Photo: Mike

By Bilal Elsakka

Why is it easy for us to wake up extra early for work, but hard for us to wake up extra early for prayer in the masjid (mosque)?

Why is it so easy to watch a movie for two hours, but so hard to pray two rak`at (units of Islamic prayer) before Fajr (pre-dawn prayer)?

Why is it that we get excited when going to a friend’s house, but feel lethargic when encouraged to go to Allah’s subhanahu wa ta`ala (exalted is He) house when He created that friend we love so much?

Bismillah (In the name of God)

Dear brothers, sisters, and respected elders,

I post this with pure intentions and an optimistic attitude regarding our attendance (of our youth especially) in the masjid at Fajr time. A few sayings of our beloved Prophet Muhammad ﷺ (peace and blessings be upon him) are listed below regarding the importance of praying `Isha (late evening prayer) and, in particular, Fajr in the masjid (mosque). This is a beneficial reminder for myself a dozen times before it is for a single other person. That being said, I humbly request you, the reader, to invest a few short minutes to read a few potentially life-changing sentences.

`Uthman ibn `Affan radi allahu `anhu (may God be pleased with him) reported, “I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ saying: ‘One who performs `Isha’ prayer in congregation is as if he has performed prayer for half of the night. And one who performs the Fajr prayer in congregation is as if he has performed prayer the whole night.’” [Muslim]

`Uthman ibn `Affan (ra) narrated that he heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ saying: “He who attends `Isha’ in congregation is as if he has performed prayer for half of the night; and he who attends the `Isha’ and Fajr prayers in congregation is as if he has performed prayer for the whole night.” [Tirmidhi]

“If they knew the merits of prayer after nightfall (`Isha’) and the morning (Fajr) prayer, they would come to them even if they had to crawl to do so.” [Bukhari and Muslim]

“No prayer is more burdensome to the hypocrites than the Fajr prayer and the `Isha’ prayer; and if they knew their merits, they would come to them even if they had to crawl to do so.” [Bukhari and Muslim]

Any businessman would tell us that this is a good investment—a good deal. Let us think about it: praying `Isha’ and Fajr in congregation in the masjid, which takes comparatively little time, earns the reward of having prayed the entire night—the entire night! Could we ask for a better deal?! Fortunately for all of us, this sale is offered every night and every morning. May Allah (swt) guide us all to take full advantage of it.

May Allah (swt) guide us to pray Fajr and `Isha’ in the masjid at least once a week. May Allah (swt) guide us to consistently encourage others to pray Fajr and `Isha’ in the masjid. May Allah (swt) give us the best relationships with each of our parents. May Allah (swt) bless us with a good understanding of Islam. May Allah (swt) give us the best character, like that of our beloved Prophet Muhammad ﷺ a mercy sent to all of mankind. And last, but definitely not least, may Allah (swt) gather us together in firdaus-al-a`la’ (the highest rank in paradise).

By Asif Mahbub

I should be the last person to write this because I am the type of person who usually stays up UNTIL fajr (the morning prayer), but alhamdulilLah  (praise be to God), I have been able to bring some changes in my sleeping pattern with the help of a few tips:

1. Make the intention
2. Go to sleep early and do not sleep during the day
3. Set an alarm clock
4. Tell a friend/parent to wake you up
5. Maintain a regular sleeping pattern

If you have already applied the above tips, but it’s still not working, I’d like to dig a little deeper into the implementation of these points both physically and psychologically, and that will make a big difference, insha’Allah (God willing).

1. Make the intention – Make it a part of your life that as the night approaches, you become consciously aware that you have to wake up for fajr. Make fajr a part of your schedule just like other things, and give it priority. If you do not have the intention, then no matter what you do, it will not really help. For example, even if you set the alarm, if you do not intend on waking up, you will just turn it off and go back to sleep.

