# Making Du'a for the Imam to STOP PRAYING during Ramadan?! **Author:** Tom Facchine **Series:** Shorts **Published:** 2025-02-04 **YouTube:** https://youtu.be/1kVjKQqGD_o **URL:** https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/shorts/making-dua-for-imam-to-stop-praying-during-ramadan-shorts **Topics:** Faith, Sharia ## Description Dr. Tahir Wyatt, Sh. Abdullah Oduro, Imam Tom Facchine, and Imam Wesley Lebron sit down for a conversation about their first Ramadans as new Muslims. From tears of pain during Taraweeh to working 10-hour shifts in a restaurant while fasting and breaking fast on a jar of cookies in the middle of the... ## Transcript **[0:00]** Alhamdulillah rabbil 'alameen, wa ash-hadu an la ilaha illallah wahdahu la sharika lah, wa ash-hadu anna muhammadan 'abduhu wa rasuluhu sallallahu 'alayhi wa 'ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam tasliman kathiran ila yawm al-deen, amma ba'd So here we are at the Reverts Roundtable. I personally have a problem with the word revert, but we can talk about that when we get down the line. **[0:15]** So we can call it the Converts Convention, whatever way you want to look at it. And like the first thing that we want to talk about, subhanAllah, with Ramadan on the horizon, experiences like with some of our esteemed guests here, Shaykh Abdullah Odurro, Imam Wesley Lebron, Imam Tom Facchine there, subhanAllah, **[0:36]** everybody here has converted to Islam or reverted, whichever way they look at it, at some point. What was that first Ramadan like? Ups and downs, experiences that you found great, other things that you may want to see change, something that the community can do different. **[0:52]** I'll jump in at the end, but let's somebody, one of you esteemed brothers start. Alhamdulillah, bismillah wa salatu wa salam 'ala rasulillah. So for me, my first Ramadan, alhamdulillah, during my first Ramadan, I can say I think I had just accepted Islam not too long before Ramadan. **[1:08]** So I think like maybe two months later, maybe three months later, Ramadan was coming in. I didn't know what Ramadan actually was, that we would pray extra like during this time of Ramadan. I knew we had to fast, but I didn't know that there was extra prayers. And I found myself in the masjid praying salatul 'isha and after the imam gave the salams and the taslims and I made my dhikr and I was ready to get up and leave. **[1:33]** He gets back up again and I see everybody lined back up again and he says Allahu Akbar and he gets back into it again. I'm like, OK, Allahu Akbar, I get back into it. Now we're like four rak'ahs in, five rak'ahs in, my feet, my knees are shaking. And I'm like, man, what's going on here? Why does he continue to pray? **[1:49]** And subhanAllah, I remember I thought I would be punished if I would get out the salat line. So I got tears running down my eyes, not because I was righteous, but because I was tired and my knees was hurting. So I start asking, Allah, stop praying already, please. **[2:07]** SubhanAllah, as soon as he says assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh, assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh, I got up and I just shot out the masjid because I was like, I don't know how long you're going to keep praying, but subhanAllah. And then after that, I kind of, you know, went back to the local imam where I was going to the masjid and kind of asked him, yo, what's going on? **[2:24]** What happens? You know, I mean, during this time at night, you got to be praying like five, six times, you know, subhanAllah. And then he explains to me that there are extra prayers, qiyam al-layl, taraweeh and the likes, inshallah, ta'ala, alhamdulillah. But that was like my first Ramadan experience, man, subhanAllah. And besides that was just like the eating. **[2:39]** I remember I was still living at home by my dad. And back then we was waking up like four in the morning. It was early, it was wintertime. And subhanAllah, I would make these just dinner plates, man, like, you know, rice and steak and the whole nine yards. **[2:58]** But then I remember, man, like three days in, I'm sitting in the kitchen. It's like one o'clock in the afternoon and I'm staring at the cookie jar. And I'm like, man, bro, I'm hungry. And bismillah. He put a bismillah on it. He said bismillah. **[3:13]** I went in and I just started digging in, man, subhanAllah, rabbil 'alameen. Alhamdulillah, and then just found out that, you know, I can make up the day later on. Alhamdulillah, that I had to kind of take it easy on myself and kind of build up. So, I mean, this was kind of like the first Ramadan moments for me between fasting and the prayer itself, man, alhamdulillah. **[3:28]** So you became a Muslim a little before Ramadan. They didn't tell you, like, so you went to the masjid by yourself that night? