Mustafa Umar – Islamic Law Fiqh 101 Essentials Of Islamic Practice #7
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The importance of praying for the died economies and avoiding misses a prayer is emphasized in Islam. The speakers stress the need to delay witter until the last 1 third of the night and recite the Lord's recitation before waking up at night. Credit cards and banks are discussed as convenient for accessing money and avoid mistakes. Representatives emphasize the importance of finding an exception to the rule and consulting a specialist before taking further actions. The speaker also discusses the use of banks and the need for an exception to the rule. There is a focus on researching Islam and class updates, with a focus on finding an exception to the rule.
AI: Summary ©
Alright.
So any questions from the quiz?
No? Okay.
Alright. So we covered, quite a few topics
last week.
We covered the well, actually these are the
sort we're gonna cover this week. So we
covered quite a we covered traveling, we covered
different types of prayers and all of that.
So now we're gonna move on and we're
actually gonna be going until the end of
this book. So we're gonna be finishing the
Guide of the Believer book, and then we're
gonna be moving on to a different topic,
insha'Allah ta'ala,
Allah willing. So the extra prayers,
which we didn't start,
we have to realize that we talked about
the 5 daily prayers,
and we talked about the Friday prayer as
well.
But the 5 the Friday prayer substitutes
for the which prayer?
For the Zohar prayer. Right. So it's considered
either it's gonna be an obligatory prayer for
the males, for the females they have to
pray Zohar anyways. So it's still considered in
the realm of necessary, mandatory, obligatory prayers.
But then there are extra prayers in Islam
and that is that besides these 5 prayers,
there are other ones which are recommended that
Muslims should pray whenever they have an opportunity
to do so.
Now they're classified in different things. Some of
them are considered highly recommended
and you should try to pray them all
the time, and other ones are considered to
be just recommended or encouraged whenever you get
the opportunity.
You know, you can go ahead, you have
the time, you feel like you need to
perform it, you go ahead and you perform
it. So we'll start with one of the
most important prayers
and that is known as the witter prayer.
Witter literally means odd.
Right, meaning like the odd number instead of
the even.
So it's gonna be performed in odd number
of units.
So you notice that most prayers throughout the
day, the Fajr prayer
is odd or even.
Even has 2 units. Zohr prayer, even.
Asr prayer, even. Aisha prayer, even. Except Maghrib,
most of the prayers are even. So this
is witter prayer is known as the, an
an odd prayer because it has an odd
number of units in it, kind of like,
the Maghrib prayer. And actually one of the
ways to pray it is very similar to
the Maghrib prayer. So this is one of
the most emphasized prayers that you find in,
Islam after the 5 daily prayers. So it's
something that we should really make a habit.
If you wanna start doing extra good deeds,
you wanna start doing other things, you should
first make sure your wither prayer is down
because this is a top priority for you
in your life. Right? So you can pray
wither prayer anytime after you pray your Isha
prayer. So the timing for the Wittir prayer
is after Isha,
but it's not after the timing for Isha.
It's in the time frame of Isha, but
after you've prayed your Isha prayer.
Right? So anytime you prayed after your Isha
prayer, but before the time for Fajr enters.
So anytime in this the time span of
Isha prayer, which is what, by the way?
What is the time span for Isha prayer?
It begins when? No. Not an hour and
a half after Maghrib. Every time zone differs.
So we said, how do you specifically know
that the time for Isha has come in?
When the dark starts, but that's not clear
enough. More more clear. When the white not
white light, yeah, the the the brightness the
white brightness in the sky has disappeared.
The glow, the white glow in the sky
has disappeared and the night comes in. So
meaning, night comes, but what defines night?
Means that white glow is gone in the
sky. Right. So that's the definition of,
when Isha starts. And when does Isha end?
Right. But wait, what is fajr? The white
line?
Right. What's that called
in in in English?
Not sunrise.
It's very it's often it's easy to confuse
it with sunrise. It's dawn. Right?
So the winter prayer time begins when the
white
glow in the sky goes away
and it ends when,
you know, when the dawn comes. So you
could pray anytime between then, but the one
condition is you have to pray Isha first.
You have to pray your Isha first. K.
So you could do it anytime
after you pray your Isha prayer. Now it's
recommended
to delay your winter prayer until the last
1 third of the night.
That's what's considered to be recommended.
So what is the last 1 third of
the night? Well, if you consider what night
is, you consider sunset and you consider
dawn.
Right? Or yeah. Dawn pretty much. And you
take that time and you divide it into
3 portions.
Let's say 3 hours each for example depending
on the season. The last third of it,
which is about 2, 3 hours before Fajr
prayer, before dawn, that's considered the recommended time
to pray with him. Now that's only
if you're
used to waking up early, right. If you're
if you're in the habit, you know you're
gonna wake up, but a lot of people
they try and say, okay, I'm gonna try
and pray in the recommended time. I'm gonna
wake up
3 o'clock in the morning, 4 o'clock in
the morning, but you don't end up waking
up. You miss it quite often.
So if that's the case, it's better to
simply pray the winter prayer before you go
to bed at night, because you're allowed to
pray at that time as well. So you
can pray before you go to sleep at
night so that you're not gonna miss this
prayer.
Now there are several ways to actually pray
the winter prayer,
and one way to perform it, which is
a very easy way to learn it, it's
very similar to the Maghrib prayer. So the
Maghrib prayer, you know, is 3 units.
Right? With, in in almost the same way,
same shape, same form as praying the Maghrib
prayer. So what you do is, in the
first unit,
you're gonna recite al Fatiha,
and then what do you normally do in
the in the first unit of Maghrib prayer
after you recite Fatiha?
More verses of Quran. You can recite whatever
you want. So in the winter prayer, it's
recommended to recite Surah Al A'la,
if you know it.
Otherwise, you could recite anything. It doesn't it's
just recommended. It's not a requirement. So you
could go ahead and recite whatever else you
want to do. In the second unit, when
you stand up, you're gonna recite Fatiha. You
can recite any other Surah, but it's recommended
to recite Al Kafirun in the second unit,
which is one of the shorter ones. So
it's pretty easy to memorize, kuliya e hulkafirun.
And then what you do is after you
recite
Quran,
after you're done in the second unit, you
you you sit like normal. You stand up
for the 3rd unit after you're sitting and
everything. And in the 3rd unit, after you
finish,
reciting your, surah al Fatiha, you recite al
Ikhlas.
So Al Ikhlas is QuluallahuAhad,
that Surah.
Once you're done with that Surah,
normally
now now see here's one difference.
Normally in Maghrib prayer, in the 3rd unit,
you're not gonna recite any more Quran after
Fatiha. Right? But in the wittir prayer you
do, you recite another Surah even in the
3rd unit. And after you're done with that,
or you could recite whatever other Surah,
when you're done you raise your hands, you
say Takbir and you say Allahu Akbar. You
raise your hands again in the middle of
the prayer in the 3rd unit, and then
you put your hands back, you know, to
your torso like normal,
and then what you're gonna say is you're
going to recite this supplication known as the
Khunud supplication.
And the Arabic is, here. It's Allahum Mahdi
NiFi Man Hadei Tu Aafi Man Afait. It's
there for you and this is the translation
of it. So, oh Allah,
guide me like those You have guided, protect
me like those You have protected,
Guard me like those whom you have guarded.
Bless me in what you have given me,
and save me from the evil which you
have decreed. You decree and nothing can be
decreed against you. Whomever you support can never
be disgraced.
You are blessed, Lord, and high above all.
So this is one of the supplications that's
there. There's more than one supplication that you
can read in the Winter Prayer. Right. There
but as long as it's been narrated from
the prophet. Right. So there's there's more than
one. I chose this one because
it's pretty short,
and it's a little bit more intimate speech.
So both, you know, all of them are
correct. There's actually another there's another main one
which is very common. You could choose either
one. They're both fine.
If you don't know the supplication,
what do you do?
You can simply,
say SubhanAllah
3 times,
like you would do if you didn't know
any other part of the Quran,
or you can maybe recite a little bit
more Quran or something like that. So you
could you could substitute something until you learn
this. But the thing is, we shouldn't be
lazy in learning this. Right? So we should
at least try to learn one of these
supplications at least
within 3 months
or within 6 months or something like that.
