
is a piece of cake now. So we're
a little bit late in this. We should
we should have developed this literally a few
years ago, and we're still kind of behind.
So if you know some programmers,
you get them, you know, cracking. Otherwise, we
just gotta wait for the Malaysians to do
the job for us. Right. So,
so that's that.
So Zohr and Asr can be a little
bit tricky, but here's another thing to make
your life easier. So you're actually allowed to
combine prayers
when you're travelling
as well.
K. So it's, of course, it's always recommended
to pray every single prayer on time, but
when you're traveling and you're actually facing a
little bit more difficulty
when you're traveling,
you can combine
2 prayers. You can combine the Zuhr and
the Asr prayers,
and you can combine the Maghrib and the
Isha prayers. So what does it mean to
combine them? It means to pray them back
to back
in the same prayer time.
K, in the same prayer time. So you're
praying them together
in either one of their time. So you
take the Zuhr and the Asr prayer, and
you can pray it in the prayer timing
of Zuhr,
or you could pray in the prayer time
of Asr.
So that means you're actually praying Asr early
if you combine it in the time with
Zuhr.
And if you combine it with Asr, you're
actually praying the Zuhr prayer late,
but it's not sinful because you're allowed to
do this only when you're on a journey
and it's recommended that you only do it
when it's a little bit difficulty involved in
it. Not just normal travel but a little
bit more difficulty.
But remember one thing, you have to have
the intention
to combine
before the time of Zohar is finished.
That's really important. So you shouldn't be negligent
and say, oh, yeah yeah yeah. I'm gonna
I'm gonna pray I'm not gonna combine. I'm
gonna pray Zohar as 2 units and I'm
gonna pray Asar as 2 units. And then
the time is going, time is going. You
went ahead some lunch with your friends. You
totally forgot and you looked, oh, man. It's
Asar time. We totally forgot the prayer. Oh,
don't worry. I'm a traveler. So I'm gonna
go ahead and combine the 2 prayers together.
But you didn't have the intention to do
that before the time elapsed. So you actually
neglected your prayer. So that's something that you
should make sure you have the intention to
do. Otherwise, that's very common for people. They
get very lazy when it comes to traveling.
Oh, I can always combine my prayer. It's
not a big deal. It's not a not
a good habit. You need you need to
have the intention first.
And you can also combine the Maghrib and
the Isha prayers,
and you could do it in either of
their times.
So you could pray Maghrib and Isha together
in Maghrib time, or you could pray Maghrib
and Isha together
in the Isha time.
So,
and there should not be a long gap
between these two prayers when you're combining. You
should pray them, like, back to back. Right.
You don't pray 1 and then 1 hour
later you pray the other one, but it's
in the same time. So you should pray
them together.
Now
if you
avail of this,
it solves your airplane problem
of determining the prayers of time. Right? If
you can't figure out the prayer timings and
you're on a long flight, you're on a
12 hour flight, you're on a 18 hour
flight, and you say, well, how am I
gonna figure out what the Zuhr time is
and the you can just all you need
to do is you figure out
post afternoon. You figure out, you know what?
This is we're probably in the afternoon time.
The the noontime has passed probably. It looks
like it based on all my calculation, approximate,
and everything, I can go ahead and combine
the 2 prayers at that time. Combine the
Mozgib and Isha prayer, get some sleep. Fajr,
you just gotta make sure you wake up
for Fajr prayer and you try and you
gotta calculate the Fajr prayer. It's a little
bit tricky, but you try and calculate anyways.
Right. So that
helps you. My general advice or my my
personal practice is
that I combine
prayers when travelling
when there's actual difficulty involved,
like, actual difficulty. So we're travelling, for example,
and we're on a bus and we don't
want the bus to stop again and we
wanna, you know, keep on travelling and going,
we're gonna go ahead and do the combining
the prayers. Once you arrive in a hotel
room or you're at a conference or something
like that,
you know, what I do is I go
ahead and
shorten the prayers, but not combine the prayers.
Okay.
And this I think is a good practice.
Interestingly, I actually,
I actually got this practice from, Sheikha Asarqaldi,
who's a very, prominent figure in America and
I think it's a very good opinion. It's
a very balanced stance, and it's actually the
opinion of Sheikha Bintemiyya as well. Alright.
Do we have more today?
No? Okay. So we're done.