Nadim Ali – Prayer Abandonment
AI: Summary ©
The importance of faith and not dying until the day of judgment is emphasized in Islam. It is essential to not believing to Allah and not giving up on one's duty, educating oneself and being a part of political activities, and investing in one's own life. It is also emphasized that learning and preaching is essential to reaching one's values and being a part of the community.
AI: Summary ©
All praise belongs to Allah the most high.
We thank him and we seek his aid
and we seek his forgiveness.
And we seek refuge with him from the
evil of ourselves and from our bad actions.
Whoever Allah guides, then there's no one who
can mislead him. And whoever Allah calls to
go astray, then there's no one to guide
him.
And I bear witness that there is no
deity except Allah who is unique and without
partners. And I bear witness that Mohammed is
his worshipper and his messenger. May the peace
and blessings of Allah be upon him and
his family and his companions
and those who follow them with good intentions
until the day of judgment.
All you who believe fear Allah as he
should be feared and don't die except as
Muslims. Again, all you who believe fear Allah
and don't die except as Muslims.
Old mankind, be careful of your duty to
Yorab who created you from a single soul
and from it created its mate. And from
the 2 of them, he spread forth many
men and women.
Be careful of your duty to Allah whom
you demand your mutual rights and be careful
of your duty to the wounds that bore
you. Indeed, Allah is our over
you. Oh, you who believe fear Allah and
always speak the truth. He will cause your
deeds to be beneficial and he will forgive
for you your sins.
And whoever obeys Allah and his messenger, then
he has truly achieved a tremendous accomplishment.
Indeed, the best speech is the book of
Allah. And the best guidance is the guidance
of Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam and the most
evil of all affairs,
a newly invented matters which has no precedence
in Islam. And indeed, all innovations are astray.
And each astray is in the * fire.
And oh Allah, save us from it. Oh
Allah,
accept our
dua. Your real friends are no less than
Allah,
his messenger, and the fellowship of believers,
and those who establish regular prayers and regular
charity, and they bow down humbly in worship.
Again, your real friends are no less than
Allah,
his messenger, and the fellowship of believers.
Those who establish regular prayers,
regular charity, and they bow down humbly
in worship.
And also, Abu Huair Abu Huaira Rehailahu Anhu
said that the prophet said
that the believer
is a mirror to his faithful brother.
He protects him he protects him against laws
and defends him behind his back.
Abu Ureda, who read the landu, said that
the believer is a mirror to his brother.
If he sees something wrong in him, he
should correct it.
And again, this hadith has been,
recorded as as as fair according to Sheikh
Al Bani.
And what we wanna look at is that
when we
how we are to function towards one another.
As Allah says in the ayat from Surah
to Maida,
that we have to take those aspects into
consideration that your true friends,
you know, are are the messenger.
You know Allah and the fellowship of believers.
And, again, just because
one
says that he is a Muslim
doesn't mean that he's a believer.
You know? Because,
you know, believers have certain characteristics and and
and and Allah has given us the the
job description of the believer.
Establishing the prayer
regularly,
given being charitable
regularly,
you know, and bowing down most of all.
And most of all, believing,
believing
to Allah. You know, again, the quote that
I always attribute to my wife who talks,
she says that, you know, sometime we say
we believe in Allah, but do we believe
him?
And,
you know, the old grandma saying that action
speaks louder than words.
And so sometime, I'll come into
different massages throughout the city and throughout the
country.
And I'm wondering if I'm in a masjid
or a museum
because the the people aren't there. The brothers
are not there.
It was the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam
said that when we make the prayer in
congregation,
20
25 to 27 times the increase
as opposed to praying at home.
And what Imam Jamil used to taught us
and and and and and and tell us
that if your boss told you he would
pay 25
times your salary,
what would happen?
You know, you'd live at the on the
job.
But Allah, who is all of he's our
creator. He's not just our boss. He is
our creator.
But the law through his prophet has said
the importance of congregational
salat is 25 times
more than when you pray at home alone.
So we have to start increasing. I know
we've been in the pandemic and the Muslims
weren't available.
But do we have a pandemic in our
hearts?
