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S1E4 - Does Praying Tahajjud Make a Difference? | DoubleTake
Tahajjud, or Qiyaam ul-layl, is the voluntary night prayer that was recommended by the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. It is a simple act of worship that can have profound benefits.
In this episode, host Mohamad Zaoud talks to Dr. Tamara Gray, author of the Yaqeen Institute paper “Tahajjud: Fuel for the Self and Society,” about how tahajjud can reinvigorate your personal relationship with God and your ability to contribute to positive social change.
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This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Why is there such an emphasis on voluntary prayers in Islam? Can the key to holding on to our faith be found in these night prayers? Welcome to Double Take, a podcast by Yaqeen Institute where we explore ideas and questions in Islam that give us pause. I'm Muhammad Zawar and today on the show, we're looking into the concept of tahajjud, the voluntary night prayer, and the role it has to play in our lives. And with me today is Dr. Tamra Gray, author of the paper Tahajjud, Fuel for the Self and for Society. Dr. Tamra, assalamualaikum and welcome to Double Take. Wa'alaikumussalam, rahmatullah, thank you for having me. Dr. Tamra, you're the founder of Rabita and you've got a doctorate in leadership, policy and administration. You've been in education for the last 25 years. My question right off the bat is, why did you focus on tahajjud? What was that moment that made you realize, you know what, we need to start focusing on this? In 2012, when I came to the United States, I thought I was coming here for a short time. I thought I was only going to be here for like five months. And during that time, in those first months, I toured around the United States and met a lot of Muslim women, many, many. MashaAllah, it was a very, it was a beautiful experience. It was also exhausting because I did 69 talks in Ramadan. But what I learned that throughout that time, I learned so much. And one of the things I learned is that we have a, I don't know what to call it, a crisis, a crisis of prayer in our community, that so many people are not praying,
or they're not praying regularly, or they're not praying at all. And I was really surprised by that, I must admit. And I gave a lot of thought to how do we fix that? How do you, how do you come to, this is by the way, I'm not talking about those who didn't self-identify as Muslims, or those who were not on a path of some sort. These are the people that would take time out to come to a talk. These are the women who would take time out, or they were wearing hijab, or they were volunteering at the masjid, or volunteering in their youth group, that we really had a crisis of even our young leaders or our leadership missing prayers on a regular basis. And so I did a lot of thinking around that. And I was reading a book at the time about habits, The Power of Habit. It was called The Power of Habit. And it was talking about the the keystone habit, had a lot of really good examples in there about businesses and things like that. And I was thinking, what is the keystone habit of our dean? What could I, what might I be able to say is the keystone habit? Now his definition of a keystone habit is the thing that when you do it, everything else falls into place. So it might not be what you feel is the main thing. So he had an example of an aluminum company. And in this aluminum company, the main thing in an aluminum company is to sell aluminum. I think that's an obvious thing. But the keystone habit that that he demonstrated that saved this company that was failing was not selling or sales, it was safety. And I learned from that, or I thought about that, that, you know, the keystone habit is not necessarily the furud. The furud is that basic thing we absolutely have to do. But if we're not doing it, what do we need to
do so that we can do it? And that's where I thought, yeah, tahajjud. If we, the one who wakes up for tahajjud at night is not going to miss fajr, is not going to miss their prayers during the day, because by herself or himself, he or she has self-identified as a person who prays tahajjud. The person who prays tahajjud is not going to be missing furud or the obligatory prayers on a regular basis. Was there a moment in your life where you felt that? You felt that tahajjud was the keystone habit that needs to occur in most Muslims beyond, you know, reading the power of habit and seeing people's challenges with the obligatory prayers. Was there a moment in your life where you said, you know what, this actually works? Well, it's a funny story, actually. I had, I was a new Muslim. I had become a Muslim in January and I had moved in to live with some lovely Malaysian students at Macalester, where I went to university. And I was still, I mean, I just barely had learned the five prayers and I had just begun to pray them on time, because before that I found wudu very difficult. So I spent a lot of time, I wouldn't pray because it was too hard to make wudu until I learned, oh, you actually have to pray them in their time. I didn't understand that right away. So I was just brand new praying those prayers on time. And I just moved in and I came downstairs, we prayed Salat al-Isha together, the night prayer. And when we finished praying, I went to take off my prayer clothes and my young friend, who was the leader of the prayer and the leader of the house, I would say, she said, oh, aren't you going to pray witr? And I had no idea what witr was. I had never heard of it. I
