In the name of God, The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful. We are recording this program in January of 1986. A couple of months ago around November 1985, a book appeared in bookstores across the nation that soon became a bestseller. The book is a fictitious novel narrating the arrival, monitoring of a coded message from outer space that proved the existence of a super intelligence out there trying to contact us on earth. The message was decoded by computers. And the novel, this fictitious novel, even supports all-time religions belief in God.
The novel is Contact by Carl Sagan, and there are only four quotations that I would like to share with you in this book.
The first quotation appears on the front flap of the book, and it says:
“In Contact, Carl Sagan, whose Cosmos enthralled millions of readers and television viewers, has brilliantly employed the freedom of fiction to imagine the greatest adventure of all, humanity’s first encounter with other intelligent beings.”
The second quotation appears on page 219, and it describes the computer decoding of this message as:
“This is only the most amazing discovery in the history of the world.”
Let me repeat this quotation. It describes the computer decoding of this message like this:
“This is only the most amazing discovery in the history of the world.”
The third quotation appears at the end of the novel page 430, where we find the conclusion of the whole novel:
“There is an intelligence that antedates the universe.”
In other words, the novel is trying to say that there is God out there.
The last quotation that I wish to share with you is not fictitious. There’s no fiction at all; it is Carl Sagan’s notes at the end of the book. Carl Sagan says in his author’s note:
“My fondest hope for this book is that it will be made obsolete by the pace of real scientific discovery.”
The Mathematically Encoded Message
Well ladies and gentlemen, Carl Sagan’s fondest hope has just come true. In the next 50 minutes or so I will share with you the real scientific discovery of a coded message from outer space, from deep space, and the message will represent the first physical evidence ever for the existence of God. We have been talking about God, and those who believe in God have been presenting circumstantial evidence. But now we are going to witness a miracle; we are going to witness physical evidence, the first incontrovertible evidence that God exists. And we are going to see this proof through the real scientific discovery of a coded message that came to us and could never be human-made. Before I get to the historical development of this message and the monitoring and decoding of it, I would like to make a couple of statements that I consider very important. The first statement is that every utterance you are going to hear in this program is a proven scientific fact. Every statement you are going to hear is proven by means of a mathematical code that gives us/provides us, with physical evidence, that every statement is correct. It is very important that you have full confidence that every statement here is proven by physical evidence. The reason I’m saying this is that some of the statements you are going to hear had in the past provoked ridicule or snickering or some laughter, this will no longer be the case.
The development of the message
The message came to this world in many parts, and the first part came to us through the first man, Adam. Adam was created by God, and he knew about God, and when he came to this world, he transmitted the first portion of the message. The purpose of the message as you will see is to tell us where we came from, why we are here, where we are going, and the purpose of our existence. So, Adam taught his children and grandchildren about God and everything he knew about the creation of Adam, the creation of the human being, the creation of his wife Eve, and how he came from up there to the planet Earth. That is a very important part of the message. The message afterwards came to us through every messenger of God, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, and I will go through the stages of development of the message and show you the mathematical code that was embedded in these messages.
What happened was that God picked out from every generation a human being through whom God sent part of the message, we are talking about one and the same message. Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, Jesus, Muhammad, all these people received parts of one and the same message, and as a proof of authenticity, as it turns out and as you will witness in this program, God incorporated in his message to us an intricate mathematical code, intricate beyond human ability, just to prove that this message is not fabricated by any human being. Abraham contributed a good portion of that message. And you know, you probably watched the movie the Ten Commandments, you know that Moses was walking in the desert when he saw the burning bush, and God communicated with Moses. God communicated part of that message, it was a very significant part, part that we call today the Torah. You saw in the movie and you read in the Bible how the tablets were written, were recorded, that the scripture was recorded on the tablets, that scripture in the language of Moses was mathematically coded, beyond the human ability, and this is what this program is all about, the discovery of a mathematical code embedded within God’s message to us through his messengers. The first hint, let me go back to Moses, when he carried the tablet with the message on them, the letters on those tablets were counted according to an intricate mathematical code, the same mathematical code that was discovered in all the scriptures. The message given to Jesus in his language, Aramaic, was also mathematically coded in that language. The alphabet letters of that message were counted and carefully placed. The whole message in Aramaic was composed according to a mathematical pattern, and this is the pattern that was consistent through every part of the message from Adam to Abraham, Noah before that, Moses, David, Solomon, Jesus, Muhammad. The same mathematical code, the letters, the words, the verses, everything was calculated and carefully placed to prove that the message is from God. The first hint of the discovery of a mathematical code was at least what we know of, was announced about a thousand years ago. And this was printed recently in a book called studies in Jewish mysticism. Studies in Jewish mysticism. And I’m going to read for you a quotation from that book:
“No change can be tolerated in the text of the prayers; not even a minute one. Because every change even of one letter would destroy the numerical harmony inherent in the text.”
That was the first hint of a mathematical code in God’s message to the world. Here’s another quotation from the same book and this quotation also was written about 900 years ago:
“According to Rabbi Judah and the Ashkenazi Hasidic school in general, there can be nothing accidental in the Bible, not even the forms of letters, the punctuation, the vocalization, and especially in the numerical structures.”
How do you like that? 900 years ago, marks the first discovery of a mathematical code in the scriptures. I will go through the details of this amazing mathematical code and how it penetrates and encodes the complete scripture of God. Of course I’m talking about the original scripture, not any translation, we are talking about the original words of God in the languages of God’s messengers, Adam, Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, many others, Jesus, Muhammad, and the original scripture was coded according to this very intricate miraculous system.
The Quran
How in the world are we going to study the original scriptures given to Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, and Muhammad? The mathematical code that God put in his message to the world is in the original scripture, the original words, letters, verses, that were written by God Almighty in those scriptures, in Abraham’s scripture in his original language, Moses’ scripture in his original language and so on. How are we going to study the original scripture given to Jesus in Aramaic, his language? Well, there is only one scripture in the world today that is original and still intact, and that is the Quran. Back in the year 610 AD, God picked out a man named Muhammad and communicated with us through him by giving him the Quran. And Quran today is the only original intact scripture in the original language as written by God Almighty.
The Quran represents the latest edition of the scripture, remember we are talking about one and the same message, and the mathematical code that I will share with you today was throughout the whole message, in the Torah, in the gospel of Jesus, in the Quran, in the Psalms, and as I mentioned to you, glimpses of the mathematical code that were written about a thousand years ago.
Back in 1968 I noticed that the Quran had mysterious letters at the beginning of certain chapters. For example, chapter 2 begins the first verse is only three letters A L M, what is A-L-M? I wondered. 29 chapters in Quran have these mysterious letters; chapter 50 is entitled Q, that’s it, Q!, And it’s prefixed with the letter Q, nothing else, Q. Chapter 68 is prefixed with the letter N. Chapter 36 is prefixed with the letters YS, and so on. These letters remained mysterious for 1400 years, since 610 AD. Well, curiosity led me to put the Quran in the computer just to find out what these letters represent. So, I wrote the Quran in the computer, of course the Quran in the original language is Arabic remember? And the computers back in 1968 didn’t have Arabic computers, so I took every Arabic letter in the Quran and I used an English letter to represent the Arabic letter, and I put the whole scripture, the final edition of God’s message to the world in the computer, then I asked the computer for a number of mathematical characteristics, the number of every letter in every chapter, the number of numbers of words, and all kinds of questions, I had no idea what to expect, and when the computer was through and answering my questions, a very intricate mathematical pattern emerged and fit with the older findings of mathematical codes in the original scriptures of Moses, Jesus, David, and so on. The mathematical code that emerged provides the first physical evidence for the existence of God. In fact, once you study this mathematical pattern in detail and understand it, you will no longer believe in God, you will know that God exists, you will need faith no longer. So that’s how intricate and how miraculous this mathematical code is.
Miraculous Composition
As it turns out these mysterious letters have specific counts in their chapters and there was one common denominator in the whole scripture that is common to all these letters, we’re talking about exactly half the Quran, the Quran is about 500 pages of the regular size pages, and the mysterious letters prefix 29 chapters that represent in size about half the Quran, the Quran consists of 114 chapters, many of them are short chapters, but these mysterious letters prefix about half the Quran, and it turned out that every single set of these mysterious letters is found in its chapter in multiples of 19, without a single exception, in other words the letters are distributed within Quran according to this intricate mathematical pattern that is way beyond the human ability. When you study it in detail you will have no doubt whatsoever that there is a mathematical system proving the authenticity of Quran as God’s message to the world, to be more accurate as God’s final edition of the scripture, His message to the world.
Initial Q
So now let me give you a few examples to demonstrate the miraculous nature of this mathematical code. Chapter 50 for example in Quran is entitled Q as I mentioned before and is prefixed with the letter Q, when you count the letter Q in that chapter you will find 57 Q’s in the whole chapter, that is 19 x 3, it’s a multiple of 19, and as I said every single one of these mysterious letters is found in its chapter in multiples of 19.
There is another chapter in Quran, one other chapter that is also prefixed with the letter Q, and that is chapter 42, and guess what? even though chapter 42 of Quran is more than twice as long as chapter 50, it has the same number of Q in it, 57. So 57 is 19 x 3, so the only two chapters in Quran that are prefixed with the letter Q have exactly the same number 57 and 57.
And Q we are told in chapter 50 represents Quran, Quran is spelled with the heavy K in the Arabic language which is represented by the letter Q. Only two chapters 57 and 57, the total is 114, and guess what? This is the number of chapters in Quran, 114, 19 x 6.
Initial N
The letter N prefixes chapter 68, and when we count the letter N in that chapter, we find 133. These as you notice are physical facts, it is not guesswork, I’m not saying in my opinion chapter 68 contains 133 N’s, this is a physical fact, the chapter is initialed with the letter N, prefixed with the initial N, and it contains 133 N’s, 133 is a multiple of 19, it equals 19 x 7.
Initial YS
Chapter 36 for example is prefixed with the letters Y S, and when you count the letters Y and S in this chapter, the total is 285, or 19 x 15. How do you like that? This means every letter Y, every letter S in this chapter is counted, calculated, and harmonized with the other initial chapters. There is also an interlocking relationship between these letters, because you find these letters in a number of chapters, and they interlock with each other, and all of them give you totals that are multiples of 19. We will find out why 19 before the end of this program.
19 Common Denominator
But at this point I would like to quote for you from Rabbi Judah the pious, his writings of about a thousand years ago, and it demonstrates the common denominator in all the scriptures, one and the same message, the Quran, the Gospel of Jesus, the Torah of Moses, the Psalms of David. Let me quote for you from Rabbi Judah the Pious, where we find that the number 19 is the common denominator in all the scriptures. Here is what Rabbi Judah said:
“900 years ago, the people, the Jews in France, made it a custom to add in the morning prayer the words “Ashrei Temimei Derech”, which means blessed are those who walk the righteous way. And our rabbi, the pious, of blessed memory, wrote that they were completely and utterly wrong, it is all gross falsehood, because there are only 19 times that the Holy Name is mentioned in that portion of the morning prayer. And similarly, you find the word “Elohim” 19 times, similarly you find that Israel were called sons 19 times, and there are many other examples. All these sets of 19 are intricately intertwined and they contain many secrets and esoteric meanings which are contained in more than eight large volumes.”
So, this just to give you an idea that the number 19 is the common denominator in all portions of the message, God’s message to the world.
It’s a Miracle
Ladies and gentlemen, it is impossible, statistically impossible, to write a book with this kind of mathematical composition, where every letter, every word is calculated and carefully placed according to a mathematical pattern that is clearly beyond human ability. We find this mathematical pattern in God’s scripture, the one and the same message in Quran and in previous scriptures. I just gave you the example from the Torah as written by Rabbi Judah the Pious.
Why 19?
And now we come to the big question, why 19 in the older scripture as well as in the Quran, why is 19 the common denominator of God’s message to the world from the time of Adam until now? And why did it have to wait? You see when Rabbi Judah discovered the number 19 in the older scriptures, he didn’t know why 19. As you recall when I quoted him, he said there is a secret and the great esoteric meaning to the number 19, but he didn’t know why, because this question had to wait until the completion of God’s message to the world by revealing the final edition, the Quran, in the Arabic language. You see 19 is the numerical value of the word “One” in Arabic, and this is the whole essence of the scripture, that there is One God, that we shall worship only The One God. In Arabic the word one is written like this: واحد. it is pronounced “Wahid”, and at the time of revelation of Quran, there were no numbers as we know them today. They used the alphabet letters as numbers. So, the numbers were non-existent, this is a relatively recent invention, the numbers.
The Gematrical value of the word Wahid
So let us go to this word in Arabic, the word one, or Wahid, and see how the numerical value equals 19. واحد
The first letter in this word (و), was 6 in those days,
This is the letter (ا), and it represents the numeral 1,
This is the letter (ح), which represents the numeral 8,
Finally, the letter (د), the letter dal was 4.
And if you add the total 6 + 1 + 8 + 4 = 19, so there is the total; the numerical value of the word One in Arabic. And now with the completion of the scriptures through the revelation of Quran, we know why 19. 19 is the common denominator of the mathematical code throughout the scriptures, means one, God is one.
The content of the message is more important than the composition of the message
What is more important than the mathematical code is the content of the message itself. Because the message being from our Creator tells us who we are, where we came from, where we are going, and why we are here, what is the purpose of our life. These are the most important questions as far as any human being is concerned. And now we have the answers from the most authoritative source, the Creator himself. Naturally we cannot discuss all the contents of the message in one program, hopefully in a series of programs we will present to you the contents of the message, but for now let me deal with just one question,
Who is God? Who is The One who created you and me?
There is a specific One who created you and me and the whole universe, there is a certain One that we should know, who is The Omnipotent, Omnipresent, Omniscient, God, who runs this universe, who is He? The Quran describes God as following.
