Rania Awaad – Healing Through My Journey With The Quran

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In this party, they were crowned with the
Qur'an.
Literally, they were given a crown, like a
tiara, mashallah.
And I had never heard in my life
a term called ijazah, I didn't know what
this word meant.
And I remember making this very private, quiet
du'a in my heart, oh Allah, I
want to do that.
I want to be like one of them,
subhanallah.
You know, how we keep growing on our
journey with the Qur'an, we keep learning
new poems, we keep learning new memorization, whether
you're still memorizing, and so on.
But this is, subhanallah, one concept, revision, subhanallah.
So you need to maintain your revision throughout
the whole journey.
Other than the practical tips from our Shaykh,
inshallah.
Never say to yourself, I can't, or this
isn't for me, or this is for some
scholarly people over there.
Your only job today is to make an
iyyah, is an intention.
Ya Allah, I am at Alif, Da, Ta,
how can we get to Jeem, Ha, Kha?
This is a very common question that you
probably got before, subhanallah, which is, how can
you kind of put everything into your plate?
And I remember my teacher saying to me,
look, this is not a race, and this
is not a comparison between you and other
people.
You are on your journey, they are on
their journey, and someone who works as hard
and fights as hard, and has as many
pressures for something that they fight very hard
for, it's going to mean that much more
to them in the end.
I'd like to thank you for it, subhanallah,
as something that opens up the plate, so
it can end up having more, because of
the Qur'an, subhanallah, and because of the
way it trains us, and allows us to
have that self-discipline, all of the things
that come with it, subhanallah.
Have you witnessed any barakah of the Qur
'an in your life?
There are many things that would come ahead
that wouldn't be easy, subhanallah, but it was
leaning back on the Qur'an, and knowing,
and knowing, and kind of feeling the barakah
of it coming through.
Ya Rabbi, I intend to take the next
step, so help me.
Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi ta'ala wabarakatuh.
Welcome to another exciting episode of the Life
as a Muslimah podcast.
This episode, subhanallah, is particularly special and dear
to my heart, firstly because, Allahumma barik, I've
got the Qur'an here with us, and
secondly because this is our first, our very
first Life podcast, alhamdulillah, proudly brought to you
by, in collaboration with Qur'an Halaqah, and
the Khalil Institute, and we extend our deepest
gratitude as well for the Maryam Center for
hosting this event.
I'm aware all of you, subhanallah, know who
Dr. Rania is.
Jazakallah khaira for being here.
Jazakallah khaira.
But I will give a very quick bio,
inshallah.
So Dr. Rania Awad is a renowned scholar
and a clinical psychiatrist.
She is a clinical associate professor of psychiatry
at Stanford University, where she directs the Muslim
Mental Health and Islamic Psychology Lab.
And Allahumma barik, she holds many ijazahs in
the Qur'an alongside the Islamic fiqh.
So we'll crack on with this, very excited,
bi-idhnillah.
The first question I'm going to ask you,
bi-idhnillah, Shaykha, is how did your journey
with the Qur'an start?
Inshallah.
Well, first, assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu.
I hope you're all well.
Thank you for coming out this evening, inshallah.
And thank you for being part of a
program that talks directly about the Qur'an,
and I'm really humbled to share my journey
in this story.
It's just one of many journeys, subhanAllah, of
so many people that have experienced the miracle
of the Qur'an.
But if in any way we can, in
some way or form, inspire somebody to pick
up the Qur'an and to do more
with it, alhamdulillah, then it's worth sharing a
little bit of what's actually been a very
private journey, subhanAllah.
I don't normally speak about this very often,
but I'm happy to share if it's of
use to others, inshallah ta'ala.
Like many of you, I grew up in
a household in which there was Qur'an
being recited.
There was people who read the Qur'an
in my household, who we saw as little
children, you know, elders of ours reading the
Qur'an.
Myself, I grew up in the United States,
as many of you may know, and in
my upbringing, certainly went to the kind of
schools that, you know, there we call them
Sunday schools, in which we're learning the beginnings
of the Arabic alphabet and the readings of
Qur'an.
Eventually, my parents put me in an Islamic
school for some years of my schooling, and
I appreciated that quite a bit after the
fact, inshallah.
And there, there was a lot of emphasis
on learning how to read the Qur'an
and memorizing.
It wasn't until I moved from one state,
I was in the East Coast of America
into the Midwest of America, we moved roughly
right before my high school years.
And there, the summer that I moved, subhanAllah,
there was a group of women and girls
who, it was a predominantly Syrian community.
I'm not Syrian, but they were predominantly Syrian.
And in that summer, there was a summer
camp we were attending as girls, a girls'
summer camp.
Part of the camp had Qur'an in
it and Islamic studies and other things.
But at the end of the summer, they
had a celebration.
And in the celebration, they were welcoming back
a lot of the girls that had gone
to Syria for the summer to study Qur
'an.
And I had never heard in my life
a term called ijazah.
I didn't know what this word meant.
I didn't even know that you can receive
an ijazah as a girl.
Like, I didn't know anything about this, subhanAllah.
Still, for those that don't know, do you
mind explaining?
Yes, an ijazah is a license to teach.
So these girls who were my age, roughly,
teenagers, maybe a little bit older, a little
bit younger, but the point is they were
there in Syria to receive this ijazah or
the licensure to teach the Qur'an.
And when they came at the end of
the summer camp, there was a party, a
festivity, and it was so beautiful.
SubhanAllah.
And how old were they?
They were teenagers, mostly.
Some of them might have been in their
20s, but mostly they were in their adolescent
years.
And they were in this party, they were
crowned with the Qur'an.
Literally, they were given a crown, like a
tiara, subhanAllah, and a cape.
They were caped and crowned for their ijazah
celebration.
And I had never seen anything like this.
It was beautiful.
The gowns were this white satin color.
The tiaras were, you know, beautiful and had
flowers.
And as a girl at the time, I
was probably about 13 when this was happening.
And I remember standing there looking at all
of them, just like, you know, kind of
took your breath away, kind of just in
awe.
And I remember making this very private, quiet
du'a in my heart.
Oh Allah, I want to do that.
I want to be like one of them,
subhanAllah.
But as I mentioned, I'm not Syrian.
I don't know how to get to Syria.
And I'm not sure what the process exactly
entails.
But I kept it quiet.
I actually didn't say anything to my family
at the time.
I just sort of kept it to myself
and thought, oh, ya Rabbi, I would love
to do this thing.
And the reason I'm so glad that in
this audience that there are all ages, from
all ages, subhanAllah, is because you don't know
like that, a 13-year-old watching something
and right then making a du'a and
an intention, an ijazah, that eventually may, and
in this case, alhamdulillah, was fulfilled.
And we'll share a little bit of that
story.
But please make your intentions.
Even right now, as you're listening to this,
regardless of where you are in your journey
of the Qur'an, we all have more
to do with the Qur'an.
We all have more to do.
So make the intention, oh Allah, allow me
to do more.
SubhanAllah, jazakallahu khayran astaghfirullah, that was very beautiful.
And as you mentioned, subhanAllah, we have all
ages, all levels in terms of the Qur
'an.
Some of the sisters sitting here may be
just about to start their journeys.
And some, may Allah mubarak, have ijazahs and
different qiraat may Allah mubarak.
And one thing you mentioned is regardless of
age, subhanAllah, regardless of age, you can always
do the Qur'an and have something new
to learn about the Qur'an.
SubhanAllah, jazakallahu khayran.
And do you think, I'm guessing here, do
you think that this moment that you had
was the one that sparked your connection with
the Qur'an?
Or was there a moment later on that
you felt like I'm connected to the Qur
'an more, you know, as youngsters?
