Tamara Gray – Tahajjud Waking Soul & Society #03 Turning to Tahajjud in Hard Times

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