Riyadh al-Saliheen and Women’s Q&A #05

Okay, in the interest of time, we'll get started, shall we?

This will happen Rahim Al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil Alameen wa salatu salam ala NBOMe. Serene the Vienna will put once in a Muhammad, Allah He helped us get to sleep. A lot of them I live nearby in Sacramento and fatten me, Matt, I need to know is it and they're in and out of it, I mean.

So at the end of last week, we were approaching the very end of the first Hadith.

And we see how rich the first hadith is, because we spent several weeks on it, there's just a couple loose ends,

about the Hadith, and then we'll be moving on to the second Hadith and inshallah

so when we zoom out,

and look at the Hadith, in general, right, and I'm at Ahmed open the window, medical, you name and now

all good deeds are accompanied are caused by intentions, and a law is going to reward us in the afterlife according to these intentions. So who ever made their migration or whoever is migrating for the sake of Allah and His Messenger, then that is what they're going to be, they're going to be rewarded as if their migration was truly for a law and His messenger. And whoever migrated for some worldly reasons to get a piece of the dunya or to marry somebody than they are going to be rewarded.

According to whatever their intention was.

When we zoom out and look at the Hadith, in general, there's a couple worthwhile reflections are lessons to take from it.

We touched on one of them last week, which is that

intentions are not a black and white matter. Right? We can imagine,

in both scenarios, let's say we have here the migration to Allah and His messenger. And here the migration to get a piece of the dunya. We can imagine a continuum, right, we can imagine, we can imagine a scenario in which maybe it's this person over here is like 8020 80%, you know, for Allah and His messenger and 20%, because there's some some kinds of latent benefits, or some indirect benefits that they're going to get from that migration.

And similarly, over here, it's probably very rare that you find a Muslim, that's just like 100%, you know, doing things for the dunya. You know, people are more complicated than that. They have lots of kind of narratives and excuses and things like that. And there might be some kernel of truth in them, they might be doing things 10% 20% For a lot, but the predominant reason that's driving them is for some sort of worldly gain. And so one thing that we can reflect upon from this hadith is the,

the process the project of purifying our intentions, right? That's not necessarily something that's like, Oh, I just need to flip the switch, show up to prayer. And then I have my intention. No, it's something that's more subtle than that. Something that takes it's a longer road and takes a lot of work, to kind of first draw awareness

to the reason why you do the things that you do.

Most people talking about society at large, don't pay attention to the reasons why they do things. They don't stop to think, Well, I'm doing this for the sake of Allah, I'm not doing this, because of our language and our Muslim culture, we have that kind of on our map. So we're a little bit better. But we often don't think about it as much as we should. So the first process is kind of

the first step I should say is kind of getting it on our map,

on our plane of awareness, that all of these things, either have intentions or might be able, we might be able to have a better intention with them. And then trying to find a way to purify those intentions and make them more for a lot and less for the other things.

So how do you do that? That sounds really good, but it sounds really hard.

And it is, but there's a couple thought exercises that you could do to kind of isolate or determine or experiment with yourself and see Hmm, what's the reason I'm doing this thing?

For example, one test you could subject subject yourself to is this thing that I'm

I'm about to do

what I do this thing, if I didn't benefit at all from it.

Let's say for example, I don't know, you

do certain things for your spouse, right, you have a certain kind of balance of responsibilities at home, maybe you do the dishes, maybe you do the laundry, or he does a laundry, because everybody has their own kind of way that they split it up.

And some people, the reason why they do things is because of they get something in return. Right? This is kind of like business model. Now that thing could be material, right? Like, it could be like house and shelter, right? Or it could be non material, it could be praise, right? Maybe when you were a student, you were doing things you were trying hard in school.

Because you're really enjoyed the praise of your teachers and your parents. Right? It's a little bit different from doing it for the sake of Allah, and doing it for, you know, being an educated Muslim. And so therefore, somebody who is more respectable, and more respected in society, and therefore reflecting better upon Islam.

So the question would be like, okay, if I'm this student, and you take away all the praise that I'm getting, you take away all the either material or non material benefit, what I still do that thing?

