Tahajjud: Waking Soul & Society
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Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. People ask me, why tahajjud? Why are you always talking about this? It's such a small part of life, such a small part of worship life. Why do you talk about this? Talk about other things. Talk about recitation of Qur'an. Talk about charity. Talk about fasting. And of course all of these other things are very important. But tahajjud has a unique reflection or a unique importance that we understand if we really carefully read the Qur'an and carefully think about the words and lifestyle of Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. If we think about the concept of nafila, what does nafila mean? Nafila is something extra. We know we have to do the farood. We know that the farood alayna is very important and many, many people are struggling with the farood. I know this. But when we ask ourselves, what is nafila? We can look to the Qur'an to understand. Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la says, So nafila means it's nafila. So this is something that is nafila. This of course is This is something special for Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. Something special for his ummah. That we have this unique time at night that is nafila. What does nafila do? Nafila brings us to the love of God. And this ultimately is what we all need. And so then we look around. What is the nafila that we should be doing? And we discover that Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la Himself has described nafila as tahajjud. Okay, so now we need to get up. And in other places in the Qur'an, Get up at night except for a little.
So we begin to understand this night time is for sleep and for worship. And when we begin to understand and think about that, we begin to walk a different path. The importance of tahajjud comes back to the importance of really what it means to be human. Because we are created to be ibadallah, to be of the worshippers of God. And we have a whole life of busyness and running around and rushing and coming at night exhausted. And we're looking for rest in a hundred places. But the real rest is at night. The real rest is standing before God. Standing before God at night. The real rest is standing in the last third of the night, standing before Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. Qoom al-layl, stand up at night. Stand up at night. To be of the ibadur rahman allatheen yubituna li rabbihim sujjanan wa qiyaman. Let's think about that verse for a minute. To be of the worshippers of the merciful. And I want to talk a little bit about what that means, to become of the worshippers of the merciful. But to be that person, we'll talk about that maybe later, is also to define this as the one, yubitun means to settle. If you think about the word bait, a house, a place you settle, yubitun, to settle in. Settle in to worship. It becomes something that you're at home with. Something that you settle your heart in. And it's very interesting, the verse, because it begins with sujjan. So yubituna, in prostration, prostration to God, in great humbleness to God. And then qiyaman. And think about that. When we talk about the fuqaha of prayer, when we think about what's the most important part of the prayer. If you have bad knees or if you have an injury, you break your leg or something like that. What do you have to do? We have to make sure about qiyam. We have to make sure about the standing up at night, right?
Or excuse me, the standing in prayer, which is the standing at night, the establishing of the prayer. And sujood is the thing that if we break our leg or something, we don't have to do. Yet in this verse, sujjadan wa qiyaman, sujood comes first. Why? Because it's not only an action. Because the nighttime prayer is not only an action of the body. It's not only an action of the forehead kissing the ground. It's also an action of the heart. And tahajjud is the place where our heart wakes up and where our heart rests. And so when we begin to develop a habit of tahajjud, naafilatan lak, naafilatan lak, this naafila, this special thing that it's not a farad. No, no, it's not an obligation. Think about your children. When you ask your children, what is the most important thing in your life? And when you ask your children to do something that is an obligation and they do it, you're happy. But what if they come and do something extra? Maybe you ask your kids to unload the dishwasher. And you come upstairs, you come into the kitchen, and you find out they unloaded the dishwasher and they did the dishes. Of course, in a way, it's a silly comparison. But as parents, we know how that feels. You didn't have to neg for the dishwasher to get unloaded. You didn't have to fuss about all of these things, about whatever it is to take the garbage out or whatever the thing is. And on top of that, they did something extra. Imagine if you're a son or daughter. After you told them to take the garbage out, you discovered they washed the garbage tins. Allah, you might faint, fall on the chair and say, what in the world was that? But certainly, you'll look at that child with the eye of appreciation, of love. Naafila is the thing we do that is extra for the one that we worship. Naafila is not just the fard.
It's standing up to do that extra thing. And tahajjud is the most important naafila. It's the most important sunnah. I mentioned all of these other beautiful things that we have to do and all of these other things we want to think about, I should say. Other things that help us on the path. Fasting, sadaqa, praying sunnah prayers around our fard prayers, giving kind and good words to people. All of this is important. But tahajjud helps us to grow individually, to become of those who Allah loves. And also, as a community, think about that verse, becoming of those who have maqaman mahmuda, an elevated status. What is the status of our community today? Not so great. We have pretty bad PR. But we can find good PR on our prayer carpet at night. We can, through the worship of God, through deep worship of God, and even quick, even swift, even a couple of minutes before fajr, worship of Allah Subhanu wa ta'ala, we can elevate not only our personal status with God, not only our personal status with dunya, but the status of our ummah, as was the promise to Rasulullah Sallallahu alayhi wasallam. As is a promise to us, the importance of tahajjud is in walking the path of becoming of the beloved, of becoming of those who have a heart that it's easier to love with this heart. Stand up at night and follow in the path, listening to the Prophet Sallallahu alayhi wasallam when he was asked, what are the best of deeds? Ifshu salam, give greetings of peace, feed people, wa qoom al-layl wa al-nas al-niyam, stand up at night while people are sleeping.
Let us all together stand up at night while people are sleeping, and as we look out of our window, pray for every single one of them, that everyone might take advantage of these most beautiful moments and grow love flowers in our hearts that bring us near and close and holding to the path we are meant to be on. walhamdulillahi rabbil alameen.
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