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Tahajjud was the lifestyle and the way
of the earliest people.
(gentle music)
I remember, when I lived in Damascus,
and I would look outside my window,
and in the nighttime before Fajr,
and I would look at all the little windows,
because the buildings were very big and many, many floors.
And they felt like there were many windows,
and each window would either be dark or shine brightly
with the lights, especially at night.
And I would look and think about
how many people get up and pray Tahajjud
in this day and age.
And of course,
SubhanAllah
most of the lights were out.
And I would think about one of the
Ta'baein
and what he would say:
That the angels look down upon the earth,
and they see the homes of those
who pray Tahajjud as shining stars.
Just as we look up at the sky,
and we see those shining stars and their lights for us,
and think about those who are in like,
go out to the countryside and look at the stars,
not from the city.
And it used to make me really sad, and still does sometimes,
when I think about how dark the earth
must look today to the angels.
So many of the houses are without that light at night.
You know Junaid
Someone saw him in a dream after he died,
and they asked him, "how did it go?
How did the questioning go? How are you now?"
Think about that.
To see someone after their death and wonder,
"what was that experience like?" And Junaid,
if you don't know who he was,
he was a person who was known to be a person of great faith,
many, many good deeds, great scholarship, great knowledge.
And his answer in the dream was everything has left except
for the two rak'at, I prayed at night with sincerity.
So we want to ask ourselves,
are we praying these two rak'at at night
with sincerity,
Are we building that relationship?
Tustari, a Mufassir,
one who wrote an very beautiful explanation of the Quran.
And he was three years old, he asked his father,
I want to wake up for Tahajjud.
And his father told him you're too young.
And he said to his father at three, very precarious,
precocious, precocious three-year-old.
He said, okay, but when Allah asks me why I didn't get up,
I'm going to say, because you didn't teach me,
you didn't help me.
And so the father started waking him up at three years old.
You know, when I first became a Muslim,
I was struggling with the Fardh. I really,
it was hard for me to pray each one in it's time,
to pray Dhuhr, to pray Asr.
Actually well Dhuhr was difficult in those first,
early days. And I was I'm Muslim.
I had been a Muslim maybe for a month and a half
or two months. And I moved in with the most lovely,
amazing Malaysian women, Malaysian sisters.
And the very first night of prayer was salat-al-Isha
and my roommates stood up to pray Imam for us.
And I prayed with her and I took off my right.
We finished praying Isha.
And I took off my prayer clothes
and she looked at me and she said," Aren't you going
to pray Witr?".
And I said, actually, I didn't know what to do.
I had never, ever heard of Witr,
and this was before Google.
So I was,
I wasn't able to pull up my phone and look it up
or anything like that.
And so I was, I went silent.
I was also at 18. It was really hard for me to tell people,
I didn't know things.
I like to be the one who knew everything back then.
And so I, I didn't say anything.
I just stared at her.
And then she said," oh,
you pray after Tahajjud, don't you?"
I also had no idea what Tahajjud was, but I said, yep,
that's what I do.
And so she said," shall I wake you?"
And I said," yes".
SubhanAllah
So she did.
And I rushed and tried to look it up in my books that I had
and tried to find out what in the world is this thing she's
talking about.
Alhamdulillah
because of the blessing
of living with such amazing young women.
I was able to benefit early,
early on from this most blessed prayer
that really changes lives
SubhanAllah
And really was the way of the early people, you know,
Tamim, may Allah Subh'anaHu Wa At-A'la
be pleased with him.
One of the companions of Rasulullah
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam,
it is said that once that once he missed Tahajjud,
he's known, as you may have heard of him,
he's known as the one who lit up the mosque.
He was the first one ever to put lanterns or lamps
in the masjid.
Anyway, one night he missed Qiyamul Layl
or he missed Tahajjud.
And he was so grieved.
Now I want to just slow this story down,
because think about what are the things that we grieve?
Maybe you grieve.
If you lose a lot of money in the stock market,
maybe you grieve if there was a house you wanted to buy,
but you weren't able to get it.