Do we do we have an infected heart?
Is our heart filled with pus or filled
with noor, filled with light?
Act like it.
Demonstrate the fact that
you believe Allah, not just say with your
lips
that you believe in Allah.
We have to be of those who are
not abandoning
prayer, abandoning this a lot.
Because, again, we've been
trying to continuously make this a lot since,
what, 1976
at this particular Masjid.
And you go around the country, specifically in
African American community, you could see people who
have established prayer in the forties.
Forties, the communities that have been around. You
go to New York. You go to places
like Cleveland.
Think they have the thirties, the old their
oldest mosque.
First Cleveland mosque.
And so,
you know, you hear the people who attribute
themselves to the Pan African. They talk about
the ancestors and all of that. And I
tell the brother talk about ancestors to me
the other day, and I say, well, some
of our ancestors were drunks.
Some of our ancestors were criminals.
So I don't attribute things to my ancestors.
I, you know, I do things for
the pleasure of Allah.
And that's how we have to look at
it. And we have to teach and preach
and reach
and encourage the people to come to this
dean.
Because, again, when I came to the dean,
there was a lot of activity
in the in the in the in the
Muslim community
on bringing people in to the Deen.
And so we've got fat and comfortable,
you know, our generation. And so but we
the younger generation, we have to step
up. And we all we had was telephones.
And brothers would have chains where they would
call each other to remind each other for
us a lot.
Tell landline, we didn't have cell phones.
And now we have everything. We can communicate
through Facebook,
you know, in in those book, all kinds
of ways that we can communicate, but yet
the the numbers have gone down.
The communication, the ability to communicate has gone
up, but the the
the the numbers have gone down. No matter
how much knowledge you have attained,
the salat
in congregation has not been abrogated.
And if if it has, bring me to
Hadith.
If it has been obligated, bring me to
Hadith.
So what we have to start doing is
stepping up.
Not being, again,
role models, what we have to be real
models. These are some of the things that
we have to do to
be of that group, the the real friends,
the fellowship of believers who are establishing
this a lot and and and preserving this
a lot.
Being more prayerful, being more charitable,
and being more committed, being more committed.
You know, we have to be of those
who,
again, have the ability to recognize
those attributes in others as well as try
to internalize those attributes in ourselves.
Because as long as we have breath in
our body, brothers and sisters, we have the
ability to change. And then remember, shaitan,
he mad.
The prophet
said that he goes through our system like
blood.
And we don't feel our blood
moving.
But when something happens, woah.
You know? We have to basically
be on guard
247
on the shaytan and his influence and he
will he's smooth. He'll convince you, you know,
go on. You stay home.
Go roll over and get more sleep.
It's real smooth.
And you walk around all day
with a bucket full of urine in your
head.
Because when you oversleep,
that's what it says, is the prophet
said that it's like Shaytan urinating in your
ear.
And so we have to basically detox from
that Fajr urine.
We have to be of those who are
striving to be the best Muslims that we
could possibly be because we live in a
society that is majority
not yet Muslim.
And so if Allah has planted us here,
you know, from some of us have come
through the chattel slavery
and and and and and our the people
we are descended from, but many of us
have traveled
across the sea to be here. So if
you're gonna be here, we need to be
here and be involved in spreading this word,
spreading the deen,
spreading the word of Islam
because
the people,
are misguided.
The people are misguided.
And I know many of us don't do
the politics, but if we look at this
past week, how
the political choices that were given. You had
a person who is educated
and doctorate, and you have another person
who, you know, can barely spell his name
for the most part.
But millions of people voted for this person.
And what they say that the the people
get the leadership that they deserve?
And so if these are the choices that
have been given, the Muslims have to start
to step up and be involved. And again,
in Islam, there's no separation of church and
state. So we can be involved in political
activity
and we have to because there was a
reputation that we had and
Muslims around the country that we are political,
not involved politically.
You know? Because what happens is you just
say, well, don't do politics, but then that
judge, if you get involved in a situation,
that judge is elected.
You know, that governor is elected.
The congressman is elected. The state representative is
elected, and they make the laws.
