Suhaib Webb – Live with Restream November 30
AI: Summary ©
The speakers stress the importance of prioritizing one's spiritual presence and avoiding sin in crowded environments. They also emphasize the need to practice praying for 20 years to get up in the night and increase one's energy and well-being. Prayer practices include recitation, bowing, and recitation of the prayer after Maghrib, Tahab lifting, and Isha. Prayer for 20 years is advised, emphasizing the importance of practice and obtaining a boast in the night.
AI: Summary ©
Allahumma salli ala Sayyidina Muhammad al-Fatiha lima
uqlika wal khatim lima sabaka nasir wa ala
alihi wa sahbihi wa sallim wa la hawla
wa la quwwata illa billahi as-sameen, al
-a'aleem wa la hawla wa la quwwata
illa billahi as-sameen, al-a'aleem wa
salli ala sayyidina muhammadin wa ala alihi wa
sahbihi wa sallim, subhana rabbika rabbi azzati amma
yasifoon, wa salamun ala al-mursaleen, walhamdulillahi rabbil
alameen.
So today inshallah we'll begin from chapter 3
of Imam al-Haddad's book of assistance.
And Imam al-Haddad, he starts this off
by saying chapter 3 is titled on vigilance.
So being vigilant in kind of, you know,
more kind of everyday English, you could think
of it as kind of being on top
of things, not being overly comfortable to the
point that, you know, in American slang where
you get caught slipping in a sense.
So we should be vigilant just as I
think about, let's say a father is walking
with his children and he's in a kind
of, you know, crowded area where there are
a lot of people.
He's vigilant.
He's aware of things.
He's watching out.
He's making sure that his children are safe.
So just as we would be vigilant with
our children, with our younger siblings, all of
these sorts of things, we should be vigilant
with our hearts.
When we find ourselves slipping in the deen,
we should find a way to kind of
pick ourselves up to prevent that from happening.
Do not get so comfortable in a way
that, you know, something bad could happen to
you.
So Imam al-Haddad, he says, you must,
oh my brothers, be mindful of God in
all your movements and at times of stillness
at every moment, with every blink of the
eye, with every thought, wish or any other
feel or any other state.
Feel his nearness to you.
Know that Allah looks and is aware of
you, that nothing you can see is hidden
from him.
And then Allah says in the Quran, nothing
that weighs so much as an atom is
hidden from your Lord, whether on earth or
in heaven.
When you speak aloud, he knows your secret,
although and that which he knows, which is
more hidden.
So this is something that is very important.
Say what you're thinking out loud or say
it in your hearts.
Surely Allah is that which is in the
essence of your hearts.
So nothing happens in the realm of this
world except that Allah has knowledge of it.
So know that.
And then it says he is with you
wherever you are, with his knowledge, awareness and
power.
If you are of the righteous, he will
guide, assist and protect you.
And this is this idea of taqwa.
This is this idea of knowing that Allah
is with you in each and every single
moment, that Allah is closer to you than
your jugular vein.
And then it says have modesty before Allah
as you should.
Make sure that he never sees you in
a situation where he has forbidden you and
never misses from you where he has commanded
you to be.
Worship him as if you see him, for
even if you don't see him, he sees
you.
So Imam Al-Haddad is telling us this
idea of Ihsan, that Ihsan is to worship
Allah as if you can see him.
And if you cannot see him, know that
Allah sees you in each and every single
moment.
This idea of Ihsan, I like to give
the example that if someone's young, let's say
they're playing a sport or something, like I
give the example, when I was young, I
used to play baseball.
I used to love to play baseball.
And I used to love when my, oh
no, did my camera go away?
Okay, here we are.
So I hope that you guys are able
to see me.
So when I was young, I would love
to play baseball.
And you know, my parents would come, they
would come to my, you know, baseball games,
all that sort of stuff.
As I'm talking about my parents, my mother
is calling me.
I'll call her back soon, inshallah.
Let me just text her.
But I would love to play baseball.
And my mother would, you know, come to
all of my games.
But when my father would come, I would
kind of be extra on top of things,
right?
Why?
Because my dad is right there.
My dad is watching me.
And I want to perform my best for
him, right?
Let's say my uncle, my mother's brother, he
would come to my games maybe like once
a year.
So those days, I would be extra vigilant.
I would say, okay, you know, I want
to hit as best as I can.
I want to field as best as I
can.
I want to run the bases as quick
as possible.
I would be super on top of things.
This is the idea of Ihsan.
If we understand this with human beings, that
when there are certain human beings around, we
perform more than we would otherwise, what would
we say to the Lord of every single
thing that exists, the creator of all creation?
So if we recognize this reality that Allah
is with us at all times, it will
do a lot for us.
So then he says, have modesty before God
as you should.
Make sure that He never sees you in
a situation that's forbidden and never misses you
when He has commanded you to worship.
Whenever you notice in your heart any laziness
in worship or inclination to disobedience, remind in
that God hears you and sees you and
knows your secrets and secret conversation.
So let's say you're inclined to do something
bad.
The first thing that you think of is
think, okay, Allah is able to hear me.
If this reminding does not benefit because of
the inadequacy of your knowledge of the majesty
of Allah, so he said, if this doesn't
do enough to remind you, it's our failure
to see the majesty of Allah.
He said, if that doesn't work, then remind
yourself of the two angels, that there's an
angel on our right shoulder that writes down
our good deeds and an angel on our
left shoulder that writes down our bad deeds.
And then he says, if this reminding does
not influence it, remind yourself of death.
Remind yourself that you will die and you
have to take account for these deeds that
Allah says in the Qur'an, فَمَيَّا مَنْ
مِثْقَرَ ذَرَةٍ خَيْرًۭا يَرَىٰ وَمَيَّا مَنْ مِثْقَرَ ذَرَةٍ
شَرًۭا يَرَىٰ Whoever does an Adam's weight of
good will see it and whoever does an
Adam's weight of evil will see it.
