 In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful I mean, this is a duty on men and women as well. But since this is a men's halakha, we're talking about as a man what is our duty, especially towards people in our care. We have children, nephews, family, friends, and so forth. So it's important to go back to the basics. And one of the scholars in Mauritania, one of the very famous scholars of West Africa, He gave advice to another scholar, and just remember this is a scholar speaking to scholars, to review the rules of bahara, of purity, every two months, every two months. This is for scholars who have spent years studying the subject of purification and who are practicing it. It's not like an obscure section or the rules of fit that are not practiced often, like for example hajj. How often do people make hajj, maybe once a life? So you're not really practicing those rules on a regular basis. There's a story of one Mauritanian scholar from West Africa. Because before modern transportation, people had great difficulties to go to hajj. So if you live far away from hajj, very few people from your community made it to hajj. West Africa was one of those. For the most part, a death sentence. A death sentence. A lack of water, lack of food, getting lost, all of those things were real difficulties. Out of our teacher, Murabba al-Hajj, he made the trip to hajj from West Africa in Mauritania to Mecca, and his round trip was three years. Three years, he went by foot. Going there, he spent about six months there, because imagine you get there a few months before the hajj season. And then you have to wait for it, and then you travel back. So his trip was three years total. So that was the reality that they lived in. Well, one of the things that came about through that is that they didn't practice the rules a lot. So there's a story of one Mauritanian scholar who went to the hajj, and the first thing, imagine, they don't even have pictures of the Kaaba. So imagine the show, the desire to see the Kaaba that they had, and they go and they see the first time they see the Kaaba. They've never seen a picture, maybe never even seen a drawing of it. And so as soon as he saw the Kaaba, he's in the masjid. He feels so overwhelmed. He wants to greet the Kaaba in the proper way and starts doing it. He was about to do his two rakahs. Now, this is a scholar who's about to greet the masjid. Is this the proper way to greet the masjid? In any other masjid it is. But the sunnah for the Kaaba is Allah, to go around Allah. So before he started, just a commoner from Mecca came up and said, He reminded him that Ta'iya for Mecca is Bawa. He realized it as a scholar, but because he's not practicing it, the commoner who was practicing it often knew the ruling through application more than the scholar who had only studied it, maybe from a theoretical or a hypothetical standpoint. Does that make sense? So the rulings that we're doing on a regular basis, it becomes second nature to us. And bahadah, purification and getting ready for prayer and so forth, that's one of those rules. But here is this scholar advising another scholar that those rules that you're familiar with, review them every two months. Does that make sense? So if he's saying about those rulings, review them every two months, then what about those rulings that don't occur regularly? And it ties in directly into Ramadan, preparation for Ramadan. Some cultures have this as an issue, other cultures may or may not. But one of the things that I saw growing up, I grew up up until the third grade, I was in Jordan. And I remember seeing a lot of people, almost everybody fasted. Everybody fasted. But did everybody pray? And I'm not saying that's a whole scale, but that's in general, that was an issue. People were like, I will never stop fasting. And sometimes people hold onto certain elements of the day. And I remember a friend of mine telling me that he went to lunch one time with a person and they brought a pizza. And the pizza had pepperoni on it. He told the waiter, no, no, no, I'm Muslim. I don't eat pork. Please take it back and bring us a pizza with no pork. And then after it left the table, he picked up his beer and took a sip. So what happens in that? The person, he or she makes one element of the being super important and then disregards other elements of the day. I remember on my first trip to Mauritania, I was sitting, I was on a plane and it stops in Mauritania and then it goes to Mali. So there was people from, there were French people, there were French people, Mauritanians, and people from Mali as well. So there was this lady sitting next to me and it was funny because she was wearing shorter skirt and when I sat down next to her, this is many years ago. But she took a blanket and covered up her legs out of high up, honestly. She was fine before I sat down, but when I sat down next to her, she looked good. So then during the course of the flight, she had the food came and she had her wine. And so, and I said, we were talking, she was asking me, what are you doing in West Africa? I was kind of out of place in West Africa. So I was telling her I'm going to study in a traditional school and so forth. And the food came and I said, sister, why are you drinking the wine? She's like, well, you know, I drink the wine, but I don't drink the pork. I don't eat pork. At least I don't eat pork. Now this is the opposite of the other person. And so what I told her, I said, you know, both things should be left, but if you're going to leave something, it's more important to leave the wine. She's like, no, no, no. Pork is more healthy. I was like, no, the alcohol is more healthy because it affects your intellect. It affects your prayer. You're not able to pray, you're not able to focus. You're not able to commit crimes under the influence of the court. But do they come under the influence under the influence of alcohol? It's one of the biggest sources of crime. It's one of the hidden costs of alcohol in