know what she was talking about, but I was 18 and I was very, it was very important to me not to look foolish. So I said, I didn't say anything. I just stared at her. And then she said, oh, oh, oh, you, I bet you pray witr after tahajjud, right? And I didn't know what that was either. Witr, tahajjud, what are you talking about? But again, I didn't want to look foolish. So I said, yes. And she said, shall I wake you? And I said, yes. And so she did. And from that, I, you know, I grabbed, it was pre-Google. So I had to quickly look at my books and try to figure out what she's talking about. But yeah, so from those very early days, I started to pray tahajjud with those beautiful women in the house. Hamdulillah. So you learned tahajjud, subhanAllah, like you learned tahajjud as part of learning the faith full stop. Like it wasn't kind of an extra that you learn several years later. It was something that was built into the foundation. I guess that, that plays a big role. I have, I have actually a very small story on that front. So I have like a sister, mashAllah, who's like, like my, literally my sister, she's like next level Muslim, right? I'm inshAllah a late bloomer with regards to tahajjud, but she's, she's really good with it. And her kids, she's got eight kids and she was telling me the story of one of them who's 10 got sick. So the one who was nine, she has Hassan and Hussein, the one who was nine, woke up in the middle of the night to pray for his brother who was sick. And when he woke up feeling better, they asked, you know, did anyone do anything special? Because they've got eight kids. So they have that conversation over breakfast. And, and so the nine year old said, yes, I woke up to make dua for him and pray for him.
And he felt better. And honestly, like it's, it's part and parcel in their, in their lives. So I guess it plays a very big role if that's just your habit from really early days, I guess, inshAllah later in this episode, we're going to talk more about what if you're hopefully a late bloomer and learn tahajjud later in your years, how can you create it into a habit? But like, I have, I just want to ask you the question one more time, if you don't mind, like, what is the relationship between tahajjud and the obligatory prayers? Like what does it do if, if my obligatory prayers are kind of wavering or struggling and I'm, you know, sometimes missing fajr, what's the role of tahajjud in that kind of context? Well, it pulls you up. So just like if we can use an analogy for someone in a classroom who did really poorly on a midterm exam, and they care, if they care about their grade, they're going to go to the instructor and say, what can I do? How can I, how can I pull myself up here? Because I've made that mistake of not studying or whatever for that other exam. And instructor might or might not give some extra work. Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala is very generous with us. And the, the act of praying tahajjud does three things. One is it pulls you up out of a state of ghaflah, a state of heedlessness. So if you're rushing to pray fajr prayer and setting that alarm for 10 minutes before the sun, or going to bed at two, three o'clock in the morning and missing fajr prayer on a regular basis, if you decide I'm praying tahajjud, that lifestyle is going to change. You're going to have to go to bed earlier. You're going to have to figure out a different way to manage your clock. So that's one thing. It will, it will, that's why I say it's a keystone habit, because in establishing that habit, other habits will begin to develop because of it. And secondly, with the