So first think about Allah.
Think about the greatness of Allah.
If you cannot do that, think about the
fact that there are angels on your right
shoulder and your left shoulder that write your
good and bad deeds.
After that, if it doesn't work, think of
death.
That is of nearest of all hidden and
awaited things.
Frighten it of its sudden pouncing, whereby it
does not come when it is in an
unsatisfactory state.
It will end up in endless perdition.
If this threat is of no use, remind
yourself of the immense reward which God has
promised those who obey Him and painful torment
which He has threatened to those who disobey
Him.
Say to it, O soul, after death there
will be no opportunity to repent and there
will be after this life only the garden
or the fire.
Choose, if you will, obedience, the consequence of
which is triumph, contentment, immortality in vast gardens,
and looking at the essence of God, the
Wajh of Allah, the generous, the beneficent, or
else disobedience.
The consequence is to be degraded, humiliated, mocked,
deprived, and imprisoned between layers of fire.
Endeavor to cure your soul with such reminders
when it neglects obedience and inclines to rebellion,
for they are useful medicine for the heart's
diseases.
So he says the first thing you should
do is remember Allah.
Remember the greatness of Allah.
He said if that does not prevent you
from sinning, it's because you don't understand the
greatness of Allah.
And then he says after that, he said
remember the angels on your right shoulder and
your left shoulder.
He said if that doesn't work, remind yourself
of the death, of the life of the
grave.
He said if that doesn't work, remind yourself
of heaven and *.
And then he says if you find emerging
in your heart when you call to mind
the fact that God observes you, a shyness
that prevents you from disobeying Him and drives
you to exert yourself in obeying Him, you
are in possession of something of the realities
of vigilance.
And he translates vigilance here, or the original
word used is muraqabah.
Muraqabah you can also understand is like contemplation,
that you understand this reality, that you're reflective
of this reality.
So he says let's say you're inclined towards
a sin, and then after you're inclined towards
that sin, you, what's it called?
After you're inclined towards that sin, you think
to yourself that okay, I remember that Allah
is with me and a shyness overtakes you.
If that shyness comes after recognizing that Allah
is with you, you have reached what is
called muraqabah, which is a spiritual station.
Because there are some people who don't have
that spiritual station.
Some people, they are inclined to sin, they
think to themselves, Allah is with us, and
then they think to themselves, I'm just going
to do it anyways.
So do not be a person that does
that.
And then he says, know that vigilance is
one of the most noble stations, high positions
and lofty degrees.
It is the station of Ihsan, indicating the
Prophet ﷺ saying, may Allah's ﷺ, Ihsan is
to worship Allah as if you see Him,
for if you do not see Him, He
sees you.
And he says each believer has nothing, has
faith that nothing on earth or in heaven
is concealed from Allah, that Allah is with
them wherever He is, and that none of
His movements or time of stillness are concealed
from Allah.
But the important thing is, is that this
awareness be permanent, and then the results appear,
the least of which is He does not,
that He does nothing when alone with God,
that He would be ashamed should a man
of virtue see Him.
That is rare, and it eventually leads to
that which is whereby the servant is totally
immersed in God, annihilated and thus rendered unaware
of all else, absent from creation through His
contentment of the true King, having arrived at
a secure seat in the presence of an
able sovereign.
The way that one of my teachers explained
this to me, is when you have reached
this status, you are the same in your
house than you are in the masjid.
Your awareness of Allah does not increase based
on the situation because you always know that
Allah is there.
Many of us, when we do wrong things,
obviously we try to hide the wrong things
that we do.
But when you are truly aware of Allah,
you know that Allah is always there, and
you know it would be displeasing for Allah
to see you do those wrong things, so
you hide it even when Allah is there.
And this is one of the early stations
of Ihsan, so there are three stations of
the religion, that of Islam, that of Iman,
and that of Ihsan.
And this is mentioned to us in the
hadith of Jibreel.
The hadith of Jibreel is the first hadith
in Sahih Muslim.
And the Prophet Isa asked, what is Islam?
And he replies with the five pillars of
Islam.
He asks, what is Iman?
He replies with the six pillars of Iman.
And then he asks, what is Ihsan?
The five pillars of Islam are to worship
Allah, to believe in La ilaha illallah, Muhammadur
Rasulullah, to pray five times a day, to
fast during Ramadan, to give zakat, and to
go for hajj.
Three bodily acts, one financial act, and one
act that combines the bodily and the financial.
The Shahada is something you say with your
tongue, and it's obligatory on every single Muslim
to say, ashadu an la ilaha illallah, wa
ashadu anna Muhammadan abduhu wa rasuluhu, sallallahu alayhi
wa sallam, at least once in their lifetime.
And if someone has not done this, we
should actually say this right now to fulfill
that niyah.
So we should say, ashadu an la ilaha
illallah, wa ashadu anna Muhammadan abduhu wa rasuluhu,
sallallahu alayhi wa sallam.
And the Shahada is something you say once
in your life, but you internalize in your
heart for 24 hours, seven days a week,
for the rest of your life.
Prayer is the second of these pillars, and
you do it five times a day, day
in and day out.
And there are very few exceptions for men.
For women, menstruation, post-nail bleeding, all these
sorts of things make prayer exempt.
For men, unless you're in a coma or
something, there are very few exceptions.
The third of these acts is fasting during
Ramadan.
Fasting during Ramadan, you do one month out
of the 12 months of the year, and
after you have done that, you fulfilled the
obligation.
Zakat, for the one who has wealth, they
give it once a year, if they're over
a certain amount and all that sort of
stuff.