And we can probably imagine that for a lot of things, the answer would be no, no, I wouldn't do that thing, because I'm kind of doing it off of the business model, right. Or I should say, I'm doing it off of the business, the duty and business model, where I'm kind of, you know, favors for favors. I'm not doing it off of the business with a lot model, where I'm kind of trading, if you will, my sincerity towards the law with something that stood up for me later, which is paradise. Right. So that's one thing you can kind of ask yourself, another thing you could do is ask yourself, this thing that I'm doing, it's related to the first it's a little bit more specific, what I do this

thing, if nobody knew about it, right, because especially with good deeds, like giving money to the poor, or donating my time, or volunteering or whatever, a lot of that can be very easily mixed in with with intentions of getting praise or getting recognition for people. A lot of times people's involvement in the MSG,

to be honest, is tied to recognition. Right? We want to be recognized as this role or that role that eat healthy, the whatever director of this and the the you know, whatever of that, right, it's a it's a fitna, right. It's a it's a, it's a temptation. So would you do the same thing, if nobody knew?

All the hours that you put in for, I don't know, sitting on board meetings or organizing this event or that event? Would you still do them? If not only no one knew. But maybe they gave somebody else the credit. And really, the credit kind of belongs to you more than it does to that other person. These are really tough questions, but they're useful. They're useful to ask yourself when you're trying to pinpoint what's going on inside of your heart, and what you're really intending to do. And then the last level, which is something extremely difficult,

that many people hamdulillah don't have to face but you know, it's worth asking, what I do this thing, if it was actually risky to my material comfort,

right? There are certain things that are like universals that everybody praises, and everybody likes everybody in Unicode is going to tell you you're doing a great job. If you, you know,

volunteer some time at a soup kitchen, for example, the backpack giveaway, stuff like that. But what about the sorts of things in Islam that are either rewardable, or praiseworthy or just parts of Islam that we believe in that aren't so readily praised by outside society? Right? Would we be

still willing to defend those things and do those things even if it brought us scorn? Right, the hijab is one of those things, you know, not 100%, right? Because there's a lot of people that are, you know, can get behind it from either a multicultural perspective or a women's empowerment perspective or stuff like that. But getting behind it from a this is what Allah command

added me to do perspective is something that's a lot rarer. Right? So like, you know, questioning our intentions, right? Why do I, why do I wear hijab? Okay, I can say it's because it's my right. It's liberating. It's and these kinds of things, kind of hijack. The popular discourse that's going on in society takes concepts that are already praiseworthy, and flips them on their head in a way that works for us. But what if we justified it by something that was very unpopular? Like, like obedience? Right? Like, obedience isn't a very praiseworthy value in American society. Right? Conformity, even worse, submission even worse, right? So just things to get thinking about if you if

you consider those things, okay, what if I'm saying I'm doing this because it's a sign of obedience? And obedience is something that I aspire to be?

Like giving shelter to someone who might be escaping immigration crisis?

Yeah, maybe, yeah, that's a that's a good example to different it's a different type of example, it's a good example. Like, for example, what if, um, you know, ice was knocking at your door, right. And you're sheltering somebody who, you know, legally stands to be deported. Right? Like that. That's a very good example. That's something that actually puts you in the crosshairs of the legal system, the society kind of taking something from you or punishing you, or in some sort of way. That's a very good example. Right? So that's like, top top level top shelf stuff. So I mean, don't, I'm talking about myself, like, you guys. Also don't feel bad if you're not at that level for

certain things. But it's a good thing, just to get in the headspace of thinking about these sorts of levels, and asking ourselves why we do what we do.

And then Okay, so that's one thing. And then the second main reflection from the Hadith that I have is expanding our view or our ideas of worship. And this is related to the first thing, right, we said that we want to start by bringing our level of awareness to our actions. And the first thing that we'll find is that most of our actions don't have a lot of intention behind them at all. Right?

What we're trying to get at here is something encapsulated in a saying of imminent I am famous scholar,

who said that

the foolish man or the foolish woman, the foolish person, they allow their acts of worship, to become habits.

Whereas the wise person, they try to convert their habits into worship.

Right? So you have this one class of people where

everything they do is kind of habitual, it's routine, even the prayers, even the fasting, even the, you know, the Ramadan's, it's not really done with a ton of intention. Right? There's no real kind of taking aim and saying, it's like, okay, I'm doing this for a law, and I hoped for his reward in the afterlife for it.

It's part of the social milieu, it's because of that's who people know you as you're smart, or you're Samira, and that's always who you've been, and people know you. And so there's kind of expectations on you. Right?

So, on one end of the spectrum, we can allow all of these things to become just rote

habits, mechanical. And that's really a tragedy. And so those things are habitual.