this country. People say, oh, free trade and free economy and freedom and democracy. But those alcohol companies, what should happen is they should be responsible for the unintended cost of alcoholism, all of the hospitalizations. Why do we have to cover that as taxpayers? The crimes that are, and then we house those criminals. And then all of those effects, all of those costs of alcohol, we as a nation, we bear that financially and through our community, they don't. Or gambling. In one state, I think the cost of the gambling in Georgia is something more than $100 million. The cost to the incarceration that happens because a lot of gamblers, they start stealing. There's all these other hidden costs of gambling where they're like, we're responsible for just selling the tickets or selling the slot machines and so on. So in any case, alcohol, there's a lot of hidden costs of it and it's worse than anything. But she was having a hard time understanding them. So one of the things that we have to do for ourselves is make sure that we have a balanced understanding of the dean and that doesn't happen in our lives. I saw when I was in Mauritania when Ramalan came around and we went down to the city, I saw these people eating food in the daytime. And you ask some of the people and they'll say, well, I'm safe and I'm not able to fast and so forth. But everybody prays. So see it's the opposite. In one country, I don't know if you were in Jordan, did you notice that? Were you there during Ramadan? Did you know? No, I didn't know that. Oh, you didn't want to go to Ramadan? Okay. Has anybody noticed that from another country? Like where there are no people that are adamant about not leaving the fast but they won't pray. Or the opposite. So there's a funny story where this Mauritanian scholar traveled to Morocco and when he went to Morocco he came to this Boran school and we went to the Boran school and he saw this nice chef and he's teaching the children and the Boran time comes in. So the Mauritanian scholar gets up and he does this and he prays Boran. He doesn't say anything because he doesn't want to have bad feelings with the chef. He just, he waited a little bit when he saw the chef wasn't praying his life. The chef has an excuse and he's going to delay his Boran prayer a little bit. I'll just go ahead and pray at the beginning of the time because it's Sunnah to pray as soon as you can. So then he waited, he waited and he saw Boran time went out. And now his hostel bun is wearing out inside. Maybe the chef has an excuse but it's like and then Asa's time and then he gets up and prays the Mauritanian prays Asa, the Moroccan scholar misses Asa as well. Now the sun goes down now you have no excuse, right? Like maybe, you know, there was some room for a little bit of Asa. Sun goes down? No, so he says, share it. What's going on? You know, you're sitting here teaching Boran all day to these children that you don't pray. He's like, oh, I don't pray. And he said, why not? You're a chef, you're teaching the Boran, the Book of Allah and so on and so forth. He said, look, he said, just like Allah has divided the risk in the world, sustenance, right? Some people have deserts some people have snow some people have this. He said, the Ma'asi, the sins have been divided among people. He said, so you and Mauritania, you put your people never leave the prayer, but murder is a prayer. And he said, us, we don't murder people in tribal conflicts because they have like an inter, like, an addict of being a, like, if two people get in a fight, the chance that it becomes a tribal conflict is very high. I've seen it with my own eyes, like, people are very, like it's, you can see that tribal mentality. So he says, you're tribulated inter-tribal conflict and wars and fighting and bloodshed that happens before that. We don't have that, but we have the tribulation of leaving the prayer. So it's not an excuse, but it's an interesting, like, sociology, the sociological, you know, analysis. We have to look at the cultures that we're in and see what has our culture really, like, given importance to and what it has it not. But then our job as Muslims is, we're not defining things by the culture, we're defining things by the Dean. So we have to kind of bring some balance back so now as we prepare for Ramadan, in preparing our children and our families for fasting, the important thing is that it balances well. We prepare them, we prepare ourselves and our families for fasting but also for the prayer as well. That's how I'm looking at the two together. When we, and then when we talk about it, one of the things that's important to realize is that even though we have the five pillars, you know, the shahada, the fast, the salah, there's actually, they're actually grading. Some are more important than others. So out of the five pillars that Islam rests upon, when the Islam comes, like in the hadith in Japan, Islam was built upon five things. It doesn't mean that's the only things, but those are the pillars of Islam that are built on. What is the most important of those five? Shahada. Right? Shahada. Because without the shahada, yes. But I've heard they talk to one of the sheikhs and he went over the same topic. Yes. Let's go to the topic and the reason why he mentioned the prayer is because during your prayer, you will eat the shahada. That's true. You say the shahada. So I guess you could say, you know, the shahada has the element if you actually believe in the shahada. Because there's people, there are non-Muslims who will pray. Has anybody ever seen this? Yes? Do you see that? There's a person named Houston Smith. He's a very famous writer on world religions. I don't know if he's still living or not. He has a book called World Religions and he prays five times a day sometimes. But he doesn't, he's not a Muslim. He's a Methodist or another denomination of Christianity. So he'll pray. He looks at it as a meditation. There was a sister actually through the woman's halapa here. They