Why Fajr Prayer Builds Strong Muslim Youth

I have a question.

[Arabic recitation]

Of the modern state of Israel? Who's it named after? Ben-Gurion. Do you know why he's considered the one that is the founder of the state of Israel even though on paper he's not. He is revered as the founder of the state of Israel. Do you know why? Because he revived the Hebrew language. He unified the otherwise entirely disjointed Zionist movement by unifying their language. The airport's named after him. An interesting quote from this man. Kind of a peek into the mind set. You know, he was asked all these Arabs around you and all these Muslimin around you aren't you afraid being this little tiny state in the middle of all these hostile, allegedly hostile, states around you and countries around you? Don't you fear the Muslimin? You know what he said? Yeah, what she had to say to them in sometimes, you know, wisdom comes from all different angles. He said, "We will start to fear the Muslims when we see their message fill up for salatul Fajr." When we see their message fill up for salatul Fajr. What's interesting is that when I was growing up in Palestine, in the otherwise we were supposed to be my area was supposed to be under Jordanian government rule. And we were what were referred to as Fatah. And this is before the official state of the PLO, right? they used to have military jeeps camped out in the dead of dark in the middle of the desert waiting to catch people going to salatul Fajr. And I remember many a times having to either turn around and go back home or to literally hide in the trees from military convoys to not pick us up because we were on our way headed to salatul Fajr. And there were actual spies that were paid for, planted in the masjid, their only job was to take down names of young men that come to salat al-fajr. Now, you've got a little voice in the back of your mind, especially the young younger Americans amongst us, saying, "Oh, you know, is that proven? That's a conspiracy." You know, it's interesting about conspiracies is the state of Palestine is slowly being disintegrated and melted, and the state of Israel is slowly being ballooned, and we are actually categorized as a country that is not officially recognized by the United Nations, which is the state of Palestine. Now, this only happened in the about 10 or less, you know, couple decades at most, where it is considered to be a non-state. How did this happen? How did this happen? Was there a conspiracy, or was this just organic? Is just naturally the an entire country faded into obscurity? Does that happen? So, the issue here is what why is this important to us? Some of us who lived in such a place, and I know also other Arab countries this, and maybe even non-Arab countries, but Muslim countries. Libya is a very good example. Syria is a very good example. Where salat al-fajr, salah in the masajid, especially during certain places, during certain times, is absolutely off limits. As a matter of fact, your father and your mother will fight with you tooth and nail to try to stop their young sons from going to Salat al-Fajr and going to the masjid in general because they don't want any trouble with the government. maybe the old-timers here can remember that. You remember this Abu Usama? Abu Musab, you remember these days? I don't know if it's still that Syria, you remember these days? I remember being picked up by military jeeps, convoys in the dead of night. There is There are few things more haunting to a young Palestinian boy than the silhouette of an Israeli military jeep. It used to strike dark, black dread and terror into our hearts in a way that I can't even describe to you. I remember many of times being picked up either on our way to salah, at the masjid, on our way to Fajr in the dead of night. They just pop out of nowhere and getting slapped around and kicked around and sent home and then later having to report to Israeli internal, it's kind of the FBI of or MI5 of Israel. And you know, what were you doing at Fajr? What are you doing going to the masjid? You know, are you some kind of terrorist? Are you an extremist? Why is your beard growing out a little bit, right? Et cetera. You remember in Egypt in the late 50s, early 60s, in the fall of in the fall of Al-Malik Farouk, the king of the last king of Egypt, Farouk, and who took his place? Do you guys remember? Gamal Abdel Nasser. Gamal Abdel Nasser was propped it up by Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimeen. And at that time, Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimeen was 90% Islamic driven, 10% politics and policies. Now, you could say it's probably exactly the opposite, but at that time he, as soon as he got into power, he turned on all of them. And he started to collect them from the masajid salat al-fajr, salat al-zuhr, salat al-isha, in the masajid. Started collecting them and putting them in prisons that nobody would ever hear from them again, or not hear for them from them for decades. Same thing happened in Libya. The same thing happened recently in Bangladesh. actually, hundreds, if not thousands of scholars were executed in Bangladesh just of recent. Sudan, Syria, and so forth. What's the point of all this? The point of all this is that we live in a country right now where we have liberties that maybe are not allotted to us in our own Muslim countries. Look at these big, beautiful doors right here. Just open. You can get in your car and come make salat al-fajr and your name's not going to be on a list and you're not going to be in and you're not worried about the boogeyman. You remember in those in those days in under the reign of Gamal Abdel Nasser, and then after him as-Sadat, and then after him Mubarak, you'll notice that 99% of the scholars of that era, none of them had beards. You notice that? the most was al-Husary, and he was considered to