analogy of the extra paper, with that extra paper, you start to feel better about yourself. When you start to feel better about yourself, it becomes easier to stand on the prayer carpet before Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. One of the reasons I think people don't stand is because they're feeling shame. And they're, they feel like I missed four prayers today, and now I'm going to pray isha. I missed a whole bunch of prayers last week. Now I'm going to, you know, who am I? What do I think? No. But with tahajjud, you start to see yourself as a person who prays. And they start to fall into place. And pretty soon you're like, I mean, I prayed tahajjud, why would I miss dhuhr? I prayed tahajjud, why would I miss fajr? I prayed tahajjud, why would I miss maghrib? And the third reason that people miss prayers is because they are out and about. They're somewhere where it's difficult to pray. And again, this feeling of, okay, it's difficult to pray now, but I prayed tahajjud. How am I going to, I'm not going to miss this prayer. I'm going to stop, even though I'm on the highway, I'm going to stop, get off the highway and go pray my dhuhr prayer. I'm not, I'm going to pray isha before going to sleep. Maybe I'm going to set up my day so that all of my prayers can be prayed in the beginning of time, so I don't have to worry about them. It just changes your attitude towards prayer. Prayer becomes part and parcel of life, just like eating or for some people, exercise or brushing your teeth. The thing that you just do. Everybody eats, everybody brushes their teeth. I guess in that moment where no one else is awake and you know, if you're a busy mom who's busy during the day and got kids kind of lingering around and, or a dad for that matter, who's also catching up, that moment just between you and Allah, I guess is that precious time. Let's just say, yeah, sorry, go ahead. That's a little bit different. So, that's actually really enjoying tahajjud time. So, that's a beautiful thing that will come as you begin to develop the habit of tahajjud and begin to feel,
wow, this is the only time I have space. A lot of moms, myself included, when my children were young, after they went to bed, I didn't want to go to bed. I wanted to stay for two or three hours just with my own head. And I had to sometimes with my own studies. I had a lot going on. And dads, just for the record, and dads. They want to, yeah, well, I mean, I've never been a dad, so I'm not sure. But, yeah, like that time. So, when the time sets to flip and become the morning time, it becomes very valuable time. But that takes time, I think, to begin to appreciate the really extensive blessings of those early hours of the morning and really appreciate them. The story you told about your sister's son and his understanding that the dua at that time is answered. I mean, those kinds of lessons over time begin to really, in this age of addictions, you can become addicted to tahajjud instead of, you know, chips or candy bars or something more difficult to give up. Inshallah, inshallah, I become addicted. So, let's just say I'm convinced, and I genuinely am. Like, I read your paper and I read your works, and generally speaking, we hear about tahajjud and the night prayer and the dua of the last surah of the night and that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala descends in His infinite wisdom to listen to the one who's making dua. I get that. But everything I read about sleep suggests that I need eight hours of uninterrupted sleep or seven to nine hours. There's, you know, ample research that suggests that uninterrupted sleep is just mandatory if you want to live a healthy lifestyle. Don't you feel this is contrary to that, especially if we're waking
up twice, like once for tahajjud and once for fajr or, you know, once for a very extended time? Well, oh, I have so much to say. First of all, I, this, this so-called, this so-called, all this so-called research that tells us that we need seven to nine hours of sleep a night has not been done on people of prayer or people of tahajjud or people of dhikr. And I used to say, or people of meditation, but just recently, someone told me, I haven't read the study yet. This was very recently, like a couple of days ago. Someone told me about a study, a sleep study that has come out around people that meditate and how much less sleep they need because of meditation. And so imagine if we did a sleep study around people that use the time of sleep for prayer and dhikr for tahajjud and dhikr and Quran recitation, what would we learn? I propose that we would learn that those who spend serious time in worship not only need less sleep, but their bodies become healthier as a result. And now, of course, that's not going to happen. You can't say that you can't be sleeping nine hours a night and then all of a sudden go to sleeping four hours and then blame tahajjud because you feel tired. It takes, it takes time. It takes some time to work on it. And the tahajjud, you know, you said waking up twice a night. I don't think, personally, I think it's better just to leave it to the end, get up before fajr, and you can start by just getting up literally 15 minutes before fajr. 15 minutes will be enough to run, make wudu, pray two rikas, then you can go make yourself a cup of coffee. It's just a beautiful moment to have a little coffee, pray your fajr prayer, sit with your coffee, do some