So we shouldn't be lazy. I'll tell you
from personally, you know, when I first learned
how to pray wither and I learned that
you have to memorize this, but then you
have the option
of saying, you know, subhanAllah or something like
that or you can recite, you know, Ayatul
Kursi or something.
It just kept on delaying delaying delaying for
a few years.
There's really no excuse to delay for that
many years. It doesn't take that long to
memorize. So should just make a plan, you
know, I'm gonna sit down. I have like
a few hours, maybe 1 hour.
1 hour,
3 days, sometime in my life within this
year. I'm gonna sit down, you memorize it
in an hour.
Again, the next day you spend another hour
just reviewing it. The next day you spend
another hour reviewing it and you have it
down. And you recite it every day in
winter anyway. So it's you keep on practicing
it. So just don't don't delay too much,
right. You have a few months, you don't
have to learn it tomorrow, but don't delay
too much. Take a few months and make
sure you get it down.
So once you're done saying this supplication here,
you say you complete the, 3rd unit as
normal. So what would you do after you
do this? If you were in Imaq Rah
prayer, what would you do next?
You go into bowing, you go into ruku,
say, Allahu Akbar, and you complete the prayer
like normal, and that's it. It's it's finished.
So now that's,
how you pray the wittir prayer. So the
only differences that we saw, it's exactly like
Maghrib prayer. With 1 what the what's the
first exception? You recite a surah after Fatiha
in the 3rd unit.
Right. What's the second exception?
You say takbir.
Right. You say Allahu Akbar. And the third
exception is
the dua. You make this qunut,
dua.
The supplication that's here. Okay. So once you're
done, if you you you finish your prayer,
if you forget to perform your qunut supplication,
which is very common for a lot of
people because they they think almost like they're
praying Maghrib and then they go allahuqar and
they go into bowing and they continue their
prayer and then they realize, oh, you know
what? This was with their prayer. I was
supposed to add that other thing in. What
do you do? It's considered to be a
correctable mistake. And a correctical a correctable mistake
can be compensated by doing what?
Two prostrations and that's it. Alright. So you
you you just,
you just do that and you finish. You
don't have to go back, you don't have
to do any other kunut or anything.
It's also recommended, this is a very highly
recommended prayer. So if someone misses the witter
prayer, it's actually recommended for them to make
up that prayer as well. Okay, to make
it up.
Wither is such an important prayer,
did I write that twice? I wrote it
twice. Alright, if making if you're making up
the wither prayer
before sunrise,
meaning during the Fajr time, right, or anytime
before sunrise,
you're gonna pray it like normal.
But if you make it up after sunrise,
what you're gonna do is you're gonna make
it up as 4 units instead of 3
units.
And the reason for that is the winter
prayer is supposed to be during the night
time. So if you delay until the daytime,
what you're doing is you're gonna actually be
making it up as 4 units. Okay. So
this is the opinion according to, several scholars.
So even number of units is gonna be
preferred.
That's it for winter prayer.
So moving on.
There's other prayers that are connected to the
5 prayers.
You know, most people when they pray they're
gonna fall short
in their prayers.
They're gonna not be they're not gonna be
concentrating. They're not gonna be
giving their full attention, their full time and
everything. So one of the ways to compensate
for that,
lack of perfection in those prayers and those
shortcomings
is to perform these additional prayers, which are
connected to the 5 daily prayers and these
are really recommended.
So,
when you perform the 5 daily prayers, it's
recommended to also pray the following prayers along
with them. These are the ones which are
considered highly recommended.
K. So the highly recommended ones are 2
units before Fajr.
So praying a 2 unit prayer before you
pray your Fajr prayer. So Fajr is 2
units itself,
and it's highly recommended to pray 2 units
before you pray the Fajr prayer as well.
And these 2 units are supposed to be
brief,
very short units. You're supposed to recite very
short Surahs of the Quran. So they're not
supposed to be long. In fact, they're supposed
to be very very short.
And this is one of the out of
the highly recommended prayers, this is
one of the most highly recommended ones. So
after wither prayer, this is the most highly
recommended prayer. So you should really make it
a habit to not miss this at all.
And the great thing about it is, it
happens to be one of the shortest prayers
because you're supposed to pray short actually. You're
not even supposed to go long. So the
2 very short units of prayer, meaning you
recite very little Quran, in the units.
If in fact this prayer is so recommended
that if you miss your Fajr prayer and
you're making up your Fajr prayer later on,
it's actually recommended that you make up these
2 units as well. It's not required, but
it's recommended that you make them up.
If you
join a group prayer,
let's say you're, you're coming to the masjid
and you see people praying but you came
late.
If you finish your Fajr prayer or let's
see everyone started the Fajr prayer. You go
and you join them. You can actually do
these two units
after Fajr prayer immediately
after you're done praying the Fajr prayer because
it's highly highly recommended. So you're allowed to
do that as well. Although, normally, you should
you should keep it in the order. So
you should be praying before, but in case
you don't, you can actually pray it immediately
afterwards.
So that's the the most recommended prayer. So
Fajr, that's one thing. If you're not doing
it right now, you should start doing the
wither prayer and you should start doing the,
that's like step 1 in your advancement. If
you're not doing wither you should start doing
wither.
Make it a habit.
Then your next level when you're ready to
move forward, you make sure to do the
2 units of Fajr prayer before,
that prayer. So that's very very recommended as
well. Alright. Then the other ones are just
in the level of being recommended. So you
have Zohar prayer. Zohar prayer,
either 2 or 4 units before the Zohar
prayer. So Zohar prayer is 4 units. So
you could pray either 2 or 4 before
or 2 or 4 after.
Okay. So there's there's flexibility,
in what you're gonna be praying.
So if you wanna if you're feeling really
good and you wanna pray extra and you
feel really good to you pray 4 before
and you pray 4 after and you pray
4 for Zohr prayer. So you just pray
12 units of prayer. Right. Then there's 2
units of prayer after the Maghrib prayer.
Right. So 2 units after Maghrib prayer. We
said asr. There is there is a recommended
prayer but it's just slightly recommended. So it's
not at the same level so we didn't
put it in the list. Maghrib is 2
units of prayer after Maghrib,
and Aisha is 2 units,
of prayer after. It's recommended.
So what do you do then? Do you
pray with her first or do you pray
this 2 units of prayer first?
You pray the 2 units of prayer first,
then you pray with her. So if you're
gonna if you're gonna do this, you do
this first, then the witter prayer. So let's
say you were praying Asha, it's gonna be
4 units.
Then it's recommended that you pray 2 after
that.
Then it's highly highly recommended that you pray
your witter which is 3 after that. Okay.
So that's the Isha prayer. The prayer is
connected to the Isha prayer.
Now
these prayers,
not only do they merit reward, they bring
you closer to Allah, but like I said
they help you compensate
for the mistakes and the inattention that you
had during the prayer, the 5 prayers that
you were praying in the first place. So
it kind of helps you and, you know,
gets you either warmed up or compensates from
some things.
Now these prayers are considered
optional.
Right. They're not considered mandatory such that you
have to do them. If you miss them
you don't have to make them up like
you have to do with the other prayers.
And if you if you overlook them or
you skip them someday or whatever, it's not
considered to be sinful on you. So you
don't get a sin. And there's another thing,
because
they are
optional prayers
you're allowed to perform them
while sitting
even if you don't have an excuse.
So you can actually pray the prayer sitting
down even if your back is fine, you're
you're standing up or something like that,
except
the reward of the prayer
will be half for you.
You get half the reward if you're sitting
down.
Right. So you can go ahead and perform,
these prayers sitting. But some people they feel
a little bit tired or something. They're thinking,
should I pray? Should I not pray? I'm
a little bit tired. Okay. I'll go ahead
and sit down and perform this prayer. You
get half
the,
reward for the prayer itself but it's still
you still get something.