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was in the masjid by myself. Alhamdulillah, I was sitting in the Saam in New York, right, on the street corner. We didn't get the five pillars of Islam and the six pillars of Iman. **[3:44]** I got Bilal Philips, Kitab al-Tawheed. That's what they sent me home with, alhamdulillah, in the Quran. I read the Quran, alhamdulillah, I read Kitab al-Tawheed. I believed in Allah, alhamdulillah, I know Muhammad. I said, I'll figure that out later, inshallah, wa ta'ala. The brother was like, you know, you ready to take shahada? I was like, yeah, I'm ready to take shahada. **[3:59]** Just don't tell me what to do, when to do it, how to do it. I'm good, alhamdulillah, I became Muslim. And we would go back and forth to him in the city, like, every week, week and a half, two weeks, to kind of just get a little bit from him. Well, he came home from prison, to be, you know, fair to the brother. He didn't really learn much in prison either and stuff like that. **[4:15]** He wasn't a murabbi like that. And then the masjid back then was an Arab masjid, Palestinian masjid, that we walked into. Arabic was the first language. Khutbah was spoken in Arabic. The dars after Isha was in Arabic and stuff like that. So really, we was just coming in, making the salat, hit it and quit it. **[4:31]** You know what I mean? We got to come and pray, we come and pray, and alhamdulillah, just kind of roll out. So we didn't really have that interaction of really learning, like, the pillars and all of those things, in those initial phases. What era are we talking, Shaykh? 1998. All right, so you're still pre-internet. **[4:47]** Pre-internet. Right, right. I mean, on a large scale. I know the internet existed, but I'm saying it wasn't a thing. I'll jump in here, man. SubhanAllah, my first Ramadan was also less than two months after taking shahada. **[5:04]** So I still wasn't even praying five times a day. I didn't really know we had to do that. I knew that prayer was a part of Islam, but I didn't understand that we here in America had to pray five times a day. **[5:22]** And Ramadan, my first Ramadan was sunup to sundown, which I think is a huge issue that has to be addressed. It's in most of the literature up until today. You see a lot of the literature says Muslims fast from sunup to sundown. **[5:40]** So my fast did not start at fajr. My fast started at sunup. Right, right. Which, I mean, as we know, is a shallah we get diplomatic immunity as new converts. But the idea was that my first Ramadan was totally messed up because of that, because of a sunup to sundown thing. **[6:03]** And I mean, you know, just having been Muslim for a couple of months at that particular time, Philadelphia was nowhere near what it is today in terms of the amount of people. The amount of masajid, the ubiquity of Muslims. **[6:18]** And I don't think that we also appreciate how much information was not readily available. Right. You're talking about you're talking about a lack of not just books. **[6:34]** So now you can find out anything you want to find out on on the Internet. You can go on YouTube and you'll see videos. You can go read certain Web pages and all of that. But none of that was available at that particular time. So this that was the first Ramadan. **[6:51]** The second Ramadan was much better. I was more now part of the community. So you get to ask questions even if you don't have actual literature. You have people with that lived experience. So I learned a lot more at that particular time. **[7:06]** And and that was when I first experienced Tarawih. And I was praying and a masjid that was very diverse. It's it's it's diverse because it was originally it's called Masjid Al-Jamia. **[7:24]** Right. So it's it's basically it was a university of Pennsylvania. Some students from University of Pennsylvania and maybe Drexel as well. They started this masjid. So it's a bunch of different nationalities there. And that was a beautiful experience. **[7:40]** Well, I'm the praying prayer and Tarawih for the first time was was a lovely experience. I was also working. So it was like coming from work. Go to the masjid. You pray and Tarawih. But it was it