You see this planet Earth is part of the Milky Way galaxy, and the Milky Way galaxy is so huge that it takes 30,000 light years, if you travel at the speed of light, it will take you 30,000 years to reach the outer limit of the Milky Way galaxy, our galaxy. And our universe contains 1 billion galaxies like the Milky Way, a billion trillion stars. These numbers are actual scientific numbers, the astronomers, the scientists stopped counting at 1 billion galaxies in our universe, and a billion trillion stars, that’s how big our universe is. We now measured 26 billion light-years within our universe, 26,000 million of light-years within our universe. And God tells us in Quran that there are seven universes. The billion trillion stars, the 1 billion galaxies, the 26 billion light-years are only within the smallest and innermost of seven universes. This is how God describes the universes. You can imagine seven balls inside each other, and we live in the smallest and innermost of the seven universes. Can you imagine the size of the second universe? How about the third universe? The fourth? the fifth? the sixth? and the seventh universe? How can we describe the circumference of the seventh universe? Infinity will be the most accurate description of the length of the circumference of the seventh universe. And you know what? Quran describes God as holding the seven universes in his right hand, that’s who God is. God is holding the seven universes in one hand, it makes a difference whether you are holding something in both hands, or within the fist of one hand. And in chapter 39 of Quran, God describes himself as holding the seven universes in his right hand. And this tells you who God is. God is the one who created the sun, the moon, the stars, the galaxies, in the extreme accuracy that you see. The sun will rise tomorrow exactly at the specific time from the specific place, because God designed it this way, and He is the Only One who controls it. No other entity, human or non-human, designed this universe. So, this is just an example of the contents of the message.
The message goes on and tells you exactly why you are here and how to fulfill the purpose of your life. But we will get into these topics in the future, God willing, and I hope you will follow this series of programs. Meanwhile, if you have any questions, please write to us or call.
In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. Brothers and sisters, Assalamu Alaikum (Peace be upon you). The Friday Congregational Prayer is an obligatory duty upon every Muslim man and woman. This is a social function decreed by God Almighty for the Muslims to get together and to know each other and to be familiar with their problems and their joys.
And we find in surah number 62 verse number 9 the commandment from God says,
“O you who believe, when The Contact Prayers; The Salat for Friday is announced, you shall go to the mosque and observe The Salat Prayer and drop all business. This is better for you if you only knew”.
So if anyone is afraid that he or she may lose some business during the Friday prayer, God is saying this would be better for you, God will make it up to you. God runs the world and he’s the only provider and he guarantees you doing better if you go to the Friday prayer. And notice that the commandment said, “O you who believe.” It didn’t say, “O you believing men or O you believing women.” It says, “O you who believe, when the contact prayer on Friday is called for, you shall go and drop all business”. It is very important; I’m emphasizing the role of the women because this is also an educational meeting where people sit down and listen to a sermon and the Muslim woman must be the best educated because she teaches the children. The women are our mothers, and they teach us as we grow up and it is essential that they are educated not ignorant. The traditional customary Muslims of the Middle East kept the women away from the mosque and this kept the children ignorant because the mothers are ignorant as far as the religion is concerned. So, it is very important to emphasize this fact that Muslim men and women are required, it is an obligatory duty for them to go for the Friday prayer.
Features and conditions of the Friday Congregational Prayer
There are certain conditions for the Friday Prayer: The people dress nicely, as commanded in the Quran, and they go for the noon prayer on Friday to the mosque, and the imam, or the person who gives the sermon, is required to follow certain traditions. These are religious traditions or duties that came to us all the way from Abraham. And it is universal. This is the way it is happening all over the world.
The first condition is that throughout the prayer, from the beginning to the end, you mention only the name of God. Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala (God, Glory to Him, and Exalted He is).
The adhan should be Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, La Elaha Ella Allah (God is Great 4x, There is no god but God). This is Adhan. So, the Adhan, or the call for contact prayer is delivered,
Then the Imam stands up in front of the congregation and he starts the first sermon by saying Alhamdulillah (Praise God). This is the first requirement. The Khutba or Sermon on Friday consists of two sections or two sermons. The prayer itself consists of two Rak’ahs instead of four. The customary noon prayer consists of four Rak’ahs or four units, but on Friday it is only two Rak’ahs or two units, and this is because the two sermons compensate for two Rak’ats or two units. So, the first sermon and also the second sermon, they must begin by stating Alhamdulillah, (Praise be to God), followed by the Shahada. And the Shahada as dictated in the Quran, in surah 3 verse 81, is: “La Elaha Illa Allah” (There is no god but God), that’s it. So, the Imam stands up and he begins each sermon, the first one and the second one, by saying Alhamdulillah, La Elaha Ella Allah.
Then he goes into the sermon, the subject, in any language that he wishes. Of course, in this country, in the United States, it will be English, so the people will understand.
If the imam during the sermon uses Quran in Arabic, he must translate it, so the people will understand. This is the whole idea of a sermon.
The sermon also deals with the local conditions of the local community. Or it can deal with a general lesson from the Quran or a general religious lesson.
So let me write for you the first requirement, which is stating, Alhamdulillah, La Elaha Ella Allah, at the beginning of each sermon.
The Imam stands up for the sermon and the first thing he says in the first sermon and the second sermon is, Alhamdulillah. Which means, Praise be to God.
La Elaha Ella Allah. “La” means no. “Elaha” means god. “Ella” means except, “Allah” means God. La Elaha Ella Allah. There is no god except Allah. This is the required utterance at the beginning of the first sermon and the second sermon. After this you go into the subject of your sermon.
Now you notice I didn’t say anything else. This is what you start with. Alhamdulillah, La Elaha Ella Allah. You don’t start with Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim, or dear brothers and sisters, or Assalamu Alaikum, or anything else. The minute you stand up for the sermon, you say Alhamdulillah, La Elaha Ella Allah. Then you can say, dear brothers and sisters, Assalamu Alaikum, I want to talk to you today about the contact prayers, the salat, for example, or whatever your subject is.
Repentance + Ending the Sermon
After you finish the subject of the first sermon, how do you finish the first sermon? You finish it by asking the people to repent. You can ask them in Arabic and then translate it to English. And the Arabic is, “Tooboo Ela Allah”, repent. This is how you end the first sermon.
Now, as soon as you say “Tooboo Ila Allah”, repent, you sit down, and you repent yourself. You sit down and you pray to God, please God forgive me, I repent to you, I will never commit a sin after now. And you mean it. So here is how you end the first sermon.
You finish your subject,
Then you say to the people, Tooboo Ila Allah, repent.
And then you sit down, and you ask God to forgive you and you declare your repentance.
You say, “please God forgive me, I repent, I will never commit a sin after now.” And you mean it. Of course you are going to fall in sin again. But God says he loves those who continuously repent. So, you sit down for about a minute, no more, just one minute, and everybody in the mosque will be asking God for forgiveness, and everyone in the mosque will be repenting,
Then you stand up for the second sermon. And you start the second sermon by, Alhamdulillah, La Elaha Ella Allah. This is how you start the second sermon. Exactly the same way as the first sermon.
Then, you either continue the subject you were talking about in the first sermon, or you talk about a new subject. You can have two different subjects for the two sermons.
And after you finish talking in the second sermon, you end this last sermon by saying Aqem Al-Salah. And this is assigned to someone in the congregation to declare that the Salah, the contact prayer for Friday, is ready to be observed, and everybody stands up. You end the sermon by saying “Aqem Al-Salah.”
Now, the minute you say Aqem Al-Salah, the second sermon is over, and a person in the congregation will say Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, La Elaha Ella Allah. And this means everybody stand up and let us pray. Then as the imam who gave the two sermons, you stand up in front of the congregation and you pray two Rak’ahs as usual.
1. The Adhan: Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, La Elaha Ella Allah.
2. The statement: AL-HAMDU LILLAH. LA ELAHA ELLA ALLAH
3. First sermon
4. The statement: TOOBOO ELA ALLAH
5. The Repentance (Silent)
6. The statement: AL-HAMDU LILLAH. LA ELAHA ELLA ALLAH
7. The second sermon
8. The statement: AQEM AL-SALAH
9. The Adhan: Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, La Elaha Ella Allah.
Which Places of Worship Are we Allowed and Not Allowed to Visit?
In which places of worship are we allowed and not allowed to go to worship God? This is a very important question, because according to the Quran, people who stop themselves from the permissible places of worship are evil (2:114), but at the same time, people who visit the prohibited places of worship are transgressors and liars (9:107-109). So having a very detailed and clear answer to this question is of vital importance.
So, let’s find out from the Quran exactly which places of worship are permissible and which of them are prohibited. To understand this, first we need to understand how the places of worship are established. Places of worship are established through spending, by giving or dedicating the property to God. However, God only accepts the spending from those who:
Believe in God (9:54),
Believe in God’s messenger (9:54,107,108),
Do not observe Contact Prayers lazily (9:54),
Do not do the spending stingily (9:54),
Obviously, point 3 and 4 are automatically fulfilled when the spending is done for places of worship, because the very fact that a certain spending is done for a place of worship shows that those people were not stingy and not lazy. So, we may ignore these two points for the purposes of this study.
So, for a place of worship to be accepted by God, it must be established by people who
Believe in God (9:54),
Believe in God’s messenger (9:54,107,108),
Additionally, when establishing a place of worship, it should:
Not harm the believers (9:107-108),
Not divide the believers (9:107-108),
Not cause disbelief (9:107-108),
Not in an unsafe plot of land (9:109),
Be dedicated to God alone (72:18).
So, a place of worship was not accepted by God unless all of these seven criteria above were fulfilled when it was initially established (9:108, 2:127, 72:18). We are emphasizing, “when it was established”, because it does not matter whether the people who maintain it now are believers or not. They can not change the fact that it was accepted by God. Once a piece of land or property is dedicated to God, and God accepts it, it can not be rededicated to the idols, no matter how hard the idol worshipers may try. It’s like when a sheep is sacrificed to God. No one can bring the sheep back, and rededicate it to the idols. It’s impossible. And also once a sheep or a piece of property is dedicated to idols, it can never be rededicated to God. So, an initially prohibited place of worship can never become a permissible place of worship, and an initially permissible place of worship can never become a prohibited place of worship. So, the circumstance in which it was initially established is what matters (9:108), and at that moment they must have fulfilled all these seven criteria.
So, according to these seven criteria, all the religious buildings which are established by the Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, other Dharmic religions, Taoists, Confucianists, and other Eastern Religions, all the religious buildings established by them are prohibited for us to visit, because they do not fulfill criterion 2 at least. They do not believe in God’s messengers mentioned in the Quran. Also, the religious buildings established by the “Nation of Islam” in America, and the Bahai go against criterion 1, because they believe in human beings as God or as a Manifestation of God. Also, together with the Ahmadiyya, they go against criterion 2 and 4, by believing in false messengers. Also any religious building established on top of a grave does not fulfill criterion 7, because that piece of land was intended for the dead person, and you can not dedicate the same piece of land twice, by dedicating it to God also. God does not accept double dedications (6:136). So, all these religious buildings are prohibited.
Now, let’s look at the potentially permissible places of worship.
Let’s start with synagogues first. The ancestors of Jews who established the synagogues fulfilled all these seven criteria before Jesus came. After Jesus came, they reject him (4:156-157), and as a result they cause division in religion. So, they do not fulfill criterion 2 and 4 after Jesus. So, from year 0, none of the new synagogues which they established were accepted by God.
Now, let’s look at the churches. The ancestors of Christians who established the churches fulfilled all these criteria until the time when they rejected Prophet Muhammad (2:120), and as a result they caused religious division. So, they did not fulfill criterion 2 and 4 after Muhammad. So, from the year 610 when God chose Muhammad to be His messenger, none of their new churches were accepted by God.
Now, let’s look at the masjids (mosques). The ancestors of Muslims who established the masjids fulfilled all these criteria until 1980 when God sent the Messenger of the Covenant. From 1980, those who rejected him did not fulfill criterion 2 and 4, and their newly established buildings were not accepted by God. So, after 1980, God only accepted the new masjids established by people who believed in God’s Messenger of the Covenant. This condition continued until 2008 when God sent the Clarifying Messenger. After that, God only accepts new masjids established by people who believe in the Clarifying Messenger. Otherwise, they will not fulfill criterion 2 and 4. Although God will send two more messengers after the Clarifying Messenger, belief in them is not a deciding factor for masjids, because anyone who believes in the Clarifying Messenger will also believe in the Strengthening Messenger. There will be groups of people who believe in the Clarifying Messenger, but not in the Guide Messenger (the Mahdi), shame on them, but even that will not be a deciding factor for masjids, because people should stop establishing new masjids anyway after the year 2260, way before the Guide Messenger, because after 2260 there is no point in building masjids, since they will not fulfill criterion 6, because soon all the masjids will be destroyed. What’s the point of establishing buildings which will be destroyed soon (9:109-111)? Instead, the believers should set aside that same money to eventually support the Guide Messenger (the Mahdi) in the cause of God (8:1, 8:41, 9:111), when he comes. So, the Clarifying Messenger is the last messenger who is a deciding factor on weather God accepts new places of worship or not, which is why one of his main duties is to clearly establish once and for all how to establish new places of worship owned by God alone; not places of worship owned by our communities, not places of worship owned by leaders, not places of worship owned by God’s messengers, but places of worship owned by God alone (72:18).
So, here is the conclusion. We, the true believers are allowed to visit these graveless places of worship only:
Synagogues established before the year 0, (which includes only 1 out of about 20,000 existing synagogues (17:1)),
Church buildings established before the year 610, (which includes about 100 out of about 3 million existing church buildings),
Masjids established before 1980, (which includes about 1 million out of about 3 million existing masjids),
Masjids established between 1980 and 2008, only if they were established by people who also believed in God’s Messenger of the Covenant,
Masjids established between 2008 and 2260, only if they are established by people who also believed in the Clarifying Messenger.
This is why only synagogues, churches, and masjids are mentioned in the Quran (22:40).