And Hajj you do once in your lifetime.
So the five pillars of Islam in this
order established by the Fuqaha, it has a
wisdom to it.
It's what's required the most amount of time
to what's required the least amount of time.
Hajj you do once a year, and there
are many exceptions.
Most Muslims in the world will never go
for Hajj.
Or Hajj you do once in your lifetime,
and there are many exceptions.
Most Muslims in the world will never go
for Hajj because it will never become obligated
upon them.
Zakat, you do once a year.
So Hajj is once in your lifetime, Zakat
is once a year.
And there are many many exceptions.
Most Muslims in the world don't live how
we do, where they have 401ks, they have
saving accounts, all these sorts of things.
Most people live paycheck to paycheck, and people
with no savings are exempt from Zakat.
So most people in the world, Zakat has
less exemptions than Hajj, but it has the
second most exemptions of the five pillars of
Islam.
The third of these pillars is that of
fasting during Ramadan.
You do one month out of the year,
and there are kind of many exceptions.
And then prayer is what's required the most,
and then the Shahada.
And there are some people who became Muslim,
but they never took the Shahada, or they
never prayed Salah.
So an example was there's a man who
converted to Islam.
He became Muslim through the Prophet, he met
the Prophet, he's from the Sahaba.
He fought in battle, and then he died
before any prayer was ever obligated upon him.
But for most people who live for a
longer amount of time, the prayer is obligatory.
So the five pillars of Islam go to
what's required the most amount of time, to
what's required the least amount of time.
And there's three bodily acts, the Shahada you
say with your tongue, prayer you perform with
your body, fasting it's an act of depriving
your body of things, and then Zakat is
a financial act you do with your money,
and then Hajj combines the body and the
money.
So three bodily acts, one financial act, and
then one act that combines the bodily and
the financial.
And SubhanAllah, look at this, in terms of
outward acts of religion, that's all you need
to do.
And then Iman is belief in Allah, belief
in His Prophets, belief in the books that
they sent, belief in the angels, belief in
the Day of Judgment, belief that nothing can
happen except by the Qadr of Allah.
And then Ihsan is to worship Allah as
if you can see Him, and if you
cannot see Him, know that He sees you.
And this act of Murakaba, this act of
contemplation, this act of vigilance, is the first
means of that station of Ihsan.
Another way I like to explain it is
that Islam consists of the bodily acts of
the religion.
This is, you know, am I allowed to
do this?
Am I not allowed to do this?
This is the realm of zikr.
Is it haram?
Is it maqroo?
Is it mubaa?
Is it mustahab?
Is it halal?
Is it wajib?
All these sorts of things.
Aqidah, or the power of Iman, consists of
the beliefs of the Muslim.
What do we believe about this?
What do we say about this?
All this sort of stuff.
This is the mind of the religion.
And then Ihsan is what?
Is the science of the soul.
So we as Muslims, we're a holistic religion.
We believe in mind, body, and soul.
And this act of contemplation is that act
of the soul, is this act of Ihsan,
is that act of trying to get close
to Allah.
And then chapter four, subhanAllah, this chapter is
very short but it's very powerful.
This chapter is a page and a quarter
of a page but it's a powerful page.
Imam al-Haddad says, on the inner and
the outer self.
He says, you must, oh my brother, improve
your inward aspect until it becomes better than
your virtuous outward appearance, for the former is
where the gaze of God obtains, while the
latter is where the envious gaze of creation
is to be found.
God never mentioned the inward and the outward
in his book without beginning with the inward.
So whenever Allah talks about the inward aspect
and the outward aspect, Allah begins with the
inward.
And the Prophet, he used to make dua
to Allah, oh Allah, make my inward better
than my outward, and make my outward good.
SubhanAllah.
Even the Prophet, he was worried that maybe
his inward does not match his outward.
The Prophet, he is saying, ya Allah, he
is making dua to Allah, ya Allah, make
my inward better than my outward, and make
my outward virtuous.
And then he says, when the inward is
good, the outward is also inevitably so.
For the outward always follows the inward, whether
for good or for evil.
The Prophet, he said, in the body there
is a piece of flesh.
When it is sound, the rest of the
body is sound.
And when it is corrupt, the rest of
the body becomes corrupt.
It is the heart.
So if our hearts are sound, then the
rest of us, everything else will be sound.
I actually, I asked one of my teachers
once, I said, is it better that somebody
be, or actually I didn't ask this question.
Someone else asked this question to one of
my teachers in front of me.
And he said, is it better, you know,
you meet people who in terms of outward
acts of religion, they are very good, very
upright people, all of this sort of stuff.
But then you get to know them and
they have a whole bunch of diseases of
the heart.
And then you meet people, amazing people, great
people, all of this sort of stuff.
But then, outwardly, they are just not there.
You know, maybe they don't pray, maybe they
don't have a beard, maybe they don't wear
a hijab, all of this sort of stuff.
And it was basically asked which is better.
And he said, in both of these people,
there are things that need resolving.
But he said, diseases of the heart, they,
you could have a disease of the heart
that takes, you know, months, years to like
get rid of.
He said, growing a beard is easy.
You don't, especially, you know, if you're Disi,
you don't shave your beard, you don't shave
for like a week or two, the beard
grows, right?
Putting on these pieces of clothing, these are
the outward acts of religion are easy.
The inward acts, those are the things that
you really have to struggle with.
And that is not to diminish the struggle
to do the outward acts of the religion.
But the inward is really where it starts.
And then Imam Al-Haddad, he says that,
know that the one who claims to have
a thriving inward but whose outward has been
corrupted by his abandoning outward acts of obedience
is a pretender or a liar.
So maybe you'll meet someone and they will
say, oh, you know, my heart is good,
all this sort of stuff.