were talking about the importance of praying in public. Like one of the field trips that girls are taking right now for one of the groups on the girls' halapa is they took them to barns and nobles. And anybody's daughter goes to your daughter with her. So at first I thought, like, oh yeah, are they going for just like, you know, bring some books, buy some coffee, whatever. They said, no, the main point is that we're taking the girls there so that when the month of the time comes in, they're going to pray in public. And it's a very important exercise because there's a lot of people, children and adults included that will allow the embarrassment, I guess, of praying in public to prevent them from praying it on in public. I'll just make it up when I go home. And so it's a training exercise to get them comfortable with, yeah, here in public, doesn't matter whatever people say or why are they putting their head on the ground. You know, we have to get over that inhibition and be able to do that. There was one sister here in the sisters' halapa. She was listening to that lesson a few months ago. And so she was reading the prayer in her office space because of something similar like that. And so she started praying in public. And so a non-Muslim lady in the office started walking by. She's Christian. And she later on, she said, can I join you? You just look so peaceful when you do that. So she started praying with them. She's not Muslim. That might be her role to Islam. But just think about that. If our inhibition of praying in public, it could harm not only ourselves, it could harm other people. Like, what if that was a way, there's many people who their path to Islam was because they saw somebody pray. There's a sister here. Does anybody know Usman Hussein? Sister Usman Hussein. She was part of the ING network and giving talks. And she was very involved in the Zaytuna, still the Zaytuna Institute and in the college. But she did a, she performed Salah in one of the high schools. And when, and when she went into Sejda, there was one girl in the classroom, a high schooler. That's when her belief in Islam entered her heart. She was overcome. And the reason why is because she said as a devout Christian, she reads in multiple places in the Bible and he fell on his face in prostration. And he fell in his face, and you know, and so and so fell on their face in prostration. But which church do they ever see that? They never see that. So when they see a Muslim fall on their face in prostration, they're like, that's what I read about in the Bible. And so she was so overcome. She became Muslim because of that. Now imagine if somebody is like, well you know, and the floor is dirty, what would they say? You know, would they whisper and so forth and then cause that to prevent them from being able to do that. So, that's the importance of prayer, importance of praying in public. So we're, we're working to bring that balance back in the, in the, in the, so in the five prayers. So okay, that's how we got into that. There are non-Muslims who will use the prayer as a form of meditation. But the shahadah is a, a precondition of the validity of that prayer. Because if somebody still believes in idols, what happens, you know, is the sense of the account. With the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, when the Surah of Najib was revealed to them, when the Najibi had a hoel, marabam nasahib, the whole entire surah. At the end of the surah, because it came down to the Prophet while he was at the capital, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, and it said, at the end of the surah, what iteration was hearing this, and the revelation come down? What did they do? They went into sensitive. They all went into prostration. And so some of the idol worshippers who had not embraced Islam, they asked them, like, are you prostrating to the God of Muhammad? They said, no, we're just prostrating because of the eloquence, the amazing eloquence of this, of the surah. So people will prostrate for different reasons. So what we have to do is we have to say, okay, what's the most important thing? So out of the five pillars, the most important is the Shahada, Imam. That's like a business person that would be your capital. Everything else is a profit. It's profit. What's the next point after the Shahada? Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. Then after the Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam comes. Is that correct? Now if you look, something might be alright, something maybe you hesitated. What's next? Think about it and put it on. What is always binged in with the Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam? What's that? No, with this one. Wa Aqeemus Fala? It's actually Zakaab. Wa Aqeem. Alladina, ayat al surat al-Faqarah, alright? It starts off. The description of the believers is what? You mean, you mean, the belief which is expressed through the Shahada. What you mean, you mean, you mean, you mean, you mean, you mean, you mean, you mean, you mean, you mean, Zakaab. So Zakaab is next. And this is why, this is why when after the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam passed away, many of the tribes of Arabia that had become Muslim recently, what did they do? They didn't say we leave a slap. They just said, we used to give our Zakaab, the Zakaab that Muhammad had made an obligation, we used to give it to him. We're not going to give it to his Khalifa. That, that oath was with Muhammad. That was you, Abu Bakr. And so then Abu Bakr did what? What's that? He fought them back. He fought them. They read their wars. And a lot of the Sahaba questioned him including, most interesting, Oman. Holy Allah. Who was the first, like when somebody insulted the Prophet, if Oman was around, what did he do? Grab his sword. Rattled his, one person he started, he just rattled his sword and made the person so scared. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam actually told Oman and shouldn't have done that. And they made Oman pay him some money as like a, a fine. Like he scared this believer. You got fear into his heart, because you're Oman and you just rattled your sword. That scares him. One time, Abu Hurayro was, was with the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and they were by themselves. They were in one of the gardens of Medina. And the only way to get in there was through this little, hole in the wall. And so Oman, he saw, he saw Abu Hurayro coming out. He's like, what's Abu Hurayro coming out of the, like it's out of the ordinary. And then he's holding the sandals of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. He's like, why does he have the sandals of the Messenger of Allah? So he stopped it. He said, Abu Hurayro, what's going on? You know, it's out of the, out of the ordinary. And he said, these are the sandals of the Messenger of Allah, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. And he told me to take them and that whoever I first see, to give glad tidings to them, that if they say La ilaha illallah Muhammadur Rasulallah, they will enter Jannah. And so, I'm going to push them back and stop them. He said, wait. And he said, he pushed them so hard and the way he stopped them with his firmness, the hadith mentions, he says, the tears welled up in Abu Hurayro's eyes. For those of you who are our parents, you know, before you're a children, like if they start crying, before the tears come, you know how it like, it just breaks your heart like you can imagine that, right? The tears just fill up in the eyes. They don't start, they said it welled up in his eyes because he stopped them but he said, if you tell the people this, if you tell them this, they will, they won't give importance to actions, right? Just think about if a person like, some faiths, they're like, oh, faith is enough for me. Every, all my sins will be forgiven. All I have to do is believe. Some Muslims have this, right? They're like, I'm a believer. If you say, brother, why don't you pray? Sister, why don't you pray? Why don't you do this? Why don't you do this? Why don't you pray? Why don't you pray? Why don't you pray? I'm not having that. So, Omar Real knew this about the psychology of human beings. If they thought faith was enough, it's going to cause a problem. So, he stopped him. Then they both went back to the Prophet S.l.w. and then the Prophet S.l.w said, yes, don't tell this to the people. Now, somebody might mention this and they're like, oh, Omar is like stopping the lecture. But this, is one of the instances The synchrony that Umar had, he didn't have wahi because wahi in revelation only comes to the prophets. But he had a deep understanding of the shari'ah, of this deen that when he heard something, it was in sync with what was eventually going to happen. So part of the wahi was supposed to come, but the prophets told that to Abu Hurayra. Umar had that interaction and then the prophet abrogated what he had said, which is possible. He's not contradicting himself, it's not that he's going back on his word, it's that he's abrogating what he had said. There's other instances when the lie was told about, insha'Allah, the first thing that Umar said, the first thing that came out of his mouth when he heard the if, subhanaka hada bukhtanu al-Azim, which is the same wording that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala chose when he described the if, hada bukhtanu al-Azim in the Quran. So Umar's choice of words matched up to what Allah was going to give in revelation. Not that what Umar said was revelation, does that make sense? Okay, so here's an instance of where Umar, since he's trying to help in those priorities. So we have, okay, that's how Umar had a harsh tendency. When Abu Bakr made this decision to do the Rik'ah wars, Umar, you rattle the sword, you tell people if they insult the prophet, let me make my sword his necklace. That's you, Umar. You know, this is what you, you stopped the war even made it here. You're trying to go back to stop the Rik'ah war. So he came to Abu Bakr and said, you know, don't do these wars, the people are new to Islam. He said, they became Muslim. And they said that part of their Islam was to believe in Allah, to establish the prayer. And I will not distinguish between something that Allah did not distinguish between. In the Quran, Allah, we said. He said, if Allah didn't make a distinction between those two, why should the high Abu Bakr say, okay, it's okay for you as Muslims to just pray but not give zakat. And so he did the famous Rik'ah wars. And that's actually what maintained the Umar for the later expansion that happened during the Fidah of Umar. Okay, so we have the Shahada, the fasting, the zakat, then what? The reason why it's not clear is because that's the same thing as the Ulema. They don't know. Is Hajj more important or is fasting more important? Like what is the Tafli of it? The prayer is clear. It's mentioned first in the Quran. It's also, we just passed the Day of Isra al-Niharadi. Every single obligation that we have to do as Muslims was given to us through the Prophet while he was here on earth. But the obligation of the prayer came where? At the Siddharat al-Muntaha. At the farthest point. Direct revelation from Allah SWT to the Prophet SAW. During that journey. There was a lot that was going on in that journey. So one of the things that we can tell our children when we encourage them to pray is not, Oh, pray. Right. It's fun. And if you don't do it, you'll sin. Burn in hell. You know, like that kind of. You have to say like, look at what Allah gave us. He gave us this prayer. One of the things I just shared with the youth halapa over there at the gym. I said, the, even the emotions of our prayer. Do we know where we got that? Like why do we do standing or poor coming up? And then there's a saddam and there's a, why do we do it in that format? It's because on the night of Isra al-Maharad, when the Prophet SAW went to the farthest Siddharat