Without intention, without proper intention, that everything else that you're doing is probably going to be similar, right? When you cook for your kids or you help them get dressed or tie their shoes or, you know, iron, maybe iron your husband shirt, I don't know if people iron anymore. Whatever it is, you do, right. If your worship to a loss power to Allah doesn't have intention, then those things of course, when Allah, as we say, probably won't have intention. So what we need to do is the opposite project, we need to rescue our actions, all these things that we spend our days doing, doing doing, and not benefiting from them in the Hereafter, because we're just letting them

go by go by go by without intention. If we took a second and reclaim them and rescue them, from the realm of habit, and rote ritual, then we can turn absolutely everything that we do into work.

Ship.

Those shoes that you tie the lunches that you pack the dishes that you wash the work if you have a job or the work or the career that you go to

even, even your intimacy with your spouse, there's a specific Hadith about that, from the Prophet sallallahu alayhi salam going to sleep, waking up in the morning, stepping outside of your house, every single thing can become worship, if we take the time and have the awareness to have a correct intention.

So that is something that general reflection from the first Hadith moving on to the second Hadith. Try and try to get through some of the at least today. So this one is married by Aisha Radi Allahu anha. And we will talk more about her soon.

She's a very important Hadith Narrator she's one of the mcphedran not theatre, one of the people who narrated many, many, many Hadith over 1000 Hadith, there's only seven of them among all the companions and our Isha is right there. Number four, and if you want I can teach you a lot of poetry that will help you remember all of them in Arabic, of course. So she said

that the prophesy centum said follows hula solo he said, um,

I'll just go with the English for the sake of time, and army will read the kava, and when it reaches a desert land, all of them will be swallowed up by the Earth. Ayesha then asked the prophets of Allah hottie was salam, ala Rasulillah, ye all of them.

The prophesy said, I'm answered, all of them will be swallowed by the Earth, but they will be raised for judgments. According to their intentions. A hadith is both in Sahih, Al Bukhari and Sahih Muslim.

There's a lot to talk about in this hadith. The first thing is, how we know what we know, as people of faith. This hadith has a prophecy from the Prophet Mohammed Salah is,

right, so he's predicting an event that's going to happen in the future. Predicting not in the sense of guessing might be right might be wrong. No. As people of faith, we believe with certainty that is going to happen, something that's strange to a lot of contemporary secular society. And so it bears thinking about how does anyone

get their information about anything? If somebody were to confront you and say, I don't understand how you under you believe in all this prophecy stuff, all this revelation? It just seems like a sale theater. Lean just seems like these stories and tales from olden times.

If we break it down into what are the possible ways that a human being can know about anything than it actually there's kind of an organization here

that supports us.

The first way that you can know about anything is through eyewitness, it's through empirical observation. And a corollary of that is hearing somebody narrate to you or report to you

an eyewitness account, right? This is why the Hadith scholars were so busy with verifying who met who and who talked to who and who studied that from this one, and that one, because they had to verify that these eyewitness reports actually happened.

The second way that we can know anything is through logical deduction, you take something you know, from experience or something that you observe, and you extrapolate it to come to a conclusion.

And then the third way, which is what we believe in, and some people don't, is Revelation.

But an prophecy is a subsection of Revelation. If you look at how a law appeals to our reason, because in many of the classes we've talked about,

a lot of appeals consistently and constantly to our reason, because He created us with reason.

A lot utilizes these two.

I don't want to say primary, I would say

prerequisites maybe

the empirical way of knowing and the logical deductive way of knowing in order to point to and lead to accepting revelation. How many times in the Quran does Allah start by calling us to observe the natural world, the trees, the flowers, the food, even animals, the bees and camels and cows and sheep and all of these things?

The sky, the mountains, all of these things.

And then what does it do? Does he just say so you have to believe? No, he said, he tries to get us to draw a conclusion from those things, a logical conclusion, look at how these things

are magnificent, how there's a degree of complexity in them, how they're so suited to what they are created for.

Or they're so suited to the activity that they engage in, in their lives.

Once you take heed, right, so it's all this these three types of knowing all exist in how a law talks to us in the Quran, starting with something empirical, drawing a conclusion from what you observe, and then basically telling you that

those two things are both pointing to a recognition of prophecy, and Revelation as a legitimate source of knowledge.

We could spend a lot of time on that, but that's just the side point.

I think the rest will have to wait until next class inshallah.

Let's go to the questions because we have a lot of questions. And historically, I have not given enough time to the questions. Always keep your questions coming. By the way, they're very good questions, and I will get to them eventually, some of the sisters have requested

that I spend more time on issues of marriage, women's rights within marriage, and just pretty much everything about marriage in general. I think that's a good idea. And that's on a lot of people's minds.