The outward actions aren't there.
I'm just an in the heart kind of
guy.
Imam Al-Haddad says, anyone who says that
is a pretender and someone who has fooled
themselves.
And then he says, the one who exerts
himself in the reform of his outward aspect
by caring about the way he dresses and
speaks and appears, moves, sits, stands and walks,
believes his inward full of repellent attributes and
vile traits is one of the people of
affection, affectation and extension who have turned away
from Allah.
So he says that the people who are
so focused on reforming the outward, but they
forget the inward, they have missed out.
They have missed out on the purpose of
these things.
So we need to be people who address
our inward and our outward.
And then Imam Al-Haddad, he says, beware,
oh brother, of doing in secret that which
if seen by people would make you ashamed
and worried about being censured.
A great Arif, a great knower of Allah
once said, a Sufi is not a Sufi
unless were anything that is in him to
be exposed on a plate in the marketplace,
he would not be ashamed of anything that
came to light.
SubhanAllah, think about this.
Many people, the first week of our class,
they ask, what is Tasawwuf?
What is a Sufi?
It's Tasawwuf from Islamic orthodoxy, all of this
sort of stuff.
And the short answer to that is yes,
right?
We brought quotes from Imam Al-Ghazali, Imam
Junaid Al-Baghdadi, Sidi Ahmed Zarugh, from Ibn
Taymiyyah.
Everyone believed in the science of the outward
science, of the heart, the science of reforming
the soul.
But what is a Sufi?
How do one of the scholars define a
Sufi?
A Sufi is a spiritual rank that were
everything about that person to be exposed on
a plate in the marketplace, he would not
be ashamed of anything that came to light.
And one person that I think of that
fits this definition is Malcolm X.
Malcolm X, they spied on all sorts of
civil rights leaders and they found out all
sorts of stuff about them.
Extramarital affairs, all this sort of stuff.
Malcolm X, they spied on him, they found
nothing.
He was a moral man.
His outward was his inward.
He was not someone who had a secret
life that people didn't know about.
He was someone who's not two-faced.
He was someone who had one face and
that face was he had taqwa outside in
his public life and he had taqwa in
his private life.
And this is what the person of Tasawwuf
is.
They've cleansed their heart enough that there isn't
something that they do that they wouldn't want
people to know about because everything about them
is good.
And that is a very, very high rank
to aspire to.
And we ask Allah to make us people
who are of that rank.
And then Imam Al-Hadadi says, make your
outward better than your inward.
If you cannot make your inward better than
your outward, the least you can do is
make them equal so that you equally behave
well privately and publicly in obeying Allah, avoiding
his prohibitions, respecting what Allah has made sacred
and hastening to please him.
This is the first step a servant takes
on the path of special knowledge, know this
and success is from Allah.
So think about this, subhanAllah, that if we
cannot make our inwards better than our outwards,
let's at least make our inward match our
outward.
And then the next chapter, he says, on
regular devotions.
So Imam Al-Hadad, he says, you must
fill up your time with acts of worship
so that no period of time elapses, whether
by night or by day without being used
in some act of goodness.
This is how the barakah within time is
made manifest, the purpose of life fulfilled and
the approach to Allah made constant.
So this is something very important.
We as Muslims should be people who are
productive with our time.
We should not be people who waste time.
Wasting time is haram in Islam.
That does not mean we don't take leisure.
That doesn't mean that we don't do these
things.
We are not a people of extremes.
If you are trying to be productive in
each and every single moment of your life,
you're going to burn yourself out.
But if you spend entire portions of your
life just engaged in kind of wasteful activity,
just kind of playing around, not taking life
seriously, that is also a problem.
So we as Muslims, we need to strike
that middle ground.
That we're not a people who are uptight
and we burn ourselves out, but we're also
not a people who waste time.
So this is something that is very important.
And Imam Al-Hadad says, you should allocate
specific periods of your day for your habitual
activities such as eating, drinking, and working for
a livelihood.
So this is also something that's very important.
That all of these are acts of worship.
So you should basically make a schedule.
Imam Ghazali, he says do not be the
kind of person who is like the cattle.
The cattle just eat whenever, all this sort
of stuff.
Have a schedule and be very serious about
your time.
Your time is extremely, extremely valuable.
Imam Hassan Al-Basri, he said that, oh
son of Adam, you are nothing but time.
When a day goes by, a part of
you is gone.
Imam Ghazali said that each breath is a
precious jewel from Allah.
Do not waste any precious jewel from Allah
in doing things that are wasteful and have
no benefit in them.
The way I like to think of it
is your life is like an hourglass.
You have flipped over the hourglass and that
glass coming from the top, that sand on
the top, you don't actually know how much
is left.
So be conscious of your time and take
the limited time you have on this earth
very seriously.
And then he says, the proof of Islam,
Imam Al-Ghazali, may Allah spread his benefit,
says you should structure your time, arrange your
regular devotions and assign to each period a
set function of time during which it is
given priority but which it does not overstep.
For if you abandon yourself to neglect and
purposelessness as the cattle do and just do
anything that may occur to you at any
time it happens to occur to you, most
of your time will be wasted.
Your time is your life and your life
is your capital.
It is the basis of your transactions and
the mean to everlasting guidance.
In the progeny city of God each breath
is a priceless jewel and when it passes
away it never returns.
Think about that.
Think about, let's say somebody had a million
dollars in their bank account and they were
told that if you give me a million
dollars you will live another year.
But if you don't want to spend a
million dollars you will not live another year.
Most people would spend that million dollars.
Your time is more precious than anything else.
And then Imam Al-Haddad he says you
should not occupy all your time with only
one wird even if it be the best
for you would then miss the barakah of
multiply and varying your awrad.