This was a first moment, for sure.
But there was another moment, and it comes,
actually, there's a bit of a roundabout story.
SubhanAllah, ghulam, alhamdulillah.
It's a beautiful story, it just takes a
little bit of time, so I'll condense it.
And just say that in the following year,
I was about 13 in that year, that
was the summer.
In the school year, we had a visitor
come to where I was living.
At the time, it was in Michigan, in
the state of Michigan, California, in California, in
the United States.
Sorry, I live in California now.
Michigan is not in California.
Just not to confuse you, because clearly I'm
confused.
Alhamdulillah.
Anyhow, we were in Michigan, and we had
a visit from a sheikhah, from a Syrian
sheikhah.
And again, I had never heard of a
sheikhah.
I never heard of a woman who was
a sheikh.
Like, this had never crossed my path before.
In fact, I didn't even know that women
could be sheikhahs.
And there was all this buzz and excitement,
because a sheikhah was visiting, you know, our
home state.
And all the women, including my mother and
all of her friends and everybody, were taking
classes with the sheikhah, because they were so
excited there was a sheikhah in town.
And we girls just, you know, heard about
this.
But then one day, the sheikhah said to
the woman, she said, I want to meet
the girls of the community.
Gather them all.
So we all piled into a house, somebody's
house, and we sat there, and she gave
us a class.
And this particular sheikhah would be the only
time I ever met her, subhanAllah.
The one and only time.
And I could tell you, I'm still 13,
yeah?
But I was crying.
I mean, tears, tears, sobbing, tears.
And, you know, she's speaking in Arabic.
I'm raised as American.
Like, my first language really is English, right?
And I can tell you some of what
she was probably talking about, but wallahi, it
wasn't her words.
It was her hal.
It was her, the vibes that she was,
the energy she was emanating, subhanAllah.
And I just, like, lost it.
I was like, I don't, and I went,
then I went home that night, and that's
when I finally said to my family, I
said to my parents, I said, wherever this
sheikhah is from, I want to go there.
Please send me there.
And they just looked at each other, and
they said, inshaAllah.
As parents often do when they don't want
to commit to something, they say, inshaAllah, you
know, subhanAllah.
And that's it, that's all, that was all
the conversation between my parents and I.
But I held on to this as something
I really wanted to do.
I didn't know, subhanAllah, in the background, that
the sheikhah was actually in Michigan at the
time, because she was there for treatment for
cancer.
And it would actually be just that summer,
she would pass away, wallahi humma.
Yet, subhanAllah, her visit opened many doors.
Amongst the doors that were open is that
she actually asked some of the, you know,
the women of our community who were the
teachers and leaders and such, to go to
my parents and ask them to send me
to Syria.
I didn't know this.
I mean, I didn't know this for years,
actually, that there was a back story.
All I know is in the summertime, my
parents came to me, right before the summer,
they came to me and said, you've been
saying you want to go to Syria to
study like the sheikhah did.
Do you want to go to Shem?
And I was like, yes, yes.
And I thought it was because I had
asked them.
It turns out there was this whole tussle
between them of, like, really, like, sleepless nights
because I'm not Syrian, I have no family
there.
How would they send their young 13, now
14-year-old daughter to a country alone
and to study?
But they figured the Qur'an is something
that is worth a sacrifice and even worth
criticism because they did receive criticism from members
of the community around them.
How do you send your young daughter alone
to study in a country that's foreign?
Even though I was in a school, I
was in a program for girls.
Nevertheless, they received some criticism.
But I appreciate that and I appreciate their
sacrifices because it does take sacrifice.
My mother told me that first summer when
I went to Shem at 14, she said
she didn't sleep a single night.
Just awake every night, just anxious, worried.
I mean, that's a mother, subhanAllah.
But later, alhamdulillah, she would say this all
paid off.
Do you see what I'm saying?
But they took a step that wasn't very
common.
And there's a reason why my father agreed,
which I could share with you as well.
And it's worth sharing because I think sometimes
we also need the buy-in from the
woman and from the men.
My father, Jozal Mokher, had an opportunity when
he was a young man to study the
Qur'an.
And he got to a certain point in
his memorization, his studies, and then subhanAllah, he
wasn't able to finish because of his medical
school.
He was studying to become a physician.
And he remembers going with his father, my
grandfather, asking him and saying, can you please
enroll me in al-Azhar, al-Azhar al
-Sharif?
Right?
And they did.
They actually went all the way to the
program.
And they tried to enroll my father into
the program.
And they said to him, well, since you
hadn't done the elementary earlier years with us,
you can't actually enroll for the college years,
enroll for the schooling years.
And he remembers that moment being kind of
crushed.
And then himself making a du'a inside
of his own self saying, if ever, subhanAllah,
my child were to come to me and
ask for an opportunity to study the deen
or the Qur'an, I would allow for
them to do so because he wasn't able,
subhanAllah.
And it would be years later, and I
don't think he realized it would be a
daughter that this would happen.
But he said that was the reason he
gave the yes to actually go and study.
And I share all these very personal family
stories just to inspire as much as we
can because sometimes doors may open, but they
very quickly close again unless you really take
the opportunity.
And sometimes there's a lot of hesitations because
it was not an easy journey for him.
My entire studies in Sham, all the years
I went back and forth and back and
forth to Syria was fraught with a lot
of tension because my parents allowed that first
trip, but then when they saw that I
was very attached to Syria in my studies,
they didn't, let me say it this way.
They thought Sharia studies were cute, you know,
but it wasn't what they exactly expected for
me in my life.
And so it was hard on them and
they were not very sure they wanted to
keep sending me back and forth.
So it was not an easy journey.
There was a lot of struggle and there
was a moment there where I had that
very first trip when I went at 14
and started my journey with the Quran formally
of not sure I'd be able to actually
get through it.
And the reason for that, it wasn't just
a matter of time, but it was also
a matter of there was pressures.
My parents wanted me to come back home
after a certain amount of time.
They also weren't sure that they said, you
know, you could do this in America.
And I'm thinking to myself, no, I really
can't.
I need my teachers.
And at the same time, there were other
pressures from within myself.
And that was comparing myself to the other
girls.
It's a very common thing that we do
on our journeys.
The other girls who traveled with me, SubhanAllah,
most of them were Syrian and they had
a journey with the Quran for years, like
since they're toddlers.
I didn't quite have the same journey.
And so I was very much, and I
share this openly, you know, that first trip
when I would read, it was literally like,
da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da.
It was very slow.
And it was very, I hadn't learned Tajweed.
Like this was a whole new foreign science
to me, the science of Tajweed.
It was like learning a foreign language, you
know?
And it was complicated.
And I remember shedding lots of tears.
And I remember my teacher saying to me,
look, this is not a race.
And this is not a comparison between you
and other people.
You are on your journey.
They are on their journey.
And someone who works as hard and fights
as hard and has as many pressures for
something that they fight very hard for, it's
gonna mean that much more to them at
the end.
It's prominent, it's so true, it's prominent.
So keep with it.
And that was that other moment that I
think really solidified because it was, I didn't
finish on that first trip.
And I couldn't actually, and many of my
friends did.
And they had their ijazah parties and we
crowned them and we keep, and I was
very happy for them.
But I was very sad too.
Because I wasn't able to accomplish what I
had set out to accomplish.
And I went back to America, not having
completed.
But those years in between until I was
finally able to get back to Sham, it
would take about three more years before I
could get back.
Those years became, the Quran became my buddy,
my friend.
It was very much, you know, it was
like this angst.
Like, I really want to do this Ya
Rabbi.
And it was almost like Allah was saying
to me, do you really want it?
And if you really want it, right, you're
gonna have to work harder for this.