So you can go ahead and sit down
and pray, but you cannot do that with
a mandatory prayers. You can only sit down
if you actually are ill, your back hurts
or something like
that. There's another thing,
is that when you're traveling
these prayers, which are optional prayers,
you can
actually, perform them
while sitting in a car,
or riding on animal,
on a horseback, or something like that.
Obviously,
not while you're driving because that would be
dangerous,
but when you're sitting in the passenger side
of a I just want to point that
out. So if you're sitting in the passenger
seat of a car, you're sitting in the
back seat of a car or something, even
though you're not gonna be able to face
the direction of prayer, you're allowed to perform
these prayers while you're traveling. So if you're
sitting in a car, in the back seat
of a car, something like that, especially if
you're on a long journey
and you say, you know what, instead of
listening to whatever's on the radio or something,
let me just I can pray. So you
can go ahead and you can pray,
while you're in the car, but this is
only remember the optional prayers,
not the mandatory prayers.
Alright. So that's the those are the recommended
optional prayers.
Now there are certain times of the day
when you're not supposed to pray.
Now that means you're not supposed to pray
the optional prayers because the 5 prayers we
already know the times, right?
Optional prayers you can pray to Allah anytime
you want. You can pray any type of
prayer anytime you want because Allah is always
willing to listen and He's always deserving of
praise. But there are certain times where it's
disliked to pray during the following times. You
should avoid praying during these times.
The first one is
after Fajr prayer and after Asr prayer.
That means after you pray your Fajr prayer
and after you pray your Asr prayer, you
should avoid praying until the end of the
time has finished.
So the end of the time for Fajr
prayer is what?
Sunrise. So if you pray Fajr in the
Masjid at 5 o'clock
and sunrise is at 5:45,
when when can you resume praying prayers again?
After 5:45,
so far until what we've learned so far,
right.
And the Asar prayer, likewise, same thing. If
sunset
So if you've prayed Asar prayer at 5
PM and sunset is at 6 PM,
between 5
and 6 PM, you're not gonna be praying
any other prayer, optional prayers or something like
that. So that's number 1.
Unless
unless
there's a reason
for that prayer.
Now I'll give you an example of a
reason. So for example, you need to make
up a missed prayer.
So you pray your asr, but then you
realize you skipped your Zuhr prayer and you
need to make it up. You don't wait
until Maghrib time. You go ahead and you
make it up at that time, even if
it's after this time. You make it up
anyways because that that's a time that needs
to be made up immediately. It's not just
a I feel like praying right now. This
is a prayer which is due on you.
You have to make it up so you're
allowed to pray the makeup prayer during this
time.
The second one would be a funeral prayer.
So funeral prayer someone, you know, died, someone
is coming for burial
and you just you already prayed your, you
know, your Asar prayer and now they're being
buried into the ground. So what do you
do in that case?
You obviously you're allowed to pray the Janazah,
the the funeral prayer for that person, right,
because there's no other time they're gonna bury
the person. So you're allowed to do that.
So it's it's it's,
it's if there's a prayer that's for a
specific reason, there's a time for it, you
can go ahead and you can pray. Likewise,
you can you can read Quran, you can
remember Allah, you can make Zikr, you can
you can do all those other things during
these times. So that's the
time where it's disliked. The second time where
it's disliked
is during sunrise,
exactly during sunrise
and during sunset.
So the exact time of sunrise while the
sun is rising
and sunset while the sun is setting and
each of these times
lasts about 15 minutes,
right. So you take you take, sunrise for
example, right. So the sun
rises and about 15 so remember what what
was the definition of sunrise?
Sunrise is when the tip of the sun
crosses the horizon.
What's gonna happen is this is the sun
and this is the horizon. And the sun
is coming up slowly slowly and their sunrise
started and now it's gonna slowly come up
come up come up come. Once it gets
all the way up, you're supposed to wait
a little bit more until it gets a
little bit above the horizon
and that once it gets here it takes
from this time
to this time it takes 15 minutes.
So what you do is when you look
at your sunrise time on your calendar it
says, oh, sunrise is at this time. You're
supposed to wait 15 minutes
before you resume any other prayers.
So you should not be praying during that
period of time. Okay. And the second is
the same thing with sunset.
When the sun is actually setting down, like,
the sunset is right when the sun is
completely gone down. That's when Malab script starts.
So 15 minutes prior to that,
you should not be praying and the sun
will be like a little bit overhead from
the horizon over here. So 15 minutes before
that, you should not be praying on both
sides and the reason for this is that,
there are people who used to worship the
sun, they would pray during these times.
Right? And this is to make sure that
we don't even resemble them in any way,
shape, or form. And you may think, well,
there aren't people who worship the sun anymore,
you know, they're not around me or something
like that, but they were so common. There
are still people who do that by the
way, and they were they were so common
and so prevalent. Every time you unearth a
civilization,
Incan civilization,
Mayan civilization, Egyptian civilization,
Persians, and all of that, you find sun
worship built into almost all of these systems.
You look at even the names of our
calendar.
Right? Sunday and, like, all these things, you
find
these pagan names built into everything. You look
at the names of the planets and they're
planets that, you know, you know, Jupiter and
Venus and Pluto and they're all named after
deities. They're named after their gods that they
used to worship. So we have paganism
around us everywhere.
Right? Even if people aren't doing it, there's
still remnants of it and there's still, like,
appreciation for it. So we should try to
avoid
imitating them in any way whatsoever. So the
prophet wanted to keep us as far away
from these people as we possibly can be.
So we don't even give anyone the wrong
impression
that, you know what, you might be worshiping,
something. Right? And it's interesting because somebody asked
me,
somebody says, oh well you guys worship the
moon,
right? So they said, why you worship the
moon? Well because look at your dome. On
top of your mosque, on the dome there's
a little moon sign, and everywhere you go
on Muslims there's a little moon sign. So
you guys worship the moon. It's a ridiculous
statement, of course. No one no Muslim worships
the moon, but
some people the moon just they didn't understand
what the sign was. It gave some people
the wrong perception, and they actually go and
spread that rumor around. So the prophet, s
alaihi, wasalam, wanted to make it very clear.
Don't even do any small thing which might
give some people a little hint or semblance
that you're even doing something in this respect.
Otherwise, if we were praying during sunrise, someone
would come and say, see, they're praying because
the sun is rising. That's what people in
the past used to do. They used to
pray when the sun is rising and the
sun is setting.
We don't even wanna give that so he
made made this clear prohibition, you don't do
that. So we stick to that even today
when there's no really there's not really much
sun worship going on.
So that's the,
times the two times that you're not supposed
to be performing any prayer. K. Otherwise, you
can pray at any time.
Then there's a sunrise prayer.
Right. Or actually it shouldn't be called the
sunrise prayer. It should be called the,
the no. I know the Arabic term. It
should be called
the forenoon prayer. No. I'm talking about English
term. Yeah. It should be called like a
forenoon prayer or a post sunrise or what
you can call early morning prayer or something
like that.
So,
this prayer
is
supposed to be performed this is a recommended
prayer,
supposed to be performed between the Fajr prayer
and the Zohr prayer. So you probably noticed
that the time for Zohr goes from Zohr
to Asr. Time for Asr goes from Asr
to Maghrib. Maghrib starts immediately
until the time for Isha.
Aisha goes all the way until the time
for Fajr.
But between Fajr and between Zohar, there's nothing.
There's no prayer there.
So actually, usually, that's the time where people
are gonna be working, people are gonna be
earning a living, people are gonna be doing
their daily things, and all of that. So
what you find is that there is no
prayer that's obligated there, but there is a
recommended prayer. And that recommended prayer is to
perform either 2 units or 4 units of
prayer during that time, anywhere in that time.
So it doesn't have to be, you know,
at one specific place. It could be any
time between there
except
as long as it's before Zohar time.
It's after Fajr time, after the end of
Fajr time,
but there's one more exception,
which you should be able to figure out
and that is the end of Fajr time
is sunrise,
right,
but, you're not allowed to pray within that
first 15 minutes. So as long as you
cross the first 15 minutes of sunrise,
anytime up until
Zohar time, which is the high noon, you
can go ahead and you can perform this,
prayer. What's known as the Ishuruf prayer, Isharaq
prayer, or Tuhah prayer. This is considered the
early morning prayer.