dhikr, some dua, and you've had this beautiful section of worship in the morning that will literally nourish you in ways that sleep cannot. And that's not to say that sleep is not important, especially if you're recovering from illnesses, if you are deficient in certain vitamins. The body has a right on us, and that's true. But I think we should look with some level of skepticism on studies that haven't taken into account the physical bodies of the one whose soul is a little bit lighter because of worship. And what makes us heavy to the bed? The early scholars would say that what makes us heavy to the bed is sin. And it's ghafla, it's a distance, it's being away from Allah subhana wa ta'ala, that we need a lot of recovery time because of that. So as Muslims who are praying and doing our best, we shouldn't need quite so much sleep. Thank you for clarifying that. You mentioned, you know, that 15 minutes and a cup of coffee in between is sufficient. We often hear stories of the Prophet ﷺ and his feet swelling to the extent that he, you know, it would crack or we would hear of Muhammad al-Munkadir, for example, and he used to spend the whole night and make du'a for it to rain and it would rain. We hear these stories of like extended prayer, like really extended prayer. And I'm going to kind of pick your brain as to how that 15 minutes becomes that extended prayer later. But you have something really profound in your paper, which is centered around the concept of activism, and that there is a relationship between tahajjud prayer and positive social change, being out there and doing something positive for society. Can you help kind of just talk to that? Yeah, I'd love to. So
there are a couple of different thoughts that I have here, or different, let's say, levels of social change or levels of how we create social change with tahajjud as our friend or as our fuel, as our fuel. That's the word we used in the... And one of them is when Allah ﷻ in Surah al-Isra calls upon the Prophet ﷺ to pray tahajjud. He says that this will result in maqam al-mahmoodah, which is a praised status. So on one hand, as Muslims, we as a community, are we a praised community? Are we a community that is praised by others? And there's a lot of conversation around why we're not. Even though if you meet Muslims person to person, you'll find out that no matter really where they are in their deen, they're going to be really generous, kind, good people. So why are we missing on this level? Islamophobia has money, but on our side, what can we do? We can be a people of tahajjud. So on that level of social activism, of how do we help our own Muslim community through tahajjud, by itself, we can raise our status in community. Now, what does that mean exactly? It can mean all sorts of things. It can mean a change in systemic oppression. It can mean a change in the way textbooks are written. It can mean a change in the way that Muslims are approached in the news. It can mean all sorts of things. This is... But this is the result of a community that prays tahajjud. Now, also, we are, as we should be, active in other
issues that are not clearly, let's say, Muslim issues, but for example, in anti-racism work. And when Muslims are involved in anti-racism work, there's a lot of pain there. A lot of pain in just hearing the stories and knowing the kind of systemic racism that has occurred in this country for so many years, and then also occurs in individual communities. This country being the United States, but I think racism is also global. And also, we have other issues in the United States, like the issues of Native Americans is bringing. Like my heart, for example. So what does tahajjud do for someone who's passionate about the Native American cause? Right. So when you are praying tahajjud, you are given an inner strength that gives you the ability to handle and manage the world of difficulty when you want to enter into it to change it. Let's say the world of systemic oppression, when you want to go in there and make a difference. Without tahajjud, it's very draining and you can burn out in a very short time. But with tahajjud, there's like this warm bubble on the inside that is sustaining and can hold us as individuals and as a community to not only being able to continue the work, but also to continue to do the work within our own value system and our own sense of what is right and wrong so that we can participate while staying very much as part of the Ibad ar-Rahman, those who are the worshippers of the merciful. SubhanAllah. You know, as you're talking about that, there's also a couple of things like if you're in public life, like if you're on the front lines of like a cause or if you're,