So once I exhaust the questions that I've been given, I can start to do a general thing about women's rights and marriage and what marriage should and shouldn't be about, from an Islamic perspective, inshallah.

As for today, the first question that we have is about women's perfume.

The question was asked, When can I wear it? When can I not wear it? What is the deal with women's perfume?

We have several Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi salam that instructed us or told us that the application of perfume for women is restricted by certain concerns.

Okay. So, in one Hadith, the Prophet Mohammed slay Salam said, if one of you and he was talking to a group of women attends the MSG for prayer, then they should do so. Not having perfumes themselves. That hadith is in Sahih Muslim In another Hadith, in most now that you know, Akhmat and the Sunnah, even sunnah Abu Dawood, the Prophet Mohammed slice and I'm said, don't forbid your women from attending the mass cheats,

but make sure they leave their homes not perfumed.

And then in a more

we could say, severe Hadith and more specific Hadith,

which is

in the most net of Imam Akhmed add in Sudan and the sati. The Prophet Mohammed aside, Saddam said that if a woman

on purpose, we're talking about intention, right, purposefully applies perfume to herself and then leaves her home. And in order to attract attention from men.

Then the Prophet Mohammed slay Saddam had some not so nice words for that she is a Zania he said that this is Zania basically saying that this is a type of fornication. Right? And the

the way that he phrased it, obviously, it's not literal fornication, but it's something that is one of the

that could potentially lead to that sin. As the Prophet Mohammed say, Saddam said In another Hadith, the fornication of the eyes is looking, and the fornication of the ears is listening, the fornication of the right and so on and so forth. Right. So, what are the general principles that we can derive from all of these Hadith that

Islamic law concerns itself with

public order? First of all, because all these things don't have to do with anything that's going on within your homes? The privacy of your own homes

and

It has to do with the sanctity of marriage. Okay, the sanctity of marriage, basically,

all sexual satisfaction and all sexual attraction should be satisfied and enjoyed within the context of a responsible marriage, I should say, in the context of responsibility period, and that responsibility is achieved by the institution of marriage. Okay? So whenever something is introduced into the society

that threatens not exclusivity.

Okay?

That threatens to bring attraction, or intimacy, for sexual desire, outside of that relationship of responsibility and into an irresponsible context, where there aren't checks and balances where there aren't rights and responsibilities, then this is something that's dangerous, not just to the individuals involved, but it's dangerous to the entire society, and so it can't happen. Okay. Now, the Prophet Muhammad Ali Salam here in the Hadith that we have, he was talking specifically to women.

And we can perhaps pondered two reasons why this is. So first of all, because in general, men's attraction is much more easily ignited. Okay, that's one thing.

But there's another sort of situation, which is just the social dynamics of his time in place, which was that women tended to stay in their homes, and not go out as much as men. Right. So in our society, we have the scales have been much more evened out, there are easily as much men

out with careers and jobs as there are women, maybe there's even more women, you know, I'm not sure about the latest data, but it wouldn't surprise me. Right. So where the attention of the Hadith focuses on women, the intent and the purpose behind these things apply to both genders, right, any sort of thing that's going to introduce these elements of sexual attraction, outside of a context of responsibility, which is marriage is dangerous and should be avoided at all costs, whether it applies to men or women. So most scholars hold that it's not permissible for a woman to

perfume herself

to perfume herself, and then leave the house. And

especially if she's going to be in the other presence of men. Now, there's a lot of things that we could qualify this general

instruction with, first of all, we have to define what is perfume, okay? Is perfume, anything that smells pleasant? Or is perfume, something that just has to, that's sole purpose is to smell nice, right? To smell alluring, even, not just to smell nice, because there might be nice smells that

are on your person that aren't alluring. And no one would ever think

is alluring. If you take a tic tac or a breath mint, or you just brush your teeth right before leaving the house, there's probably a minty smell coming from your mouth. Maybe other people are going to smell it is this something that falls under perfume so that you can't brush your teeth before you leave the house?

From my perspective, that doesn't enter into it. This is a secondary aspect of brushing your teeth are whatever you're doing. It's not a primary aspect. And it's not something that's alluring. Right. It's not like you're putting on Chanel or Estee Lauder or something like that. I don't know anything about perfume.

Right? So there's other things like olive oil or you know, some sort of creams and things like that that have scents. Okay, but they're not perfume, right, you're not putting them on.

Specifically for the smell, you're putting them on for a separate purpose. And furthermore, that smell is not an alluring sort of smell. So those are all things to keep in mind.