Alright. So you can pray 2 or you
can pray 4 units
just like any other prayer, like Fajr prayer,
like Zohr prayer, and it's a silent prayer.
Right? So because it's during the daytime. So
you can perform that. That's a recommended prayer
as well.
Then there are night prayers,
and night prayers are very recommended as well.
You can you can join us, brother. So
the night prayers,
are also recommended.
Now praying at night is actually better than
the extra prayers during the day
because
that's when most people,
and I say most normal people, I'm excluding
college students and, you know, those other people,
they actually sleep during nighttime. Most people sleep
during the nighttime.
So that's why because while people are sleeping,
it's difficult to wake up from your sleep,
interrupt your sleeping pattern. So it shows more
devotion and obedience to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
So these are considered very,
rewarded prayers because they're they're difficult. It's difficult
to wake up in the middle of the
night, disturb your sleep and start praying at
that time when everyone else is comfortable and
sleeping.
So,
this is something that's it's it's very,
very rewarding,
but it's not considered highly recommended at the
same level as with their prayer or at
the same level as the 2 units of
prayer before Fajr.
Right. So the night prayers can be performed
anytime
after Isha
and
well, after Isha, but the best time to
pray them is in the last 3rd of
the night. So the best time to pray
these these prayers is the same time that
the best time for winter prayer is, at
the last 1 third of the night
and after you've slept.
So otherwise there's no there's, like, there's not
much reward of you waking up from sleep
to pray the prayers if you didn't sleep
in the first place. So, like, all those
college students they're like, oh, I'm gonna I
I I pray every night before I go
to sleep. What time do you sleep? Sleep
at 3:30 in the morning. So you didn't
sleep actually in the first place. You just
stayed up watching TV or something and then
you decided you're gonna go ahead and pray.
So you're still rewarding, of course, but it's
not the same level. So it's recommended if
you wake up to pray between 2
to 8 units of prayer consisting of 2
unit prayers each. So you either pray 1
2 unit prayer,
or you could pray 2, which makes 4.
You could pray 3 sets,
or you could pray 4 sets.
Alright. So you can pray either one of
them
as much as you want,
and if you've not performed the Witter prayer
already it's recommended you conclude your final prayers
with witzer at the end. So let's say
you wake up at night and say I'm
just gonna pray 2. What you do is
you pray 2 units of of this night
prayer, what's known as tahajjud.
And after you're done with that, you say
okay I'm getting a little bit tired now.
I'm about done. You pray your winter prayer,
and then you go to sleep or you,
wait until you fudge your time, alright, and
you continue.
Or you could pray 8. So let's say
you pray 8. You pray 2, 2, 2,
2,
and then you pray your winter prayer. So
you prayed 3. So when you woke up
at night how many prayers did you how
many units did you pray?
11. You prayed 11 units then. So you
could do, either of those, and this is
something which you build up over time. It's
recommended too. At least it could be like,
you know, your your your dream in life,
you know, your goal in life. Everyone has
their goals. I'm gonna buy this one day.
I'm gonna buy that car one day. I'm
gonna live in this house one day. Your
goal as a Muslim should be, you know
what, one day I'm gonna be waking up
that 1 third of the night and I'm
gonna be praying those 8 units.
That's that's my goal someday. In 5 years
I can do it, in 10 years, whenever
it is I'm ready, I'm gonna be able
to do that and I'm gonna keep it
up.
That should be like the the Muslim's dream
goal that they should be looking forward to
and I'm gonna concentrate in all my prayers
in the daytime.
That's a real goal to look forward to
rather than such and such chrome rims on
my car or something like that, you know.
So think about that.
There's another prayer that's recommended and that's prayer
when entering a mosque.
So whenever you enter a mosque,
it's recommended to pray at least 2 units
before sitting down.
So whenever you walk in,
you you pray 2 units of prayer in
the mosque area before you sit down. Just
Is it, correction or something?
Oh, just write write it down and ask
it at the end, inshallah.
So 2 units before you sit down. Now,
if a person
already sat down,
right, they can still get up and perform
this prayer. So it's not like if you
just sat down for a moment, you cannot
pray this anymore, you can still get up
and perform this prayer. So if you walk
in, you sit down and then you remember,
hey, I should pray. I'm not doing anything
else. You can stand up and you can
still perform this prayer. This is called the
Tahiyatul Masjid prayer. K. So this is something
you can do. Now if the person begins
another prayer
such as, like, the prayer for that time,
then that prayer that they're performing will count
as the
prayer for welcoming the mosque or entering the
mosque.
So let me give you an example.
So if you come in the morning for
Fajr prayer
and as soon as you walk in you're
supposed to pray 2 units
2 You're praying your 2 recommended units of
prayer.
K. Your 2 recommended units of prayer
count as your
entering the mosque prayer.
Right. If you come late for Fajr
and you join the congregation that already started,
the 2 units of prayer that you're praying
counts as your entering the mosque prayer. Why?
Because this is not considered a separate prayer
by itself.
The point of this prayer is that anytime
you walk inside of a mosque, anytime you
walk inside of a Masjid, you're not supposed
to just do anything because the Masjid is
mainly a place of prayer. So So when
you walk into a Masjid, there's a lot
of things you can do. Some people will
walk in and say, well, have a meeting
in the Masjid. So I'm gonna meet someone
and sit down for 30 minutes and have
a conversation with them. Instead of doing that
before you walk in, what you're doing is
you're almost redefining the Masjid as being a
place of conversation.
So in order to maintain the fact that
it's still a Masjid, a place of prayer,
you walk in, you perform these two units
of welcoming the Masjid or entering the mosque,
and then you sit down and you do
whatever else you wanna do. Sit down for
an hour, sit down for half hour, whatever
it is, you go ahead and you,
you go ahead and you do that prayer.
So that's what the the way that this
prayer works. Alright. So the wisdom
behind it is to honor the mosque
by praying in it before you walk in.
That's the that's the point, or the the
wisdom behind,
this.
Alright.
And according to some scholars,
only one of these prayers with that intention
is recommended per day in a mosque.
Alright. So some scholars say, one per prayer
time and
some scholars said, one per day. You only
need to do it one time per day
in a particular mosque. So for example, you're
sitting you're sitting in the mosque, you're having
a conversation with someone. You have a meeting
with someone, you're discussing some things with them
and then you decide, you know what,
I need to go to the bathroom. So
you go to the bathroom
and you come back to continue your conversation.
Should you be praying another prayer of entering
the mosque prayer again? Now you don't need
to do it again, right. Now let's say
you decide, okay we're having a meeting, we're
gonna go out and eat lunch for a
few hours and then we're gonna come back
and we're gonna meet with someone else, right.
Do you need to perform your prayers? Well
some scholars said if the prayer time is
different then you should do it again. Other
scholars said no, it's only once per day
because you're honoring the mosque. Once a day
is sufficient for you. So there's a little
difference of opinion on that, but just keep
that in mind. It's a recommended thing if
you do it,
at least try to do it once a
day. But if you walk in and you
already perform a prayer which is part of
the,
group prayer or whatever it is of the
day, it counts as substituting for your tahiyat
al masjid or your,
this prayer. This, entering the mosque prayer.
Okay. Moving on,
the funeral prayer.
Okay. Funeral prayer is an important thing. It's,
you know, death
is a fact of life. Nobody denies that
sometime everyone is gonna pass away.
The funeral prayer has been,
implemented in Islam
in order to honor a dead Muslim, in
order to pray for them once they've passed
from this life, from this world.
So who needs to pray, first of all?
Who must perform this prayer? The funeral prayer
is a collective obligation
on the entire Muslim community.
Meaning,
what is what is a collective obligation?
A collective obligation means that as long as
there are some Muslims in the community
performing this prayer, you know, they're they're preparing
the dead body and they're praying, oh, you
know, over the person and all of that,
praying for the person, then the responsibility
will be fulfilled.
Right? But if no one does it, if
everybody neglects it,
every single Muslim who's living in that community
is gonna be responsible for neglecting their duty.