you know, on the streets protesting, I guess tahajjud also plays the role of protecting that sincerity. Like if you're out and about and in front of people doing that all the time, if you're caring about the same cause in the middle of the night, then it just, you know, it just reinvigorates that sincerity that you're doing this for the right reason. Oh, absolutely. And then also, if you find yourself missing it one night, you can say to yourself, oh, what happened that I missed out on that khair? What did I do? Did I do something differently yesterday? Did my intention change yesterday? So, you get the opportunity to quickly come back and make tawbah and re-establish. But that's only for a person who's really established their tahajjud. So, Dr. Tamra, you wrote off my sleep study that I cited just earlier. I'm going to cite another study if it's okay and tell me if it passes. There was a study in the European Journal of Social Psychology that suggested that you need two months, 66 days, to build a habit. And if you miss a day, you rekindle it and you continue. But it's 66 days to build that serious habit. My question to you is, how long in your mind do you think it would take for us to build that habit of tahajjud? And how do we even start? I've told people it takes 21 days, but I'll have to read that study to see why they're choosing 66. Yeah, this one negates that one. But yeah, let's just suggest it's a month or two. Yeah. And I think it does take time. I will say that it does take time to establish habits that become real habits. Because what's a real habit? A real habit is when you wake up in the morning and you make coffee, even if you still cannot see clearly. That's a
real habit. You just do it no matter what. And that's what we want tahajjud to be. And the rest of our prayers, we want it to be something that we automatically do. It's just so much a part of us. And so yes, it definitely takes time. And your sister and her children are very lucky and blessed because the best time to create those habits are definitely in childhood. Children who are able to get up early in the morning and appreciate that and love that and experience the beauty of those hours are going to be adults who just they're going to wake up at tahajjud time, whether they're praying or not at that time, they'll get up and they'll just be part of that world of early risers. What was the second part of your question? How do we develop the habit? How do we even start? Yeah, how do we develop the habit? Well, I think the way that we do it at Rabataz, we have a tahajjud thread to help people that want to start. And it's just encouraging each other to wake up at night. And one thing we've done is we have this thing called throw the football. And so what that is, is when you're getting ready for bed, so you pray Salat al-Isha and now you're going to go to bed. Well, if you've been struggling with tahajjud, you can pray two raka'as of qiyam and throw that football to the morning to wake up and catch it in the morning. So it's like a visual idea that, OK, I'm tossing this to myself and I'm going to wake up in the morning and catch and catch this football and score the touchdown. I'm speaking of American football here because obviously you wouldn't catch a soccer ball. But and it can work with any sort of idea that something you do at night, that you whether you read Surat al-Ikhlas before you sleep, whether you pray two raka'as before you sleep, whether you make sure to make wudu' before you sleep, set your intention before you sleep and then set your alarm as well and get up
when that alarm calls and have a buddy to report to. So even if you just like I said, 15 minutes before fajr and someone is saying, hey, did you do it? Yeah. You're not someone who's going to shame you for not, but is going to celebrate you for getting up. Maybe you got up three days this week. Alhamdulillah, that's how habits begin. Three days a week, four days a week, five days a week. And as it begins to grow, it becomes part and partial of us. We have an app that we're working on that is meant to help people develop habits of tahajjud and habits of other acts of worship as well. And in this app, it isn't out yet, but insha'Allah, the intention is that with the app, people will be able to set two or three or four or five days a week to start on that journey of creating a time in their life that they can't miss, that they don't want to miss. They want to catch that football and score every day. You know, the concept of having a buddy, I tested that once. So I'm going to kind of expose something here. And it wasn't for this keystone habit, but it was for prayer in the mosque, for fajr. So it was a couple of guys, we were living in Qatar and we felt guilty because there's mosques everywhere, but we weren't praying fajr in the mosque. So we tested a couple of things. One thing was, okay, so whoever misses the prayer in the masjid would have to donate X amount to X cause. Okay. And it didn't work. So it just, cause it made us feel good that actually fine, I missed prayer, but I donated to that cause. So we flipped it on its head. So one of the guys suggested, what if we were to donate that money to a cause that is so vile? I can't say what the cause was. I'm too embarrassed to say what it was, but it worked. And honestly, we were
