Tamara Gray – Tahajjud Waking Soul & Society #03 Turning to Tahajjud in Hard Times
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The speaker discusses the prophesy of Allahu alayhi and emphasizes the importance of praying for the community and learning from experiences. They also share a story about a man reciting a recitation and becoming nervous, eventually reciting it again and practicing it. The community is working on activism and educating people, praying for success and being an um salar for helping people in need. They want to be the um admit, the person who pray at night, and be an emitation of the Prophet's words and encourage others to pray for themselves.
AI: Summary ©
At one of the most dangerous, scary, frightening, anxiety ridden
times of our earliest community, we see the prophesy Allahu alayhi
wa sallam, standing with his hands raised up in the air in the middle
of the night, calling out in tears to Allah, asking for help. Ali
Radi Allahu Anhu said that the Prophet saw him during Badr stood
up the night before Badr stood up all night, asking Allah for help,
pleading for help while they slept and found rest. Abu Bakr Adi,
Allahu, anhu, we see him in this in this moment, at this very
moment, the prophet Salam is in such intense dua, intense prayer,
that he comes to him and comforts him that yes, Allah, span taala,
will answer your DUA, don't worry.
Can we learn?
Can we understand that all of the difficulties that we face as a
community can be faced with prayer at night, because this is what we
should understand.
We should see in his long night of prayer, which Ali, Raja Allahu,
anhu, tells us that he stood all night, we should see in this that
when we stand at the very edges of our difficulties, when we are all
together, facing a global pandemic, concern for ourselves
and concern for our community. When we look around the world and
see one community after another struggling,
can we remember that it is at night that we should stand and
call out to Allah. You know, beautiful things happen at night.
We read that USAID, the companion of Rasulullah, sallAllahu, sallam,
knew when he would stand at night, the angels would descend to listen
to his recitation. In fact, there's one story where he was
reading Surat Al Baqarah, reciting Surat Al Baqarah, and his horses
got agitated, and he would stop reciting, and they would calm
down. And he would recite again. They would get agitated again, and
he got confused. And he went to the Prophet said, and to ask him
what that was. And he said it was the angels coming down to listen
to his recitation when you stand at night and pray. Imagine,
imagine these two things. Imagine first that you are standing as in
the footsteps of Rasulullah sallallahu sallam,
that you are standing and calling out for help, for your own Badr
and for our community Badr.
And imagine as well, that you too have the angels descending to
listen to you
as you recite and call out, and as you're making dua. And thinking
about, what am I using this very unique time for? Think about Bilal
Radi Allahu anhu,
who would stand to call the adhan, but before that, because he's
calling the Adan al Fajr. Before that, he was standing on the roof
rooftops of one of the homes of Medina, before the masjid was
built,
and making dua,
using this time for special dua. Who was he making dua for?
Really surprises me. Every time I read this story, he was making dua
for Quraysh,
quresh, the very tribe that threw the Muslims out, the very tribe
that tortured Bilal, the very tribe that abused him and harmed
him, because he said, ahead one I believe in one God.
But he loved Rasulullah Sallam and rasulallah the Quraysh, and so he
prayed for their guidance. Perhaps we also learn from his heart
that when we have a heart that makes da for people at night, that
we are healthy and we need to be a healthy Ummah, healthy Ummah that
learns how to stand at night and pray, that learns that the
strength and and power in tahajjud
is what we need today. We are a community that is doing really
good work Masha Allah, really good work in activism, in working on
changing a.
The fabric of a society that has seen for many years the Muslim as
the strange thing, from the time of the Crusades until and then
Orientalism and then Islamophobia, all of these things have tried to
box us into a place that was just just blatantly not true. And Masha
Allah, our young people, our medium people and our older people
have been working for decades to change that. This is part of that
work, getting up at taheshjood. This was the way of our early
community. We want to be the Ummah that people say. There go the
people that pray at night.
There go the people that pray at night and pray for us and pray for
themselves, and Imam shafai malas, pantanically with him, he would
say, the arrow that is shot at night doesn't miss its mark,
believe me, he wasn't talking about archery. He's talking about
dua. That dua is indeed the arrow of the night, that when we stand
up to pray at night and we turn to Allah and we ask not only for the
things we need, though, these are things to ask for, but also for
what we need as a community. We can grow to makalah and Mahmoud
ah, we can grow to the community that we need to be. All the work
that we are doing is important and blessed that every whatever anyone
is doing, if someone is working for the betterment of humanity,
for the betterment of the Ummah, FISA ibilla, this is all important
work, but all of it needs tahajjud. All of it needs
tahajjud. And to hazard, will bring us to that place where we
are an imitation of USAID we are imitation of the Prophet saw them.
And one note when we're thinking about what we're doing at night,
and we're thinking about that prayer, and we're remembering
rasulallah stood at night and his feet swelled. And remember
hudayfah, who tells us about the time he prayed with the Prophet,
sallAllahu, sallam, and he stood behind him and started to pray
with him. And the Prophet started with Al Baqarah, and he said to
himself, after 100 AKAs, he'll stop. Excuse me, after 100 ayah,
100 verses, he'll stop. And he kept going. And then he said,
Okay, at the end of Baqarah, he'll stop. And he kept going. And then
he said at the end of Ali Amran, he'll stop, and he kept going. And
in Surat and Nisa, Baqarah, Ali Amran, Surat and Nisa, all three,
until he said, Allahu Akbar went into ruquah.
And his Roku was the same amount of time as his standing this. This
is the this is the core of the success of the early community,
teaching us what prayer is at night, teaching us what a long,
deep communication with our Lord is. I'm certainly not saying that
any of us should stand and the daily as the prophet Salam did. He
had? He had strength from his direct communication, we can say
but certainly we want to try. We want to at least get up for a few
shorts in imitation of the Prophet sallam. Put our hands up. Raise
our hands up and ask Allah for help. Ask Allah to turn our nights
into tahajjud into a time of prayer, such that this prayer can
be answered as we work to better ourselves, our families, our
communities, our Ummah and the entire world, Allah mussalini,
Muhammad, alhamdulillahi, rabbil alamin Abu