And this is a very very important thing
because if some Muslim dies in this area
and every Muslim goes and says, you know
what? Well, I don't have time to help
bury them and I don't have time and
I don't have time. Say, well, we're performing
the prayer now. We need to do the
prayer of this person. Well, I'm busy and
he's busy and he's busy. Everyone is busy
and no one performs the prayer for that
person. Then what's gonna happen is every single
one of the Muslims in that area is
held responsible
responsible and is gonna be sinful in front
of God.
That's a very serious thing. Now, alhamdulillah, in
in in America, for example, this rarely happens,
but it happened recently.
Unfortunately, it happened recently.
And it's something that we need to
realize that our collective obligation
takes priority
over
our own busyness,
as well as over our
PR public relations campaigns and all of that.
So what happens does anyone know who I'm
talking about?
I'm talking about the bombing which took place
in Boston.
You guys are familiar with the you heard
about the bombing, right? So supposedly it was
these Muslim kids,
who did the bombing.
Now this is obviously if if they did
it and the way that they say that
it was done, it's an act of terrorism.
It has nothing to do with Islam. It's
completely wrong. There's no doubt about that. But
at the same time,
the person who died and commits a sin,
a person who is drinking and dies, a
person who's doing something wrong and dies, they're
still a Muslim,
right. So we hope that, you know, maybe
Allah will forgive them. It's Allah's job to
deliver the justice when it comes to that.
But what happened was this person's body was
left and none of the Muslims wanted to
touch it. They said we're not gonna touch
it, we're not gonna bury him, we're not
gonna perform the funeral prayer over him. Why?
Because the people of Boston and the people
of America were so heartbroken and so upset,
so angry about Islam that they said, you
know what, it's gonna look really really bad
in the eyes of the media and in
the eyes of so and so that we're
praying over this person as if we've accepted
their action. Doesn't mean you accept their action
but they're still a Muslim at the end
of the day. It's our responsibility
to pray over them.
So we need to be very careful about
when it comes to PR things like that.
A collective obligation takes precedence and priority over
over any PR agenda
that might be out there. So just a
note to keep in mind, all the all
the masjids, as far as I heard if
this report is true, they refuse to pray
over the person.
Why? Because the media and Fox News and
everything was literally breathing down their neck and
they would target them.
If you get targeted you get targeted, you
know. I mean that what can you do,
but this is a person's responsibility. Go in
a corner and and do it somewhere outside
the city or something like that. You don't
have to do it inside your mosque. You
could be anywhere.
Do it at the graveyard or whatever it
may be.
Yeah. Yeah, the body, yeah I'm gonna talk
about that Insha'Allah. So the body is supposed
to be there, right. So this is a
communal
obligation just keep that in mind. So wherever
you are something happens someone's gotta
take off time from work, someone's gotta take
a vacation one day from work and go
and pray over that person and make sure
that their body is buried. Otherwise, who's gonna
do it? Who's gonna do it otherwise?
So what are the conditions?
The conditions
for
performing this prayer, first of all the deceased
must be a Muslim.
2nd of all the dead body must be
present and it must be prepared for burial.
So the dead body has to be present
there and should be there, it has to
be there.
In case someone has been buried
already
and nobody performed the funeral prayer over the
body,
you can pray in front of the grave
where the
where the burial was.
If the burial was recent. It recently happened.
But if it's been like, you know, a
few weeks, it's been a few months, it's
been a few years or something, then you
just leave it, you just skip it and
Allah knows, you know, Allah knows the intention
and it's not gonna, you know, it's not
gonna adjust what happens to them, InshaAllah.
So how do you perform this prayer?
So this prayer
consists of
only
standing. You stand the entire time. There is
no bowing.
There is no prostration.
There is no sitting. You stand literally the
entire time like this. Okay.
So the way that it's done is you
place the deceased person
in front of the Imam.
Okay. So you have the person in a
coffin or in the, you know, like wrapped
up and ready to be buried. You place
them on the ground or, you know, on
a table or whatever it is and the
Imam, the leader of the prayer, is gonna
stand right in front of them, but facing
the direction of the prayer. Okay. Not, you
know, not obviously not away from the direction
of prayers. It's gonna be facing right there
and,
the followers
will line up behind the imam as normal.
Right? And what's gonna happen is the prayer
begins
with the imam saying Allahu Akbar, raising up
his hands, and then folding the hands like
this. So you you start the prayer like
normal.
Right. So there's 2 ways to perform the
prayer that we're gonna talk about one way
only. So it's easy way for you. You
start by saying Allahu Akbar and you start
the prayer. Then you recite Al Fatiha.
So you recite Surah Al Fatiha just like
the normal way that you would start prayer.
Then what you do, the Imam says another
takbir. He says, Allahu Akbar again and he
raises his hands a second time and he
folds them again
and then every and this is all silent
by the way because in the daytime it's
all silent.
Everyone will silently recite their salawat,
the blessings on the prophet. So you say,
Allahumma salaeala Muhammadu ala ala Muhammad. Where do
we recite this in prayer normally?
During the sitting position. So at the end,
near the end of the prayer, we say
this right before we conclude the prayer in
the sitting position. We take that same thing
which we say every single day and we
say the same thing after we make this
second.
Allahu Akbar Takbir. So we recite. Say Allahu
Akbar recite Fatiha. Alhamdulillahi
rabbilalaminarrahmanarheem.
Allahu Akbar.
You finished the whole thing. Then the Imam
says another Takbeer. He says, Allahu Akbar again
raises hands again, folds them,
and everyone is supposed to silently
supplicate for the deceased person. So you make
a dua supplication for the person and you
can use any words
that you want as long as it's in
Arabic because it's a prayer. So the the
the most basic
thing you can say, you say, Allahum Makhfirullah.
That's all you can memorize, you just memorize
that. If it's a man,
Allahum Makhfirullah.
If it's a woman, it's Amma Allahum Makhfirullah
The hu becomes a in Arabic. Right?
So
you can say that there are a lot
of, different supplications that the Prophet, peace be
upon him, taught,
the Muslims.
So you can memorize either one of those.
Here's a very short one.
I have it have it in the book.
Which means, oh Allah forgive our living and
our dead, our present and our absent, our
young and our old, our our male and
our female.
So that's one example of a supplication the
prophet used to say. So you're praying for
the person, you're praying for everyone else, Israel.
So this any any number of supplications you
can make, you're allowed to go ahead and
do that. Once you're done with that, you
say one more time, Allahu Akbar, another Taqbir,
and then you conclude the prayer like normal
while standing, say, Assalamu Alaikum,
Assalamu Alaikum, Muhammadu Allah. Finished.
So that's the way it's gonna look. So
the funeral prayer is gonna be, the dead
body is brought inside the masjid, it's gonna
be placed right there. Imam is gonna start
and say, Allahu Akbar
recite Fatiha, Alhamdulillahi
rabbilal.
Say, Allahu Akbar,
Allahu Masali'Allahu Muhammad, Waala'Allahu Muhammad, till the end.
Say, Allahu Akbar,
Allahu Mafirullah.
Alright. And you continue whatever you wanna recite.
Say, Allahu Akbar,
and Assalamu Alaikum Rahmatullah, Assalamu Alaikum Rahmatullah. That's
the funeral prayer. It's very short. You don't
sit, you don't bow, you don't do anything.
So when it comes to the funeral prayer,
one of the things you you should know
if you're if you're gonna be the imam,
is if there's crowding going on,
tell people to stop leaving the gap in
between because you're not gonna prostrate anyways. So
people can literally be standing, like, 1 foot
away from each other there's more than enough
space for them because they're not they're not
gonna bow, they're not gonna prostrate, they don't
need all that space between them. So they
can fill in all the gaps literally and
they can be next to each other and
they can pray.
Alright.
So that is the funeral prayer.
Okay. There's another thing related to prayer, which
needs to be covered,
and that is the prostration
of recitation.
Okay. This is known as a sajdah attilatawah.
The prostration of recitation is recommended,
and this is according to the Shafi'i school,
by the way. According to the Hanafi school,
it's required.
It's recommended to prostrate
after reciting or hearing certain verses of the
Quran,
which emphasize this humility in front of Allah.