However, the permissibility to visit those places of worship does not automatically apply to the Friday Congregational Prayers. The Friday Congregational Prayer can be done only behind a preacher or leader who believes in all of God’s messengers (14:21, 62:9, 21:92, 4:144, 58:22, 5:56). We are not allowed to do it behind a preacher or leader who does not believe in all of God’s messengers, even if he does it in the permissible places of worship (58:22, 4:144).
But outside of the Friday Congregational Prayer, you may visit the permissible places of worship, even if they are maintained by disbelievers. Their present domination does not change the fact that those places still belong to God. If you own a house, for example, and mobs take it over, that does not change the ownership of the house. You are still the owner of the house. So, God is still the owner of those places (72:18). People are just visitors there. And we can see examples in the Quran of believers worshiping God in places of worship which were managed or dominated by disbelievers, as long as that place of worship was initially established by the believers. For example, Zachariah, Mary, Jesus worshiped God in the synagogue established by Solomon in Jerusalem (3:37, 3:39, 19:11), despite the fact that it was being managed by the evil Jews at that time (4:156). Also Muhammad worshiped God there (17:1-2), despite the fact that during his time it was being used partly as a synagogue, partly as a ruined church, and partly as a temple for idols (17:7). Also, before migrating to Medina, Muhammad worshiped God at the Sacred Masjid (8:33), at a time when it was being used and managed by idol-worshipers (8:34-35). He was kicked out of there eventually, but he never boycotted it (2:114). Also, God asks us to perform Hajj at the Sacred Masjid (3:97), and use it as a prayer house (2:125), without taking into account the belief or disbelief of those who dominate it now (3:97), because it is a masjid which was established by Abraham (2:127), and God accepted it from him (2:127, 14:39). It would not make sense to find the obligations to visit the Sacred Masjid in the Quran, and on the other hand make it impermissible for believers. God fully knew who was going to maintain it (22:25). We do not go there to visit the people. We go there because God says so (3:97, 22:27, 22:29), and because it is the right thing to do (22:32). In the same way, God orders us not to boycott the permissible places of worship (2:114), and we should feel free to visit them (2:150, 9:18). Alban Fejza shows you in practice in the video how we can visit them.
Requirements to Fulfill to Visiting a Permissible Place of Worship
Before we enter a permissible masjid, we should fulfill seven requirements:
Believe in God (9:18)
Believe in the Last Day (9:18)
Not fear anyone except God (9:18, 2:150)
Having given the Obligatory Charity (9:18)
We should not enter and leave without having performed the Contact Prayer (9:18, 7:29), whichever of the five Contact Prayers applies at this time. If we have already done the Contact Prayer outside of the masjid, or we go in the masjid in the forenoon when no prayer time is applicable, we should still do two Rakats of Contact Prayer (9:18, 7:29).
We should not enter the masjid without having ablution (5:6).
We should be clean and in modest clothes (7:31).
Children under the age of 12 only need to fulfill the seventh requirement (7:31, 5:6, 24:58). (When God says, “O you who believe” (5:6), it does not include children necessarily (49:14), but when God says “O children of Adam” (7:31), it includes children.)
The prayer rows should be filled from front to back (61:4, 9:93). Women should fill them from back to front. If we enter the masjid at noon time for example, we should do the Noon Contact Prayer (2:238, 17:78).
To learn how to observe the Contact Prayer, watch the video titled “Principles of Muslim Prayer” by Rashad Khalifa. But that video does not explain the different voice levels during the Contact Prayer. They are especially important in masjid circumstances, so let’s explain them here.
The Quran mentions five human voice levels:
Silent (7:193, 6:53, 20:7),
Murmuring (20:108),
Low (31:19, 49:3),
Normal (20:7, 44),
Loud (49:2).
During the Contact Prayer, your voice level can not be silent or loud, but it may be any of the levels in-between (17:110). However, this applies to portions of the Contact Prayer when you magnify God (akbar) or praise God (hamd) (17:111). So, when you say the Elhamdulillah (Sura 1), “Allahu Akbar”, and “Semi’a Allahu Leman Hamidah”, you can do it in a murmuring, low, or normal voice (17:110-111), which are the levels in-between. But, during bowing and prostration positions, we glorify God (Subh), and the glorification voice level may be silent, murmuring, or low (7:205, 3:41), and these commandments are given in the Arabic Quran. The Shahada may be spoken in a silent, murmuring, low, or normal voice (20:7-8, 7:205, 3:41). The Salaam is said in a low or a normal voice (6:54, 31:19).
We should enter peacefully and leave peacefully (2:191).
We should not do anything which invalidates ablution (2:187, 5:6). You may fall asleep there (2:187), but when you wake up, you should go outside and perform ablution again, if you wish to stay further at the masjid.
We should not preach (72:18), except for the Friday Sermon organized by the person in charge (62:9-11).
We should not try to convert people (72:18), or have debates or discussions, or arguments, or engage in private discussions or in vain speech.
We should not use entertainment like movies, reading, news, etc. (62:11).
We should not buy and sell (62:11).
We should not use that time to befriend people (6:70). You may acknowledge their presence with a simple greeting, “Salaam alaykum (Peace be upon you!)” (6:54).
We should not call other names besides God (72:18).
We should not answer any phone call (72:18).
We should not pray to anyone besides God (72:18).
We should not use our smartphones for other than reading or listening to the Quran in earphones (62:11, 5:48). The Quran may be read aloud when it does not interfere with others, but during Ramadan, others should not interfere with the reading of the Quran.
During Ramadan the whole Quran is read aloud (2:185,187), and it must be in a language which people understand (14:4).
We should not prevent others from entering because they might have different opinions and beliefs, except if they openly declare that they do not believe in God or the Last Day (9:17,18).
We are not allowed to reserve spaces for later by leaving things there (72:18, 2:114).
If we are told to make room for others to sit, we make room for others to sit. God will then make room for us (58:11).
If those in charge ask us to get up and leave, we get up and leave. God will raise us to a higher rank (58:11).
If those in charge impose additional unfair mosque rules, you may choose not to enter, or you may choose to enter with those rules, but not if those rules require you to change the way you worship God.
In the video clarification, Alban Fejza also shows an example of him going to the masjid and finding others already there getting ready for the group prayer.
When you go in, you check if they are doing the movements together simultaneously. If they are not, you simply sit and do not join them in prayer. That prayer is not from the Quran (2:43, 3:43). The Quran describes the obligatory Contact Prayer as one where all the believers bow and prostrate at the same time. Also, if only one person is appearing to do the Contact Prayer, you do not join him, but if two or more people are appearing to do the contact prayer together simultaneously, and you have not done the contact prayer, you must join them. You can not choose to do it separately in that case (2:43, 3:43). If you have to just wait, you may simply sit, commemorate God silently, or even use your smartphone to read the Quran in whatever language you understand. And when all the people stand together to do the Contact Prayer, you must join them (7:29-30, 4:88, 4:142, 5:2, 3:113), because the Quran orders you to stand when they stand, bow when they bow, prostrate when they prostrate, and sit when they sit (2:43, 3:43). During the Contact Prayer, we should follow the same Qiblah (prayer direction) as the prayer leader (4:59), even if his direction is not perfectly towards the Sacred Masjid (2:177), because there is no such thing as the wrong direction to worship God. There are only good and better directions (2:144). To God belongs the east and the west (2:115, 2:142). Although the prayer leader is not supposed to recite additional Suras of the Quran beside Sura 1 during the Contact Prayer, if he does that, you are not allowed to object to it, because when the Quran is recited, you should listen (7:204). You are not responsible for the words of others (6:52). You are responsible for your movements during the group prayer (2:43, 3:43). When the end of the Contact Prayer comes, and they say Salaam, you should return their greeting, at least in equal measure (4:86). After the Salam, you may leave immediately, even if the others stay further (3:149). You are not obliged to participate in any other ritual with them (28:55). Only the five obligatory Contact Prayers may be a group ritual in the masjid.
So, these were the rules of masjids. However, you may still choose not to go there for practical reasons. For example, some mosques are not maintained properly, some of them might smell bad, some of them are closed, some of them are too far, and in some cases it might simply not be practical.
A place of worship becomes obligatory for you only if it is within 10km (2:203) travel distance, it is Friday noon (62:9) and those in charge of it are believers who believe in all of God’s messengers (62:9, 4:144, 5:56).
Also, of course, visiting the Sacred Masjid is obligatory once in your lifetime, if you are not prevented (2:196). In all the other cases, it is optional to visit the permissible places of worship.
Now, everything we said so far, we only talked about real places of worship, places which only have God as an owner. Improvised places like places inside airports, as part of a university, inside companies, rented properties etc., none of these places are places of worship, because they have other owners besides God (72:18). You may use them for prayer if they suit you, but you should know that they are not places of worship, and the rules of their owners apply, not necessarily the rules of this video. They do not really represent any religion, regardless of what the sign at the door might say. So, for example, if you see a door sign inside the airport saying “Masjid”, you should know that you are still in the airport. You are not in a masjid. A masjid can not belong to human beings and to God at the same time. For the Friday Prayer, if you don’t have nearby a real place of worship which is maintained by believers, you may use an improvised place of worship, but not if the person who is leading the Friday Prayer does not believe in all of God’s messengers. Anyway, establishing new real places of worship is the best solution, and the only way to have a permanent community of submitters. In the other video clarification titled “Penalty Zakat“, you can learn which is the only proper way to collect and use the finances to establishing new places of worship which belong to God alone.
The word Zakat in the Quran literally means purification (20:76, 2:43, 2:129, 9:103). The Quran does not specify what type of purification because it includes any type of purification, any deed which purifies your soul (20:76). However, most of the purifying deeds in the Quran also have additional names. For example, body purification is called fasting, or travel purification is called Hajj, and so on. But here, when I say Zakat, I am limiting my explanation only to financial purification – obligatory financial purification. So, when I say Zakat, here, I mean financial purification. And I read the whole Quran, just for this – to list all the financial purifications – and in the whole Quran, I found 19 different financial purification subcomponents. Of course, there is only one Zakat, but it has 19 subcomponents. Here they are:
If you harvest crops, fruits, or vegetables, give the due alms from it (6:141, 17:26).
I call this Private Obligatory Charity.
If you own more than 40 units of anything, you should give 1 of them, which is 2.5% for charity.
I call this Public Obligatory Charity. I explain the details of both these first two subcomponents in the other video clarification titled “The Obligatory Charity (Zakat)”. However, I have to mention that the amount of 2.5% is never mentioned directly in the Quran, and that is because it’s not always 2.5%. It’s 2.5% only under the assumption that you did not do anything wrong. But, if you did something wrong, or gained wealth through some way which is partially wrong, then there are additional subcomponents of Zakat, or additional financial purification subcomponents (9:102-103) – the following 17 subcomponents, which I explain in this video:
I call the following 17 subcomponents, Penalty Zakat, because they are financial penalties for something wrong which you did (9:102-103). The Christians and the Jews translate them in the English Bibles as purification offerings, or sin offerings (Leviticus 4:27-35) – a financial contribution to purify yourself from a sin. So, let me present them:
If you break an important promise or oath, feed ten poor people (5:89).
If you don’t fast when you should, then feed a poor person for each day of not fasting (2:184).
If you break your engagement or marriage, compensate the woman (2:236-237).
If you estrange your wife, and can’t fast, feed sixty poor people (2:233).
If you divorce your wife with a baby, provide food and clothing for two years (58:3-4).
If you accidentally cause a death, compensate the family, plus two months of fasting (4:92).
If you kill a person, and their family forgives you, compensate the family (2:178).
If you take a loan, pay it back (4:58).
If you take an unwritten loan, leave an equivalent item as a guarantee (2:283).
If people entrust something with you, return it (4:58).
If you set for Hajj and return due to your own health, send an animal offering to Mecca, plus atone through fasting, charity, or worship (2:196).
If you set for Hajj and others prevent you, send an animal offering to Mecca (2:196).
If you break the state of sanctity (Ihram) during Hajj, offer an animal sacrifice (2:196).
If you kill (hunt) an animal during Hajj, offer an equivalent domesticated animal (5:95).
If you publicly mention or admit a bad deed which you did after joining the submitters, you should contribute an equitable charity (9:102-103).
If you wish to confer with the messenger, contribute a charity (58:12).
If you get unowned wealth (ghanimtum) of any type, then 20% of it is for God and for the messenger, and for the relatives, the orphans, the poor, and the traveling alien (8:41, 8:1).
Ok, so now you have all the 19 subcomponents of Zakat (the financial purification). The first two are obligatory for every submitter. The next 17 ones are obligatory only for submitters who did something wrong – Penalty Zakat. Now, among the Penalty Zakat, the blue ones are either personal, or they are facilitated by Democratic States, which means that there is no need for us as community to facilitate them. The purple ones are facilitated by the Custodians of the Sacred Masjid (9:19, 8:34), so we don’t need to facilitate them either, but the Mahdi will eventually end up facilitating them (48:27). The red ones should be facilitated by the messenger or the Congregation Directors whom he puts in charge (4:59). I call these, Public Penalty Zakat, because they are penalties for damages against the whole community of submitters, which is why they have to be facilitated by the messenger as the center of the community (22:78, 59:7), which is why now I am going to explain them further.
Let’s start with the first one:
If you publicly mention or admit a bad deed which you did after joining the submitters, you should contribute an equitable charity (9:102-103). This might include compensation for damages. For example, let’s say that you broke the window of the mosque, then you should pay for it. It can be any other bad deed, even if it is not visibly directed against the community. This is because once you mention it among submitters, it degrades the community (24:19), but once you pay, then your sin is erased. Of course, if you tell a sin which you did before you joined submitters, then we should not request that you pay (64:9), because at that time, you were not part of the community (2:256). That’s between you and God, and God will make you pay (6:120), or maybe you already paid through suffering (42:30), or additional worship, or other means (3:16-17). Also, a sin which you tell to your family, or your husband, or wife does not count as a public confession, because that is a private discussion, and they should never leak that information to the others. They should try to convince you to fix it, but not tell the others. But, if you admit it publicly, then you should pay for it publicly, so that the others know that justice was restored.
