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So, how do you pray Tahajjud?
(music)
How is it different than any other prayer?
Well first of all, let's talk about timing.
We know that Qiyam al-Layl,
and Tahajjud are kind of interchangeable words.
Usually, if you pray it after 'Isha.
So right now, we're talking about the time
between Salat-ul-'Isha and Salat-ul-Fajr.
This is the night time between
the nighttime prayer and the morning prayer.
Now, if you pray before you sleep,
we usually call this Qiyam al-Layl,
and if you sleep and then wake up,
we'll usually call this Tahajjud.
How do you pray it?
You've prayed Salat-ul-'Isha.
You've prayed your Sunnah of 'Isha,
and now what?
If you're going to pray Qiyam al-Layl,
you can stand up and make intention for two extra rak'at
and you just pray two rak'ats,
and then you can sleep,
or you can sleep after 'Isha
or do the dishes, or whatever you do,
and then you go to bed,
wake up before Fajr.
Now simplest, you can wake up even 15 minutes before Fajr,
and just make Wudu, and pray two rak'ats of Tahajjud.
And then, you wait for the Fajr prayer, and you pray.
That's the simplest. That's the basic,
two rak'ats of Tahajjud.
Now, here we have also Salat-ul-Witr, okay?
So, Witr is our very strong Sunnah
and it's meant to be prayed at night.
So, the next step we can say is,
we're gonna wake up just a tiny bit earlier,
pray two rak'ats of Sunnah-ul-Tahajjud
and then pray Witr,
depending on if you're praying it,
which madhab you're praying,
you're going to pray all three rak'ats together
or two, and then one.
Now, what else can we do at night?
Of course, first of all,
there is, what has the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
told us about the numbers of rak'ats to pray at night?
We have interests, many different narrations that talk about
the number of rak'ats. Abdullah Bin Omar radiAllahu Anhu,
tells us that the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam would
pray 11 rak'at, that's 8 plus 3,
which is the eighth rak'at because of Tahajjud plus
three of Witr, eight being 2, 2, 2, 2.
Now mind you, the prayer of the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi
Wasallam was not the prayer
of your regular Ahmad or Tala.
It was a prayer that was long and extended.
So we don't need to hold ourselves to 8 rak'ats.
What we need to think about is
the time at night that we want to pray.
And I really wanted to emphasize
thinking about habit growing.
So think about, I'm going to do two rak'ats.
I'm going to start with two. Then I'm going to do four,
and then I'm going to do six.
And then I'm going to do eight.
Now, maybe I'm doing eight.
Maybe now, I want to expand each of these rak'ats,
and make each one longer.
Maybe I'll just do four, but I'll make them longer.
Or maybe I'll do something else.
Here are a few ideas of things to do at night.
Our community, one of the things that
our community is struggling with is missed prayers.
Many, many, many Muslims today,
unfortunately have a lot of fard prayers
that we have missed.
One really beautiful way to use the night is
to make up your fard prayers.
So to say, well, you know what?
When I was 14, I should have been praying, but I wasn't.
When I was 15, I should have been praying, when I wasn't,
I'm just going to do what I can to make up these prayers.
Now, for some people that get really serious about it,
they print out a paper and they start marking off
the prayers, so that they can reach a point
where all these prayers are made up,
and they do it at night.
That's a time when things are quiet.
If you're praying anyway, it's just easier really,
to pray a full day of Qadaa',
rather than raka'atayn:
two rah'kats, two rah'kats, two rah'kats.
But either way, whatever you want to do,
it is beneficial to pray at night.
Now, what should these rak'ats look like?
When you are reciting Qur'an at night,
you recite the Qur'an out loud,
you benefit from listening to it yourself,
your recitation improves.
And maybe you'll be like
Usayd radiAllahu Anhu
the angels are coming down and
listening to your recitation.
Now, of course,
I know that not everyone's Qur'an memorization is
good enough to be able to do this at night.
So in the Shafi'i Madhhab,
you can set the Mus'haf in front of you,
on you can get a music stand, a cheap music stand
from anywhere, really.
Go to your local shop, better than those big online stores,
and buy one, put it in front of you.