So there's certain verses of the Quran, which
the prophet used to
go into prostration whenever he would recite the
verse or even when he would hear the
verse.
Right. So there are 14 places in the
Quran where there is a place of prostration,
and they are as follows.
So the list is in your book. So
these are the numbers. So chapter 7 verse
206.
84
verse 21, chapter 96
verse 19.
So these are these are the 1 the
verses that are there. And when you're reading
the Quran in Arabic,
if you learn, if you take our
Quranic recitation class,
we'll teach you that it's actually written in
the corner. It says the word Sajda,
which means prostration,
whenever it's in the corner here, whenever that
verse comes up. So there's only 14 places
in the Quran that have this. So you
pretty much you you kinda
whatever you read in prayer, you have memorized
already anyways. So whenever you memorize one of
these
Suras or one of these verses,
you know that that it's a verse of
prostration. So it's not gonna just gonna be
random or something. What you don't know
is if the Imam who's leading the prayer,
if he knows the verse but you don't,
then he's gonna say Allahu Akbar and go
straight into prostration,
in the middle of prayer even, and you're
supposed to follow him. Right. So it's important
so that you you be aware, if you
wonder if you didn't know this at all
and all of a sudden
the Imam is reciting Quran and you don't
know which part of the Quran he's reciting.
And then he says, Allahu Akbar, and he
goes all the way into prostration. You might
think, if you didn't study up until now,
you might think he made a mistake.
So what would you start doing if you
made a mistake?
Start saying, SubhanAllah. SubhanAllah.
He didn't make a mistake because actually going
into Saizdah, because he knows that these are
one of the verses where the prophet used
to prostrate as well. K? So these are
14 places,
where there's prostration. Imam Shafi said there's one
more. So there's 15 according to Imam Shafi,
but 14 are agreed upon. So if you
recite
one of these verses
during your prayer, so you're in the middle
of prayer
and you intend on continuing your recitation.
So you're reciting the Quran and you're gonna
keep on reciting.
You're you're not just gonna recite
chapter 7 verse 206.
You're gonna recite 207, 208 all the way
up until 209.
You had the intention of going until 209
because you wanted to finish that meaning or
that section of the Quran in your recitation.
What you do is while you're reciting, you're
in the middle of reciting, you're just gonna
say, Allahu Akbar and you're gonna go all
the way down into prostration
and have all the followers, everyone else also
goes with you
and you're gonna do prostration like normal, subhanahu
wa'ala 3 times.
Then you're gonna say, Allahu Akbar and you're
gonna stand back up all the way, same
standing position,
and you continue reciting
verse 207,
and then you keep on reciting verse 208,
verse 201, whatever verses until you're you feel
like you're done. Then you continue the prayer
like normal. So you're in the middle of
prayer. You as soon as you read one
of these verses,
you stop right there and you go straight
into frustration.
Okay. The followers should also follow.
Okay. If
so
if you're a follower
and the imam, let's say,
during Zohar prayer, which is silent. Right?
So Zuhr prayer is silent.
The Imam is reciting certain verses of the
Quran and you're reciting your own verses of
the Quran.
So what if you recite a verse of
prostration silently
and the Imam is not doing that?
What do you do in that case? Do
you have to prostrate?
No. Because in this case, following the Imam
takes priority. So it overrides the fact that
you have to do the prostration. So you
don't have to do that. Okay. But if
the Imam does it silently,
it's, he he should go into prostration and
come back up. But it's not recommended
for an Imam
in a silent prayer
to read
verses of prostration, because it'll confuse some people,
because they don't understand what's going on, right.
I mean, they may understand what happened but
they don't even know which verse he read
and they're just going and prostrating anyways. So
since they're not hearing it, it's better that
he doesn't do that.
Okay. If you decide to stop at the
prostration verse and you're not gonna continue reciting
more,
of the Quran because it's like let's say
it's the last verse of the surah. So
for example,
look at the last one, chapter 96
verse 19. How many verses are there in
chapter 96, Surah Al Alak?
There's only 19 verses in the entire Surah.
So chapter verse 19 happens to be the
verse
which tells you you're supposed to be prostrating.
So at the end, if you're gonna stop
if you're gonna continue reciting, you have to
start with chapter number 97.
If you're gonna if you have the intention
of you're gonna keep on moving to 97
verse 1, 97 verse 2, then you're gonna
perform the prostration. Otherwise, if you're gonna stop
right there, you don't have to perform the
prostration.
The reason why you don't have to is
because you're gonna be going you're gonna say
allahu akbar and you're gonna be going into
bowing and then you're gonna be going into
prostration anyway. So there's no significant gap in
between so you're allowed to skip that.
You don't have to keep reciting. Otherwise, you
would recite, you'd you'd make the prostration stand
back up and then just continue the prayer
like normal.
Alright. So,
yeah. This is because you're gonna prostrate anyways.
If you're not in prayer, so let's just
say you're sitting by yourself and you're reading
some Quran
and you recite one of these verses, what
should you do? Well, you should stand up,
should say the takbir, say allahu akbar, you
don't have to raise your hands or anything,
stand up, say allahu akbar and go into
prostration.
You perform the prostration the same way you
would normally do, you say allahu akbar and
you sit back up. You're done. That's it.
No salaam,
no nothing else. Just like normal. That's it.
That's all that requires, your prostration.
That's all that you have to have. Okay?
According to the Hanafi school, you have
to be in a state of purity
while performing this prostration,
meaning you have to have wudu while performing
this prostration.
And usually you would because you're if you're
reading Quran, unless you're memorizing, you know, reviewing,
you would generally have have it anyways. According
to Imam Shafi'i, though, it's not a requirement.
But you make sure that you're you're properly
covered
when you perform this, and, make sure that
you're facing the direction of prayer, the qabbla,
when you're performing the prostration.
Okay. And
if you're,
outside the prayer
let's see what happened here.
So if outside the prayer you're reciting the
Quran or you hear someone else
reciting one of these verses,
you should prostrate,
but you're a let it doesn't have to
be done immediately.
Right? So you can either do it immediately
or you can delay if you want for
a little while. So let's say for example
you're
sitting in the Masjid,
you're listening to someone reading Quran or you're
reading Quran yourself, you don't have to perform
it immediately. You can let's say you
you had the intention of sitting down, you
wanted to read 2 pages of Quran.
You open up the Quran and you happen
to be at verse,
chapter 7 verse 200.
So it's Al Araf and you're reciting from
verse 200. You say, you know, I'm gonna
read about 20 verses of the Quran. So
you're reading reading reading reading reading reading, you
say, you know what? I got to 206,
but you know what? I wanna, you know,
let me just finish what I'm reading. You
can go ahead and finish
until verse 220
and then you can do the prostration afterwards.
You would normally wanna do this. Why?
Because if you're memorizing.
Right. So when you memorize, let's say you're
memorizing
chapter 13
verses 14, 15, 16, and 17.
So you're gonna sit there and you take
chapter verse 14, you're gonna repeat it again
and again and again and again until you
memorize it.
Then if you read verse 15, you're gonna
repeat it again and again while you're repeating.
If you're gonna prostrate every time and then
you repeat it again and then you prostrate
again and you repeat it again, too many
prostrations there. You're gonna get you're gonna get
thrown off. So you don't have to do
it immediately. You could do it at your
own leisure. K. So it can be done
immediately or it can be delayed.
If you hear
a recording,
like a CD
of a person
reciting,
then the question is,
is it still recommended to perform the prostration
or not?
And
my opinion is that it's the same as
if you were listening to it live. Because
the
effect, that it has on you, the concentration,
you're trying to reflect upon it, it's the
same. So you should go and perform the
prostration as well. But if you're in your
car, like you said, once you're done, you've
parked and everything, go and perform the prostration.
And according to Imam Shafi, it's only recommended.
So if you forgot,
you got on the freeway, you got stuck
in traffic or something,
it's fine.
Alright.
Okay. So the,
these are appendices
in the book.
So these are general principles where
we should, really
understand these principles so that we don't get
confused. These principles apply across the board whenever
we're studying Islamic law. So the first principle
is that doubt
does not remove certainty.