so consistent. So it was having like, it was more of a punishment, like a serious punishment that is so obscene. And we were in the mosque every morning. Anyway, that worked for us. Well, you know, the thing really is to know ourselves, it's really important to know yourself and to know what motivates you. So in that case, what really motivated you that you didn't want to help this other organization and you didn't want, so that motivated you to go and do the thing that you really wanted to do. And for people that really just getting in that space of having a partner and having a buddy means that there's people that care about this thing with you. And that by itself, that social and that, you know, that also gets to social activism because as we encourage one another and in that social sphere, become better individually, we become better as a community. As we become better as a community, we become the people we're meant to be. Those who are calling for beauty and pushing against all things that are ugly. I'm going to ask you one last question, Dr. Tamra. If you were to, you've explained it to me and very eloquently, so thank you so much. But if you were to explain the concept of tahajjud and its role in our lives to say a nine-year-old who is not so familiar with tahajjud and the concept of night prayers, is barely familiar with the obligatory prayers, what's your elevator pitch? I would say tahajjud is a very special prayer that brings life to the night. It brings life to the night. And it's a time to wake up with your parents, to sit with them and have maybe a cup of hot chocolate, a lovely pot of tea with cups all that are shared, maybe a special treat that isn't allowed at another time of day to pray together and to make dua for one another and to ask for those things that you really, really want and to store up for
yourself presents and gifts, wrapped gifts in Jannah. That when you grow older and after a very, very, very long life, inshallah, when you go to Jannah, you'll see them and you'll say, what are those gifts from? And they'll be gifts that you gave yourself when you got up at night to pray and set up for yourself this incredible, beautiful future. And not only that, it's really a good time for a good relationship with parents at that time and siblings. I'll tell you a story. When I lived in Philadelphia, I was driving. This was a long time ago. And so children didn't have to be in chairs in the car, car seats and they also didn't have to be in the back seat. So I wasn't breaking any laws. My daughter was four years old and she was in the front seat with me. And we stopped at the stop sign, stoplight and we were waiting. And kitty corner from where we were, there was a huge billboard and it said nightlife. And my daughter, four year old daughter had just started to read. And she said, mommy, what is nightlife? Now, of course, that was a billboard for a bar. And I said, I racked my brain. Like, what am I going to tell my four year old daughter about this? What is nightlife? And I said, Habibti, nightlife is when you get up at night with your mommy and you mommy makes you a lovely cup of hot chocolate and we sit together and you pray with me and we bring life to the night. And she said, mommy, I want nightlife. And I thought, oh, my God, don't say that to your grandmother. But, you know, actually, it's funny, because I it was adorable. And that was so lovely. But there was a part of me and we talked about this earlier that didn't want her to wake up at night with me at that time. She was four. And that was a time that was really precious to me. That sort of sanity piece. And I had a baby at the time as well. And
she was four, also had an infant. And it was it was definitely a time that I really needed. And I remember and I had friends who were really good at getting their children up and praying with them at Tahajjud time, praying with them after Fajr, taking them to the masjid, sitting with them, teaching them Asma Allah al-Husna. And I wanted to be those people. And I and when my daughter said that to me, I was really like, yeah, subhanAllah, I have to be more generous with my own time in the morning for my my lovely little daughter. Of course, when it came to waking her up, she wasn't quite as excited about it. We did it maybe once or twice where she wanted, you know, the whole hot chocolate thing and this and that. And it was fun. But at four, she wasn't quite ready for such a concept. Dr. Tamra, JazakAllah Khair. Thank you so much. And for those of you who are interested in the topic of Tahajjud, you need to read Dr. Tamra's article, Tahajjud, Fuel for the Self and for Society. JazakAllah Khair, Dr. Tamra. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
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