It's a reminder for myself first, but throughout
this journey, you're gonna get tested.
You're gonna have ups and downs.
It's not gonna come like a straight brick.
You can't have that, subhanAllah.
With anything in life.
Imagine with the book of Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala, which is, subhanAllah, the second best
lesson you can have after Islam, subhanAllah.
So it's a reminder for myself first again.
Throughout this journey, keep holding on to the
Quran.
Hold on to the Quran, inshaAllah.
Whether that's one verse daily.
That is better than taking a whole gap
of the Quran and then, subhanAllah.
May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala make this
journey easy for us.
SubhanAllah, ameen.
From there, inshaAllah, take me all the way
to when you finished the first khatmah.
What were the feelings?
How did you, did you get a party
for that, inshaAllah?
How did you get a party?
There was, in fact, a party, yes, alhamdulillah.
So I'll walk you through.
The next few years, like I said, were
my high school years and my parents were
unsure about sending me back to Syria.
I really wanted to go specifically not just
to finish but also to receive the ijazah
formally.
And it's a big deal to receive the
ijazah from Syria because they're very, very strict
on their recitation, their rules.
In fact, many people from so many countries
will have finished in their own home countries
but come to Syria for the ijazah specifically.
And it's, inshaAllah, it's an amazing process but
a very rigorous process.
Anyhow, my parents said to me, just so
you understand the backdrop, they said to me,
well, if you graduate at the top of
your class, you have a 4.0, which
is for us the highest grade mark, you
receive scholarships to a college, university.
They listed all these things.
And then you can go back to Syria.
And I think they were saying that as
in to say like, focus on your studies.
They put all these barriers.
And I said, is that what I'll take?
Yeah, all right, let's do it.
And so actually, there's this joke that we've
had for many years, especially early on in
my medical studies, when people would say to
me, how did you get into medical school?
And I'd say, trying to get to Syria.
So I did that.
And alhamdulillah, but it pushed me.
It pushed me academically.
It pushed me in my studies, subhanAllah.
And when I finally got back, alhamdulillah, I
managed to finish early my high school studies
so that I could spend the remaining year
in what would have been my final senior
year of high school in Syria.
So it was in that year, alhamdulillah, that
I received my first ijazah.
And that was a process too, subhanAllah.
And it was just the most amazing thing
when you're sitting in front of the shaykh,
there's a curtain between you and the shaykh,
but in reciting, and everybody knows, it's not
just the fluency of your recitation.
It's not just the accuracy of being able
to answer the questions on tajweed or the
jazariyya or so on when asked.
But actually, it's more than that.
It's like, we believe that there is a
sense of, is a person truly ready to
carry this amanah?
Because once you receive an ijazah, it's a
licensure to teach.
And you can't just sort of sit on
it.
You need to actually work with it.
And so there's also a maturity aspect and
a, are you ready to carry this tradition
forward?
And so sometimes the shaykh will turn people
back, even though they have excellent recitation, because
they're not quite ready for this just yet,
subhanAllah, and so on.
So we're all like, it's such a nerve
-wracking day to go sit in front of
the, because then you go from your teacher
to your teacher's teacher, and eventually you get
all the way to the shaykh.
Like, it's multiple, and you have to be
checked at every process.
Alhamdulillah.
So yes, it was a phenomenal day, subhanAllah.
Nerve-wracking day, but it was also one
of those days where you're like, oh, Allah
Akbar, you know, sense of like, it's been
years in the making, and so it felt
just so amazing, alhamdulillah.
Some people might think the story ends there.
I get my ijazah, and I get my,
subhanAllah.
That's literally where the story starts.
Yes, subhanAllah.
So that's exactly, subhanAllah, where the story starts,
because the amanah holding onto the Book of
Allah, subhanAllah wa ta'ala, or the responsibility
that you have is far greater than being
on the journey with the Quran.
Once you've memorized that verse, even if you've
just memorized, I don't know, one juz, verse,
one juz, your responsibility of keeping that is
far more greater than you moving into the
next juz.
And that takes me to the next question,
subhanAllah.
You know, how we keep growing on our
journey with the Quran.
We keep learning new poems.
We keep learning new memorization, whether you're still
memorizing, and so on.
But this, subhanAllah, one constant, revision.
Sah?
So you need to maintain your revision throughout
the whole journey.
Are there any practical tips you have, Shaykh
Afuaz, inshaAllah, that helped you throughout your journey?
Maybe tips that you got from your teachers
as well.
You know, something I saw my teachers do,
which was so beautiful, is they insisted that
as soon as we can, meaning as soon
as we were given permission to teach, to
go ahead and do so.
And it didn't matter exactly who you're teaching,
as in to say, it could be children.
It could be your own family members.
It could be community members, right?
It could be a formal halaqah class, but
it could also be your cousins.
You know what I mean?
And they insisted that we immediately go.
And this is something, remember, I'm still a
teenager at this story, at this point of
the story.
But they said, you must pay it forward.
Allah, subhanAllah, would take something away from you
if you don't actually, you know, if he's
given you a blessing and you don't use
it, you're gonna be questioned and asked about
it.
So we were kind of thrown in to
teach immediately.
And that was phenomenal, because once you start
teaching, they say, teaching is learning it twice.
So once you start teaching, then it became
very, started teaching, it became very clear, I
myself needed to be on track, on top
of it, in order to be able to
convey the message to the next person over.
So that really solidified.
The other practical piece of advice, which I
would say all, which bring us to like
this point of my journey, all the way
over here, is having a sohbah.
Having a group of sisters, right?
A sohbah saliha, a righteous companionship.
In this case, a Quranic companionship.
And in the years in which I've had
that, it's been amazing to do revision, reading,
working on the next levels of things.
And I'll tell you, when I got to
university, so after this point of the story,
I enter university.
There was a friend of mine who, subhanAllah,
we didn't plan to be at the same
university, but we ended up being there.
She too had finished her khatm and received
her ijazah from Sham.
And we lived in the same building, but
on different floors for a university.
And so we said to each other, hey,
let's keep it up.
Let's keep this up.
And so, okay, so we had, I don't
share this often, but again, I'm only sharing
very private and personal things at this point
in my life in order to help people
be able to see what's possible, especially those
of you who might be university students now.
We said to each other, well, we're both
very busy.
University's lots of work.
Let's meet up for tahajjud.
And our teachers in Syria are very big
about tahajjud.
They insisted we get up.
If you're going to do any sort of
da'wah work or work for Islam, you
need to fill your cup and the time
to fill it is in pre-fajr, right?
And so we would get up every morning
for the four years of university, and she
would come down to my apartment.
She lived a little further up on the
tower, the building, and she would come to
my apartment.
And one day I would lead, one day
she would lead.
We would do our murajah that way.
This is how we kept up, right?
And luckily, I had a roommate, may Allah
bless her, who could sleep through anything.
So we didn't bother my roommate, may Allah
bless her.
But we were able to do this, and
then we would wake her up for fajr
with us to pray.
But the tahajjud period was amazing in that
it was so special, because I'll tell you
what happened over these years.
Some days, I was really energetic.
You know, but come on, let's do this.
And she's like, ah, you know, and like
pulling her along.
Some days, I was in a slump, and
she would pull me up.
And so that's how sisterhood is.
You help each other.
Ta'awinu ana al-birri wa taqwa, right?
Like, help each other to do righteous deeds.
And that's exactly what it was.
And until this very day, this is my
best friend, because there are friendship in the
Quran that cannot be explained or felt in
any other way.
SubhanAllah.
That is so true, that is so true.
And if you'll say, hey, with someone that
you know because of the Quran, thank Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala.