K. Doubt does not remove certainty. So what
does that mean exactly? Well, a lot of
people have questions about things in Islamic law
about doubts.
But what if I'm not sure if I
prayed 2 units or 3 units?
What if I think I've lost my wudu?
What if
I think my fasting was broken?
What if I think sunrise had come when
I prayed but I wasn't sure?
These are all what we call doubts.
So whenever these questions come out like,
what if I feel something came out or
what if the water the water might have
some impurities in it? Right? So this this
water may not be clean or it could
be that I've prayed an extra unit
or it could be that there's some impurity
on my foot, on my shoe, but I
just can't see it. But I might have
stepped in something. I might have stepped in.
So look at all these words. Right? I
might have done this, it could have been,
what if such and such happened.
These
concerns that people have,
they're all
coming out of
well meaning
zeal
and, you know, wanting to please Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala. And this is it's very good.
It's it's based on a sincere intention.
It's based on a right intention.
But
these can
all be easily resolved by understanding this principle
that doubt does not remove certainty. And Allah
wanted us, he taught us, the prophet, peace
be upon him, taught us this principle.
And therefore, we're supposed to apply this principle
rather than applying our own
understanding of what Allah would want us to
have. So if you say, no, I wanna
be very on the safe side. What if
there's some impurity in that water? What if
there's something on my shoe? Maybe something happens
this way, that way, or something, and you
think that you're being more pious by doing
that. But remember,
in Islam,
Islam is means submission.
The definition of submission means you submit to
Allah and his messenger and their teachings.
So if the prophet taught us this principle
that doubt does not remove certainty,
right, don't let doubts overcome what you have
general certainty about, then
our devotion to Allah should be in following
this principle.
Rather than in thinking that when we follow
each and every little tiny thing, what if,
maybe this, maybe that, you're not actually following
Islam by doing that. You may think that
you're trying to do something good with a
good intention but with the wrong knowledge.
So it's very important to have right knowledge
and a good intention, not just a good
intention.
So
here's an example. So the basically what this
means is when you're relatively
sure about something,
any other doubts that come up in your
mind, you should discard them and not consider
them at all. You just literally throw them
away. The prophet, peace upon him, he made
a statement. He said,
Leave that which gives you some doubt
for that which does not give you any
doubt. So let's take an example. K? If
you have a doubt
whether or not you have wudu.
Maybe I have wudu, maybe I don't have
wudu, well, you go with what you're sure
about. So we talked about this already before.
If you recall waking up from sleep,
you remember brushing your teeth. So you remember
you woke up. You remember that you brushed
your teeth, but you don't remember whether or
not you made will do.
You say, well, I I know I brushed
my teeth. I'm thinking in my mind. In
my mind, I see myself brushing my teeth.
I feel in my teeth that I had
brushed my teeth.
Alright. I can tell my breath and everything
I brushed it,
but I don't remember if I performed will
do or not. I'm looking at my arms,
not seeing any water.
My looking at my face, not seeing any
water. My feet are dry, there's no water
on there. So what does that tell me?
I can't figure out. Maybe I did, maybe
I didn't. In this case, your certainty is
what? You're certain that you brushed your teeth
and you're certain
that you woke up, which also means that
you're certain you were sleeping.
And if you were sleeping, you didn't have
you lost your will do. So your certainty
here is you don't have will do and
you're supposed to perform your will do. This
is considered,
it's not this is not considered a doubt.
Right? So this is this is a doubt
whether that you made wudu or not.
But the certainty is that you didn't have
wudu because you're certain that you slept.
And you doubt whether you had wudu, so
you don't have wudu. You throw the doubt
away.
So the doubt is what? Maybe I have
wudu, maybe I don't have wudu.
And the certainty is, I'm sure I was
sleeping. So these are the 2 things you
identify. And what do you do? The maybe,
maybe, perhaps thing, you throw it away. What's
left?
I was sleeping.
I don't have wudu, I need to make
wudu. Okay? That's example number 1. So that's,
you know, something you need to do. Otherwise
people they're gonna come and, ask, you know,
a bunch of, questions, you know, to themselves.
So if you but let's take another example.
You remember that you were praying.
You know that you prayed your Fajr prayer,
but now you start thinking, maybe I passed
some gas during my Fajr prayer. My stomach
was gurgling a little bit. I started feeling
something. Right?
Now what do I do?
Do I repeat the prayer or not? So
your certainty is what?
You prayed Fajr. Your certainty is that you
prayed Fajr.
Where is the doubt? The doubt is, did
I lose my wudu while I was praying
that Fajr? Did something come out or it
didn't? So what do you do?
What do you do? You take the doubt
and you throw it away. What's left?
You prayed Fajr,
you're done. Move on with your life, continue
the rest of your day. You don't think
twice about it.
This is the way it works, okay? Let's
take another example.
You wake up in the morning,
you remember
that you had an erotic dream when you
were sleeping.
But you wake up, you don't see any
trace of * on your clothes,
you don't find anything else,
So you say, okay, I don't need to.
Take a bath.
But then you're just gonna make wudu for
the for the fajr prayer. But then you
start thinking, you're making wudu and you say,
well wait a minute.
What if something came out while I was
sleeping during my dream but then it dried
up. So you look around when you check
and you say there's no traces of anything.
So the certainty is what? The certainty is
you had an erotic dream.
The doubt is
whether or not something came out.
So what do you do? You throw the
doubt away,
you're left with you had an erotic dream.
Does having a dream
necessitate that you have to take a bath
when you wake up?
No.
So you don't need to take a bath.
You just make will do, you continue your
life as normal, you do your prayer, and
you're gonna be fine. Right? So
that's the way it's gonna work. Now
you can only override that with another certainty.
So you wake up in the morning, you
remember that you had a dream, and then
you start thinking, you know what, maybe
it dried up, maybe something happened. And you're
looking around looking around, and then
you find traces of it,
of * that had dried
up. Now you can you can see the
clear signs that, yes, it had dried up.
Now what do you do? Now you have
certainty that you had the dream and you
also have general certainty that something came out.
Now you gotta take a bath.
That's the only way that one certainty
can override another certainty. But if there's a
doubt here and there's a certainty here, this
doubt cannot override what you're certain about. You
just throw this doubt away and you build
upon this. This was called building upon certainty.
Right? So doubt does not remove the certainty
that you have. It stays in place.
Okay. So the same rule applies when determining
when something occurred.
Not only whether something occurred, also when something
occurred. So for example,
if you completed your prayer, you finished your
prayer,
30 minutes later,
you notice that there's some impurity on your
clothes.
All of a sudden you find that there's
some, you know,
urine on your clothes or something like that.
Well, what do you do?
So you can assume
safely that, you know what, there's a possibility
that this urine came on my clothes
before prayer.
It might have come before I prayed.
It might have come after I prayed.
I don't know. So let let's say let's
say you work in,
you work in a butcher butcher shop. So
you're at work, you're doing the cutting and
all of that stuff,
you checked your clothes before you were gonna
pray, and you walk in. What do you
do? You start praying, and then after about
an hour, you're you go back to work,
you're doing your work and everything, and then
all of a sudden you look and you
see some blood on your pen. You say,
oh, was that blood there before I prayed
or did it come after I prayed? So
when when you're trying to figure out which
one it is, what you do is you
say, well, it could have been before and
it could have been after. You don't
know. So what you do is you safely
assume that, you know what? It probably was
afterwards. We don't have to worry about that
because you checked your clothes beforehand. So you
were certain that you checked your clothes pretty
pretty good. You don't need to worry about
that. But let's take a counter example.
Counter example is
you're painting.
You're painting the wall or something like that.
So you go and you perform your will
do and everything. Everything is going good. You're
checking for paint and all of that, and
then you perform your prayer. 30
minutes later,
you look,
on your foot there was some paint. You
totally missed it. You forgot it.
And you start thinking, did that paint come
before
my prayer or after my prayer? But you
did not continue painting after your prayer.
You were only painting before your prayer and
then your paint job was done. The paint
cans were gone. You never encountered paint again
after the prayer.