be a very strong-willed man, with a little tiny short beard. That's not because they didn't love the sunnah or didn't love following the prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam. It was because these things were illegal. Right? We grew up in those times. This masjid is only going to be as good as its attendees. We cannot sit and accept the status quo. We need to work individually and together to fill this masjid up. I want it to be busting at the seams, not just for salah, but especially for salatul fajr. Especially those of us who have young men at home. High school age, middle school age, get your bones out of that bed and get in the car, we're going to salatul fajr. The Arabs have a proverb, "Man shabba ala shayin shaba alayh." Whoever grows up in his adolescence on a particular habit will usually grow old on those habits. And when you instill that in your child, especially men, especially young men, they will be lost if they don't have, starting with the masjid, starting with salat al-fajr, they're coming to the masjid. We need to see young men vibrant in the masjid, the rest of the prayers, and this is something that we have to work on individually and together. You guys are already here for fajr. So, what's the point of me telling you this? Right? You're already here. No, you have a neighbor, you have a son, you have a cousin, you have a brother. Especially young men, get up, let's go to fajr. And I know we can do it. I know as parents we can do it. You know why? Because we dedicate our children to 12 years of continuous schooling where they get up at a certain time, dress a certain way, do certain assignments, get certain grades, come home at a certain time, and we respect that so much that we actually build our lives around the schooling schedule. Isn't that true? Our whole life is shaped by the schedule of the school. We don't ever call the school and say, "Oh, so-and-so is not going to be in today. My son's not coming. He was too tired." You know, he was tired last night, so I just thought, "Eh, nix on that. Let him sleep in." Or he'll just come to He'll come to school whenever he comes. He comes a little hour or two late. We don't do that. We get him up out of the bed with a whip. Correct? Only when we have this kind of discipline with our deen, are we going to , advance. And so, , the thing is is that a lot of us as parents, even I, suffer from this as well. You almost are afraid to that you're going to be too tough on your child. You're afraid that if I'm too , strict with my son to get up and go to Fajr or if I, you know, push him too much, he's going to resent me. This is waswas of shaytan. No child will ever grow past his adolescence and complain that his father and mother were not , you know, disciplined enough with him. As long as what you do is not random and there are clear rules, and if you break the rules, there are clear consequences, but you're not driven by emotion, but you're driven by objectivity, they will always respect you and pray for you after that. Even if they go through a spell of resentment, that's okay. They'll come back and they'll say, "Alhamdulillah. Maybe my dad didn't teach me much, but one thing he taught me was every day we went to make Salat al-Fajr. It was breathing. It was eating breakfast. You remember during Ramadan how full the masjid was for Fajr? There's no reason we can't do that every day. So, , there this reminds me of a quick story I'll share with you about Umar ibn Abdil Aziz. Do we know Umar ibn Abdil Aziz? Umar ibn Abdil Aziz is considered to be the fifth of the four Khulafa. The prophet Sallallahu alaihi wasallam mentioned that the Khilafa the successorship of prophethood after his death would be how many years? Huh? 30. 30 years. And then after that it would turn into what? Kingship. It would be kings. But the Khalifa of Muhammad Rasulillah Sallallahu alaihi wasallam would be 30 years. And that ended exactly with the succession of al-Hasan radiAllahu anhu al-Hasan ibn Ali ibn Abi Talib. Roughly 6 months after the death of Ali ibn Abi Talib or the martyrdom of Ali ibn Abi Talib. But because he was such a revivalist, because he brought such light to a dark world at the time, and because there were so many prophecies that he ended up fulfilling in just 2 years as the Khalifa. He is considered to be the fifth of the four Khulafa. Even though there is a huge gap between him and the the companions Khilafa. So, we hear about Omar ibn Abdul Aziz. He was never corrupted by wealth. He was a major scholar of Islam. We're not talking about he was a leader, but he dabbled in Islamic sciences. He is considered one of the top finest upper echelon of scholarship of his entire era, right? And of the entirety of Islam. So, this is a great man. What kind of childhood did he have? There's a good story that kind of captures the effects that his father had on raising such a man. He was actually sent by his father's father His father was a prince. They were royalty. They weren't just regular people, right? They were royalty. And so, he sent Omar bin Abdul Aziz to Al-Asma'i to mentor him as a young boy. Meaning that he would be in that city. Al-Asma'i is a major scholar of Hadith, Fiqh, and Lughah. Linguistics. He was a impressive linguist. And so, they would send their children to reside under the mentorship of scholars in their adolescent years to be able to learn more than just knowledge, to learn character, to learn discipline, etc. So, basically, what his job was was to service his sheikh. Carry his shoes. A prince carrying the shoes of a scholar, yes. So, one day Omar bin Abdul Aziz, he was about probably just after the age of puberty. He was very young, probably between 10 and 12, somewhere in there. He missed the first of a salah in in jama'. He didn't miss the first rak'. He didn't miss the recitation. He missed takbirat al-ihram. When the.