al-Muntaha, before that he sees all the angels that are worshiping Allah. Some of them, they're created and all they do is such that. That's it. Some of them, all they do is rukor. Some of them, all they do is they send. So the prayer of the angels was all in these different positions that we see in our prayer. The Prophet SAW asked Allah SWT, he said, all of those different forms of the angels praying, I want that in my prayer for life and life. That's what we have. So when you, when you put that in, it helps put it in perspective even for ourselves. Like, we're not just going through these motions. There's this, there's secrets and there's meanings behind these motions. And that's one thing that we can help our children as they grow. Even if we can even help ourselves. Like, why is it so important? So then we have, so then there's fasting and Hajj. We don't know, you know, which one is greater. We have to be doing all five, but it's just which one is more superior. So as we come into Ramadan, and now the whole household is gearing up for preparations of Ramadan and getting ready for Ramadan. And okay, where are we going to get your kids? And your family are hearing conversations. Okay, how are we going to do tarawih? Are we going to switch off if we have kids? You know, are we going to take them to the masjid and get lost in our prayer while our kids are running around the masjid, you know, destroying property and disturbing other people while we're in the front of the line, you know, getting closer to Allah and sent the sarcasm in my voice, right? It's better for a person to switch off with their spouse. Like, think practically. You don't have to come and drop your kids off at the masjid, you know. And if your kids can't do 20 rakhaz, you know, maybe leave after eight. It's better to do things that is not going to be cumbersome on you or switch off with the spouse. You know, start thinking strategically. Which masjid are we going to pray? How are we going to do tarawih? How are we going to do any eels? So on and so forth. So as your family sees this planning, they should also see that the prayer is not neglected, especially in Ramadan. Because we see here at the masjid, tarawih. Mashallah, right? We have, we, it's, it's, there's standing room, there's not standing room, there's not even standing room, right? But what happens after Ramadan? The masjids are empty. And we know that one thing that happens is that some people, they will go to tarawih prayer, but they're not praying five times a day. And we know people will do that. So what's going on in that person's mind? You know, what is going on in that person's mind? One thing that can help us bring balance to that is a statement of Omar al-Julal. He said that leaving one dirham because it's haram, like if there's an interaction, a business interaction, a sale, a transaction, cheating somebody, theft, whatever type of, whatever makes this one silver dirham haram. Not taking that dirham as haram is better than 70,000 rakhaz of nafida, or 70,000 omas. Now think, he's giving us a very like vivid image, right? So now imagine your, your view, come in, you see a person who's like, he just gets, he just gets finished with like 70,000 rakhaz here. And he's like, he had a counter. Imagine the like magnificence of that. He's just finished 70,000 rakhaz. But he took a dirham that was haram. He's like, look, I know, I know he took that dirham. I know I did this transaction. It was haram, but I've done all these nafida prayers. What's going on with that person? And why is Omar saying that leaving that one dirham is better than those 70,000? Why? Okay, you're taking somebody else's property. But what's the, what's the defining difference between those two actions? The magnitude. Okay, so why, why, what is it in the magnitude? The 70,000 rakhaz, that's huge, right? Why is this one bigger? Okay, that one has a larger effect. Those are all reasons behind the ruling. But what's the ruling of those two? So those, what you were saying is actually like, reasoning behind why this one is worse than this one. But what's the ruling of those two items? Exactly. And the nafida? Exactly. They're not stealing, they're not taking the haram. That's a farb. And this is a nafida. And so leaving the farb, you know, fulfilling the farb of not stealing and staying away from the haram, you have to do that. You don't have to do the 70,000 nafida. If somebody came to Allah and didn't do one nafila in their entire life, can they be put in the Hellfire for that? They can't. The famous Bedouin man who came to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, tell me about Islam. He said Islam is the Jew. And he mentioned the five prayers. And when he mentioned, he said, if I only do this, I don't detract or increase from this. Just the basics that happen. The basic one hajj. No opera, no multiple hajj, all that. Will I go to, you know, is that enough? He said yes. And then he left. What did he say to the companions? If you want to see a man of paradise, look at this man. So what that establishes for us is that even though we're talking about the sunnah and the importance of the sunnah, the baseline that we always have to remember is that as long as we do the fahm, we're good. That's the most important thing. So when it comes to like a choice between I'm going to use, imagine the energy and the time it would take to pray, even say not even $70,000, $700 or something like that. There's a cost associated with that. There's money that you're not getting because you're not working, there's time that you're not with your friend. Way that cost against the cost of, what would it cost you to stay away from this one build-up? And that's the balance that you make. But why is it that human beings, like for example, I'll give you one example. There's a rule in this mentioned. If a person, well let's start with this, when does a person have to start to pray? Once a person has puberty, now it's a fahm upon them to not