2. Go to sleep early and do not sleep during the day – Have your dinner early and force yourself to bed, even if your mind tells you that you have no sleep. Get rid of distractions, be it Facebook, your cellphone, etc, you know yourself best. Distractions will set your mind working again, and that only makes things more difficult. Instead, do something so boring that you automatically feel sleepy. For example, I make recordings of my professor’s class lecture and listen to it again when I can’t fall asleep. You can also read a book which helps some people fall asleep.

If you manage to wake up on time for fajr the first morning after, resisting sleep becomes the most difficult thing in life! You forget all the promises you made the previous night with only one thing in mind—how to get back to bed! This is the hard part—stay up no matter what. Bear the pain the first morning, take a small nap around 20 – 30 minutes in the daytime if needed (it’s sunnah!), and Insha’Allah, that night you can go to bed early.

3. Set an alarm clock – For those with cell phones, set the alarm at its loudest and keep the phone some distance away from you so that you have to get up and walk to turn it off. If you have a bathroom nearby it’s best to keep it there with the door open, that way the echos will hit your ears hard. For those who have an Android phone, I highly recommend using the app “Alarm Clock Xtreme.” It’s free and unlike normal alarm apps which automatically snooze after a few minutes, this alarm will not be silenced until either your phone runs out of juice, or you turn it off yourself. And that is not easy either! You can set it to give you math calculations to solve in order to turn it off, or entering a “captcha”—all things that are bound to get your mind working, and hence effectively breaking your sleep: http://bit.ly/HB5PfQ.

A piece of excellent advice I heard from Yasmin Mogahed—set your alarm tone as Qur’an recitation. The sound of Qur’an will reach out to your heart, and it will be more difficult to ignore.

But if you see that your sleep is so deep that nothing gets to your ears, you can make your bed less comfortable, for example, by sleeping on a plain surface instead of the soft comfortable mattress. That way your sleep is less deep, and more likely to break on hearing the alarm!

4. Tell a friend/parent to wake you up – The best way to do this in my opinion would be to make it more interactive. Don’t just let your friend wake you up—you should also take the responsibility of waking up someone else, be it another friend or a sibling. Once responsibility falls on your shoulders too, you will automatically feel more inclined to wake up on time.

5. Maintain a regular sleeping pattern – This is a tip that helped me a lot. A great way to maintain this is to make a game out of it, an expensive one rather. For example, you can arrange a game with your friend where if you don’t wake up for fajr, then you will have to pay him/her a certain amount of money, which goes to charity (an amount which isn’t so little that it’s insignificant to you, or so great that it puts you in financial crisis!). Say $100. So if you do not wake up for fajr, you pay $100 to charity that day, and if they do not wake up, they pay $100. Maybe you will end up paying 2 or 3 days, but believe me the next day and onwards, you are gonna be up before anyone else!  And important thing to note, this money should be for charity only, not for personal gain!

Well that seems to be the end of the list right? But why continue further? Because that list lacks the number one tip of all. This is the ultimate advice, the one which if you are able to follow, all the other tips above are unnecessary. Before I get to it though, let me explain indirectly. If you had a final exam that starts at 8am and you go to sleep at 5am, will you be able to wake up for it? Oh you bet! If your work starts at 6am and being late means you will lose your job, will you be late? Never!

Why?

The reason why is because when something has value and importance to us, no matter what our condition is, no matter what the situation is, we will find a way to do it. So perhaps the real reason why we are unable to wake up for fajr is because we do not give enough importance to the fajr prayer. We do not realize or ponder over the benefits of praying or the consequence of neglecting this prayer. Prophet Muhammad ﷺ said that the first matter which we will be brought to account for on the Day of Judgment is the prayer. If it is sound, the rest of our deeds will be sound. And if it is bad, the rest of our deeds will be bad. Praying fajr keeps us safe under the protection of Allah, subhanahu wa ta`ala (exhalted is He), as Prophet Muhammad ﷺ said (Sahih Muslim). Prayer is one of the main foundations on which Islam is built.