[Arabic recitation]

Row. Al-Asma'i saw this and immediately asked him, "Come here. Why did you miss takbirat al-ihram? Why'd you miss the first takbir?" He said that one of the servants was he had just bathed and she was braiding his hair for him. And if he had left at that exact moment to make salah, his braids wouldn't have been finished. So, we're talking about a difference of a minute or two, a few minutes. So, he said, "Okay." Immediately sent a letter to his father. "Your son, Omar, missed takbirat al-ihram on this day and this salah." Does this sound a big deal to you guys? To us, does this sound a big deal? If you spoke to the average Muslim child today about missing takbirat al-ihram, would they even understand what the heck you're talking about? So, what are you saying? I was here for salah. What do you mean? If you get here by tashahhud, the final tashahhud is good enough. Right? This is takbirat al-ihram. His father wrote a letter back to his son, "I vow not to speak to you until you shave your head." Now, some of us may say, "That's extreme, right? It's kind of extreme." Let me ask you a question. What about if he was in swimming club and he wanted to shave his head so he could swim a couple milliseconds faster cuz that's what all the other students were doing. They shaved their head in the swim team and he was shaving his head to be on the swim team. Do we view that as extreme? Is that extremism? No? So the issue isn't really the shaving of the head. The issue really is then priorities, isn't it? It's priorities. It's not really an issue of extremism, is it? Cuz we'll shave the head. If all the kids in school had their heads shaved, would we not shave our children's heads? If the child got lice and couldn't go back to school until the lice was gone, would we not shave his head so he doesn't miss school? Yeah? Okay. He's shaving his head because he's not disciplined. And he's missing salah and his father said, "Your hair is more important than your salah? I'm not speaking to you until you shave your head." And he did so as a dutiful son. Fast forward 20 years, we have Omar bin Abdul Aziz. Right? Now I'm not saying that that's what we need to do now. That's That's not the level that our children are at. That's not the level that even our our adults are at. However, we need to set priorities. The thing that your child is most desperate for is for you to teach them priorities. Right? So let's work on filling this masjid up, especially for fajr. Everyone, you have a neighbor, you have someone. Think of someone today that you can humbug and bother until you get them to come make salat al-fajr once a week. That's your mission. Get that done and then work on a second and a third. Just one day a week, not every day. Just one day a week. Come on Fajr, on Jummah, on Saturday, on Sunday, make Salat al-Fajr. Bother them until they avoid your calls about making Fajr. I'm sure all of us have someone in mind. This is how we start to rebuild.

[Arabic recitation]