Each weird has a particular effect on the
heart, a light, a flow of assistance and
a rank with Allah.
Furthermore when you move from one weird to
another you escape becoming bored, indolent, impatient or
weary.
And then Ibn Ataullah may Allah have mercy
on him he said because God knew of
the presence of boredom in you he created
a variety of acts of obedience.
Think about this.
If the only way to get close to
Allah was praying salah we wouldn't be able
to pray salah like all the time right
24 hours you wouldn't be able to pray
Nawafil or something like that.
So that is why Allah gave us dhikr,
that is why Allah gave us reading the
Quran, that is why Allah gave us fasting,
that is why Allah gave us serving our
families.
All of these are acts of worship.
So vary your acts of worship because the
varying different acts of worship have different lights
attached to them, have a different noor attached
to them.
The one who does dhikr they will get
a certain benefit, the one who serves their
mother will get a certain benefit, the one
who gives in charity will get a certain
benefit.
So get all of these benefits so you
can be a well-rounded worshiper.
And then the other reason for that is
that you don't get tired of things.
Sometimes you might be too tired to read
Quran so go find another form of worship,
go serve your family.
Sometimes you might be too tired from serving
others, go and sit alone and make dhikr.
Sometimes dhikr might be hard you just kind
of want to like chill out for the
day.
Fasting might be good for that day.
So different acts of worship apply to kind
of different times.
So you should vary your acts of worship
because they all have different lights and because
they have different lights and because they prevent
you from getting too bored with one activity.
So there's a wisdom in the fact that
there are different acts of worship.
And then he says, know that Uraad have
a great effect in illumining the heart and
controlling the senses but these only appear and
become established with perseverance and repetition and their
performance at specific times.
So this is also something very important that
Imam Ghazali, he gives the example of, he
says if you drop a water on a
rock, if you consistently drop water on a
rock, it will cause a hole in that
rock.
But if you were just dump a bucket
on a rock, that rock would just get
wet, that rock would not break.
Similarly, the Prophet ﷺ, he said the most
beloved acts to Allah are those that are
done consistently even if they're small.
It's more beloved to Allah that you grab
a Sibha and you say La ilaha illallah
a hundred times a day and you do
that for a whole year, then you spend
one day and you say La ilaha illallah
a thousand times and then you just never
do it again.
So this is something that is very very
important that what we are after as Muslims
is not doing a lot of deeds necessarily,
but what we're after is doing a lot
of good deeds even if they're small consistently.
Consistency is that key.
And then he says, if you are not
one of those who fill all their night
and daytime hours with devotion, then assign to
yourself some urad to persevere with at specific
times that you make up if you miss,
so that your soul becomes accustomed to keeping
them when your soul despairs of your abandoning
them altogether when you miss them.
It will hasten you to perform them.
And then my master Shaykh Abdul Rehman al
-Saqaf, may Allah be pleased with him said,
whoever has no weird is a kird.
And this is nice because it rhymes.
A kird is a monkey.
So he said that if you don't have
like a daily set of dhikrs that you
do, you're like a monkey.
You're not a person who's thinking and contemplating.
So he says, have a weird that you
do even if it's consistent.
And one of the good words from the
sunnah is just say la ilaha illallah a
hundred times a day.
The Prophet ﷺ would also say a suq
for Allah a hundred times a day.
And also send a hundred salawats a day.
So this is something important and this was
something that will bring to you a lot
of benefit in life.
Imam al-Haddad, he also put together a
book called the Ratib al-Haddad.
And if you just google Ratib al-Haddad
pdf, R-A-T-I-B and then
al-Haddad, A-L-H-A-D-D
-A-D pdf, you will find a collection
of dhikrs that he made to do every
day that are mostly drawn from the sunnah
of the Prophet ﷺ of dhikrs that he
would do every day.
So even if you do that Ratib al
-Haddad for maybe 10 minutes a day, that's
something that you'll see a lot of benefit
in.
And then Imam al-Haddad says be moderate
and keep to the middle way in everything.
So we as Muslims are not a people
of extremes.
One of the most beautiful hadith in Sahih
Bukhari mentions that the Prophet ﷺ said that
this deen is mateen, this deen is deep.
And he said do not rush into it
but rather tread lightly within it.
And he says just as like when you're
walking through a river, if a river has
like you know very heavy kind of waves
and stuff, you don't jump right into those
waves because the waves are going to hit
you.
Tread slowly and they're not going to have
that same effect and do that.
So this is something especially amongst the youth,
they might be irreligious and they'll become religious
and then they burn themselves out.
Tread in this deen slow and steady.
Don't try to do everything at once.
Don't try to go zero to a hundred.
Don't think that, let's say you haven't been
studying the religious sciences, that you need to
just drop everything you're doing and spend 40
hours a week studying the religious sciences for
a year or two years.
It's more beloved to Allah that you spend
one to two hours a week studying the
religious sciences and you do that for 10
-20 years, then you burn yourself out and
you know rush through things.
It is Shaitaan's way to entice the seeker
at the beginning of his quest to be
excessive in his devotion, the purpose being to
make him retreat either by giving up acts
of goodness or performing them incorrectly and Shaitaan
does not care which of these two he
afflicts the man.
So this is something also very important.
That's one of the tricks of Shaitaan that
he makes you go zero to a hundred
because he knows that will burn you out.
Shaitaan wants to see you burned out but
the scholars, the ulema, Allah and His Prophet,
they don't want to see you burned out.
They want you to do things slowly and
consistently and kind of push through doing them.
And then he says, usually take the form
of super-obtique prayers, Qur'an recitations, the
acquisition of knowledge, invocation of zikr or reflection.
