Tahajjud: Waking Soul & Society
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Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. So how do you pray tahajjud? How is it different than any other prayer? Well, first of all, let's talk about timing. We know that qiyam al-layl and tahajjud are kind of interchangeable words. Usually, if you pray it after A'ishah, so right now we're talking about the time between salat al-A'ishah and salat al-fajr. This is the nighttime, between the nighttime prayer and the morning prayer. Now, if you pray before you sleep, we usually call this qiyam al-layl. And if you sleep and then wake up, we usually call this tahajjud. How do you pray it? You've prayed salat al-A'ishah, you've prayed your sunnah of A'ishah, and now what? If you're going to pray qiyam al-layl, you can stand up and make intention for two extra raka'ah, and you just pray two raka'ahs, and then you can sleep. Or you can sleep after A'ishah, or do the dishes or whatever you do, and then you go to bed, wake up before fajr. Now, simplest, you can wake up even 15 minutes before fajr. And just make wudu and pray two raka'ahs of tahajjud, and then you wait for the fajr prayer and you pray. That's the simplest, that's the basic. Two raka'ahs of tahajjud. Now, here we have also salat al-witr. Okay, so witr is our very strong sunnah, and it's meant to be prayed at night. So the next step we can say is you're gonna wake up just a tiny bit earlier, pray two raka'ahs of sunnah tahajjud, and then pray witr, depending on which madhhab you're praying, you're going to pray all three raka'ahs together, or two and then one. Now, what else can we do at night? Of course, first of all, there is, what has the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam told us about the numbers of raka'ahs to pray at night? We have many different narrations that talk about the number of raka'ahs. Abdullah bin Umar, radiAllahu anhu, tells us that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam would pray 11 raka'ahs,
so that's eight plus three, which is the eight raka'ahs of tahajjud plus three of witr, eight being two, two, two, two. Now, mind you, the prayer of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was not the prayer of your regular Ahmad or Tala. It was a prayer that was long and extended. So we don't need to hold ourselves to eight raka'ahs. What we need to think about is the time at night that we want to pray, and I really want to emphasize thinking about habit growing. So think about, I'm going to do two raka'ahs, I'm gonna start with two, then I'm going to do four, and then I'm going to do six, and then I'm going to do eight. Now, maybe I'm doing eight, maybe now I want to expand each of these raka'ahs and make each one longer. Maybe I'll just do four, but I'll make them longer. Or maybe I'll do something else. Here are a few ideas of things to do at night. Our community, one of the things that our community is struggling with is missed prayers. Many, many, many Muslims today, unfortunately, have a lot of followed prayers that we have missed. One really beautiful way to use the night is to make up your followed prayers. So to say, well, you know what, when I was 14, I should have been praying, but I wasn't, when I was 15, I should have been praying, when I wasn't, I'm just going to do what I can to make up these prayers. Now, for some people, they get really serious about it. They print out a paper and they start marking off the prayers so that they can reach a point where all these prayers are made up, and they do it at night. That's a time when things are quiet. If you're praying anyway, it's just easier, really, to pray a full day of qada'ah rather than raka'atayn, two raka'ahs, two raka'ahs, two raka'ahs. But either way, whatever you want to do, it is beneficial to pray at night. Now, what should these raka'ahs look like? When you are reciting Quran at night,
you recite the Quran out loud. You benefit from listening to it yourself. Your recitation improves, and maybe you'll be like, Oh, Sayyid, areedullahu anhu, where the angels are coming down and listening to your recitation. Now, of course, I know that not everyone's Quran memorization is good enough to be able to do this at night. So in the Shafi'i Madhhab, you can set the mushaf in front of you. You can get a music stand, a cheap music stand from anywhere, really. Go to your local shop, better than those big online stores, and buy one, put it in front of you. Then you can get a mushaf that is bound with a spiral-bound mushaf that will lay flat, or anyone that's big enough, even a tablet on a stand like that. And then it's right in front of you. So you can pray a longer prayer. You can pray a whole page or two pages in that raka'ah where you're slowly meditating and thinking about these verses, listening to the verses as they enter into your heart, and spending time. And remember what Hudhayfa, areedullahu anhu, told us about the prayer of the Prophet, Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, that the standing was equal in time to the raka'ah, was equal in time to the sujood, to the movements of the prayer. Think about that, especially at tahajjud. I know that when we're busy in the day, sometimes our dhuhr prayer might be really quick. Oh, got to run off to that meeting. Or maybe asr, you have to go and cook dinner. Or maybe at maghrib, you have bedtime things going on with the children, or a Zoom meeting, or something that's nagging at you. But at night, even WhatsApp stops working. Well, for the most part. Here is a time to have a balanced prayer, to recite, to settle in your ruku'a, settle in your sujood.
And one other really important part of tahajjud is du'a. So we talked now about raka'atayn, raka'atayn, two raka'as, two raka'as, two raka'as, or you can do qada'a yawm, a day of qada'a, or you can do any sort of special prayer. So I'm just going to list some special prayers that you might be able to think about. And this is something fun. Make tahajjud interesting for yourself. If you're a person who's not in love with routine, do something different every night. One night, you can do qada'a yawm. One night, you can do eight raka'as. One night, do two raka'as reciting surah al-Baqarah, for example. One night, maybe you can do salat al-tasabih. Maybe one night, you can do salat al-hajjah. If you don't know what these are, you can look them up. You can Google them, alhamdulillah, or look them up in your fuqoo book. The prayer at night is a time to really develop that relationship with Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. So having new things to do is a good idea, but also take note of the environment. Set up your prayer place. The other day in my own house, I was doing some spring cleaning, it actually was summer cleaning, but some summer cleaning, and I was moving things around, and my daughter wasn't home. She came home, and she kind of looked at me with a panicked look. Mama, where's your prayer place? Because it wasn't, I didn't have one out at that moment. I said, don't worry, don't worry, I'm moving things over here. But get our children used to seeing that there's a place in the house where we settle in our prayer. And also for yourself, is something about knowing where you're going to go. Light a candle, spray some perfume in the area, or incense, whatever it is that you like to bring beautiful smells. Bake some cookies in the middle of the night. Bring some cinnamon rolls and open it up so that smell is filling the air. And make it a place of cleanliness. Make sure your prayer clothes are clean. Make sure the prayer carpet is something easy to sit on. If you are not able to do sujood,
you have knee issues or a broken leg or something, then have a chair that's comfortable. Pay attention to these things. Get the place ready so that when you wake up, your appointment, your meeting with your Lord is prepared. You're just beautifying yourself with wudu. And you're going to that prayer carpet. You begin with raka'atain, two light raka'as. And you do these two raka'as. And they're very lightweight. That means they're not very long. That's how the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam would do it. And then the next ones are longer. You've warmed up, just like exercise. Exercise of the heart, exercise of the spirit. You've warmed up and then you extend that. And then you sit and make dua. And if you're a person who can't think about what to make dua for, make notes during the day and set that next to you so that you can look at it. And remember to make dua for me. Remember to make dua for our Ummah. Remember to make dua for your children, your family, for all of the people that you know and don't know. That Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la will guide, support, help, cure, send His mercy down, forgive, all of those that we love, those that are close to us and those who are far. And make tahajjud and pray for ourselves that we make tahajjud a habit for us. That that prayer becomes the thing we long for and hope for and enjoy deeply. Allahumma salli wa sallam wa baraka ala Sayyidina wa nabiyyina Muhammad walhamdulillahi rabbil alameen.
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