was beautiful. And I don't have any like at that particular time. **[7:58]** I felt like I was part of the community because of the diversity of the community. You know, I think there is a looking back on it. I think that there's a benefit to have sometimes to having these homogeneous masjids where there is a preservation of some back homeness. **[8:18]** Right. That helps them at that particular stage preserve Islam. Right. But I think eventually you have to be open to the fact that you're in a totally like you say, you know, you you want to imagine. I don't understand the khutbah. I don't understand the dars after salat. I don't understand anything. **[8:34]** You know, you're amongst the people that that are that are thirsty. Right. They want this, but they can't understand it because it's not in their tongue. Alhamdulillah, that wasn't that wasn't my particular experience. But I will say that if you are far from community, you're less likely to understand the nuance. **[8:57]** Right. Even even reading books. That's that's not just going to that's not that lived experience. You know what I mean? And you might you might be stuck on sunup to sundown, you know, it's a lot. Yes. About you, Shaykh. I'm trying to remember my man. I'm trying to remember my first year. **[9:15]** I remember I think it was at a masjid. I mean, obviously in Houston, Houston, Texas. It was a small storefront masjid. It was a small storefront masjid. The imam was Libyan and he was the head of the math department in Houston Community College. **[9:30]** But I remember that masjid was it was it was it was Arab and African. It was a particularly North African. So it was African. You know, sometimes you try to separate, you know, it was African colors. Right. It was Libyans, primary Libyans and West African, some East African and some Pakistani. **[9:51]** And I remember from what I remember vividly was I just I had this burning desire to want to understand what he was reciting. I mean, I always wanted to. I just wanted to know what he was because he he was he was rough. **[10:07]** Mashallah, Tabarakallah. He didn't take any. We love his khutbas because he would lay the law down in his khutbas. Right. He didn't care. I remember one time he was talking about Qasr, like we have hair and no hair. You know, it's not because it is haram and it's ugly. **[10:22]** It is ugly. He said it's on the minbar. We're like, yeah, we want some more of that. Right. So we used to go to his masjid and he would recite very like his voice was very, very loud. But it was it was very full, you know, and I just remember what I can remember vividly is two things. **[10:44]** I remember vividly is me praying behind him and not understanding the majority of what he's saying. And I said, man, I really want to understand what he's saying. And then secondly, me leaving Tarawih and going home to a non-Muslim empty home, you know, just like it was on. **[11:01]** It was on, then it was off. It was just literally, OK, I'm not supposed to community. I go home. There's nothing, you know, so there was somewhat of a community. How you mentioned the diversity, you feel a sense, a sense of belonging from the generic community sense from there. **[11:19]** There are bodies there and they're Muslim, you know. But then, as you mentioned as well, the educational component within the curricula of the masjid being in a language that you can understand or it's contextualized in a way that you can understand. **[11:34]** That was somewhat there in the masjid that I used to go to, the first masjid. But again, those are two vivid things I remember is like there was a community and I wanted to had a burning desire to learn what he was reciting. But then when I would go home, it was just boom. It was just automatic. That's one thing, the two things I can vividly remember on my first Ramadan. **[11:51]** Yeah, Mashallah, a lot of very similar elements. I was trying to piece together what exactly was like my first Ramadan because I moved around quite a bit around the time when I accepted Islam. But my first Ramadan, it was the opposite of your situation where I knew about fasting and I fasted the whole month of Ramadan before I took shahada. **[12:10]** I didn't know I had to take shahada. I consider myself a Muslim, you know, like I prayed and I fasted. I'm a Muslim, like what else do I have to do? This was living. This was I lived in rural Wisconsin for like 10 months. **[12:28]** I was working in a Mexican restaurant in the kitchen. That was my