And subhanAllah, in this gathering, you might meet
the best of people just because we're gathered
here for one reason, which is the Quran.
So if you have a friend that you
met because of the Quran, hold on to
them for life, inshaAllah.
Jazakallahu khairan, subhanAllah.
You touched a little bit on, you know,
medical school and being in a university.
Of course, this is a very common question
that you probably got before, subhanAllah, which is,
how can you kind of put everything into
your plate?
Whether that's responsibilities that you have towards your
parents, your family, and then at the same
time, your university, and then you've got the
Quran, you've got all of these things.
So how are you able to put all
of this in one plate?
Only with the permission of Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala.
I'll tell you something, though, because it's not
unique to me.
I don't consider my story to be unique,
actually.
If you knew my teachers and the people,
the woman that I sat with and took
from, you, we wouldn't need to ask this
question.
The reason is because when you see many
role models and examples, the proof is in
the pudding.
When you can see, and so many of
my own teachers in Syria, it was so
phenomenal.
I wish, I wish, you know, a grant,
safety and security back again.
You know, the war devastated everything for Tabarak
Allah.
You know, in the years that I was
there, Syria was so safe and so beautiful,
subhanAllah, and they had amazing, amazing teachers, men
and women both.
And of the women that I studied with,
what was so phenomenal about them is you
meet them, and like many of us in
this room, almost all of them were wives
and mothers, and homemaking was a priority.
In addition, almost all of them had university
degrees, and many of them had careers, jobs,
teachers, engineers, doctors, whatever they're doing.
And all of them were working in the
dawah, as in to say some taught Quran,
some had specialized work in fiqh and seerah,
tafsir, hadith, whatever it is that they were
specialized in, and deep scholarship.
But they had their foot in the dunya
too.
It's not like it was just a theoretical
thing, teaching the deen, and it wasn't like
they were all in the dunya either, do
you know what I mean?
But the balance between it all, and prioritizing
their kids and their family and their husbands
was powerful, because sometimes people hear, oh, sheikhat,
women teachers, they think they're men haters or
something.
No, no, these women honored their husbands, and
that was very important, and raised their children,
and that was a priority.
And Allah gave them the barakah and the
ability to then, once you, this is what
our teacher tells us, once your core priorities
are taken care of, Allah allows you then
to expand those circles.
But when you are out here saving the
dolphins, and your house is in shambles, that
work isn't mubarak.
It's not accepted.
Allah doesn't want that.
He wants the core priorities fixed first, and
then the barakah extends to the outer circles.
Wallahu alam.
But this is what I saw.
Very profound.
JazakAllah khair.
JazakAllah khair.
You reminded me of the two verses, subhanAllah.
Allah subhana wa ta'ala says in the
Quran, wa ma khalaqtul jinna wal-insa illa
niyabudun.
That's your ultimate purpose.
That's what you should be doing.
And subhanAllah, being a mother, being a wife,
being whoever you are, that is your priority,
and that is your form of worship.
Allah subhana wa ta'ala tells us somewhere
else in the Quran, wa laa tansa naseebaka
min al dunya.
Do not forget your portions in this dunya.
It doesn't mean I'm gonna lock myself up
and memorize the Quran morning and night.
No.
You're gonna have your portion of the Quran.
You're gonna have your portion with your family.
You're gonna have your portion of having fun.
And all of this, subhanAllah, will be facilitated
because of the barakah of the Quran.
And that takes me very nicely to the
next question, inshaAllah.
We all talk about the barakah of the
Quran, and I'd like to thank you for
it, subhanAllah, as something that opens up the
plate so I can end up having more
because of the Quran, subhanAllah, and because of
the way it trains us and allows us
to have that self-discipline and all of
the things that come with it, subhanAllah.
Have you witnessed any barakah of the Quran
on your life?
Oh, what other barakah is there?
SubhanAllah.
No, absolutely.
The discipline is phenomenal.
The discipline of the Quran, the discipline of
prayer five times a day, fasting, all of
this is different forms of discipline.
And the barakah is definitely there, I'll tell
you.
In the years that I was in university
and I started teaching the dean kind of
alongside my college studies and such, there were
going to be dark days ahead.
There were gonna be difficult days ahead.
And I didn't know that, something one of
my teachers said which rang so true later.
The Quran is light, it's nur.
And when you fill your bucket, if you
will, with nur, you're able to then draw
from that nur all in any rainy day,
in any dark, difficult day.
And the more you do so, the more
you're able to pull from a reservoir on
days where you are depleted and you don't
have enough.
But if you're depleted on top of depletion,
on top of depletion, where are you to
go?
You see, the Quran is actually that nur,
that light that continues to nourish you even
in the dark days.
And I think that's something that I saw
very profoundly in my journey and in my
studies.
There are many things that would come ahead
that wouldn't be easy, subhanAllah.
But it was leaning back on the Quran
and knowing and kind of feeling the barakah
of it coming through, subhanAllah.
This is the same thing, by the way,
with Tahajjud.
It's the time of nur and light.
I didn't, I'll tell you something.
At one time, I told you about my
roommate, may Allah bless her, we met again
many years later.
And it was a gathering of women, we
were sitting together and they played, they wanted
to play like a, you know, get to
know each other game kind of thing.
And so she ended up having to introduce
me, right?
And so she said, this is my university,
you know, roommate, flatmate.
And she said, it was so interesting.
It rang true because I had never, I
never thought of it this way, but I
could see, you know, she could see something
I couldn't see.
And she said, and because I would, ya
haram, I laugh so hard, I think of
all these times.
Let me give you a backstory just to
explain what she's gonna say.
So in order for me to get up
that early in the morning, I need an
alarm clock.
I don't know, I don't know if you
all just wake up, naturally, I need an
alarm clock.
We all need an alarm clock.
The very first day we moved in together,
she said to me, I'm scared of loud
noises.
Do not turn on an alarm clock.
And I said to her, what do you
mean?
She said, I don't like beeping sounds.
And I said, what am I supposed to
do?
We share a room.
And so I went to the store and
I found an alarm clock that was nature
sounds.
It was like a babbling creek.
You know, these kind of sounds, right?
Mashallah.
And so I bought this, I was very
excited.
I said, look, look, I found this alarm
clock.
It's not gonna scare you.
Don't make you sleep, no?
What would happen though is I wouldn't be
able to hear it.
And so the thing is, it would get
louder and louder and louder.
So the really funny part of the story
is that after it would go, then you
hear a little duck squeak.
Quacking, quack, quack, shh, quack, quack.
And then it'd get louder and louder and
louder.
And it would wake her up and she'd
say, Rania, your ducks are quacking.
And I'm like, oh, sorry, sorry.
Alhamdulillah.
So she went through all of this with
me, subhanAllah.
So then she's introducing me years later to
this group of women.
And she says, you all are, as mothers
and wives and such, you're asking, how do
I fit in all these things in my
day?
She said, you know, it's that tahajjud that
Rania does.
And I was like, oh, interesting.
But it's true.
It's this reserve, literally, of nur that you
build.
Even if you can't quite feel it or
touch it, you can draw from it later.
It keeps you positive.
It keeps you going.
And other people start to notice it even
when you don't, subhanAllah.
The Quran is nur, literally.
And nur, light, will never stay in an
unclean vessel.
SubhanAllah.
It will escape and flee.
This is why sometimes, Allah will protect us,
Allah will protect us, Allah will protect us.
You have people who've memorized, and now they
can't remember a single verse that they memorized.
The Quran will not stay in a place
that's unclean.
So we have to continue to purify, subhanAllah.
It's an ongoing journey.
That was very beautiful, very profound.
JazakAllah khair.
I just wanted to ask, inshAllah, before we
move on to your work, Yani.