So you could have a daily weird where
you say, okay I'm going to pray two
extra rakahs before I go to sleep at
night or you say I'm going to read
a page of Qur'an every day or
five pages or ten pages or something like
that.
Or your weird might be that every Friday
I go to this class at my masjid.
Or another weird is to make zikr, to
have certain zikrs that you do every single
day.
Another weird is that you might take some
time and just spend your day reflecting.
And then Imam al-Haddad says, we shall
now mention some of the proprieties with which
these religious activities need to be performed.
So he says, you must have a weird
of extra prayers in addition to the established
ones and should assign a definitive time for
it and a definitive number which you can
constantly sustain.
Some of our prized predecessors, may Allah have
mercy on them, had a weird of a
thousand rakahs by Imam Zayn al-Abideen, Ali
ibn al-Husayn.
May Allah be pleased with them both.
Others had a weird of 500, 300 and
so and so.
SubhanAllah.
Imam Zayn al-Abideen whose father is Imam
Husayn, whose father is Imam Ali and Imam
Husayn is the grandson of the Prophet Ali,
the son of Fatima Zahra.
This is his son, Imam Zayn al-Abideen.
So the great grandson of the Prophet, he
used to have a weird where he would
perform a thousand extra rakahs every day.
Now you don't need to perform a thousand
rakahs every day.
Just set a weird maybe of two extra
rakahs every day.
If you're not praying your sunnah, start praying
your sunnah.
Stuff like that.
Take things slow and get to that point
because you might not be able to become
like Imam Zayn al-Abideen overnight.
But 20-30 years, if you push yourself,
you can make more people like this.
May Allah be pleased with them.
May Allah allow us to benefit from your
ilm and may Allah allow us to to
be like them.
And then Imam al-Haddad, the prayer, the
ritual prayer has an outward form and an
inward reality.
You will not have properly established the prayer
and its outward properties such as correct standing,
such that thus be recitation, bowing and so
forth, until you have established both its outward
aspect and inward aspect.
So this is something very important.
In fiqh, in the science of the body,
there are over 12,000 rulings related to
prayer.
In terms of spirituality, there's so much other
stuff going on in terms of what the
science of the soul.
So mastering prayer is a lifetime event, both
in terms of its outward fiqh, but also
in terms of in terms of its inward
spirituality.
And then he says, as for its outer
aspect, this constitutes the obligation set by God,
while its reality is that one be present
with God, sincerely intended to be purely for
His sake alone, approach Him with complete resolution
and collect one's heart so that one's thought
is restricted to the prayer and nothing else,
and maintain the courtesies necessary for communing with
Allah.
The Prophet ﷺ said, the man in prayer
is communing with his Lord.
And when the servant rises his prayer, God
turns his face towards that man.
So God becomes receptive towards that man.
So this is something that is very, very
important.
That prayer is something that one needs to
kind of, when you're entering prayer, that you
do it sincerely for the sake of Allah.
And then following that, Imam al-Haddad, he
says, the Prophet ﷺ says, make your night
prayer the wizard.
And those who have no such habit would
do better to perform it after Isha.
A further example is, or he says, you
should not occupy yourself with unspecified nawafil prayers
at a time designated for a sunnah, which
the Prophet ﷺ either did or spoke about,
until you have completed the maximum designated number.
So Imam al-Haddad says, first you do
what's obligatory, then you do the sunnahs, then
you do the nawafil.
But the sunnahs precede the nawafil.
And he says, only have you done all
the sunnahs after you've done all the sunnahs
that you start to do the nawafil.
So he says that an example of this
is the rakahs laid down before and after
the obligatory prayers.
These are sufficiently well known as to no
need for further comment.
So things like the two rakahs before Fajr,
the four rakahs before Dhuhr, and the two
rakahs after Dhuhr.
The four rakahs, sunnah ghayr mu'akadah, non
-emphasized sunnahs before Asr.
The two emphasized sunnahs after Maghrib.
And then there are six, including those two,
four extra non-emphasized sunnahs that you could
pray two, two, and two.
And then for Isha, the emphasized sunnahs beforehand
and the two sunnahs after.
And then the three rakahs of whether they
are obligatory or an emphasized sunnah.
So he says that these are laid out
and before and after the obligatory prayers, they're
sufficiently well known as we don't need further
comment.
Another example is the wither prayer, which is
a well-established and certain prayer.
Some scholars have even said that it is
obligatory.
And the Prophet ﷺ said, Allah is with,
that Allah is not an even number because
Allah is one.
And Allah, He loves that which is with.
So observe the wither prayer.
And he also said the wither is truth.
And he says, its maximum is 11 rakahs
and its appropriate minimum is three.
And then he says, for those who have
an established habit of rising for prayer during
the latter part of the night is better
perform it then.
The Prophet ﷺ said, make your night prayer
the with.
But those who don't have such a habit
would do better to perform it after the
night, the isha prayer.
So the Prophet ﷺ, for those who are
able to get up for tahajjud, who have
a regular habit of praying tahajjud, they should
pray with tahajjud.
But for those who don't have a regular
habit, they pray with right after isha.
Or for those they might get up for
tahajjud but they're not sure if they'll be
able to get up or not, they should
pray with and then go to sleep.
And then he says that another example is
the duha prayer, which is a very useful
and blessed prayer.
Its maximum is eight rakahs, though some have
said 12 and its minimum is two.
The best time for it is when the
sun is high and about a quarter of
the day is gone.
The Prophet ﷺ says, morning comes and on
each of your fingers a charity is due.
Each SubhanAllah is a sadaqah.
Each Alhamdulillah is a sadaqah.
Each Allah Akbar is a sadaqah.
Each La ilaha illallah is a sadaqah.
And enjoining good and forbidding evil is a
sadaqah.
Two rakahs performed in the mid-morning would
supply for that.