pray. Well some people don't start praying regularly until they're in their late teens or their 20s or their 30s, sometimes in their 50s or their 60s. What happens with all those other prayers that they missed? What's that? Yeah, the nephrin does fulfill if you miss the fahm, but that's for like an yom uttigama for the things that you didn't know about. But if you know that you missed the fahm, like say somebody for whatever reason went to sleep in Hasid and woke up right now, it's Isha, went to sleep and woke up and missed the fahm. Before they pray Isha, what should they be doing? Did they call it a prayer? A lot, a lot prayer. There was one time after the battle of Vedic, the something you can imagine, they were fasting, it was on the 17th of Ramadan in the summertime. Has anybody ever been in Mecca or Medina in the summertime? It's hot, probably like what, in the 120s and fighting a battle in the middle of the summer in the Arabian desert, they're tired at the end of that. So the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam told me to wake up some Prophets what happened to be asleep overslept and then wake up the Sallallam. They woke up when the sun was beating on their face. So the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam got everybody up, they traveled a little bit and then they stopped, they did their wudu, they did the qama, they did not do any adhan, they did the iqama and then they prayed as a jamal. So this actually establishes a number of rulings, this story. One, the Prophet just said, oh we missed it, okay, Allah is forgiving and merciful. It's like no, we missed something, we're going to make it up. Not only are we going to make it up, we're going to make it up as a jamal. So if you and your family miss Fajr for whatever reason, you can pray it as a jamal. The other thing is he did not do adhan, but he did do the iqama. So when we're making up prayers, we can do it as a jamal. If we all miss that same prayer and we can do the iqama, but we have to make it up. So now, this happens with a lot of people when they realize that they're like, okay, I have years and years and years and years of prayers to make up. It's a huge item. I know one of my shunu, when he started studying he may not take five years of prayer. Another person had made up ten years of prayer. I've heard stories of people making up forty years of prayer. Anybody hear stories like that? What did you hear them? Thirty years. That's like thirty years five times three hundred sixty five times thirty. What is that? A seri, right? Five times fifty-four thousand seven hundred fifty prayers. That has a lot of prayers. And you know, there's actually these little books, I don't know if they're still available. It's called Debt to the Divine. It's a little tally book and you just start, you know, marking it away. So now, the question is, people ask, okay, the first hurdle is how am I going to make up all those prayers? Figure it out, do the calculations and figure out what it is. But what happened, you know, can I still do the Sunnah prayers? And now this is where the scholar is different. Some say that you can do the Sunnah as long as you're making up your prayers. Other scholars say no, no. Because what's more important? The Sunnah or the Fadah or the Fadah or the Fadah or the Fadah? Which one is more important? Think about Romah's statement. One did come. Seventy thousand naturally. The Fadah is more important for the status of the Sunnah. So some people will go to town a week and they'll stand and especially if you go to some masajid that is like two and a half hours, why would somebody stand for two and a half hours in twenty rakhats? But they say, I don't really have the energy to make up my Fadah prayers. Can I just do the Sunnah prayers? A lot of people have that. I remember hearing one explanation because I've heard this from multiple people. They're like, look, I pray five times now and I pray every single Fadah. And I'm at the masjid and I'm up at pageant and I do the Fadah prayer. Okay, you're doing all these extra. Why can't you make up those other ones? Well, you know, they have a number of excuses. One explanation that I heard very interesting was it's because the nefs, the human being does not like being told what they have to do. They always like having a choice about it. Think of little kids, think of ourselves. Somebody tells you to do something. It's different than it's like, would you like to know? Sure. Or like little kids will say, sometimes you tell them to do something. I'm not going to do it. I'll do it when I want to do it. Not when I want to do it. And they do it. So the nefs likes having a choice in the matter. Does the nefs have a, do we have a choice in the matter of Fadah? We don't. Do we have a choice in the matter of Sunnah, Sunnah and Fadah? We have a choice. And so the nefs is actually in class like, oh, I have a choice. Then I'll do it. But if you tell me I have to make up the fun, the nefs just doesn't want to do that. So you'll have people that will have no problem making up extra prayers, but they're not sorry, doing extra prayers, we're not making up fun. So that's something that for us to bring balance to our lives and those people that are in our families, if we see somebody that's praying Kaleelir, there's a number of ways different on this. But according to some, like in the Shafi'at school, the Maliki school doesn't allow this and I don't know the other school but the Shafi'at school allows a person to pray a Fadah behind the Nafeelah prayer. So when you come to the Imam's praying Kaleelir, that's a Nafeelah prayer, you can make up Fajr, Fajr, Fajr. Just to say, just go in behind the Imam and say, this is Fajr. And so at the end, you got 10 Fajr prayers on a Kaleelir. Or if you're doing the extra prayers, just tack on some of our prayers with this prayer. I don't want to get into all the fifth of that but the thing is to think about how we are prioritizing in the month of Ramadan. I know some