Now, the next point:
If you wish to confer with the messenger, you should contribute a charity (58:12). This is because when you take the time of the messenger, you are actually slowing the whole community down (49:5), but if you are ready to atone for it through charity, then it’s ok.
Now, the 19th subcomponent: I left this point last, because it has a lot of weight in the success of submitters. All the other previous points are simply a way of maintaining the community at the same level, but this last point actually grows the community. Of course, it is possible for a community to grow, even without this, but that can only happen at the expense of righteousness (2:79). Without this last point, you can either have a fair community or a growing community (17:83), but you can not have both. Only with this last point, the community can both grow and still remain righteous (9:88). So, let me explain this last point. Here is what the verse says:
If you (ghanimtum) get unowned wealth of any type, then 20% of it is for God and for the messenger, and for the relatives, the orphans, the poor, and the traveling alien (8:41).
But what is this unowned wealth (ghanimtum)? Because it has so many meanings, the English translators of the Quran were forced to translate only one meaning, or another one, or another one, but not all of them at the same time. However, the most comprehensive way to translate it is “unowned wealth”. But what is this unowned wealth? Of course, in the end God owns everything (19:40, 15:23), but for the purposes of testing the humans and Satan in this world (21:111, 67:2), He has retracted His ownership from Earth temporarily (2:30, 19:40), to let us humans see how we will do when we are given responsibility and ownership (33:72). Nevertheless, there is still wealth on earth which is not owned by any human, either because they haven’t owned it yet, or because they lost its ownership. For example, the fish in the sea are unowned by any human. So, fishing is ghanimtum. But, we as submitters almost always get our fish from the supermarkets these days, and not directly from the sea, so let’s cross this out. It’s insignificant for us. Corporations do it, but they are not people to become members of our congregation. Now, the wild animals in the wild are also unowned. So, hunting is ghanimtum, but for the same reasons as with fishing, let’s cross this out. It’s insignificant for us as individual modern submitters. Also, the precious minerals and oil deposits inside the earth are unowned. So, mining is ghanimtum. This is also insignificant for us as individual submitters, so let’s also cross this out. Also, in the past, discoveringunexplored land was ghanimtum, but we have reached all the corners of the earth now, and there is no more unexplored land. So, let’s also cross this out. Also, the spoils of war in the past were unowned wealth, because when you killed the enemy and captured his children (33:26), his children lost the status of free people, and became slaves, and slaves don’t get inheritance, and so the wealth which was left behind by the dead enemy, then did not belong to anyone – it became unowned wealth. It was up for grabs for those who participated in the organized struggle. So, getting spoils of war is ghanimtum. But, because democracies are peace agreements between believers and disbelievers, which I explain in another video, this does not apply to us in democratic countries. So, let’s cross this out also – not applicable in democracies. But, there is a sixth meaning of ghanimtum which applies within democratic countries– It is getting “inheritance” from non-submitters. Because this is a very important case for our democratic circumstances, let me explain it in more detail. There are two main points which I will explain about this. First, why “inheritance” from non-submitters is ultimately not an inheritance, but a reception of unowned wealth, and second, why we should give away 20% from it. And by the way, traditionally, the Muslim scholars have believed both of these (al-Bukhari 6764, 8:41), but they could never explain them (75:19).
But, God blessed me with this knowledge (6:105), so let me explain both of them with one go, from the Quran (75:19). Here is how it works: When a person dies, before his inheritance is distributed, the will of the dead person should be fulfilled (4:12). But if he was a disbeliever, regardless of what his will was before he died, at the moment of death, he changes it. God tells us in verse 23:99, that his true will at the moment of death is to get his property back again. At the moment of death, he says, “My Lord, send me back, so I can do good in the inheritance which I left” (23:99-100). So, he wants his property back first, which automatically means that he doesn’t want anyone else to inherit his property. He hopes to get it back again, and then he thinks that he can give 2.5% of it as charity, and in this way, in the second try, he will be saved. But that’s not how it works. It was 2.5% only for those who accepted all messengers and who believed the Quran (57:28, 28:52-54). But, for all the other people, it is actually 10% (6:160). So, because this disbeliever rejected his corresponding messenger and the Quran, he now will actually have to give 10% to be saved. God would not send the messenger back again (25:76), just so that this disbeliever can get a second chance to accept the messenger (40:50), because it would be unfair to take the messenger out of Heaven. The messenger finished his own test (2:285). And, also God would not reveal the Quran directly to this disbeliever, because he is not qualified for it (74:52). So, if this disbeliever is sent back, he would have to be saved in a world without the Quran and without his corresponding messenger, and in that world, he has to give 10%, instead of 2.5%, which is actually what the Jews and the Christians gave (Genesis 28:20-22, Leviticus 27:32), before the Quran and Muhammad, 10%. So, with 10% Zakat, this disbeliever would be saved (6:160). However, this would be his second time that he is enjoying his property. The first time, he gave nothing (11:16). So, now he would have to give 10% for the first time, and 10% for the second time, which is 20%. So, the true will of this disbeliever when he dies is that he would want to be sent back to earth, get his property back, so he could give 20%, just so he can be saved. So, this is where the 20% comes from. So, to fulfill the true will of the disbeliever, you have to give 20% from his property. However, you can not fulfill his will, unless you get the property first. But he does not want you to have the property, because he wants a second chance. At the same time, God is not going to give it back to him, because he already got enough chances (39:59). So, according to the disbeliever’s will, you shouldn’t get the property, and according to God’s will, the disbeliever shouldn’t get the property either. And so now the property remains without an owner. It has become ghanimtum, unowned property. And because it’s unowned property, whomever can get it, gets it. It just happens today, that according to the rules of democratic countries, they give it to you anyway. So now you got it. It was an inheritance according to your state, but according to the Quran and you, it was ghanimtum, unowned property, which you luckily got, because you live in a state with such rules, where you get it anyway, but you truly received it as unowned property (ghanimtum), not as inheritance. And now that you ended up have it, you can fulfill the will of the dead disbeliever and give 20%, which is why verse 8:41 tells us to give 20% whenever we get unowned property.
And this is the explanation of verse 8:41. The verses says, if you get “inheritance” from non-submitters, you should give 20% of it to God, the messenger, the relatives, the orphans, the needy, and the traveling alien.
Now, if a submitter does not declare this type of “inheritance”, because he does not want the community to know, so that he can keep that 20% for himself, in that case, I can assure you that God will curse him, and Hell is awaiting him. Let me show you here a true story from the Bible to show you what I am talking about:
“The Book of Acts, chapter 5
Now a (submitter) man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. (so they can contribute their due Zakat).
With his wife’s full knowledge, he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest of it and put it at the messengers’ feet.
Then Peter (the messenger) said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received from selling the land?
Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied just to human beings but to God.”
When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died.”
So, no hiding the money (93:11, 40:16), and you can see that in the past the process of Zakat involved sending the money through the messenger to the final destination. The Quran gives us more flexibility about the middle process, but the final destinations of where that money should go is clearly defined, and it can not be changed (10:15). And the final destination, of that money, of that 20%, according to verse 8:41 in the Arabic Quran, word for word, it says that it should go to:
God
The messenger
Relatives
Orphans
The poor
And the traveling alien
Let me explain them one by one: First, what does it mean to give your money to God? Well, first of all, it means, buying and sacrificing animals for God (22:36). However, this is supposed to be done in Mecca (48:25), and we still don’t have authority over Mecca. So, let’s postpone this for the very end of times when the Mahdi frees Mecca (48:27).
Second, it means buying weapons to be used for fighting in the cause of God only (80:60). However, this does not apply for our democratic circumstances, because democracies are peace agreements (4:90, 4:94). So, let’s also postpone this for the very end of times when democracy ends (9:31-33, 48:28).
And now, the third type of giving to God, and the only one applicable in our circumstances are masjids (places of worship), which belong to God alone (72:18). When we spend the money to establish and maintain masjids, that money is given directly to God, because the masjid does not belong to the community, it doesn’t belong to the messenger, and it does not belong to the Congregation Director. It belongs directly to God (72:18). So, in our circumstances, giving the money to God means only two things: establishing masjids, and maintaining masjids.
Now, let’s explain the second point. What does it mean to give the money to the messenger? Well, verse 5:99 says that the ONLY duty of the messenger is to deliver the message. So, the messenger is a messenger only when he is delivering the message, publishing the message. So, giving the money to the messenger does not include giving it to him personally for houses, or cars, or for any personal purpose. It only includes things which have to do with disseminating the message from the messenger to the final listener or reader. This includes, for example, printing Qurans, paying for webpages, online adds, or things like that – any means or tools which help disseminate the message from the messenger to the final recipient. I will personally never accept any payment from any submitter for religious purposes (42:23). God gave me the message for free, and I will preach it for free (3:187). However, when I preach it, it’s still here in front of the camera. It doesn’t travel by itself. It’s to our benefit and other people’s benefit to spend money to help spread the message from here to the final intended recipients, to as many people as possible (7:164).
Now, the remaining money should go to the relatives, orphans, the poor, and the traveling alien (8:41). To enable myself not to coordinate this portion, let me decide on a fixed percentage, so you can do it yourself. Let me set it at 2.5%. Verse 59:7 gives me the authority to divide it in any portions I decide from the permitted categories, but to keep it simple, and enable you to do it yourself, I am deciding on 2.5%. So, from the 20% which you owe, you can give 2.5% directly to the relatives, orphans, the poor, and the traveling alien, and I will not include it in the declaration and reporting. You do it yourself. But, the remaining 17.5%, you have to declare it and spend it only with preapproval or upon the request of your Congregation Director (59:7, 4:59), to ensure that the money is not wasted in projects which don’t work.
So, to conclude, the main point of this video is that from whatever you receive as net-inheritance from a non-submitter, you should give 17.5% for:
establishing masjids
maintaining masjids
for means which help to disseminate the message
And I call these, contributions. And of course, whatever you receive as net-inheritance from a submitter according to the Quranic inheritance rules, all of it belongs to you, because the deceased submitter has already purified that property by declaring and giving away the regular 2.5% Zakat every year.
Now, some haters still might want to argue that I am asking you to give money (63:7), but in fact God is asking you in the Quran to give money in the cause of God (8:41, 9:41, 9:44, 47:38, 9:102-103, 63:10). I personally will never accept any money for delivering the message. God provides for me (42:19), either through trade, or previous investments, or my professional skills which I might serve as a non-messenger (25:20), like in a daily job (18:77), or even through what my own family might choose to help me with (42:23), and all of these are my human right (41:6), just like they are your human right (2:198, 62:10).
What is the only authorized form of organized religion in this world?
What sort of structure should such an organization have?
What are the proper channels of communication between those people?
How do the finances flow in that organization?
Who, what, where, when, and how to do it?
And, how to join a correctly organized religion?
But first, let me give you a brief history of organized religion.
Background
God sent religion through Abraham, but He sent organized religion through Moses. So, the first time in history that organized religion was established correctly was at the time of Moses, and this lasted until after Aaron and the 70 Judges, when the Children of Israel lost the Ark of the Covenant. The second time that organized religion was established correctly was at the time of David, and this lasted until after Solomon when the Kingdom of Israel split in two kingdoms. The third time that organized religion was established correctly was at the time of the Apostles of Jesus, and this lasted until after their death when people started to call themselves ‘Christian’. The fourth time that organized religion was established correctly was when Muhammed migrated to Medina, and this lasted several decades until the Battle of Karbala when the Muslims split in two factions. By the way, God sent many other messengers in the past but they did not organize the religion. They did not organize it because their job was to expose false religions first, and before they got a sufficient number of believers to organize the true religion, they got rejected. So, in the whole history of the world, there were only four cases with the right circumstances to establish organized religion correctly with God’s authorization. And now the time has come for the fifth case, and this time it will last until the End of the World. However, let me clarify that I am not talking about organizing all aspects of religion. Religion will still be mostly an individual pursuit, a personal lifestyle. I am only talking about organizing the public aspects of religion, only what is necessarily shared, and what brings benefits for all. So, how do we set up a correctly organized religion? What type of political system should organized religion have?
Political System
The political system of a properly organized religion is not a democracy, not communism, not an autocracy, not a republic, not a business, not a corporation, not a partnership, and not an NGO. These systems function even when people are disbelievers. The correct political system should automatically fail when people are disbelievers, and it should only work when people are believers. The only political system which succeeds only when people are believers is a peaceful religious army. This religious army will be without weapons, because we pay taxes, so let the police do their job. I will never use or authorize weapons for religious purposes. I know that God allows weapons in general, but they are useless for religious purposes in democratic circumstances. So, the political system of a correctly organized religion today resembles an army without weapons, and as such, it has a top-down hierarchy.
Hierarchical Structure
Now, let me show you the hierarchical structure of a properly organized religion. I looked at all the hierarchical positions mentioned in the Quran, and here they are:
King (Malik).
Prophet (Nabi).
Messenger (Rasul).
Successor (Khalifa).
Director/someone in charge (Emir).
Custodian/Protector (Wali).
Scholar (Alim).
Teacher (Mulla).
Leader (Imam).
Submitter (Muslim).
Dependent Submitter (Abd).
So, these are all the positions mentioned in the Quran, but do they all apply in today’s circumstances?
Let’s see:
Prophet? – There are no more prophet’s today – Muhammad was the last prophet – so let’s remove that position. This is not an active position anymore.
Khalifa? – Khalifa is a political position. It has been replaced by Presidents and Prime-Ministers, and Parliament Members. Let’s remove that.
Custodian? This is only applicable if you rule over Mecca, which we are not today. So, let’s remove that.
Scholar (Alim)? – replaced by scientists. Let’s remove that.