Yani, how do you interact with the Quran
in its different ways?
From our audiences, some people might have just
started memorizing.
Some think they're not capable of memorizing, they're
old, and we don't wanna memorize, and they
just wanna stick to, Yani, a portion of
reflection.
What would your advice be, inshAllah?
First, I give the advice to myself before
I give it to you.
And that is to know that the Quran
is a miracle.
It's actually not your qudra or your ability.
This is Allah's words, and this is Allah's
miracle.
And he can give his miracle to whomever
he chooses.
So don't ever write yourself out of this.
We have individuals that we know, subhanAllah, who
started memorizing much later in their life, like
one of my teachers.
May I share her story with you?
She's phenomenal.
I have to.
I think it's been recorded before, but this
story, every time I share it, I get
goosebumps.
My second ijazah that I worked on was
in the qudra and warish.
And the reason I went back to Sham
specifically for this ijazah is because I then
moved to a community in California where so
many people practiced the Maliki school law, and
it is mandub, or it is dast form,
for them to recite warish in their prayers.
And could you, Shaykh Hafeez, explain what qudra
is first of all?
Yes, the qudraat are the different types of
recitation.
There are 10 modalities.
There are 10 qudraat, modes of recitation.
And warish is one of the 10.
And I would have so many sisters come
up to me and say, oh, you have
ijazah in qudra, can you teach me?
And I'd say, okay.
They'd say, warish?
And I'd say, oh, I don't know warish.
MashaAllah.
So eventually I wrote to my teachers in
Syria, and I said, is it possible?
And they said, well, you know, you either
go, you do one, the hafiz, that's where
we start, and then you have to do
all 10.
I was like, I don't have time to
do all 10.
So they asked the sheikh for permission, the
sheikh who gives us ijazah, Sheikh Muhyiddin al
-Qurdi, rahimahullah.
And he granted special permission for me to
work on warish.
So I was there only for these few
months, and it was in my medical school
years.
So it was just right in the middle
there, and I had just a couple of
months.
And they assigned me to a teacher, whose
teacher, right, teacher's teacher, was this massive, like
huge, big deal sheikhah, like a really important
person, subhanAllah.
And I was like, oh, I have to
recite to her, subhanAllah, like she's such a
big deal, subhanAllah.
And so eventually, after I finished my khatm,
and I finished my teacher's, and now I'm
going to her teacher.
This is the doktora I'm talking about now.
Her name is doktora Da'ad, rahimahullah.
And I sat in front of her, and
I'm now gonna be tested by her, so
that she can now take me to the
sheikh.
Okay, you see, yeah.
So here I am, and I'm ready to
recite to her, and mind you, I've been
practicing for weeks.
I've been practicing.
But something, again, her khatm, right, or just
her haybah, her energy, yaAllah.
I sat in front of her, and I
couldn't remember a single thing.
It happens, it happens, yaAllah.
And she said, read, Rania.
And I said, read, and I tried.
And it was still coming out like, duh,
duh, duh.
And she said, okay, okay, hold on, hold
on, hold on.
She could see I was like beyond nervous,
yaAllah.
And so she said, can I tell you
a story?
Sure, yaAllah, inshaAllah.
And she said, do you know who I
am?
And I'm thinking to myself, yeah, I know
who you are.
InshaAllah, yaAllah, inshaAllah, yaAllah, inshaAllah.
And she said, no, no, no, no.
Do you know who I was before?
I was muqri'ah, jami'ah, like all
these huge titles.
I know, and she said, did you know
that I was a professor of mathematics?
I was a professor of mathematics, what on
earth?
I had no idea she had this whole
other life to, yaAllah.
InshaAllah.
And she said, yeah, at the University of
Damascus, I've been a professor of mathematics, the
first woman in the department of mathematics.
And she said, I wasn't always like this.
And I said, like this how, Yanni?
Like massive shayta.
And she said, I wasn't always a shayta.
She said, I came to this late in
my life.
And so I'm still kind of like, you
know, you're a little skeptical, like, Yanni, Yanni,
not 14, but you're 15.
And you're like, what is late, Yanni?
And so she said, actually, for so many
years of my life, I did not look
like this.
I did not dress like this.
This is not my persona on the campus.
She said, it was actually a group of
girls.
This was when the University of Damascus first
started taking women students.
And she said, a group of them approached
me as a professor and said to me,
will you be a mentor for a woman
student group?
And so she said, at that point in
my life, I was very much a feminist.
And I was like, yes, anything for a
woman, absolutely.
You want to complain about the men, come
on over.
Literally, literally.
And so she is the faculty mentor of
the student club that they put together.
And she sat with them the first day.
And they're all complaining about, oh, it's so
hard to be a woman on campus.
There's so few of us, this and that,
this and that.
And she's agreeing with them.
And she said, I don't know when the
conversation switched from a conversation around male bashing,
I don't know, to the Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam.
She said, if you had told me before
going into that room they were going to
talk about religion, Allah, the Prophet Muhammad, I
would not be there.
She said, I was completely closed off to
the idea of religion, completely closed off to
the idea of anything related to Islam.
She was raised in a secular family.
And she said, in that gathering, she's sitting
there, and they're in a circle.
And she said, suddenly, she felt this love
enter her heart for the Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam, out of nowhere, like out
of nowhere.
And it was what the girls were talking
about.
And she was so taken aback by it.
She was so shocked by it.
And then she started looking at the girls
in the room.
And she said, I didn't realize, I don't
know how I didn't realize that all of
them wore hijab, or most of them wore
hijab.
She didn't wear hijab.
Not only did she not wear hijab, but
that day, she said to me, and this
is where the story gets really funny, because
all of this is in Arabic.
And then she says to me, and do
you know what I was wearing?
I'm thinking, I don't know what you're wearing.
What could you possibly be wearing?
And then she says something, and I can't
pick it up.
And so I say, and so she says
it again.
I still can't understand it.
So then she says it in English.
I didn't know she could speak English.
And so in English, she goes, miniskirt.
I mean, literally, I think my jaw fell
to the ground.
You could probably see it on my face.
I was just shocked.
And she said, that's how you understand, that
if those girls that day had judged me
for how I looked, that I wasn't practicing,
I was wearing miniskirts, I was this professor
of mathematics, all feminist, and excited, and you
know, if you had judged me for how
I looked on my outward, I would never
have been invited into that room.
I would never have heard about the Prophet,
salallahu alayhi wa sallam, so beautifully as they
talked about him.
That love, when it entered her heart, she
said, she started to search.
She was on a searching journey.
And one halaqa led to another.
One teacher led to another.
One class led to another.
Eventually, she, you know, mathematics, yeah?
That's really incredible, yeah?
PhD in mathematics.
She put that into the study of the
Quran.
She became so excellent in her study of
the Quran, and in all of the qiraat,
that the sheikh that I'm telling you about
that gives us ijazah, and there's only five
of them in Syria, one of five, right?
He actually, when he would travel for hajj,
or he would travel and leave the country,
he needs to fill his post.
He would not put the millions, hundreds, probably,
of male students he has, including his own
son, who eventually took his post, subhanAllah, after
he passed.
He would put Dr. Adad to give ijazah
on his behalf, his khatm, because of how
excellent, how much it's on her recitation had
in it.
And her ear was so excellent in picking
up any mistakes, that that's who he put
in his post.
She became one of the first sheikhs to
actually give ijazah as a woman in the
Quran in Syria.
Do you see where her story was, and
where she is?
So please do not say to yourself, not
me, I'm not worthy, I can't, who am
I, where did I come from?
This is all the shaitan trying to pull
you away from something that's a miracle that
Allah can give to anybody, inshallah to Allah.