of the parents have to go over to pick up the boys at 9 o'clock. And I want to leave the last 10 minutes open for prayer and next week I'll talk a little bit more about the Hada, some Hada issues that we should be focusing on with our family. But tonight I just wanted to focus on making sure that as a family we're not allowing the magnificence of Ramadan to overshadow the importance of prayer. Because Ramadan is a very good time to get into a routine. What did you say you've experienced that? Like the rest of the year are eating schedules may be off, having dinner with our family is off, you know what Ramadan is so hope and if Bob you're having with your family for the most part and so again it's regular and it's not like when is dinner time oh I don't know dinner time in Ramadan is pretty clear when that sun goes down it's dinner time and so we're going to come together as a family and then we get into a routine. Once you have a routine it's easier to start a habit and so if we don't have the habit of the five prayers established in our lives we can use Ramadan to do that. If there's other things and maybe we're doing the five prayers but we're doing them sloppily or hastily or leaving it till the very end or not putting on the sunnah whatever addition you want to do let's use Ramadan include our families in that help them you know if we're getting up for sahud most people eat a vegetarian time just wait a few minutes and then pray in fact we can go back to sleep so it's a good time to get into into routines and I'll leave the last 10 minutes so how do you miss many years of prayer how do you make it up so you can have 10 minutes I'm going to pray for which day though that's a very good question if a person has made up prayers how do they do that what intention do you do and do you have to have an intention for that exact day so the scholars have answered this question very good question that you don't have to have an intention for that exact prayer because that would be impossible right January 12th you know you just say and it would be better to make them up in the way that they were missed so you don't do like 30 years of fejah and then 30 years of zohar you do fejah and then you'll go through those one of the ways that a person can do that is that you can also just read fatihah and just read a portion of a surah you don't have to read the entire surah to get the sunnah so after fatihah you go to your quah and then maybe normally you do you try not to do the prayer surah fast and so forth you try to have the finah tranquility in the prayer but in the falah prayers if you want to make them up you can do that a little bit portion of that fatihah surah you know so you can shorten the prayer yeah so you don't open this thing that so many questions come up and then you know so what about praying in the Qabah praying inside the Qabah you know isn't that like one prayer yeah and that question it's like well I'm almost 50,000 prayers all in two of the Qabahs it's worth 100,000 that's like negotiations because because I've heard some people say like you know they do the 40 prayers in the Qabah yes and so those akhadeed so you know those akhadeed they're important like there's there's another hadith there's another hadith if a person fasts from a dawn and then follows a Ramadan with six days of shawwad what is their reward for a year so now are they going to say well I got Ramadan and a full year so I don't have to fast the next Ramadan so it's not that that nafida removes the obligation of the father it's just that they get the reward of more credit yeah you get more credit you get more credit but you still have that liability so they're like this these if they were you know these assets cannot be used the currency is different you can't use the Euro to fulfill a dollar but this is a very good question so that 100,000 prayers and even that hadith says that the prayer in Mecca is worth 100,000 but it doesn't say whether it's nafida or fa and so even if we say that two rakahs of nafida is worth 100,000 what does it almost say which is worth more when fa when fa is worth more so good try at some kind of hotel or something to me so is that the situation is it allowed to pray sitting in a car okay very good question so the question is what are the rules of praying while in a car you're traveling you're not in a hotel you're not at a rest stop what do you do when you pray sitting down for years because of mass transportation trains, airplanes and so forth the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam did pray praying sitting down while riding on a car so we know that now the question is did you pray at Fadr norah nafida and when we look at what you prayed you prayed at nafida it was not a Fadr prayer because the sahabah were very meticulous in describing what the prophet did and where he did it and down to the book just to give you an idea somebody was traveling with and he saw Ibn Umar get off the animal that he was riding on walk over to a tree sit down, stand up and come back to the animal that he was riding on he said why didn't you do that he said because I was riding with the messenger of Allah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam and we were passing through this exact same place and he got off of his animal and he went to that tree and the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam but I wanted to do even though he didn't have to use the restroom he wanted to follow the footsteps of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam down to his actions that he did down to the point somebody asked Ibn Umar that he said why do you wear yellow sandals that have no hair on them have you ever seen leather sandals that people use traditional ones that still have the hair the raw hide on them so the Arabs what they used to wear were sandals that still had the the hide on them and Ibn Umar did it he wore hairless leather sandals that were yellow he said because I saw