Teacher (Mulla)? – Replaced by professors and school teachers. Let’s remove that.
Leader? – Actually this is not really a formal position. Anyone can lead unofficially. The Quran says that we are leaders of our children. Imam simply means ‘the first’. Anytime you happen to lead the contact prayer you are a leader, but once it is finished, you are not anymore. You can be a leader even when there are no organizational structures in place. It is a description of a temporary action. So, let’s remove that.
Now, we are left with only these five positions:
King
Messenger
Director
Submitter
and Dependent Submitter
So, let’s describe these positions:
The King is God.
The Messenger is the Quran, or a human being authorized by God to promote the Quran.
Directors, or more specifically, Congregation Directors, are submitters who are put in charge of a local congregation within a city and their authority is limited only on collective religious aspects, but they do not have authority over the individual lives, beliefs, and opinions of submitters. They are appointed through a God-given system recommended in the Quran, which takes into account qualities like Quranic knowledge, charitable life experience, and success in promoting the message.
Submitters are people who Observe the Contact Prayer and give the Obligatory Charity.
DependentSubmitters are submitters who are incapable of joining the organization directly for reasons like language difficulties, internet difficulties, people under the age of 18, people with serious health difficulties or mental difficulties, or any similar difficulty. They communicate with the religious organization through another submitter, but not directly.
So, here is how the hierarchical structure looks like:
So, as you can see, this hierarchical structure looks like bricks in one wall, and that is exactly what God calls it in the Quran – bricks in one wall.
Meetings
The first criterion which makes an organized religion the correct religion is its meetings – the time of meetings, the purpose of meetings, and the place of meetings. The only authorized meeting decreed for submitters is the Friday Congregational Prayer. Unity of submitters happens through the Friday Congregational Prayer. Don’t let people fool you by promising you unity through other means. God did not specify for us any other meetings. If people invite you to other gatherings, or other meetings, other conferences, those are simply distractions. On the Day of Judgment, there will be a list of questions which you will be asked about, and one of them will be, “Did you attend the Friday Prayer?” There is nothing there in that list which will ask you, “Did you go to that Saturday Quranic Study, or did you go to that annual conference, or did you go to that monthly religious meeting?” They will not be items in your record. They are simply irrelevant distractions. The Quran says that there is nothing good about other religious conferences except for those with the purpose of gathering charity, or righteous works, or making peace among the people. Some other people think that you can be a submitter by hanging out with other submitters during Saturdays (usually when they don’t have to go to work). Saturdays are not a substitute for the Friday Obligatory Prayers. In fact, God’s prediction in verse 16:124 is that those who meet on Saturdays, as a religious meeting, they will always end up disputing with one another. The only authorized meeting we attend is the Friday Congregational Prayer, and this is how we organize. Organizing in the cause of God is attending the Friday Congregational Prayer. So, when the call to prayer is made, the Quran tells us to hasten to the commemoration of God, and the commemoration of God happens in God’s mosques. I am only talking about those mosques, those masjids where God alone is commemorated, without commemorating anyone else in them. If there is no such mosque near your location, I provide the Friday sermons for you online, temporarily. I give you the detailed religious justification for the permission to do it online in another video, but the main point which I am making here is that if you are a believer, you will never find yourself in a situation where you can not attend the Friday Prayer. So, now that the religion is properly organized, the Friday Prayers will always be available for you, at least online, if not in location. Therefore, attending the Friday Sermons is obligatory and possible for every submitter, anywhere in the world. And, it does not matter how busy you think you are, or whatever opportunity you might think you are losing, or whether your boss might not like it, or whatever unreasonable fears you might have. What God provides for you is far better than any business or entertainment you might be pursuing.
Obligatory Charity
The second criterion which makes an organized religion correct is the correct financial flow – charity. Who gives it? Who receives it? Who collects and distributes it? When? How much? If this is done right, then we have the correct organized religion – we belong to the correct community. Charity is community, and community is charity. Whoever thinks that he can organize a community without organized charity has fooled himself. A moral organization does not exist without charity.
Many examples in the Quran which support the idea of COLLECTIVE charity. For example, the Quran mentions how some people in the community used to criticize Muhammad’s distribution of charity if they were not given from it, but if they were given from it, they would be satisfied. In another instance, it mentions how some of them would actually issue a promissory note to the collectors of charity to pay it later, because they might not have had the grains and animal stocks for the moment with them. In yet another instance, God informs us how the people in charge would enforce Zakat in the community, when someone became negligent, and how the submitters would be able to identify their allies based on who gave the collective charity, because it was a public organized thing.
The main reason for organizing a religion is that the purity of the community must be endangered from the inside. Moses did not organize it as long as his enemy was an outside enemy – Pharaoh. But after the Children of Israel were freed, when they moved to the desert, their enemy was within, and Moses organized the religion with the Ark of the Covenant and the Tabernacle and the Sabbath, to ensure the purity of the community. Similarly, during Muhammad’s time, only after they moved to Medina, they organized the community, because many tribes who were pursuing their own interests joined and endangered the purity of the community. Similarly, during our time, the purity of the community is being endangered from the inside by ignorant people. And they are exactly the ones who organized incorrectly and prematurely. They tried many organizational structures. They tried social media groups, half-secret societies, social movements, pretend masjids, friendship rings, heritage conferences, Quranic philosophy groups, NGOs, liberal movements, hate groups, blogger groups, and many other approaches of organizing themselves. All of them had more problems then they had people. All of them had something in common. None of them collected and distributed Obligatory Charity, and that is bad organizing. If a style of organizing ourselves is not based on how the Quran tells us to organize, then of course, it will cause problems, or not progress at all. God says that the community of submitters is one community, and this can only be achieved through a united charity process. United charity means united community.
So, even though it was not my plan to organize the religion, now I organized it because it has already been badly organized. In this way, I am not really putting any burden on you. God is actually relieving the bad burden from you. This is why I am organizing it and Rashad Khalifa did not. The difference between Rashad and me is like the difference between Abraham and Moses. Abraham brought the religion, but Moses organized it. Abraham taught the people how to give the obligatory charity, but Moses taught the people how to collect and distribute the charity. Abraham taught the people how to pray, but Moses taught the people how to pray together. An individual is purified through the rituals of Abraham, but a community is purified through the rituals of Moses. Of course, we all follow the same religion, and the religion did not change, but the circumstances changed, and the new circumstances don’t just require religion, they require organized religion. The difference in circumstances is that Abraham did not have to deal with ignorant organizers of the true religion, while Moses had to deal with ignorant organizers of the true religion. So, organized religion did not make sense for Abraham, but it made sense for Moses. It did not make sense for Rashad, but it makes sense for me.
Someone might say, “But wouldn’t it be better if we just gave the Obligatory Charity individually to our families and relatives, because we know better who really needs it?” Well, not in this case, because poverty is mostly a condition of the whole family or whole relatives. If we just gave directly to our families and relatives, then the rich people would usually give to their rich families and the poor people would usually give to the poor families, and there would still be whole families who are poor, and God says in verse 59:7 that this is not the best way to distribute charities. It is not enough for the money to just move around within a social class. It also has to move from one social class to another. Also, Obligatory Charity is not only about alleviating poverty. It is also about creating that bond, that community trust, by giving and taking. I mean unity can only be achieved through love, and one of the signs of love is exchange of material things, and that is what we should do.
Who are we?
The name of our religion is Submission, and we are submitters. The Quran says that the only religion approved by God is Submission. If you want to know who belongs with us, and who does not belong with us, first you have to know what defines our group. We do not define ourselves based on common scripture, like the protestant churches and the Quranist organizations, or based on common leadership, like the Catholic Church and the Shia organizations, or based on common tradition, like the Sunnis and the Orthodox Churches, or based on common ethnicity, like the Jewish organizations. We do not define ourselves based on common nationality like the Russian Orthodox Church, or Anglican Communion, or Turkish Diyanet, or Egyptian Ministry of Endowment, or Uzbekistani Muslim Spiritual Directorate, or Evangelical Church of Germany, or Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs. We also do not define ourselves based on political views, like the Progressive Muslims or the Liberal Christians, or the Christian Right, or the Islamists. We also do not define ourselves based on common doctrine, like the Baptist Church or the Methodist Church, or the Seventh Day Adventists Church. We do not even define ourselves based on common belief. We do not call ourselves ‘believers’. The Quran tells us not to do that.
Now, let me tell you based on what we define ourselves. We define ourselves based on common worship. This is the only criterion which makes sense to define a religious organization, because God says in the Quran, “I did not create the humans except to worship Me,” to worship God. And if you have a common way of worshiping God, like us, then you have absolutely no reason to divide, and you are with us.
So, if you want to know whether someone belongs in our group, you have to ask him three questions:
Who do you worship?
When do you worship?
How do you worship?
If all the answers are the same as ours, then we belong in the same group. If he says, “I worship God. I worship Him at Dawn, Noon, Afternoon, Evening, and Night. I worship him exactly like Abraham worshiped Him.” Then, he belongs in our group. We worship together. Forget the division, even if his religious doctrine is different, even if he has strange beliefs, even if you have different political views, even if he understands the Quran differently. See, if he has the wrong beliefs, he is wrong. But, we don’t define our group based on belief. We define our group based on worship. Submission is a form of worship, not a form of belief. Belief is between him and God, and it is not part of Organized Religion. This also should serve as an explanation to the Christians who criticize the Muslims for having specific prayers. They say, “Why can’t we pray anyway we want, with our heart?” Well, if you are going to ski, ski anyway you want. But if you are going to play football, you have to coordinate with the team. Football is a team sport, and the Contact Prayers are a team worship – worshiping God together. You can still have your personal worship of God, how you feel, but that’s not part of Organized Religion. And this is what the Christians don’t understand. They think that Jesus updated or changed or maybe nullified the rules of Moses. But the reality is that Moses brought Organized Religion, while Jesus preached individual salvation. I mean, why would Jesus preach organized religion, when God had decided to take organized religion away from the Jews, and why would Moses preach individual salvation, when God had decided to save the Children of Israel all together as a group? So, of course what Moses preached and what Jesus preached seem different, because they dealt with two different aspects of religion. One of them dealt with the collective public aspect, the other dealt with the individual aspects. In this video, I focus on the collective aspects – organized religion.
So, the Contact Prayer, a specific form of organized worship of God, is half of the collective worship. The other half of collective worship is the Collective Obligatory Charity – Zakat. If someone does the Contact Prayer, but does not agree to give COLLECTIVE Obligatory Charity, from now on, he is half a submitter, a dividing submitter, a weak submitter, an ignorant submitter, a coward submitter, a cheap submitter, a selfish submitter, and an unsupportive submitter.
Membership
To be a member of this religious organization, you do not need to change your name, nor get baptized, nor get circumcised, nor get uncircumcised, nor declare your belief in any messenger, nor declare your disbelief in any messenger, nor declare any kind of belief. Your belief is between you and God. You do not need to join any app, nor join any social media group, nor declare your loyalty to anyone. To be a member of this organization, according to the Quran, you only need to fulfill two requirements:
Observe the Contact Prayer, and
Give the Collective Obligatory Charity.
Now, because these are collective religious rituals, you are responsible to do them, and prove to the others that you do them. You prove to the others that you do the Contact Prayer by attending the Friday Congregational Prayer once a week, and you prove to the others that you give the Obligatory Charity so that other submitters can see that you belong with them. So, if you do these two, you are in. If you do not do these two, you are out. Moses and Muhammad excluded anyone who did not give the Collective Obligatory Charity and did not do the Contact Prayer. On the other hand, Moses and Muhmmad did not exclude from the community anyone for having the wrong opinions, but God will exclude them on the Last Day. Of course, if you are in, and you do evil deeds, we will pressure you to pay a compensation equitably. However, if you do not do these two, you get kicked out, regardless of how good you are. Simple. These are the two religious rituals which determine who is part of the community and who is not part of the community. No people should have the right to decide who gets in and who gets expelled. It is determined only based on these two religious rituals. And this is very clear in the Quran.
Chapter 9, verse 11 says – and this is the main verse of this video – It says:
“If they repent and (1) observe the Salat (Contact Prayers)and (2) give the Zakat (Collective Obligatory Charity),then they are your brethren in religion. This is how we explain the revelations for people who know.”
So, organized religion is two things:
Attending Jumu`ah COLLECTIVELY and
Giving Zakat COLLECTIVELY.
Don’t let anyone fool you with any other organized thing, no matter how promising it appears. Again, remember, if you wish to join the properly organized religion, here is what it means, here is what you agree to do together: Jumu`ah, Zakat; Jumu`ah, Zakat; Jumu`ah, Zakat; Jumu`ah, Zakat. That’s it. Nothing else. The rest of the religious aspects, like fasting and Hajj are personal. They are obligatory, but personal. They are part of religion, but not part of Organized Religion, which why we find them mentioned separately in the Quran, while Salat and Zakat are almost always mentioned together.
Why should you organize with us?
You should organize with us because God orders you to organize. Here is what God says in the Quran:
“O you who believed, when you are told, “Organize in the cause of GOD,” why do you become heavily attached to the material things? Have you chosen this worldly life in place of the Hereafter? The materials of this world, compared to the Hereafter, are nil.” (9:38)
“Unless you organize, He will commit you to painful retribution and substitute other people in your place…” (9:39)
“You shall readily organize, light or heavy, and strive with your money (collective charity) and your lives (collective prayer) in the cause of GOD. This is better for you, if you only knew.” (9:41)
why Zakat (Obligatory Charity) should be a publicly verifiable process
why it should be given from loanable wealth, and which portions of wealth are loanable
why it is 2.5%
And all of these will be found and presented to us from the Quran, the whole Quran, and nothing but the Quran. But first, let’s see where Zakat fits as a subcomponent of charity.