Then you can get a Mus'haf that is bound with spiral bound,
a spiral bound Mus'haf that will lay flat
or any one that's big enough,
even in even a tablet on a stand like that.
And then it's right in front of you.
So you can pray a longer prayer.
You can pray a whole page or two pages in that ra'kat.
Where you're slowly meditating and
thinking about these verses,
listening to the verses as they enter into your hearts,
and spending time and remember what Huzaifah
radiAllahu Anhu
told us about the prayer of the Prophet
SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam.
that the standing was equal in time to the ruku'
was equal in time to the sujood,
to the movements of the prayer.
Think about that, especially at the Tahajjud.
I know that when we're busy in the day, sometimes,
the zuhr prayer might be really quick.
Oh, got to run off to that meeting.
Or maybe Asr, you have to go and cook dinner,
or maybe at Maghrib,
you have bedtime things going on with the children,
or a Zoom meeting,
or something that's nagging at you,
but at nights, even WhatsApp stops working,
well, for the most part.
Here is a time to have a balanced prayer.
To recite, to settle in your ruku',
settle in your sujood.
And one other really important part of Tahajjud is du'a.
So we talked now about raka'atayn:,
two ra'kats, two ra'kats, two ra'kats, two ra'kats,
or, or you can do Qadaa' yawm, a day of Qadaa',
or you can do any sort of special prayer.
So I'm just going to list some special prayers
that you might be able to think about.
This is something fun.
Make Tahajjud interesting for yourself.
If you're a person who is not in love with routine,
do something different every night,
one night you can do Qadaa' yawm,
one night, you can do eight ra'kats,
one night, do two ra'kats, reciting Surah Al Baqarah.
For example, one night, maybe you can do Salatul Tasabiyah.
Maybe one night, you can do a Salatul Haja.
If you don't know what these are, you can look them up.
You can Google them Alhamdulillah
or look them up in your faqih book.
The prayer at night is a time to really develop
that relationship with Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la.
So having new things to do is a good idea,
but also take note of the environment.
Set up your prayer place.
The other day in my own house, I was doing some
spring cleaning, it actually was summer cleaning,
but some summer cleaning and it was moving things around.
And my daughter wasn't home. Then she came home and
she kind of looked at me with a panicked look,
"Mama, where's your prayer place?"
Because it wasn't,
I didn't have one out at that moment.
I said " Don't worry. Don't worry.
I'm moving things over here."
but get our children used to seeing that there's a place in
the house where we settle in our prayer.
And also for yourself,
is something about knowing where you're going to go,
light a candle, spray some perfume in the area,
or incense,
whatever it is that you like to bring beautiful smells.
Bake some cookies in the middle of the night,
bring some cinnamon rolls and open it up
so that smell is filling the air and
make it a place of cleanliness.
Make sure your prayer clothes are clean.
Make sure the prayer carpet is something easy to sit on.
If you are not able to do Sujood,
you have knee issues or a broken leg or something,
then have a chair that's comfortable.
Pay attention to these things.
Get the place ready so that when you wake up
your appointment,
your meeting with your Lord is prepared.
You're just beautifying yourself with Wudu.
And you're going to that prayer carpet.
You begin with raka'atayn, 2 light ra'kats,
and you do these 2 ra'kats
and they're very lightweight.
That means they're not very long.
That's how the Prophet SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam
would do it.
And then the next ones are longer.
You've warmed up just like exercise,
exercise of the heart, exercise of the spirit
you've warmed up.
And then you extend that.
And then you sit and make du'a.
And if you're a person who can't think about
what to make du'a for,
make notes during the day and set that next to you
so that you can look at it and remember to make du'a for me,
remember to make du'a for our ummah,
remember to make du'a for your children, your family,
for all of the people that you know and don't know,
the Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la
will guide, support, help, cure,
send His mercy down, forgive all of those that we love.
Those that are close to us and those who are far
and make Tahajjud and pray for ourselves
that we make to Tahajjud a habit for us
that that prayer becomes the thing we long for
and hope for and enjoy deeply.
Allahumma salli wa salim wa baarik 'ala
sayyidina wa nabiyina Muhammad
Walhamdulillahi rabbul 'aalameen
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