first Ramadan. So 10 hour shifts in the back there in the heat around food all day. And when was Ramadan? **[12:43]** Like this is the summer. Summer. Yeah, summertime. So it was hot. But you know what? Like, but the crazy thing and like it's crazy because when I think about I try to put the years in order in my in my mind, it didn't matter. You were so I was so stoked from the new Muslim high that I was just so psyched. **[13:04]** You know, it almost made it really easy because you're you're just around it all the time. And it's like, well, this is completely off limits. It's almost like it's the same thing when you wake up in the morning and you skip a meal is different from when you wake up with the intention of fast, you know, right? **[13:19]** It's like you make the intention to fast. At least my personal experience, you're less hungry than if you wake up and you just skip a meal and you don't happen to eat until later in the day. So it was sort of that sort of thing. I was able to compartmentalize. I can't remember at the time. **[13:34]** I know that I was I understood the obligation to pray. I don't I want to suspect and say that I was probably too shy to pray at work. I think I was doing the thing where you make all your prayers up after work at home. **[13:49]** And I was living. I had no control of my living situation at the time. I was with there was a dog in the house and stuff like that. So that like unplug plug unplug thing is like a very, very familiar. And there was no Muslims around, not no masjid, no Muslims, nothing. Right. **[14:04]** In fact, I eventually met someone who was who was from Morocco, actually ended up being a good friend of mine. And we met each other during Ramadan. He was fasting. I was fasting. And we didn't kind of like put two and two together. **[14:19]** And when when I told him, because like something like the people were around, we started to eat or something. And I like I didn't eat. And then he knows he's like, are you eating? I'm like, no, I'm fasting. It's Ramadan. And he just gave me this big hug because he was also the only Muslim in the area for miles. For miles. **[14:34]** It didn't even make sense to drive to a masjid. Right. Like we like we were out there in the sticks. So that was my first Ramadan. But but I definitely, you know, also the the the Ramadan without the masjid was kind of different. But I guess I kind of, you know, in Allah's wisdom, it kind of it was gradual because then I was in a different place, I think, every year for the next several Ramadan. **[14:58]** So then my first community experience of the Ramadan was was the following year. And that was when I was back in New Jersey. And then, yeah, like the the experience of hearing the imam like, man, I really wish I could understand what he was saying. And you after that point, I had taken my shahadah. **[15:13]** I figured it out. And I had that, which, by the way, was across the street from Masjid Jamia, 45th and Walnut in Philadelphia. Oh, wow. Yeah. And I had never been in the basement and I had never had any contact exchange or anything from them whatsoever. **[15:31]** I have no maybe for the best. If you know the place, but actually 45th is 45th. That's right. From sides. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. So that's where I actually took my shahadah. Yeah. **[15:46]** Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, that resonated with me about the knowing what the imam is saying. So my third or fourth Ramadan, I don't remember exactly, but I was I was in Medina at this point. **[16:01]** I think it was my third Ramadan. And I just finished a most of what I will in the show, because that's what it was called back then. So the language program in Medina and anybody that's ever studied level one, you're not getting a whole lot. **[16:18]** But living in Medina for three months, there's some level of immersion. Start picking up stuff, pick up some vocabulary. And I remember that first night praying Tarawih in the haram. And who they fee and Shaykh Mohammed, you allow your home. **[16:36]** And I was like, yeah, I'm I'm not understanding everything. But that's a juz of Quran that they're praying with. And I'm picking up enough that I can follow the story now. **[16:51]** I'm saying, subhanAllah, that, to be honest with you, I can remember was a watershed moment for me because I was like, I want to understand everything now. Like, I'll tell you, I didn't have that first reaction that you had, which was, man, I want to