Types of Possible Charities
According to the Quran, we can divide the charities into Obligatory (4:77, 98:5, 9:5) or Voluntary (9:79), and Private (2:274, 13:22) or Public (2:274, 13:22). And by combining them we get four types of charities. So, we can have:
Private Obligatory Charity,
Public Obligatory Charity,
Private Voluntary Charity,
Public Voluntary Charity.
Public Voluntary Charity is any voluntary charity you might give through a human-made organization, which is allowed according to the Quran, but most of the money you give goes to waste, usually for strengthening those organizations, instead of the final goal.
Private Voluntary Charity is any charity you give yourself directly to those who need it.
Private Obligatory Charity is charity which you owe to certain people simply for the fact that you have been connected to them by God (9:8, 9:10, 4:36), like your parents, your spouse, your children. The amount which you owe to this group of people is as much as they need (4:34, 4:5, 6:151, 17:23, 31:14), if they don’t have it. And it is called obligatory, or a duty, “haqahu” (17:26) because it does not depend on how much you want to give, but on how much they need, and what everyone needs is at least food, clothes, and shelter, a basic living. By the way whenever the orders for “haqahu”, Private Obligatory Charity, are given in the Quran, they are given in singular “Thee shall give haqahu…” (17:26, 6:141), indicating that it is private matter, but when Zakat in general is mentioned, the order is always given in plural “You (plural) shall give Zakat…” (2:43, 2:110,…).
So, again, regarding the Private Obligatory Charity, if you have basic living conditions for yourself, and either your parents or your spouse or your children do not have food and shelter, you are just not a good human being. Let’s not even go any further. And in many cases in the civilized world, that job is done by the states through pensions, retirement homes, childcare centers or whatever means they have for older people or younger people, and that is fine in many cases (2:233), but it is your responsibility to know that they got what they needed, and if they did not, then you should do it (29:8). Then your siblings, and the children of your siblings, the blind, the crippled, you must share your food with them, if they ever need it (24:61). It’s an obligation, not voluntary (24:61). As you can see, the amount of the Private Obligatory Charity depends on how much the people around you need, not on a specific percentage which you want to give. If they don’t have food, and they need to eat every single day at your house, then that is how it is going to be. It’s an obligation. The Quran tells us that they have a full right to eat in your house (24:61). Of course, they must come to your house with your permission (24:61), and do the Contact Prayer when you do it, or they should leave, if the house is fully yours (22:41), but when they are in it, you are obliged to share your food with them if they are hungry, and you have food (24:61). Perhaps a better translation of Private Obligatory Charity “haqahu” would be to translate it as “Obligatory Sharing”, because it mostly has to do with everyday perishable items, like fruits, cooking, and so on, and one of its purposes is to avoid wasting perishable things (6:141), which is why we share them with them on same day when we ourselves get them. This is why this part of charity comes from our income, because we don’t wait to see how much of it is left before we share it with whom we have a duty to share it with. When we have it, they should have it, and this is different from Public Obligatory Charity, because in Public Obligatory Charity, first you wait to see whether enough was left from your income (2:219), and then you calculate a certain amount annually.
By the way, Private Obligatory Charity and Public Obligatory Charity are both subcomponents of Zakat. So Zakat (Obligatory Charity) consists of Private Obligatory Charity and Public Obligatory Charity. Zakat is whatever is obligatory. Traditionally, only the public part of Zakat was labeled as Zakat, because religious authorities were only interested in that, because they collected it, and they did the labeling. However, in reality there is one Zakat, and it has two subcomponents, the public and the private, just like the Contact Prayers which consists of the Public Friday Contact Prayer (62:9-11), and the other daily contact prayers.
So now, let’s talk about the Public Obligatory Charity. Public Obligatory Charity should be done in coordination with other submitters, and through the authorized public structures, just like the Public Friday Sermon should be done as a congregation with other submitters. When I say authorized public structures, I am talking about structures authorized by God (4:59). And in case there is no authorized public structure in place, you give that portion to the same categories to whom you owed your Private Obligatory Charity. So, depending on which option is available, you give the Zakat in that option, but if both options are available, you have to fulfill both (3:200, 4:59). So, if you don’t have a family, for example, or relatives and friends, of course, you can not give Private Zakat. Similarly, if you don’t live with a community of submitters, you can not give the Public Zakat, and instead you give that portion as Private Zakat. And this where Public Zakat was not available was the case for all submitters who lived in democratic countries throughout the last century. Democratic states do not institute the Public Zakat, and therefore it should be given as Private Zakat, unless internet exists. Internet has changes the situation once again. Since the internet, we can live in a society of non-submitters, while at the same time being able to unite through the internet with other submitters. And because now we can do that, the Quran tells us that we should do that (9:41, 3:200), and since we should, we did. So, internet enabled Public Zakat because it once again enables the public verifiability of Zakat, which is a mandatory aspect of Public Zakat.
Verifiability
God tells us in verse 9:18 that the people who do not do the Contact Prayer and give Zakat should not be allowed to frequent God’s masjids. Now, let’s say you are in charge for a masjid’s maintenance. How would you know whether someone who comes in there observes the Contact Prayer and Zakat. Of course, you will be able to know whether the person does the Contact Prayer, because you would see him doing it at the masjid, but you can not see his Zakat, unless there is a way to verify it. This means that it is impossible to apply verse 9:18 unless Zakat is done through a verifiable process, and this means that Zakat must be verifiable, as it always was. So, one submitter should be able to know whether the other submitter gave his Public Obligatory Charity.
And this is how submitter are able to identify each other. Let’s say that someone in social media said that he is a submitter. Is this how you would know him? No. Verse 5:53 says that simply claiming or swearing that someone belongs with us is not sufficient to consider him part of our community. Verse 17:36 says that we should not accept any information, unless we verify it for ourselves. So, we do not accept anyone’s statement that he is a submitter until we verify it. And the Quran tells us exactly how to verify it. In verse 9:11. it says, if they repent and observe the Contact Prayers and give the Obligatory Charity (Zakat), THEN THEY ARE YOUR BRETHREN IN RELIGION. So, it is not possible to know whether someone belongs to the community of submitters, unless we can verify that they did the Contact Prayers and Zakat. The process of verification for contact prayers already exists through the weekly Friday Prayer, but there must be a second verification process, which is to verify whether they gave Zakat or not. So, Zakat is like a passport which is used to allow someone to join the community of submitters. We can not enter without that passport. You can claim that you are a submitter all you want, but if you don’t have that ‘passport’, you have not entered the community of submitters yet. And this is confirmed in other verses, like verse 5:55, and verse 9:5.
Now, how this Zakat verification process is administered is not that important. For example, in the past, it was simply done through two Zakat collectors, with a log book, who witnessed it. In the Internet age, it can be slightly different, and if electronic money becomes the main form of transactions around the world, that might still be slightly different, but the important thing is that it should always be verifiable, and this verification process is ensured by someone who is put in charge for that, in your local or online congregation (4:59, 42:38, 22:41). So, according to the Quran, Public Obligatory Charity should be verifiable (9:11) and in coordination with someone in charge for it (42:38, 4:59). And by the way, this is how Zakat maintained the “Obligatory” label. Many other things are obligatory like greetings for example (4:86), but they have not received this reputation as “Obligatory”, because when the ancient submitters said “Obligatory” in relation to Zakat, they mostly meant “Enforced” (19:55, 22:41), like taxes. It is an enforced ritual in the community of submitters. This does not mean that our religion goes by force (2:256), because if anyone does not want, he is absolutely free to leave the religion at any time, but he can not be part of the same religion and not give Zakat. This is why the word Zakat in Arabic means “purification”, because it is a precondition for the people to purify their wealth to be allowed to join and belong with submitters.
So, if anyone is in charge for administering a group of people, regardless of the type of group, if he does not enforce the Public Zakat, he is administrating the group unjustly, and the group will eventually fail, when the hype is gone, or it will constantly have hate and problems, and with this understanding in mind, we can see how verse 22:78 makes more sense now: It says:
“You shall strive for the cause of GOD as you should strive for His cause. He has chosen you and has placed no hardship on you in practicing your religion – the religion of your father Abraham. He is the one who named you “Submitters” originally, that the messenger shall serve as a witness among you, and you shall serve as witnesses among the people. (Witnesses about what?) Therefore, you shall observe the Contact Prayers (Salat) and give the obligatory charity (ZAKAT), and hold fast to GOD; He is your Lord, the best Lord and the best Supporter.”.
Sources of Zakat
In order to know the sources from which Zakat is given, all we need to do is to see from what sources charity is given, and that also applies to Zakat, because we already established that Zakat is the obligatory subcomponent of charity, and whichever Quranic rule applies to charity, it also applies to Zakat. According to ten different verses in the Quran, charity, which includes Zakat, should be given from moveable wealth (2:177, 2:261, 2:262, 2:264, 2:265, 2:274, 4:38, 9:103, 51:19, 70:24), and the word used in these verses is “malahu” which in Arabic includes all types of wealth except for land and homes. The land and homes are distinguished from “malahu”, from the movable wealth, in verses 33:27, 59:8, 2:267. And by the way, we know that the word “malahu” means all types of movable wealth, and not just income, because this word is used in other verses where it can not mean anything else except wealth. For example, in chapter 4, verse 6, and in chapter 4 verse 10, it refers to the wealth which orphans inherited from their parents. This cannot possibly be income. Orphans do not work to get income. They inherit wealth from their parents. Also, verse 155, in chapter 2 makes a distinction between wealth and harvest/crops (income). It says that you might be tested with loss of wealth, lives, and crops (harvest/income). Here again, we see that there is a difference between wealth and income. Verse 33, in Chapter 33 tells the wives of prophet Muhammad to stay in their homes and give Zakat. Well, if they stayed in their homes, they did not have income, but they still had to give Zakat. That’s because they had wealth. Their movable wealth was either inherited from their parents, or given as a dowry, or from their earlier incomes, or as a gift.
So, now we established that charity, which includes Zakat, should be given from movable wealth. So, now let me present to you two verses which specifically mention zakat. Verse 92:18 says that we should give from our movable wealth (from malahu) for our purification (for zakat).
And here comes the verse which stamps and specifies this issue even more, by directly mentioning the word “Zakat”. Verse 30:39 says that what you give for usury to increase your movable wealth, it will not increase with God, but if you give Zakat (from that same wealth), seeking God’s pleasure, you will receive your reward manifold.
So, according to this verse, Zakat should come from loanable wealth, because whatever you can give as a loan for usury, you can also give it as Zakat (2:280). And loanable wealth is a big part of movable wealth. Loanable wealth is the uninvested and the unnecessary wealth, because you can only loan what is not absolutely necessary for you, and what you did not already invest. So, this means that business investments, like shares in a corporation, and your last income should be also excluded from Zakat, because they are not loanable, and your last income should be excluded because you still don’t know how much of it you will need for your Private Obligatory Charity, for provisions for yourself, your children, your spouse, and your parents, and potentially your relatives and friends. Only after you receive the next income, you can be sure how much of your previous income is left. And this exclusion of the last income is given in verse 2:219 which says, “They ask you what to give to charity: say, “The excess.” “The excess” means “what is left”, and only your previous incomes can qualify as “what is left”, but not your last income, because you still don’t know if enough will be left from it.
There is one final exception given in the Quran. Verse 2:262 tells us not to do harm when giving charity. For example, if you have a phone, you can not divide one fortieth (2.5%) of it and give it as charity. It would do harm to the phone. Or if you have 20 sheep, you can not give one fortieth of them, unless you cut one of them in half, which would destroy the other half as well. So, unless you have 40 sheep or more, or 40 phones or more, you do not owe Zakat for them. This is to avoid harm, which is a Quranic requirement (2:262). You must have 40 or more units from any of the things, in order for them to qualify for Zakat.
So, if we take all the verses of Quran into consideration we can conclude this:
Public Zakat is 1 from any 40 units of any type of wealth, excluding
land,
homes,
business investments,
corporate stock,
and your last income.
Everything else is included, like gold, silver, other precious metals, money in any form (including savings, money in your wallet, in the bank, cryptocurrencies, loans given to others (since loans prove that they were loanable wealth)), valuable products (3:92), anything from which you have 40 or more units of that – for example 40 or more dollars, 40 or more sheep, and so on.
The Amount
So, we already said that the amount of Public Obligatory Charity is one fortieth, or 2.5% of the specified types of your wealth, but how do we know that 2.5% is the correct amount? We can extract this exact percentage from the Quran. Here is how: Verse 6:120 says that those who commit sins will definitely have to pay for them. So, there is no way to Paradise without being completely purified from our sins. And to be purified completely, it means that you have to give up everything, 100% of your wealth, because ultimately we do not deserve anything, because everything good comes from God (4:79). However, in verse 6:160, God says that whoever does a good deed receives the reward for ten, which means that we can reach the same necessary purification with ten times less giving, with 10%. So according to this verse, if we give 10%, God will consider it as 100%, and this 10% has been the amount from the time of Abraham until Muhammad, and even the Jews until this day consider it to be 10%. So, for people before Muhammad to be saved, they had to deserve at least 10% of what God gave them (34:45). However, knowing that the generations after Muhammad were not as strong in belief as generations before Muhammad (56:13-14), God, the Merciful (1:1), made it easier for us (8:66), and revealed in sura 28, verses 52-54 that He will double the rewards for anyone who believes in the Quran. This means that we can now completely purify our wealth by giving half as much, 5%. But there is one last reduction which came to us through the Quran. In verse 57:28, God informs us that He will double the rewards for anyone who believes in His messenger, and here He is talking about any living messenger so far. It’s easy to believe in messengers who have gone to people in the past; even the Jews believe in them. The challenge and the double reward is to believe in the messengers which were sent to us (2:285). So, if we believe in the messengers which are truly sent by God to us, then we can completely purify our wealth by giving half as much as 5% which is 2.5%. And this is where the 2.5% comes from. So, when we give 2.5%, it is doubled if we believe in God’s messenger (57:28), and then doubled again if we believe in the Quran (28:52-54), and then multiplied tenfold because God rewards every good deed tenfold (6:160), and our 2.5% now has become 100%, which is the precondition to make it to Heaven. So 2.5% x 2 x 2 x 10 = 100%.