In that case, now you have general certainty
that that could have only happened before the
prayer because I was painting before the prayer
and I there's no way I could have
gotten paint on my hand or whatever it
was, which prevents the water from going through.
Therefore, your certainty now is that it was
before prayer. So what do you gotta do?
Gotta repeat the prayer, right? You gotta make
will do again. You gotta remove the paint,
make will do again, repeat the prayer. So
that's the principle number 1. Okay.
So if one of them is more likely,
you you give it preference.
The second principle,
which applies across the board,
is that difficulty
necessitates
ease.
K. Difficulty when you're in when you're encountering
some real difficulty,
you're allowed to have an exception to the
rule.
And that's why Islam is considered to be
very moderate
religion. It makes it easy for you. So
anytime you're encountering something difficult, there's always gonna
be an exception,
for you.
So this axiom that we're gonna apply, it
means that every time you're in a difficult
circumstance, there's gonna be some exception.
But this may apply
on an individual level
for whether a person has difficulty, like like
let's take an example, individual level. On an
individual level, if you have difficulty standing for
prayer, what are you allowed to do?
You're allowed to sit. If you have difficulty
sitting, you're allowed to?
You're allowed to lie down. Right? If you
even you can't even move around, you're allowed
to pray
just with basic motions or something or the
rest in your heart. So you don't have
to even move or something like that. Now
this can also be an exception on a
societal level.
So if you're in a society
where everyone
where everyone is gonna be,
you know,
their life is gonna become difficult because of
a certain thing,
then there's an exception to the rule for
the entire society. So let me give you
an example. So we talked about
we talked about feces,
right, of animals and human beings and all
is considered impure.
Right?
So you're not you're supposed to be playing
praying on a clean place only.
There's not supposed to be any urine, any
feces, anything like that.
Now let's
say you're in a large mosque
outside
and you because it's overfilled. Or let's say
you're in Makkah.
You're in Madinah and you're praying outside the
courtyard. There's no shelter on top. And you're
praying and you're in the middle of prayer
and everything
and it just so happens
that that bird happened to go to the
bathroom
directly above you and it came straight on
your head.
Now you have impurity on your head or
it came straight
in the place where so what do you
do in that case? So in that case,
because,
this is something which people will encounter in
certain places where there's you're not gonna stop
the birds from going overhead. Right? They're gonna
go. They're gonna go. So what do you
do?
In this case,
bird droppings are considered to be
an exception to the rule from impurities
during your prayer.
Outside of prayer, if you get the chance
to wash it off, fine. During your prayer
and stuff, it's considered to be overlooked. So
some some places you have bird droppings here
and there, you can still pray in that
area. Why? Because it would be too difficult
to avoid.
It would be too difficult to avoid, so
there's an exception to the rule. I'll give
you another example,
and that is the use of banks.
Today, a modern example is the use of
banks.
So many people don't think about it, but
when you put your money in a bank,
you're they're not doing you a favor
by keeping it for you,
right,
as like a gesture and a kindness and
a courtesy, and they don't charge you any
monthly payment.
It's like they're not there to do you
a favor. So what they're doing is they're
taking your money that you deposit in the
bank and they're loaning it out to somebody
else on interest
in order to accumulate more money.
And we know that as Muslims we don't
give interest and we don't take interest. So
by putting your money into the bank what
you're ending up doing is you're basically giving
it to someone to use it and to
use it in order to make interest off
of it, which is technically impermissible in Islam.
But because
what are you gonna do with all the
cash that you have? Are you gonna keep
it under your pillow?
Are you gonna keep it under your bed?
Are you gonna, you know, do whatever else
with it? So the thing is, until there
is
a non profit type of bank
institution where you can actually safely transfer money
across the board back and forth, until there's
an, you know, some institution like that, it's
permissible for you to go ahead and keep
your money inside of a bank
as long as you're not engaging in the
rest of the process. Although, you can't avoid
certain parts of it. So otherwise, it would
have been impermissible for you to even keep
your money in the bank in the first
place because you know they're gonna take your
money and load it out to someone else.
Right. So that's,
an example of when things become,
an exception to the rule. But here's the
caveat.
The caveat is
that we already we covered a lot of
exceptions to the rule, we've seen already. But
whenever a person or a society
is faced with some difficulty when they're trying
to follow Islam,
there is an exception, there may be an
exception, but you don't know what the exception
is gonna look like.
So you shouldn't just say, oh, well, there
must be an exception for me so I'm
gonna go ahead and make the exception for
myself. You should always consult a scholar or
someone who specialize in the field of law,
first of all, whether or not there's an
exception for me.
Otherwise,
everyone finds it difficult to wake up for
Fajr. Right? So it's just so difficult to
wake up for Fajr in the morning, in
the summertime, 5 o'clock in the morning. It's
gotta be an exception. I'm gonna pray 8
o'clock in the morning.
You can't just make an exception for yourself
like that. Otherwise, it's but it's too difficult.
Trust me, it's way too difficult. So no.
You can't you can't just say it's difficult.
It's more difficult than when I'm traveling, so
I'm gonna shorten my prayers.
You can't do that. You can't just make
it up the exception yourself.
And second of all,
you need to know what the exception should
look like.
So what is the exception supposed to look
like exactly?
So let's say a person who is injured.
Person has some type of injury and they
didn't take this class and they don't know.
They never studied what to do. So the
injury someone has an injury, say, well, you
know what? I know there's gotta be an
exception to the rule. But what is the
exception? If you have an injury, does it
mean you can skip prayer?
Or does it mean you can delay your
prayer and pray it later once you're healed?
Or do you perform the prayer in a
different way due to your injury? These are
all exceptions to the rule. Now that you've
learned when you have an injury, which one
of the exceptions is the correct one?
You pray in a different way. Can you
skip the prayer?
You can't skip the prayer. Can you delay
it and then once you're healed you go
back and you pray it again?
No. Right. So there's a certain way to
make the exception as well. So that's very
important to keep in mind. Okay. So that's
why you don't just what you should do
is as soon as you know you're in
really difficult circumstances,
you know that Islam is gonna have an
exception for you. But
it you first you have to determine,
am I
legitimately in x like, really exceptional circumstance or
am I just being
a little bit, you know, of a wimp
or something like that? I'm just not being
tough enough on myself. You need to figure
that out by going and asking a specialist.
And then, if you are
in very difficult circumstances,
then they're gonna tell you what the exception
to the rule is.
Right? So if you let's say, you need
to earn a living, you can't even find
a job and the only job that you
can find and literally, you have to support
a family.
The only job you can find is dealing
in something which is considered impermissible in Islam.
There is an exception for you. But before
you assume and think that, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I know I have to earn a living.
In your mind, you may be thinking, I
have to earn $20 an hour. I'm not
gonna settle for a $15 an hour job.
But when the person goes and assesses your
situation,
there was a halal job for $15 an
hour, but you felt that you had to
have the $20 an hour one in order
to survive. So you wanted to go in
that one. The person might explain to you,
say, look, you're not qualified
for an exception because you could get the
$15 an hour job and you still support
your family. So you have to first check
with someone to figure out whether you qualify
and number 2, what the exception to the
rule will be.
Right. So if you get a job, for
example,
having to serve
alcohol
in a restaurant
because you can't find any other job, that
can be an exception to the rule, as
long as you need to support your family
until you find another job.
But if you go and say, well, I
really really need this job. So what is
the job? I'm a hitman. I'm assassinating people.
Okay. No. You can't take that job. So
you say, well, there's an exception to the
rule.
My family needs to make money and this
guy's gonna pay me $500 to take this
other guy out. There are exceptions and then
there are exceptions with so you have to
figure out which exception is gonna apply, which
exception is not gonna apply. So it's very
important before you take it into your own
hands, go and consult an expert. Okay.
So we'll stop here.
Next week we're actually 1 week ahead.
So next week, I think if I can
prepare the notes, we're gonna cover the pilgrimage,
InshaAllah. We'll cover Umrah and Hajj. The following
week we cover Zakah,
and there's gonna be a lot more people
because we're opening up the class to everyone.
The following week after that we're gonna cover
Ramadan, inshallah. Alright.