understand what he's reciting. **[17:07]** My guy, Mashallah, he was one of those quicker Ferrari type imams, you know, really rushing through it. Ferrari. That brother said Ferrari. That's what they call them, the Ferrari imams. You know, I mean, Mashallah, he was knocking out of juz at like 15 minutes. **[17:22]** I'm talking about Tarawih was was amazing, Mashallah. But you be coming up with this. That's not my line. That's their line, man. You know, but I did not get that feeling like I want to understand everything. But subhanAllah, once I was able to get a little bit the taste to say, subhanAllah, I am now understanding some of what Allah is saying. **[17:47]** That was a major moment to say, now we got to keep pushing. I want to understand everything. I don't I don't want to miss a word, you know. And I will say, I think that was a major motivation for me, you know, to I mean, humbly that it was multiple motivators, you know, once you're already there in the environment. **[18:05]** But that I remember like the night vividly. I remember where I walked into the haram and, you know, subhanAllah, back then, too. It just wasn't as crowded as it is now. So it was just a totally different vibe. And that Ramadan vibe was amazing, man. **[18:20]** And I tell you, subhanAllah, like the Ramadan's that preceded, because I think I had like two more Ramadan's before I was in actual Medina as well. And the next two Ramadan's, it was like learning on site. And what do I mean by learning on site? That first Ramadan, some part in that first Ramadan, there was a brother, Latino brother, Colombian brother. **[18:39]** He's in the mission. He's just rocking back and forth like this. Right. And he was like, I'm gonna take you out to an African-American mission. So be like, I bet, you know, I mean, we get to go somewhere and get some English, whatever have you. So then the older brother, the old African-American brother, Masha'Allah, he came over. He was like, did that brother tell you he was going to take you somewhere? **[18:57]** And I was like, yeah, yeah. He said he's going to take us to a mission downtown. He's like, don't go with that brother. He'll hurt you. Now look at the brother and you see the brother, he's just rocking back and forth. And I'm like, OK, maybe we won't go with the brother. Right. So Daoud ended up taking us downtown and we ended up going to an African-American mission at downtown Palace in New Jersey, **[19:17]** which became the home mission for me for about 10 years. But because there the imam was in a hafiz and there were no hufadh in the masjid, and we immediately jumped in to start learning how to read and stuff like that. Like the third Ramadan, I'm leading taraweeh. **[19:32]** What? I'm leading taraweeh. SubhanAllah. Reading from the mushaf. That's nuts. Right. SubhanAllah. And Allah knows best how many mistakes I was making. There was nobody standing behind me to correct me. Right. Allahu Akbar. So subhanAllah, you know, and that was just really learning on site. **[19:48]** SubhanAllah. And not only that, that masjid itself, it was above, remind me what you said, that masjid was above a chicken shack. So every time you made sajda, it was a chicken slaughterhouse in the leaves. So every time you made sajda, you smelled the chicken in the rug. Right. SubhanAllah. So you had, you know, we always said you either have a lot of iman and you stood in that joint **[20:08]** or it was crazy because of the smell that you had all of the time. SubhanAllah. But then I remember, man, the most beautiful Ramadan I had was when I finally made it to Medina back in 2001. And I had Ramadan in Medina. SubhanAllah. Like you said, subhanAllah, just to hear the imams, mashallah, recite the Quran. **[20:24]** I remember when I came back home after that and any time something would come on and you would hear hudayfi or the likes, tears would just come down my eyes. Because like you said, I can remember where I was standing in the moment. SubhanAllah, what I was praying, subhanAllah, what I was seeing, subhanAllah. **[20:40]** And my wife couldn't understand it. She was like, why are you always crying? SubhanAllah. And it's just like you have to go to understand, subhanAllah. And that was probably the best Ramadan. It was because your knees were hurting. That's why you were crying. ## Other Episodes in "Shorts" - [Things I Left For Islam | Imam Tom Facchine](https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/shorts/things-i-left-for-islam-imam-tom-facchine-shorts.md)