Maybe you, of course, we grieve loss of those that we love.
And we grieve maybe a grade that we didn't get
that we wanted to get,
or a paper that we wanted to finish
but didn't get finished on time
or a degree that we worked hard for,
but weren't able to finish or a degree that we worked hard
for but we were late in finishing.
These are all the things that we might think about really
spending some time feeling bad about.
Now Tamim,
he was so grieved at the loss of one night of prayer
that he spent a full year,
a full year after that praying every night,
all night.
SubhanAllah
And I live in Minnesota and our nights in the summer are
very, very, very short.
And I'm sure some of you also who live
in the Northern hemisphere,
know exactly what I'm talking about.
Isha that comes after 11, Fajr that comes
in around 3:00 AM.
And sometimes in the summer, I think, you know,
it's just easier to stay up all night so
that I can pray Qiyam
or Tahajjud usually Tahajjud is what we pray.
We usually,
we call it Tahajjud if we've prayed it after sleeping
and Qiyam, if we pray it without having slept before,
but there are interchangeable as well.
Anyways. So in sometimes I say to myself,
"oh, you know what?
I'll just, I should just stay up all night".
And the night, the whole night is only four hours and I,
it's not easy.
It's not easy to do that. And I think about Tamim,
who was not in the Northern hemisphere.
radiAllahu ta'ala Anhu
he wasn't in the Northern hemisphere,
but yet he made that decision to make up,
to make up for the loss of a night of Tahajjud,
May Allah Subha'anaHu Wa Ta'ala
forgive us for the nights that we slept so deeply,
that sleep became more important to us than prayer.
For the nights we missed out on the opportunity to come
close to Allah Subha'anaHu Wa Ta'ala
And the nights we missed out on the opportunity to grow our,
to grow in love,
to grow in becoming of the beloved at night.
SubhanAllah, Bilal as well.
We have, I mean,
we have story after story after story.
If you really look at the Seerah carefully,
you're going to find that you see
the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
praying at night. We know the famous one,
the very famous story of the
Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
praying until his feet swelled.
How long do you have to stand so that your feet swell?
How long does your prayer have to be such that your feet
swell, in the famous story
Aisha radiAllahu ta'ala Anha
She's worried about him. And she says," why,
why do you stand so long when you know
that your sins are forgiven?"
And he says, "should I, should I not be a thankful servant,
a grateful servant".
Standing at night for hours in deep prayer,
such that his feet are swelling.
What lesson is that for us?
Isn't,
isn't it a lesson that we also should understand that there
is deep and great benefit in standing at night,
standing not so our feet swell.
That's a difficult thing for most of us to do.
Probably if you're standing at night,
you might sit as the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
When he was walking in the masjid,
he found a rope hanging in the masjid. And he said,
"whose rope, who, who does this rope belong to?"
And they told him,
Ya RasulAllah SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
that rope belongs to Zainab, his wife.
His answer was not, what is she doing in the masjid?
No, this was normal that she was in the masjid.
Just take that and put that on the side and keep that
in mind.
But rather his answer was when she's praying and at night
and she tires, she holds onto it.
So she won't fall over.
La ilaha illa Allah
He said,
"take it down when she's praying and she's tired.
Let her sit".
Now the Ulema of Hadith explained this
in one of two ways, in two different ways.
One is, if you are tired, rest,
take a little nap and then come back to the prayer
and others have said, sit, continue the prayer, but sit,
Ya Allah
how much do we have to go deeply to understand the benefit
and importance of Tahajjud?
We need to look at Tustari,
who was three years old was hoping for this benefit
at Junaid who after his death was telling us
how, trying to give us this message stand at night
at the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
who understood it's
important, such that his feet swelled, at Zainab
radiAllahu ta'ala Anha
who understood it's important,
such that she was willing to continue.
Even though she was so tired,
she was afraid she might collapse or fall over.
And we are asking ourselves today
to put at least,
at least a minuscule percentage of that effort
into this night prayer,
such that we too can grow in the ways of light
that our earliest community grew in.
WAlhamdu lillahi rabbi alAAalameen
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