Someone might wonder why did we say earlier that we need to purify only some types of our wealth, when we can clearly see here that we need to purify all our wealth to make it to Heaven. Well, the types of wealth which are not loanable are automatically purified. For example, if we have a piece of land, the birds of the sky will eat from it, and the insects and wild animals will use it, and it will beautify the view of passersby, and so on, and that is charity. So, we don’t give Zakat from land because it was already given. Also, regarding homes, for example – we share them with our family members (24:61), and that is charity (2:215,), and it promotes modesty (33:33), enabling us not to roam around the streets (7:74), and all these are charity (59:9, 33:33), which is why we do not need to pay Zakat from our homes. So, the Zakat for your home is hospitability (59:9) within what is legal (2:235). There is also Zakat for our bodies. Even our bodies are wealth (2:247, 12:20, 4:92, 58:4). The souls are the true us (39:42), but our bodies are part of our wealth, and the Zakat for our bodies is fasting during the month of Ramadan (2:184) which is refraining from 2.5% of annual bodily pleasures (2:187), and this purification of our body is done once a year (9:36, 2:185), and as you can see, even though we have purified our bodies during the last year, we need to purify the same bodies again during this year, and this brings me to the cycle of Zakat. The Zakat cycle is every year, because it takes a year for the wealth to become impure again, and this is indicated in verse 9:28 which mentions how the commandment to prevent idol worshipers from approaching the Sacred Masjid came as a commandment to be implemented “after this year” which is how long it would take them to have their wealth impure again. So, the Public Obligatory Charity is given every lunar year, and it starts from whenever you decide to join the submitters, and then it repeats every lunar year. Of course, the Zakat for the perishable things like fruits, vegetables, and milk, should be given on the day of harvest (6:141), so they don’t go to waste (6:141), but the Zakat for the things which last longer than one year like our bodies, gold, silver, money, cattle, etc., that subcomponent of Zakat should be given once a year (9:28, 9:36, 2:135, 22:78).
The Abrahamic Religious Practices as Double Confirmation
Some people who have not examined the Quran with a complete approach might choose to understand a few of the verses presented in this video differently. However, there is another way to prove that Zakat, as presented in this video, is correct. Here is how:
The Quran informs us that Zakat is a religious practice which God instituted through prophet Abraham (21:72-73, 2:127-128), and then God guaranteed that He will keep it as a preserved tradition in practice among the descendants of Abraham (43:28, 16:123, 22:78, 42:13). This means that whatever we find in the Quran about Zakat must already exist at least somewhere in the world as a practical tradition. I am not talking about words and books (31:6, 68:37); I am talking about the actual practice in the field. I am talking about the religious practices of Abraham guaranteed by God to be preserved. And these Abrahamic religious practices are Salat (21:73), Zakat (21:73), Fasting (2:183), and Hajj (3:97). So, if anyone thinks that we should understand the Quranic verses about Zakat in a different way, he should also be able to show us from real life where such a type of Zakat existed among the descendants of Abraham throughout history and now. And the Zakat, as presented in this video, has been and is still in continuous practice in many places among the descendants of Abraham. Everything I presented here, you can find it as a tradition at least somewhere in the world. So any principles about Zakat can only be correct, if they are old and continuous. Of course, this rule only applies to the Abrahamic religious practices (Salat, Zakat, Fasting, and Hajj), but not for the other things in religion. And in agreement with this rule, this video does not present any new religious principles about Zakat. It simply shows us where to find them in the Quran.
Of course, everything in this video is concluded directly from the Quran alone, but it happens that the Abrahamic tradition and the Quran agree in this issue, as God promised Abraham. And this preservation becomes even more amazing, realizing that the Zakat details were kept intact throughout history, regardless of the fact that the people who carried those practices were more often disbelievers than believers, and they could never explain from the Quran why the details of Zakat are the way they are. For example, they could never explain why Zakat is 2.5%, and so on, and unfortunately they were convinced that you can not find these in the Quran, but this video shows us that you can find even the smallest details about Zakat in the Quran, because the Quran is complete and fully detailed in religious matters (6:113-114), and it actually also guides us on how to extend the Abrahamic practices in new circumstances which Abraham did not experience, like our circumstance which is a circumstance with internet and democracy, and cars, and bicycles, and stock markets, and paper money and so on (57:4).
The Process of Zakat and the Receivers
In the Quran, Zakat is called Zakat only in the moment when your wealth leaves your hand (purification from it), but in the moment when it gets into the hands of the poor, it is called Sadaqah (a good deed) (9:60, 9:58), and there may be steps in between, but the final recipients of Sadaqah which came from Zakat should always be
the poor,
the needy,
the workers who collect it,
those who are close to conversion,
to emancipate the dependents,
to those in sudden debt,
in the cause of God,
and to the traveler or immigrant (9:60).
This has always been common knowledge among the Muslim scholars.
And the distribution steps are not given in the Quran because they change. The internet has given us even more options regarding the distribution steps from Zakat to Sadaqah. For example, one option which we are implementing right now enables you to be both the giver and the distributor of Zakat. So you can give Zakat as Sadaqah directly to those who need it, as long as there is a way for other believers in the community to verify it, and internet has enabled it. And even this will be constantly updated depending on which distribution steps are deemed the best for the circumstances, and there might be several options available simultaneously to allow you to choose the most suitable one for you, and these are simply administrative issues, but the unchangeable religious aspects are in the Quran, and two of important aspects are that Zakat has to finally reach the needy categories mentioned in verse 9:60, and it has to be verifiable.
The Side Benefits of Public Obligatory Charity
Someone might say, “Why should zakat be a Public Obligatory Charity when private charity removes more sins than public charity (2:271)?” Well, during Zakat, you do not make your charity public. The person who is responsible for the Zakat system makes it public. The purpose is to inform the others that you belong with them, and it is not bragging, because you did not do something exemplary like in the cases of voluntary charity. You only fulfilled the obligation like everyone else in the same community. And of course, we should make sure not to humiliate the poor people who received it, and that part can be kept private, but the fact that you gave the Zakat is better to be kept public, because the purpose of Zakat is not only charity; it has so many other purposes. One of the biggest purposes is the unity of submitters which can only be achieved with Public Zakat (5:12, 2:40). We can not leave our unity at the mercy of social media (4:139). We are not sheep. Verse, 2:104, says “O you who believe, do not say “Raa`ena” “Shepherd us”, but say, “Unzurna” “Watch over us”, and you can sense how even submitters act like sheep when using social media. First they flock in one group, then they flock to another group, and so on (4:83).
The other purpose of Zakat is to help submitters connect with each other. They can know about each other, promoting proper marriages, and so on. The only case of a marriage described in the Quran is the marriage of Moses, and he found his wife during a charitable deed, and that is the best occasion to find someone to marry, because this is the best deed you can do, while communicating with other people. We don’t need to seek partners in bars and social media and all that. Let’s just unite for charitable purposes, and the side social benefits will come on their own. The Zakat system is our official social media, together with the Friday Prayer. Creating groups through other social media is allowed in principle, but if they don’t have Zakat as an entry barrier, they attract people with secondary intentions, and then the groups become venues for arguments, hate, Quranic quotes out of context, dividing the Quran, disorientation, people with false identities, people who preach to the converted, and then, of course, the result is that instead of bringing people closer to the religion, it drives the religiously inexperienced people away from religion, since they fail to realize that religion can not be contained, codified and defined by social media groups, and internet webpages.
And finally, let me remind you that Zakat (Obligatory Charity) is the best deed a human can do after the Contact Prayers. While Contact Prayers are a sign that someone believes in God, Obligatory Charity is a sign that someone believes in the Hereafter (2:3, 24:37, 27:3, 41:7, 31:4), and both believing in God and the Hereafter are requirements to make it to Heaven (2:62). There is a large number of people who believe in God alone, but they do not truly believe in the Hereafter, in the next life, in the bodily resurrection after death. And some of them are convinced that they believe in the Hereafter, but they will be surprised in the next life when they realize that they really did not, and God will prove it to them by pointing out how they disregarded the obligatory charity. Because, if you are really convinced that you will have an eternal next life, wouldn’t you invest towards it? So, obligatory charity is the second most important religious ritual, because it proves our second most important belief, belief in the Hereafter.
In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. Our dear lucky viewers, peace be upon you. This page will present to you how to observe The Contact Prayers, the salat. And you are very lucky because you are trying to learn how to make contact with your creator. Which is the greatest of all worships. In this step I will explain to you the meaning of the word salat.
You already heard me call it contact. The word salat is an Arabic word derived from the root “sila”, which means connection or contact. So when you observe the salat prayers, you will make contact with your creator. It is wrong to translate it as “pray”. As a Muslim, when you tell somebody, “I pray five times a day”, that is the wrong expression because other people can tell you, “I pray all day”. The correct expression for the Muslim is “I make contact with my creator five times a day”. This is the meaning of salat.
In this program, I will present to you where the salat commandment comes from. The Contact Prayer is mentioned in Quran more than 70 times. And I will show you the crucial verses like where the times of contact prayers are mentioned in the Quran. Then I will go on to explain to you the source of The Contact Prayers. When was the first time when the contact commandment came to us from God, and how did it come to our generation? I will explain this to you. Then I will move on to explain why does God want us to establish contact with Him? Why did God command us to observe contact prayers five times a day? What is the reason? Does God need The Contact Prayers? Or do we need The Contact Prayers? After this, I will go on to explain every aspect of the contact prayer. I’m going to start with the call for The Contact Prayers, the athan. I will go through the details, even the historical development of it. I will show you how the words are written in English, the religious transliteration. Then I will go on to the preparation for The Contact Prayers, which is called wudu’ or ablution.
The Source
And of course, our sources are always the Quran. There’s only one source, and it is this book right here, the Quran. God’s message to you, to me, and to the whole world. This is God’s final message to the world. And this is our source. The only source.
The Wudu’ + Contact Prayer
I will show you where the wudu’ is mentioned in Quran and what the details are, then I will demonstrate for you how to do the wudu’, and I will move on from there to demonstrate for you and describe in detail how to do The five daily Contact Prayers, The Morning Contact, The Noon Contact Prayer, The Afternoon, The Sunset and The Night Contact Prayer.
I will explain also some of the fine details. For example, what happens when you will miss part of The Contact Prayer in a group. You’re going to the mosque and you see a group of people praying, you come in late, what to do? And some other fine details. So I hope this will cover everything you need to know about The Contact Prayer. The most important worship in Islam.
Times of Contact Prayer
You heard me say that The Contact Prayers must be observed five times every day. Okay, where in the Quran do we find these five times? They are specifically defined in the Quran. For example, In sura number 11, verse number 114, we see three times of Contact Prayers. This is what the verse says: “You shall observe The Contact Prayers at both ends of the day and at night.” So here you have three prayers. At both ends of the day, this is the morning prayer and the sunset prayer. The morning prayer is before sunrise, and the sunset prayer is immediately after sunset. And of course, the night prayer is the last prayer of the day. So here in this verse we have three prayers. We are commanded to do these three prayers. The morning, the sunset and the night. Now the noon prayer is mentioned in Surah number 17, verse number 78, where it says: “You shall observe The Contact Prayer when the sun begins to decline from the highest point (at noon)”. This is a very specific description of the time of The Contact Prayer at noon. As soon as the sun begins to decline from its highest part of the day, at noon, you observe the noon contact prayer. This is sura 17, verse 78. It says exactly the time of The Contact Prayer at noon. So now we see the morning prayer, the noon prayer, the sunset prayer, and the night prayer. Well this accounts for four of the prayers. Where is the fifth one? We find the fifth prayer mentioned in sura 2, verse number 238. It says “You shall observe all The Contact Prayers, especially the middle prayer.” The middle prayer has to be the afternoon prayer because we have the morning prayer, the noon prayer, the sunset prayer, and the night prayer. The middle prayer would be the afternoon prayer. So there you have it, all 5 contact prayers mentioned in the Quran. By the way, the morning prayer and the night contact prayer are mentioned by name in verse 58 of Surah 24. It talks about Salat al-Fajr, this is The Morning Contact Prayer, and Salat al-Isha, this is the Night Prayer. So, all five times of The Contact Prayers are decreed in the Quran.
The Original Source of The Contact Prayers
And now I would like to discuss with you the source, the original source of The Contact Prayers. When you look in the Quran, you will notice that before Abraham, there was no mention of The Contact Prayers, the salat. You notice that Noah was telling his people to just believe in God and ask His forgiveness, but there is no mention of The Contact Prayers before Abraham. The original source of The Contact Prayers is the prophet Abraham, who is the father, the founder of Islam. And we see this very clearly in sura 22, verse 78. The last verse of Surah 22. We also see it in sura 21, verse 73, where we learn that The Contact Prayers were given to Abraham as the original founder of Islam.
We see in sura 16, verse 123, that the Prophet Muhammad followed the ways of Abraham. And then we see in sura 8, verses 33 to 35, and sura 9, verse 54, we see that The Contact Prayers were practiced before the Prophet Muhammad. A lot of people are under the erroneous impression that the Prophet Muhammad brought these practices. But they came through the prophet Abraham. And this is why we do not see the details of how many units per prayer in the Quran, although the Quran is complete, perfect, and fully detailed. So the reason the details of the contact prayers are not in the Quran is because they were already in existence when the Quran was revealed.
I can tell you to go and buy Crest toothpaste, and I don’t have to explain to you what Crest toothpaste is because Crest is already in existence, all you need to do is go out in the market and buy it. When the Quran came down, The Contact Prayers, the salat, were already in existence. And this is exactly why in one of the very early suras, surah 73, Al-Muzzammil, we see the commandment to observe The Contact Prayers and the zakat, because they were already in existence. Abraham, being the founder of Islam, what did he contribute to the religion? He contributed all the practices of the religion.