Very emotional, very emotional, subhanAllah.
Jazakallahu khayran for sharing that.
It's a powerful story.
That's an inspiration for everybody, to say in
this panel.
That's an inspiration, very beautiful story.
Jazakallahu khayran.
It just reminds me of the verse of
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, inna allaha yuhdi
min yasha.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala chooses you, and
guides you, and takes you from wherever you
are, and then gifts you with the Quran,
and then subhanAllah, instead of teaching, just mathematics
like you're saying, now you're teaching the word.
And she carried on.
She carried on her teaching, subhanAllah.
Right in the university, and also became this
hafidha, jami'a, nuqri'a, fatallahu khayran.
SubhanAllah, all the titles, subhanAllah.
May Allah reward you.
Jazakallahu khayran.
Astaghfirullah.
Astaghfirullah.
I just wanted to touch on this.
As a student myself, subhanAllah, when we go
into medical lectures, we'd hear things, and then
the dots start connecting, and you're like, subhanAllah,
I remember a verse, or a story, of
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala speaking about this,
or the qudra, or the wisdom of Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala.
When did you feel like the dots started
connecting for you, and you thought, I need
to incorporate the Quran into my approach, to
mentor her?
Oh, subhanAllah, this is early.
I would say, I would say it was
probably the very first trip to Sham.
I'll tell you why.
One of my teachers, who's still an incredible
teacher to me, subhanAllah, today, I still go
to her for so many things, subhanAllah.
It's really important to continue to have mentors,
and guides on this path, and never break
free from your, having mentors, and guides, and
teachers, because the system of Islam is a
checks and balances.
You never get too important, or too big,
not to have a teacher, kind of call
you out for something.
SubhanAllah, we always need mentors and guides.
Anyhow, may Allah bless her.
I first met her when I was 14,
and we, because we were so young, we
would take the classes, and then they would
take us on some field trips, to show
us Damascus, and one of the field trips
she took us on, and subhanAllah, this, you
know, I had forgotten about this for many,
many years, but now as I think back,
I realize how much that particular trip made
such a difference.
She took us to Abi Maristan, a Dar
al-Shifa, and for those of you who
know my work with mental health, I write
about this concept, and I love this, and
my organization's actually called Maristan, because of this.
It was basically, she took us there, to
show us the Muslim hospitals, the Muslim healing
center, but they didn't call it hospital, they
called it Dar al-Shifa, yani, center of
healing.
The Muslims had centers of healing for their
illnesses, subhanAllah, including inside of it, mental health,
which is very powerful, and the topic of
my new book, alhamdulillah.
And how, anyhow, she, I remember standing there,
and she pointing out, because they had it,
basically now it's a museum, and they show
you the wax figures, what the different parts
of the hospital were doing, and what they
were, and it was so powerful, she said
to us, look at this, look at this
center, in which it's not just doctors working
here, it's not just doctors and nurses, like
you would expect, and pharmacists, they also had
people who were here, who were dieticians, because
food makes you healthy, or makes you sick.
They also had people who were doing wa
'b, yani, Islamic reminders, today you might call
them a chaplain, subhanAllah, in the, with the
doctors, rotating on the patients with them, right?
They also had people who were helping them
in the types of modalities of treatment, were
very spiritual, yani, they were working on their
mind, body, and their soul.
And I remember her saying, look, you see
this intermeshed, interlocking understanding of the human psyche,
where you think you're gonna heal just physically,
by taking some medicine?
No.
Allah's the reason behind the cure in the
first place.
You think you're only going to heal by
some talking?
This is not going to, Allah's the reason
behind this.
You think you're going to heal without connecting
yourself back to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala?
You can't heal without connecting yourself back to
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
That was 14.
And I remember standing there and going, oh,
holistic, like that term, that concept of holistic
healing is so part of our tradition.
And the Quran was used in the healing
process of the patients, just like they gave
them medications, and they did give them pills,
yes.
And just like they gave them talk therapies,
and yes, the Muslims actually came up with
talk therapy.
It's not a white thing, folks.
Inshallah, I can go on a whole lesson
just on that.
Inshallah.
And just like they also gave them Quranic
advice, and they read to them Quran, and
they hit the sound of the Adhan, they
made sure they can hear acoustic.
There were no microphones back then.
But if you were in your patient room
from any part of the building, you can
hear the Adhan because of the itqan or
the ihsan of the Muslim architects who are
building structures for the purpose of worshiping Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala.
The fountains, the greenery, the colors, the sounds,
even using the maqamat, the tones, to help
in the healing process, all of this was
part of the treatments.
It's actually phenomenal, atabaraka Allah.
I think that's really when it kind of
hit me that, yeah, you can practice Qibla,
you can do medicine from a holistic perspective,
and that's what's in line with the deen.
SubhanAllah.
What a beautiful thing, subhanAllah.
JazakAllah khayran, ustada.
Yani, when you spoke about this, it reminds
me of, yani, there's so many things that
we hear about forms of neglect of the
Quran, sahih?
So people will say to you, how do
you neglect the Quran?
And the most reasonable answer, what do you
guys think?
How do I neglect the Quran?
If I don't read the Quran, sahih?
If I don't read the Quran, if I
don't have a connection with the Quran, subhanAllah,
one of the forms of neglect of the
Quran is to not use it as cure.
Yeah, subhanAllah.
Sometimes we just go to the doctors with
the intention of he's just gonna give me
a pill or he's just gonna give me
what I need and go.
But subhanAllah, it's not the doctor.
It's Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
And it's the book of Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala, shifa.
That's how Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala describes
his book.
And another verse that comes to mind, subhanAllah,
so Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in
surah As-Saud, kitabun anzalnahu ilayka mubarakun liyaddabbaru
ayatih.
And then there's the theme of the talk
today, reflection of the Quran.
How did you incorporate that into your life,
sheikh?
The concept of reflection.
The concept of reflection.
How did that affect who you are as
an individual?
Another teaching from my dear teacher, subhanAllah, is
specifically this concept of, and it's actually now
the topic of the newest book, alhamdulillah, I'm
just taking all these things into, inshAllah, what
I hope will be useful material for everybody
to use because I've benefited from it so
much.
One of the things that our teachers really
emphasize for us as women, not just as
men, as women, was the idea of taking
pause in order to do tadabbur, or pondering
of the Quran, to do tafakkur, contemplation of
what you're reading and understanding.
It's not just a matter of memorizing words,
and it's not just a matter of perfecting
tajweed, right?
It's also really understanding what you're reading and
then imbibing it, or being able to benefit
from its meanings.
But you can't do that without tadabbur and
tafakkur, and tadakkur, which is basically dhikr of
Allah, subhanAllah ta'ala.
But how do you do that?
Like, how do you do that practically speaking?
Well, the Prophet Muhammad, sallAllahu alayhi wa sallam,
had a way of doing this even before
nabuwah, even before prophecy.
What would he do?
He would meditate where, how, when?
In the cave of Hira, exactly.
This is even before he was a prophet.
And it's like, subhanAllah, if you look at
the books of Sira, when they're talking about
the Prophet's life and the biographers are kind
of collecting this content, they see that the
Prophet, sallAllahu alayhi wa sallam, he keeps going
to the cave of Hira every so often
to do what?
To ponder, to reflect, to think about everything
that's going on.
And then they say, he didn't know that
nabuwah was coming at the age of 40,
he didn't know.
But he could feel, I guess, subhanAllah, that
something heavy was about to come because it
says in the weeks and months right before
prophecy came, right before revelation came, he would
increase and increase longer and longer spans of
time in the cave of Hira.
Now, after revelation, he keeps this up.
He keeps this up.