If this sound hadith was the only one
transmitted concerning the merit of this prayer, it
would have been enough.
Yet another example is the prayer between Maghrib
and Isha.
Its maximum is 20 rakahs and its average
six.
The Prophet ﷺ said, God erects a house
in Jannah for the one who prays 20
rakahs between Maghrib and Isha.
And he also said the one who prays
six rakahs after Maghrib and does not speak
of ill anyone in between will have equaled
the reward of 12 years.
So SubhanAllah.
And this hadith is used in the context
of fada'il al-a'mal, in the sense
of showing the benefit of these acts.
So Imam al-Haddad is saying here that
there is a hadith that says the one
who performs six rakahs after Maghrib, two rakahs
and two rakahs and two rakahs, they will
get the reward of 12 years of worship.
So this is a very, very important sunnah
that one should not leave off, the six
rakahs that one should pray after Maghrib.
So the two sunnah mu'akkadahs and then
on top of that the four sunnah al
-ghayr mu'akkadah, two emphasized sunnah and four
non-emphasized sunnahs.
And then he says it is a sunnah
to give life to the period between Maghrib
and Isha.
Many hadith and other traditions have been transmitted
regarding his merit.
It should be enough that Ahmad ibn Abdul
Hawari asked his Sheikh Abu Suleiman, may Allah
have mercy upon them, whether he should fast
by day or give life to the period
between Maghrib and Isha.
He advised him to do both.
He said, I can't, for if I fast,
I become occupied with breaking my fast at
that time.
He replied, if you cannot do both, then
leave daytime fasting and give life to the
time between the night prayers.
So one of the great scholars, he asked
his teacher, he said that if I fast
during the daytime, it prevents me from doing
a lot of worship between Maghrib and Isha.
And his teacher said to him, the six
rakahs after Maghrib, and it can be more
between six and twenty rakahs between Maghrib and
Isha, he says that is better for you
than fasting during the day.
And then Aisha radiallahu anha, she said that
the Prophet Isa, he said that the Prophet
Isa never entered my house after Isha without
praying four or six rakahs.
And he said four rakahs after the night,
after Isha, equal the same as Laylatul Qadr.
And then Imam Al-Habad, he says, pray
at night for as Allah said, as the
Prophet Isa said, the best prayer after the
prescribed ones is the night time prayer, the
Tahajjud prayer.
And then he says, the superiority of night
time over daytime is like the superiority of
concealed charity over public charity.
And it's been related to concealed charity as
seventy times the reward of public charity.
So he says that worship in the night
is seventy times more valuable than worship in
the daytime.
So pray that Tahajjud prayer, pray those six
rakahs after Maghrib, pray the Witr prayer.
These are prayers that have a lot of
barakah in them.
And then he says, the Prophet Isa said,
keep rising in prayer at night for it
was the way of the virtuous who came
before you.
It draws you near to God, it protects
the body from sickness.
Know that the one who prays after the
night prayer has risen at night.
Some of our predecessors used to pray their
Witr early in the night.
However, rising after some sleep constitutes a defeat
for Shaitaan, an opposition to the ego and
contains a wondrous secret.
This is the Tahajjud which Allah commanded his
Prophet Isa when he said, perform Tahajjud by
night as an act of worship for you.
It has been related that God's wonders that
a servant who rises from his bed, from
his wife's side to pray, he takes pride
in him before his angels and turns his
noble face towards him.
Know there is an ugly thing in the
seeker of the hereafter not to rise in
the night.
How can he not when a seeker should
always be asking for more and exposing himself
to Allah's gifts?
For he has said, there is in the
night a time that no Muslim encounters and
in which he asks for God for some
good of the world or of the hereafter,
but that God grants it to him.
This happens every night.
So this is something very important that we
should be people who try to get up
in the night and pray the prayer.
And one can pray their supererogatory prayers after
Isha, but it's better to sleep and then
wake up and to pray it, to wake
up before the Fajr of that and pray
because that constitutes an opposition to the ego.
And this is unfortunately something that in my
own life, I'm very bad with.
I don't really do outside Ramadan.
So for those of you watching, make dua
that I also become someone who does these
things.
And then he says, mentioned in the previous
scriptures that he has lied who claims to
love me, but who when he at one
night falls, sleeps and leaves me, does not
every lover love to be alone with his
beloved?
So just as let's say you have a
friend or you have you have a wife,
you have, you know, some people, sometimes you
just want to be with them and you
want to talk to them alone, right?
There's a certain lack of formality you can
have with your friends when strangers aren't around.
But he says, just as you want to
do that with creation, if you truly love
Allah, your time to be alone and to
commune with Allah, to spend that special time
with Allah is in the night.
And then Imam al-Haddad, he goes to
say, he says that Sheikh Ismail ibn Ibrahim
al-Jabarti, may Allah have mercy on him,
said, Allah has gathered every goodness in the
night and no wilayah was ever determined to
a wali except by night.
So subhanAllah, he says that no one has
ever reached wilayah except by night.
And people who struggle with getting up in
the morning, and this is a reminder to
myself first and foremost, one of the reasons
for that is, is because we sleep late.
If you're sleeping at 1am, chances are, forget
about tahajud, you're probably not going to catch
fajr.
So if we are people who want to
get up in the night, who want to
be these great awliya, who want to be
righteous people, we need to pray isha and
then just go to sleep right away.
And in Muslim Arabic, we say we should
just sleep ala tul, right?
Right away.
So this is something that is very important.
And then he says, my teacher al-Aidurus
Abdullah ibn Abi Bakr al-Alawi said, the
one who wishes for that purity should break
himself in the depths of the night.
And the Prophet ﷺ, he said, God descends
every night to the lowest heaven, when only
the last third of the night remains.