So if you want
laws to be changed, we not only need
to be participating but we also need to
be putting Muslims in place to help make
some of the laws that can be fairer.
Because right now, in Atlanta,
people who work in Atlanta can't afford to
live in Atlanta.
And politicians made a choice to tear down
their affordable housing.
I was I'm a project child. I was
born in the projects. Where are the projects
now?
Where are the projects now?
The motel sixes
and the the extended stays have become the
new projects.
The capitalists have taken over. They they they
methodically
got rid of the public housing
and they made it into an industry
where the poor
can only afford to stay there. They make
just enough money to live there.
And so as Muslims, these are some of
the challenges that we have to face and
get involved in these things.
We have to be of those and it
starts with prayer. It starts with prayer and
we have to stop abandoning prayer.
We wanna be mirrors of one another. We
wanna be mirrors of of one another. And
then also,
we have to be able
to correct one another
in a healthy way. You know, but one
of the things I tell my clients, I
say when you assert yourself, you lose control
of the assertion. Because, you know, some people
will come up to you and say, I
don't wanna hurt your feelings.
I may need my feelings hurt because I
may be doing something stupid,
something ignorant. I may need my feelings hurt.
She said, well, if you don't wanna hurt
my feelings, don't tell me.
But stop being controlling on the outcome.
If you feel as though a person is
doing something unintelligent and ignorant, you need to
communicate it. And then
you've done your job. You've reflected
the light. You've reflected the mirror. And it's
just like if you looked in the mirror
and saw something abhorrent in your face,
in your image,
then you will want to correct that. So
it's the same thing when we see brothers
and sisters doing things that are abhorrent,
We have to correct it.
But one of the first things that we
have to start is encouraging each other in
the salat, encouraging each other in the charity,
encouraging each other and to renew your commitment
as opposed to stop treating Islam as just
a religion, another religion.
Because you get people walking around saying, I'm
just spiritual.
Who is the spiritual heaven and *?
I'm just spiritual.
If we are striving to get the really
comfortable place in the hereafter,
we have to do the work on this
level. And again, oh, we have to invest
in this level. It's just like when you
are saving for retirement, you're investing for retirement
so that you can have a a healthy
retirement.
So it's the same way our true retirement
is when we're past the barzakh, the barrier
between life and death. That's our true retirement.
What investments are we making?
Start with the prayer, the charity and the
good deeds.
If I've said anything that's inconsistent with what
Allah has given us, I take full responsibility
for that. If I've said anything in which
you have gained some new insight,
as always, all praise belongs to Allah.
Allah.
Again, we have to increase
the congregational salat.
You know, we have to
cease the prayer abandonment
because, again, that's something that can damage our
souls, brothers and sisters.
And sisters, if your husband is sleeping,
snoring, and slobbering during the time when the
dawn is being cold,
put the water on his face. Get a
water gun and have one of them big
old water guns.
You know?
Just blast them from across the room. Okay?
Make sure it's the water gun. Alright?
You know, make sure it's the water gun.
Don't want nobody.
No. The nozzle's happening.
So it's important that we basically be mirrors
of one another, brothers and sisters.
We have to stop treating this a lot
as if as if it's option. I know
we've been
in the pandemic and the monsters weren't available.
But, again,
we we it's we we're open. All the
masjids are we're closest to your house. You
don't necessarily have to come to the West
End. Closest to your house.
And if and if and if this mosque
is closest to your house, then then come.
You know, we have to stop,
practicing this relaxed version of Islam.
Abu Abu Darda
said that the messenger said
that if free people in a town
or in a desert do not establish prayer
among them, then Shaitan has overcome them.
You must establish the congregation
for
the wolf
eats the isolated sheep.
The wolf eats the isolated sheep. So praying
alone is like you're the isolated sheep, And
the wolf is the shaitan.
And so we have to do better
if we want better.
Our lord take us not to task if
we forget or fall into error.
Our lord lay not on us a burden
such as you have laid on those who
have gone before us.
Our lord lay not us a burden which
we do not have the power to bear
and overlook our faults and forgive us and
have mercy on us. You are our protector
and grant us a victory against the disbelieving
people. He come in with folly.