In fact, there is actually a confirmed sunnah
of the Prophet, sallAllahu alayhi wa sallam, sunnah
mu'akkadah, on the Prophet that is, allows
you to continue with your contemplation and pondering,
which is called?
Which is called?
To do tadabbur in it.
What is the state that you're meant to
be in?
Where do you go to do seclusion?
What is this called?
I'tikaf, i'tikaf.
Okay, I have to ask the room.
I have to ask the room.
How many of the women here do i'tikaf?
Oh, oh, oh, no, no, no, no, no.
I don't think I've ever been in a
room where there's not a single hand raised.
I think they shy.
Let's try again.
No, no, one more time, one more time.
Who does i'tikaf regularly?
He doesn't know what i'tikaf means.
i'tikaf means a spiritual seclusion.
Usually done here in Ramadan, the last 10
days.
All you can do in here.
Oh, we are about to bring an i'tikaf
revolution.
Let's do that.
Allahu akbar, inshallah.
I'm really, really big on this concept.
I mean, this is really a core, core
concept for me.
Let me tell you practically, is it okay?
We might divert just a little bit, but
we need to bring it, inshallah, because it's
a confirmed sunnah of the Prophet, sallAllahu alayhi
wa sallam.
In fact, after the Prophet dies, the Sahaba
say to each other, how dare we neglect
a sunnah that the Prophet Muhammad, sallAllahu alayhi
wa sallam, never himself neglected in his lifetime.
And that is the sunnah of i'tikaf.
If furthermore, you know that the difference between
sunnah, I'm gonna go into lecture mode, forgive
me here.
I don't mean to, I just wanna make
sure we get the message across.
The difference between a sunnah and a fard,
what makes the difference?
How do you know one was a fard
and one was a sunnah?
The sunnah, sometimes the Prophet acted upon it,
and sometimes he left it.
But a fard was always said.
Yet i'tikaf is one of the only sunnahs
that was always, he did always, and didn't
neglect.
So strong.
And so for the men, we know i'tikaf
is in the masjid, and it has to
be in the masjid.
For the women, there's a difference of opinion.
We're not gonna go into all the fiqh
today, other than to say some say in
the masjid is fine, and some say in
a woman's house, which is an exception, that
the woman can do i'tikaf in her own
home.
The reason I say this to all of
you, as women in this room, is I
don't think I would be able to keep
up my sanity in a year like this,
this year that we're experiencing a genocide, and
atrocities in front of our eyes unfolding every
single day, y'all see.
If I didn't have a practice of i'tikaf,
it's, one of my teachers would say, in
the modern world, for the modern Muslim, an
i'tikaf darura, it's literally a necessity.
And the reason she would say that is
because she says, and let me ask all
of you here, many of you are cooks,
do you cook with a pressure cooker?
I do.
Is it your modern day pressure cooker?
Or was it like the old-timey, your
grandma's pressure cooker, the modern time?
No.
My grandmother once had a pressure cooker that
exploded.
And what I would enter, until today, you
can enter into her kitchen, you can still
see the, and it terrified her that she
never used a pressure cooker again in her
life.
And the reason pressure cookers explode is why,
the old ones, why?
The air isn't coming out.
You didn't let the release valve to allow
the steam to exit.
Well, our spiritual teachers would say, the i'tikaf
is the valve that allows the pressure to
be released from the intensity of modern life.
And if you don't have pause to allow
the steam to exit, you yourself will explode
or implode, one or the other.
And so this was their practice.
And they taught us to do i'tikaf regularly.
And because for a woman who does i'tikaf
in her own home, you just designate one
part of your home, a section, a part
of a room, in my personal bedroom, it's
really the space of my prayer rug, that's
all it is.
And there, all you do is you say
a simple intention, no way to i'tikaf, or
in English, I intend i'tikaf.
You enter into that space, now you're in
a state of i'tikaf.
You do your prayers, you do your dhikr,
you do your Quran reading, you do your
tadabbur, your tafakkur, your contemplating, your pondering of
the Quran, your relationship with Allah, your relationship
with other human beings around you.
You spend a little bit of time.
And because for a woman doing i'tikaf at
home, there is no maximum or minimum amount
of time.
It could be just a few minutes, or
it could be a half hour, an hour,
several hours.
The reason that's beautiful is, you could literally
do this with each one of your five
daily prayers.
Every single time you go pray, on your
prayer rug, no way to i'tikaf, have a
masjid, this prayer rug becomes your masjid, literally,
or this room or this section of the
room becomes your masjid, and now you're in
a state of i'tikaf.
Every time I do this, after I pray
my prayers, if I have time and I'm
not getting like, mama, I need my socks,
you know, I pray, inshallah.
There's some other thing that I'm being pulled
for, inshallah, if I have a few minutes,
it encourages me to stay there a little
bit longer and do some dhikr.
A little bit longer, I do some contemplating.
A little bit longer, I'm reading my Quran
or doing revision.
And suddenly you find yourself, because there's five
daily prayers, you have five minutes here, but
this one had 10 minutes.
And over here, I found myself with 20
minutes, alhamdulillah, but then only two minutes on
the next one, right?
By the time you collect them all up,
I probably have about an hour's worth of
i'tikaf every day.
It's powerful.
Suddenly you're a person who does the confirmation
of the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam daily,
at least weekly.
And you're able to really calm yourself, pause,
and then contemplate on the meanings of the
Quran and your relationship with Allah, sallallahu alayhi
wa sallam.
It's one of the most powerful things I've
experienced, but yet we as women don't know
our fiqh as well as we need to,
to know that you can even do i'tikaf
at home, according to the Hanafi school.
Does that help?
It takes us back to the point you
mentioned earlier, priorities.
If that's there, and your priority is there,
your connection with Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
and yourself, you can then give more to
the community, to the people around you.
And do your best.
Subhanallah.
Jazakallahu khayran.
Barakallahu fikih.
What a profound thing.
And fortunately, due to time, I would have
loved to have this conversation until midnight.
We'll just keep going.
We need a qiyam.
We need a i'tikaf qiyam.
We should.
Next time.
But to conclude, inshallah, usually what we do
is we ask three questions in relation to
the topic, inshallah, or in relation to the
theme of the podcast.
The first question I'm gonna ask you, bi
-idhnillah, is can you share with us your
favorite verse, or surah, up to you, inshallah.
You can pick, and why it holds special
significance for you.
Yeah.
There was a verse when you were talking
earlier about shifa, and maybe it's my profession,
the fact that I'm a physician, and as
a psychiatrist, I'm specifically working in mental health,
which is not the easiest field.
And Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala teaches us,
says in the Qur'an, it's actually part
of a longer piece, but basically, wa-iba
martu, fahuwa yashfeen.
That if I fall ill, or if I
fall sick, Allah's the one who's actually granting
shifa.
To me, that's powerful.
I think many physicians in the room might
feel the same about this particular verse, that
we are just the vehicles that Allah has
allowed shifa, or treatment, to go through us
to a person.
And it's a very humbling place to be.
And so for me, I connect to that
deeply.
And subhanAllah, I just pray that Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala allows us to be people
of shifa, and not the opposite.
Ameen, ameen, ameen.
Next question.
You can think about this, bi-idhnillah.
It's, in one word, how would you describe
the Qur'an's impact on your life?
In one word.
I know it's a tough one.
Barakah.
SubhanAllah.
The barakah of the Qur'an.
SubhanAllah.
And the last one, subhanAllah, and that could
be, bi-idhnillah, get us thinking about our
role models in life, is, if you had
a chance to have a conversation with one
sahabiyah, who would it be and why?
And for those that don't know what sahabiyah
means, can explain that, bi-idhnillah.
A sahabiyah is a female companion of the
Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
Wow, what a cool question.