And says, is anyone praying that I might
answer him?
Is anyone seeking forgiveness that I may forgive
him?
Is anyone asking that I may give to
him until the beginning of the day?
Had this been the only hadith extorting to
worship in the night, it would have been
enough.
So how must it be when both the
Qur'an and the Sunnah are full of
encouragement and exhortations to it?
The knowers of Allah have in their night
visuals, noble unveilings and subtle experiences which they
have in their hearts of happiness of nearest
to God, the pleasures of closeness to him
and of communing and conversing with him.
One of them has said, if the people
are in the garden are in a state
similar to ours, they are indeed living pleasantly.
Another has said, the people of the night
during their nights are as the people of
the pleasures and their pleasures.
Another has said, for 40 years, nothing grieved
me more but getting up in the night.
The happiness occurred only after enduring the bitterness
and the hardships of which, as he said,
I endured the night for 20 years, then
I enjoyed it for 20 years.
So SubhanAllah, one of the great scholars of
our tradition, one of the great knowers of
Allah, he said, for 20 years, I struggled
to get up in the night and pray
the Hajj.
He says, but I pushed through.
I didn't like it, but I wanted what
came after it.
So what came as a result of it.
So I pushed through.
He said, for 20 years, I struggled to
pray in the night and then for the
20 years after that, I enjoyed it.
So this might be hard for us, but
we should make the niyyah that we get
up even before Fajr and that we pray,
we make dhikr and we worship.
And then he says, should you ask what
should I recite during the night prayers and
how many rakahs should I pray?
Then know that the Prophet ﷺ had no
set recitation in tahajjud.
It's good to recite the Qur'an one
part after another so you complete it in
a month or less or more according to
your energy.
So he's basically saying, don't overdo yourself.
Do what you can.
For some people, what you can is you
read 20 pages of the Qur'an, you
read one page in every rakah and it's
like thoroughly, they're good in their hips.
Other people, maybe they only have like 10
surahs memorized.
Maybe, you know, in your night prayers, read
from those 10 surahs, right?
So do what you're at.
The Prophet ﷺ, he said, speak to people
according to their level.
The level of people differs and those people
who know, you know, 10 surahs, they should
ascribe to, they should set the effort to
do more and do more and grow until
like they're like the people who are reading
a juz every night.
There are other people who maybe they read,
you know, they read three juz every night.
So different people are at different levels in
the deen and we should always ascribe to
be growing and growing and growing in our
deen.
We shouldn't be ascribing to kind of becoming
less and less.
And then he says, as for the number
of rakahs, the Prophet ﷺ would pray, the
maximum that's been related to the Prophet ﷺ
is 13.
7 and 9 are also reported but the
most frequent figure is 11.
So tahajjud, many people, they do eight rakahs
and then they do three rakahs with.
But even though someone does two rakahs, that
is something that is good and that will
have a lot of reward and a lot
of blessing.
And then he says, the total purpose of
all the relevant hadiths is that it is
encouraged and recommended when you wake up for
you to rub sleep off your face with
your hands and say alhamdulillah, who gave us
life after causing us to die and unto
whom is a resurrection.
Then you recite the last two verses of
surah Imran.
Then you brush your teeth with the miswak.
Then you perform wudu.
Then you pray two short rakahs, add to
them eight long ones.
You can pray them in units of two
or four or even do all eight rakahs
together with just one salam.
So when you do jaloos, instead of saying
as-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullah, you just get
up and you do rakahs three and four.
And you can even do that for five,
six, seven, eight, up to eight rakahs.
And then he says, for all these have
been reported, if you find that you still
have energy, pray any additional prayers that you
may wish.
Then pray three rakahs as with, either with
one salam or two.
And then it's sunnah during with that you
should recite surah ala, sabihis ma rabbikal ala,
all the way up until the end.
Then you recite surah kafirun.
And that you recite surah ikhlas and the
last two surahs in the third rakah.
So the first rakah of surah with, I
mean of salatul with, you recite surah ala,
sabihis ma rabbikal ala, all the way until
the very end.
Then in the second rakah, you recite qud
ya ayyuhal kafirun.
And then in the third rakah, you recite
surah ikhlas, qul wallahu ahad, all the way
to the end.
Qul wa rabbil falak, all the way to
the end.
And surah naas, all the way to the
end.
And this is like the full sunnah.
But if that's hard for someone, they want
to recite surah qutr, they want to recite
surah ikhlas, surah ikhlas, that's fine.
The shafis even permit that someone just prays
one rakah of with.
So someone, it's hard for them to pray
with, they can just take the shafi opinion
until they grow more and then they can
get to the three rakahs of with.
But do not leave off the with or
prayer because there's immense benefit in it.
And then he says, do not think that
with or which is 11 rakahs is one
thing and the rakahs we have just mentioned
is another.
Only that which we mentioned is reported of
the Prophet ﷺ's night prayers.
Know this, Allah is vast and all-knowing.
So he says, don't think of with as
one thing and the other prayers as another
thing.
This is part of this broader effort to
get close to Allah through worshipping in the
night.
And that is the end of that chapter.
And inshallah, we will continue next week with
chapter six, which is on reciting the Qur
'an.
If anybody has any questions, I can take
the questions here inshallah.
Even the hens and the bees, they wake
up at dawn, right?
So this is a lesson to us.
I also heard someone say once that, you
know, in the morning time, you hear the
birds chirping and that sort of stuff.
And it's a reminder to us that this
is a time of zikr, that this is
a time to remember Allah, in which we
should be making zikr.
So the animals are making zikr of Allah
through their chirping and the remembrance of Allah.
So that should be a time where we
make our own remembrance of Allah.
Okay, inshallah.
If no one has any questions, we can
wrap up here.