In short, Allah (swt) says in the Qur’an: “So woe to those who pray, [But] who are heedless of their prayer,” (107:4-5).

Given all these things, is it really worth sleeping instead of praying fajr? The answer is told to us twice every morning in the adhan (call to prayer):

AsSalatu khairum minan-naum.

Prayer is better than sleep, Prayer is better than sleep.

If we are able to internalize the importance of fajr salaat and the consequences of missing it, we will automatically find a means of waking up for prayer, just like we would have woken up if it had been the time of our final exam or our jobs. But how can we value something if we do not even know anything about it? We can start by seeking knowledge about its importance.

But at the same time, knowledge is fruitless without huda (guidance), so let us sincerely ask Allah (swt) to help us, guide us and increase our imaan (faith) and love for this beautiful deen (religion).

Before ending, I would just like to say that I myself struggle lots with fajr salaat and still sometimes slip, so this is first and foremost a reminder to myself. I am in need of it as much as anyone else.

By Musa Burki

As we rise in the morning

Our souls possess a yearning

To fill our hearts with spiritual light

Kneeling as a humble servant in His sight

The dawn rings out a peaceful solitude

Rising from our slumber to show gratitude

Revealed words which emanate from the heart

A beautiful ritual for our day to start

Standing before Him in all His glory

While He encompasses our entire life story

Pleading and begging for a measure of grace

As we wipe the tears from our face

Prostrating and bowing in complete humility

Desiring to feel the mercy and tranquility

Releasing our fears and anxiety

Increasing us in our level of piety

 
We feel the trembling of our soul as it’s shaken

As the wind and the sun begin to awaken

Completing our spiritual practice at the start of day

Asking for our Lord to light the way

A wonderful contentment rests in our spirit

Obeying the call to prayer as we hear it

Our day can now begin with clarity and peace

Hoping that our love for Him willincrease.

As college students, we are well aware of all the worldly aspects in life that can detract us from our faith. Every day we face a struggle with materialism and spirituality, and many times, the former wins out. With constant distractions facing us in our everyday life, we need a perpetual reminder of our religion in order to stay in tune with life’s priorities. When making the short film Fajr, we wanted to remind people about how much of a difference making the right decision between materialism and spirituality can make. We wanted to show the world that religion is not a distraction, but an investment into one’s life.

Question:

Some jurists say that the increased reward for praying in the masjid does not apply to women because of the known hadith, “A woman’s prayer in her house is better than in her courtyard, and her prayer in her own room is better than her prayer in the rest of the house” (reported by Abu Dawud). Does this hadith apply to all women?

Answer

The more favorable opinion is that it does not apply to every woman. The Prophet (ﷺ) told this to Umm Humayd Al-Sa`idiyyah, and it appears to be specifically pertaining to her because other women would pray Fajr and all the other prayers with the Prophet (ﷺ).

It is also confirmed that he said: “Do not prevent the female servants of Allah from (entering) the Houses of Allah and they should go out unadorned.” He also said: “If any woman puts perfume on, she should not pray with us the last `Isha’.” And, from the hadith of `Aisha in al-Muwatta’, “The women would pray Fajr with the Prophet (ﷺ), and they would return wrapped in their garments, unknown in the darkness.”

The Prophet would order the men not to leave the masjid until the women did, and he ordered the women not to rise up (after prostrating) until the men had sat down in case the men’s privates became uncovered (many of the Prophet’s companions were poor and only wore garments that covered their navel to their knees). He also left the last rows in the masjid for the women, and said that the best of the men’s rows are the first ones, and the worst are the last; and the best of the women’s rows are the last and the worst are the first.

So, all this indicates that women also gain more reward for praying in the masjid, just like men. This is especially true when the masajid in our times have designated areas for women. During the Prophet’s (ﷺ) time the men and women were not separated in the masjid; the women simply prayed in rows behind the men.