Nice.
I like that.
I've never asked that question before.
That's kind of cool.
Mashallah.
My goodness, there's so many sahabiyah.
Wouldn't you want to talk to all of
them?
Would you talk to every single one of
them?
That's so true.
You always think about the male ones.
I would have an answer if you asked
me, what is the sahabiyah that you want
to speak to?
But the moment you say sahabiyah, I'm like,
which one?
Yes, yes.
It looks like a question is about to
come in.
Simply, I would say khawla.
Would be probably the one I would be
very interested to have this conversation.
Because, she directly, directly, has revelation revealed for
her, and for her question, as a woman.
And this, and then she goes to the,
if you don't feel familiar, actually do you
know what surah, I'm referring to?
Al-Mujadala, fathagharakallah.
And she specifically has this question, and the
Prophet cannot speak, ma yamtaqoo AAan al-hawa.
He doesn't speak of his own accord.
He has to wait for revelation.
And he does wait for the revelation, and
the revelation with the answer, comes to her.
It's actually a long discussion, but needless to
say, her and her husband, had an issue,
subhanallah, and she needed to be, needed to
be sorted.
And, Allah azza wa jal reveals, literally, the
first few ayahs of, surah al-Mujadala, in
order to respond to this answer.
She then outlives the Prophet, sallallahu alayhi wasallam,
and Sayyidina Abu Bakr, and Sayyidina Umar, and
in the khalafah of Sayyidina Umar, where he
is now the khalifa, she sees him, and
she's an elderly woman at this point.
So she stops him, and she says to
him, and then she launches into all this
advice, and she says to him, I used
to know you, when you were just a
old maid, or a little Umar.
Talking to Sayyidina Umar, okay?
I used to know you, when you were
just a little boy.
Fear Allah, and be good to the people.
She gives him this whole lecture.
So the men, the people with Sayyidina Umar,
come to her, and they're like, what are
you doing?
What are you doing?
Sayyidina Umar, Amir al-Mumineen, how do you
let this old woman speak to you like
this?
And he says to them, do you not
know who this is?
I, Umar, am not going to listen to
a woman, who Allah listened to in the
seven heavens, and revealed revelation, this is Khawla.
So of course, I would love to sit
with Khawla, and really understand, what was it
like, to be this woman, subhanAllah, that Allah
gave revelation for, subhanAllah, in the time of
the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam, and thereafter.
SubhanAllah.
SubhanAllah, she gave you a beautiful end.
May Allah reward you, Jazakallah khairah.
As I said, subhanAllah, I would have gone,
till midnight, or even more, subhanAllah.
Next time, next time, as a joint act
of Qiyam, yeah?
A joint act of Qiyam, here at the
Maryam Salah.
So to end with inshaAllah, Doctora, if you
can give us, a final parting advice, any
key takeaways, that you would like, our audiences
to hold on to, bearing in mind, that
subhanAllah, we have all levels, all ages, Allahumma
bad.
Please my dear sisters, please know that the
Quran is a miracle, and it's a miracle
of Allah.
He gives it to whom he wishes, and
he holds it back, from whom he wishes.
Your only job today, is to make an
Niyah, is an intention.
Ya Allah, I am Alif Ba Ta, help
me get to, Jeem Haqqa.
Ya Rabbi, I am reading the alphabet, help
me join the letters together.
Ya Rabbi, I am now doing the letters
together, help me learn, fluency.
Ya Rabbi, help me learn, Tijweed.
You do that, Ya Rabbi, help me with
my memorization.
Ya Rabbi, one juz'at, two juz'at,
three juz'at, on and on and on,
and on this goes.
Never say to yourself, I can't, or this
isn't for me, or this is for some
scholarly people over there.
Right?
I told you the story of one of
my own sheikhs, yes, Dr. Adad.
If I hope that story inspires you, as
it inspires me, please share it, because by
the way, she said to me, share the
story.
So I've been sharing the stories.
Allah bless her.
And I'll end with this last thing, and
I shared it just recently, openly, just the
other time.
I shared with you earlier about my father.
He wanted to finish his Azhar degree, and
it didn't quite happen for him.
My father today is in his 70s.
May Allah bless him.
And for the last few years, once he
retired, he dedicated himself to the Quran.
He spent mornings, evenings, we just, every time
I visit them, he's in his chair, the
specific chair that he's in, and he's memorizing,
memorizing.
And he would say to me, memorizing in
old age is not the same as it,
right?
You know, basically learning in young age is
a beautiful line of Arabic poetry.
When you learn in a young age, it's
like you're literally etching in stone.
And I'm not going to tell you what
the rest of it says.
Because he says, it's so hard in old
age, finish memorizing when you're young.
But look, here he is in his 70s.
This past Ramadan, just this last few months
ago, last Ramadan, he came to us and
he said, I'm done.
I'm so proud of him.
He completed this entire khatm in his 70s.
So my sisters, it doesn't matter what age
you are sitting here.
It doesn't matter what your background is.
It doesn't matter if it's Alif, Bata, or
you say I'm not a native Arabic speaker.
In fact, some of the best and most
important of our teachers of the Tashreed and
the Qiraat were actually, to say they were
non-Arabic speakers.
This was not their first language.
This is why they did so well, quantifying
the Tashreed and the rules of Qiraat because
they were not Arabs.
They actually put it together properly in grammar
for that matter.
Please, know it's a miracle of the Quran
and all you need to do today, if
we can take a moment, can we do
this together right now?
And you have this beautiful envelope that they
gave you with beautiful exercise inside of it.
But can we at least do something together
before we part?
Can each of us make an intention, an
niya, because inna al-amalu bin niyaat.
Right?
Intentions, actions are by their intentions.
So your intention, and each person will be
different, find whatever place you're in.
Alif, Bata, Tashreed, Hifad, Qiraat, where are you
in the spectrum?
And say Ya Rabbi, I intend to take
the next step.
So help me.
You take a step, Allah takes many towards
you.
You go walking, he comes at speed.
This is something he's given and said and
verified.
He will absolutely come to your aid and
just open doors.
And if you're thinking today, where are these
doors?
Where are these doors?
Sometimes when I teach kids and I tell
them, Allah will open doors, they're like, like,
yo, just open a door.
Yes, just open a door before you even
know it, subhanAllah.
And the door could be a teacher.
It could be a friend.
It could be somebody who reminds you or
somebody who teaches you.
Or it could even be somebody you teach.
So Alif, Bata, and with that Baraka, Allah
opens more doors for you.
So may Allah subhanAllah bless me and you
to be carriers of this noble Quran, carriers
of light, literally, we are literally carriers of
Noor, carriers of light, and allow that light
to fully emanate, enter into our hearts, and
from the inside spill out.
And may we hold on to it.
And on the day of judgment, may we
gather together under the Ummah of Muhammad, sallAllahu
alayhi wa sallam, recognized by the Noor, from
our faces and our limbs, from the Wudu,
the prayers, and the Quran that we've recited
and read together.
Alhamdulillahi rabbil alamin, wa sallAllahu alaihi wa sallam,
To a profound, emotional ending.
There's no need for me to end at
this point.
I'm just gonna say the du'a, bismillah.
Subhanaka, Allahumma bihamdik, nashahadu an la ilaha ila
ant, nastaghfiruka wa natubu ilayk, jazakunAllahu khaira for
listening.
May Allah reward each one of you.
May Allah reward you, Shaykh.
It was a very beautiful conversation.
Allah bless you.
Allah bless you.
You made it very, very nice, very flowy.
There's no pressure on my end.
I'm sure the audiences enjoyed it as well.
May Allah reward you.
JazakunAllahu khaira.
As-salamu alaykum.