the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam wear this type of sandals so he got down to the color and the style and everything so that's how meticulous they were so when the prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam did something all we have to do is go back and say okay this prayer that he prayed on the animal which one was it it was I believe it was Goha prayer I'm not 100% sure the sunnah of being able to pray sitting down for the naturally but the phad is not included the phad is you have to stand up unless there's no way around it so examples they give if somebody is praying on a ship and by standing up you're going to get really dizzy and fall down like some people when they travel by plane this happens to them that person has a medical excuse not to stand up or on an airplane sometimes they don't allow you they won't so now you have federal law and regulations and air marshals and so forth and the company is telling you this is our plan you abide by our rules you have to sit down then you sit down but if you have the option of being able to pull your car over and stand up you have to do that or I said wakumu stand up it doesn't say sit down so the we're talking about this about the obligation of standing and that the sitting is for some of them after the prayers so now we come to the practical application of that what do we do a couple of things this is where now when we travel if we're going by car we have to kind of like check the prayer times and especially you know we're the driver we're the helm of the and we have our wife and our children our friends we have to think about okay so it's 50 miles to the next rest stop here you have to do those calculations and then just pull over we'll go and pray there's rare instances where a person might be stuck in traffic and there's like if there's no way out there's no way out and of course a person can sit down and fulfill the prayer but if there is a way out then we have to do it one person who asked me this exact same question he's like but what if it's on the freeway and it's very difficult to get out of the freeway I said if you really had to go to the bathroom what would you do well I would pull over and you know I would figure something out like when we're put to the test of being able to figure things out people come up with creative ideas like I'll give you an example you know the dressing rooms in malls I was with my father in law and that's where he goes the dressing room, I'm like perfect place if you don't want to pray in the mall in some corner you don't like people looking at you which is reasonable you don't want to play in the parking lot well there's dressing rooms or in the midwest where it's very difficult like we have a luxury in California being able to pray outside any time of the year in the midwest I was traveling in Missouri in the wintertime you try doing sex down on concrete in the wintertime it's like painful so you have to find a place indoors and so you just figure out creative ways you know I drive the Uber and a lot of times I go to the city and it's really almost impossible you know I try to find a mosque whenever I can and sometimes if I have time I just go to Mulbray because there's you know ample parking space there a lot of times when you go to the mosque inside San Francisco there's no way you can park it's impossible a lot of times I didn't it's waste you know so I'm stuck in the city I'm really sleeping on the screen I feel it's unsafe you know okay and that's a valid point if you're in the city it's unsafe that's why and I know maybe we can pick this up next week but it's important to even know the rules of joining between prayers and in one I'll mention this, this is not fetwa shopping according to the Maniki school as long as you're outside of your city limits so if a person is outside and they're going around I'm not going to go into the rules right now there's specific rules about how to do it but there's ways and especially if you're driving and even if you drive more than 50 miles now you're a Musaf according to all of them and that so it's important to know the rules of travel and joining prayers and shortening prayers which we can go to next but what I would say is in the Quran it says whoever has top of Allah will give him a way out in English they say where there's a will there's a way and just now I put it in there there's a way we put it in our minds and usually when I buy flights when I purchase a ticket what I do is two things I look at the prayer times of the city of departure to make sure if I can to pray in the airport because it's difficult it's difficult getting your foot up in the same way somebody's banging on the door and then it's it and then you've got to find a place to pray so I was thinking a Fajr flight and I was so anxious about all of the trips and you can actually calculate in flight your prayer times in flight for you so when I got onto the plane I said you know what I got onto the plane my seat it was all three were empty better than having a first class seat I got up I went to the plane I asked the service because that's one thing make sure you ask because when a Muslim stands next to that exit door on an airplane I said can I make a prayer it will require me to please keep us in your prayers like you know and I said this is a and I'll end on this though I know I said that a couple of times praying on an airplane if it's a non Muslim airline they would have been that they would have told you that to suddenly aliens the planes, the airfranks, the United Airways the American Airlines have travelled a lot have never had a non Muslim stewardess tell me no will not pray standing up on the airplane they will let me into their stewardess the area where they're serving food they go in the back they say can you pray here? can you wait for by the bill accommodation for you that's a Muslim steward on a Muslim airline to pray you don't even need to pray. So I'll end on that. I don't want to turn this into, but