Jack cover that

That's a

good, it's always good to keep in mind with this issue and a lot of other issues that come up in FIP, that there's a difference between bare minimum permissibility. And best practices. Just like if you go to a hospital, right? There are hospitals that are barely holding on to their

whatever, like certification or passing inspection, right? And then there are hospitals that do best practices cutting edge all this other stuff, right? Your religious practice is no different. And many fit questions are no different. Sometimes we get to focus on bare permissibility. And we're not worried about what's best practice. So with this issue, there's a level of bare permissibility. And then there's best practice, the best practice would be to avoid anything, whether you're a man or a woman, that's going to allow for

the opposite sex to you when you're out in public. And that's what the city is concerned with.

The next question we have everybody has any follow up questions or ideas? Put it in the chat box? The next question we have is, is there a difference between men's prayer and women's prayer is a very common question. And there's two schools of thought on this issue. One that there are no differences between men's prayer one was prayer, and one that there are some differences between men's prayer and women's prayer.

To build up the question from the beginning, the defaults in Islamic law is that all commands are addressed to both men and women. The default also in Islamic law is that the commands are to be carried out in the same manner. So if a law commands us to pays a cat, then men and women aren't suppose a cat in a similar way, for us an exact same in a same way. The same thing with the prayer the same thing with fasting, until there's some sort of evidence or qualification that gives us license to make a differentiation between the two. So when it comes to the prayer, we don't have any specific, explicit evidence to differentiate between men's prayer and women's prayer. And this is

the evidence of the group of scholars that say that no, they're the same.

What many scholars throughout the centuries have said, is that that's true. But if you look at general principles of Islamic law,

there are certain things that women can do in their prayer that serve those purposes. There, what they're thinking about is, for example, it is important that a woman cover herself properly, we were just talking about being alluring, right. And we were talking about the alluring scent, while there's also a lowering visuals, right and views. And so it's important that women avoid alluring being alluring to, to men, with their looks as well. And so many of the scholars said that, there's a couple of slight modifications that women can do in their prayer in order to

cover themselves more fully, or to better serve or more fully serve those concerns about,

about covering oneself more fully. So the scholars of that camp, said that, for example, instead of raising your hands high and tech via that you would raise them lower and closer to the body. And another example is that when you're in sujood, instead of spreading your arms way out to the side, that you would keep them closer tucked in. Similarly, your knees and your stomach, you wouldn't be elongated, very much that you would keep your knees closer to your your stomach or your chest. And then finally, the way that you sit in your prayer, that you would sit on your side, which is called Tawadros. You're sitting on your hip, and not on your punches, not on the back of your legs or

knees.

Many scholars, including many of the official positions of the schools of law, take this position, that it's better not that they have to, but that it's better for women to make these slight modifications in their prayer. Not because of any specific evidence, but because of general principles in Islamic law. If they're praying in front of men that they're not related to, right, obviously, these things would not apply if you're in front of just your lady friends or you're just in front of your husband or things like this. Right. So but there's also the other camp that says that no, there's no specific explicit evidence for that. And so the

There's no difference at all. And the stakes for this difference of opinion are not high. Whatever you do, and whatever you feel comfortable with is fine.

We have four minutes left. The next question relates to our, to what women's dress and kids dress and what you should cover and what you have to cover. And there's a lot to say about that are wanting to get through it, but I don't think we're gonna have time. So we will save it for next time in sha Allah

important announcement. And if you ladies are in the WhatsApp group, please make this announcement in the WhatsApp group so that everybody gets the message.

This is the last week that our timing of the class does not interfere with one of the prayer times I have to leave leave the prayer and the message here. So we need to move the time of the class. When I looked at the prayer schedule and how the prayers are shifting earlier in the day, the time that made the most sense to me was 7pm because the A Shah time, at least the time that they pray in the masjid is going to stay for a long time away from that so we would be able to keep it at 7pm for a long time. So starting next week, this class and all the classes will be starting at 7pm Okay, same exact everything else is the same

you can still get if you miss the the video, you can still catch up on YouTube and everything like that. So please forward the message along to your sisters. Does anybody have any other questions at all about something we talked about or something that you wish we had we had talked about

or anything else?

I mean we

Okay, if that's it, then thank you very much. I appreciate your participation, your attention.

And may Allah benefit us by this knowledge and keep us sincere. And may we see it in our good deeds on the day of judgment. And

inshallah I will see you next week. Thank you very much. Somebody coming up to look at