The Contact Prayers,
The Zakat charity,
The fasting of Ramadan (In fact we see the fasting of Ramadan was slightly modified in the Quran, in sura 2, verse 187),
Hajj (in Sura 22, we see that it is directly decreed through the prophet Abraham).
So Abraham contributed all practices in Islam. You must correct that impression. The Prophet Muhammad contributed the Quran, that’s it. But all the practices existed before the Prophet Muhammad, they were in existence before the Quran came down.
Why do the Contact Prayer?
Now we get to the question, “Why should we pray?” Why should we make contact with our creator every day five times, repeating the same thing five times a day? The obvious answer first is that we do it because our creator commanded us to do so in the Quran. But what is the mechanism? Why does God ask us to contact Him five times a day? Does God benefit from it? Do we benefit from it? And the answer immediately is God does not need our contact prayers. We need The Contact Prayers.
And we fully understand the reason for decreeing The Contact Prayers if we know who we are. Most people do not even know who they are. You ask a person “who are you?” and they look in the mirror. They say “this is me” and they are wrong. The body is like a garment that we are wearing temporarily. The real person is invisible to us. The real person, the soul, is in another dimension that is not visible to our eyes. So what does the real person look like? This will lead us to understanding, why should we observe The Contact Prayers? You see, you can consider The Contact Prayers, the meals for the real person, the food, the nutrition. When we are born our mother feeds us milk and we grow. Then we eat all kinds of food, rice, meat, potatoes, and so on, and our body grows until it becomes 5 feet, 6 feet, whatever. And that is the limit of the body’s growth. Meanwhile, what is happening to the real person, the soul? Is the real person nourished just like the body? This is why most people don’t realize the importance of making contact with their creator.
Making contact with our creator is the most important nutrition for the soul. We need it to grow and develop. The real person grows and develops by contacting our creator daily. Five times everyday constitute five meals for the soul. Every time you do a contact prayer, your soul grows and develops. This is why we are commanded to do the contact prayer. You can imagine the person who does not feed his/her soul. At the end of living in this world, they are still babies because they never feed their souls. But the Muslim, the person who observes the duties and practices of worship, this person feeds the soul and the soul grows and develops immensely. We end up our mission in this world grown and developed and healthy and fit for the real life, the eternal life that comes after this life.
The Contact Prayers therefore are very important. Think of them as the meal for the soul, for the real person. The morning prayer is the breakfast for the soul, for you, the real you. Just like you give your body breakfast, lunch and dinner, you need for yourself, the real person, you need meals also. The noon prayer is the lunch for the soul, and the afternoon prayer is another meal, and the sunset prayer is a meal, nutrition for the real person. And the night contact prayer is the dinner for the soul. Nourishing, developing, and growing the soul is the reason for observing The Contact Prayers, and we are the ones who need it. God does not need it.
The Strength of the Soul
All practices of worship in Islam, without exception, are designed to cause the soul to grow and develop. The Contact Prayers therefore, are very important. They are all designed to make you the boss over your body. A lot of people, in fact the majority of people are enslaved to their body, their outer garment that is temporary. Someday this garment is going to vanish and you, the real person, will remain forever, for eternity. So most people, unfortunately, are unaware of nourishing and strengthening and developing their soul, the real person. But all practices of worship in Islam are designed to cause the soul to grow and develop, nourish the soul. For example, let’s take the morning contact prayer. Before sunrise, what does your body want? Your body wants to sleep, right? But your soul, you, the real you, the real person, needs to get up, do the ablution, and observe the contact prayer. Make contact, the first contact of the day, with your Creator. So immediately you can see that there is a fight. The body wants to sleep, and the soul needs to get up and nourish itself, and have breakfast. Now who’s going to win? If your body wins, you continue to sleep, and the body is the temporary garment. It is not very smart to let the body win, right? If you win (you, the real person wins), your body will obey and will say “yes sir”. It will listen to you, obey you, get up out of bed, do the ablution and observe the contact prayer. So you can see that the first contact prayer is a struggle between you and your body. By the way this struggle becomes less and less as your body becomes more and more obedient to you, as you become the boss. As you develop and become stronger, your body becomes more and more obedient, and with time, when you say “get up and do the morning prayer”, your body will say “yes sir”, obediently.
As a matter of fact, eventually you will actually enjoy getting up in the morning and doing the contact prayer. And this is because the soul has grown and developed and became the boss and enjoys observing the contact with our Creator. You look at the fasting for example, one of the important practices in Islam is fasting during the month of Ramadan. And in Ramadan your body of course wants to eat and drink, but you tell your body when you fast you’re not to eat or drink until sunset. So you can see that you are practicing, exercising your soul. And this causes your soul to grow and develop, and this is exactly the whole idea of our being here in this world. We want to grow and develop as much as possible in order to enter the real life, the eternal life, the hereafter, in a state of fitness, strength, growth and development. Because in the hereafter, you cannot hold a responsible position in eternal real life if you are weak, unnourished, and still a baby. Will you hire a baby as a pilot or an engineer? Of course not. So God wants you to develop yourself and to be strong enough to hold a responsible position, a high rank in the hereafter, the eternal real life. And all practices of worship in Islam are designed towards this end.
For example, the zakat charity, what is it? The zakat charity is simply taking money away from your body and giving it to the poor. So you can see that you are being the boss, because the body loves money. And you take something that the body loves and give it away. So all practices of worship in Islam are designed to make your soul grow and develop, make you the boss over your body. And The Contact Prayers are the most important tool to do so. You’re going to notice it the first time you do the morning contact prayer before sunrise.
How to do the Contact Prayer?
Let us now get to the details of The Contact Prayers and how to observe them. There are a billion Muslims in the world today, one thousand millions throughout the world, in every country of the world. But in the area that is recognized as the Muslim world, you hear the call for the prayer five times every day. The morning, noon, afternoon, sunset, and night. And you hear the “Muadhin”.
Adhan
“Muadhin” is the name of the person that delivers the Adhan, or the call to contact prayers. And before I get into explaining the Adhan, I wish to remind you that in the last 1400 years, lots of customs, innovations, prejudices, superstitions were added into the Adhan. And what I’m going to present to you now is the Adhan of the Prophet Muhammad that he approved. And I’m going to remove all the additions and the superstitions and nonsense from the Adhan, and I will give you the pure Adhan. I am going to show you, so you can see how it is pronounced. Now at the beginning of Islam, the people went to the Prophet Muhammad and they said, “how can we call the people to come to the prayer? The Jews have the horn, and the Christians use bells, what are we going to use?” And with time, the Prophet’s companions studied the matter, and finally, it was suggested that somebody stands on top of the mosque and make the announcement “Allahu Akbar”, which means “God is Great”, four times. Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, La Ilaha Illa Allah. There is no God except the One God, which is the message of all God’s messengers to the world. There is really one message from all the messengers that God sent to us, and this message is La Ilaha Illa Allah. There is no god except The God, Allah. So the Adhan consists of Allahu Akbar four times followed by La Ilaha Illa Allah.
This Adhan that has been approved by the Prophet consisting of Allahu Akbar four times then La Ilaha Illa Allah, with time it got so long that in around 1953, the Minister of Religious Affairs in Egypt issued a law to reduce the Adhan. It got so long and so ridiculous it took 10-15 minutes to deliver the Adhan and it had foolish things, praising the Prophet and his red cheeks and silly things. I mean the Adhan got really ridiculous. After a few years, some people added to the Adhan “Ash-hadu an La Ilaha Illa Allah, Wa Ash- hadu Anna Muhammadan Rasool Allah”. This was added to the original Adhan. Some years later they added the expression “Hayyu Ala Salah”, which supposedly means “come to the prayer”. But it really doesn’t mean that. Apparently some new foreign Muslims, that is non-Arab Muslims, added that expression “Hayyu Ala Al-Salah”, which is not typical. The Arabic should have been “Hayya Ila Al-Salah”, but they said “Hayyu Ala Al-Salah”. Then many years later somebody added “Hayyu Ala Al-Falah, which supposedly means “come to the success”. And some other people added “Ash-hadu Anna Aliyyan Waliyyu Allah”, in some parts of the Muslim world. And until now they use these, all these additions are being used in different parts of the Muslim world. Later on some people added, “Ash’hadu Anna Ahlul Bayt Hujuj Allah”, and so on. So the adhan kept getting longer and longer, as I told you, until the minister of religious affairs in Egypt issued a law reducing the Adhan to its present form in the Muslim world. But here at Masjid Tucson, and hopefully you will go back to the original Adhan that the Prophet Muhammad approved. Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, La Ilaha Illa Allah. This is the Adhan that we use here in Masjid Tucson and hopefully it will spread all over the world. We have it done like this in many mosques around the world that have seen the light and decided to take the Adhan and the prayers to the original Adhan and prayer of the Prophet Muhammad.
Ablution
You know the same thing is true with the Wudu’. Wudu’ is the ablution or preparation for Salat. When people hear the Adhan or the call to The Contact Prayer, they prepare for The Contact Prayer. And they do this by observing ablution. And ablution is decreed in the Qur’an, in surah number 5, verse number 6. And it is very specific, it gives you four steps. Remember that, four steps of ablution. The average Muslim today has eight or nine or ten steps, which constitutes actually, in reality, some other God that added these steps, because they do it religiously, and it constitutes idolatry. So please be careful and observe what the Quran says. The Quran, the whole Quran, and nothing but the Quran. And the Quran gives us four steps.
The first step is washing your face.
The second step is washing your arms to the elbows.
The third step is to wipe your hair.
And the fourth step is to wash your feet.
These are the four steps decreed in the Quran, and it is actually a gross transgression to add anything to the four steps or reduce anything. Some people will say, what is wrong with washing my nose and my mouth and my neck and all this, my ears and so on. Of course there is nothing wrong with extra cleanliness. Go take a bath or a shower if you want to, but when it comes to religious practices we must adhere to what our Creator dictated exactly. We cannot increase it, reduce it, or increase it by anything. So it is very crucial that we follow what our Creator said in the Quran. These are the words that came out of the Prophet Muhammad’s mouth. Ironically, those people think that they are following the Prophet Muhammad by increasing the number of steps in ablution. And you and I know that the Prophet Muhammad could never disobey God. So, if God said four steps, this is it. The ablution is four steps. So now let us demonstrate for you the four steps of Ablution; The Wudu’. We find this commandment in Surah number 5, verse number 6, it says:
“O you who believe, when you get up for the Salah prayer, you shall:
wash your face,
your arms to the elbows,
wipe your hair,
and wash your feet…”
Four steps. And these are the words that came out of the Prophet Muhammad’s mouth. These are the words of God. And God is saying you shall observe the ablution four steps. Washing the face, arms to the elbows, wipe your head, and wash your feet. These are the four steps as dictated in Quran. However, like everything else, innovations, superstitions, traditions, crept into God’s commandment and Satan distorted the commandment. Now the vast majority of Muslims observe something like nine or ten steps in ablution. And this is very serious, because it simply means that there is some other God who told them to do the ablution nine steps. They wash their hands, their mouth, their nose, their face, their ears, their neck. They have all kinds of innovations and additions. And I would like to warn you that you must never increase the steps or decrease them – the steps of ablution. You must obey exactly what God told you in Quran. If you want to wash more more you might as well take a shower or do whatever you want but outside the ablution. If you are taking a shower or a bath you can do the ablution after the shower or the bath while you are still in the shower, but you have to go through the motions of ablution as I will show you now. So let me demonstrate to you how to go through the motions of ablution as I will show you now.
We are now demonstrating the ablution. You should make an intention, that is, you say, “I intend to observe the wudu or the ablution”. And you say, “Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim”, and you commemorate God in any way you want. You say, Alhamdulillah, Subhanallah, Allahu Akbar, anything you want to commemorate God. But if you want to say it in Arabic, the intention should be “Nawaitu Al-Wudu. Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim”. So here we go, “Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim, Nawaitu al-wudu”. And then the first step, you wash your face. There is no set number of washing your face. The second step, the arms to the elbows. Right arm and then the left arm. And this takes care of the second step. The third step is you wipe your hair. So what I will do is I’ll wet my hand and then I will wipe my hair, my head. The final step is wash your feet to the ankles. That’s it. There you have it. The four steps of Wudu’. Very simple. Don’t add any more steps and don’t reduce the steps. Now that you finished the four steps of wudu, you are ready for the Salat prayer. So now let’s go back to the masjid and show you how to observe the Salat prayers, all five of them. Here is a visual demonstration of the steps:
The Contact Prayer
The innovations, superstitions, prejudices, customs, and traditions did not hit the Adhan and the Wudu only, brothers and sisters, it also hit the Salat itself, The Contact Prayers. There is so much garbage that we had to remove from The Contact Prayers to make it pure and make it exactly The Contact Prayers that the Prophet Muhammad preached and practiced. So what I am going to present to you is The Pure Contact Prayers without any innovations or additions that happened in the last 1400 years. We are trying to take The Salat, The Contact Prayers, all the way to the Prophet Muhammad, the way he preached it, and the way he practiced it.
The Contact Prayer is for God Alone: Do not mention any other name!
And the most important point, please pay attention, the most important point is never to mention any name other than the name of Allah, the name of God, in your Contact Prayers. This is dictated upon us in the Quran. But you probably know that the average Muslim today adds the names of Muhammad and his family, Abraham and his family, and so on, in The Contact Prayers, and this nullifies The Contact Prayers, it makes it absolutely useless, if not harmful. So you must be very careful, and this is our responsibility to tell you that, you must be very careful never to mention any name other than the name of Allah, the name of God, in The Contact Prayers. We see this in the Quran in Surah 72, ayah or verse number 18, where it says, the places of worship belong to God, do not mention any other name besides the name of God. This is a Qur’anic commandment. And in surah 20 verse 15, we see the commandment, Aqimu Al-Salata Li Dhikri, observe The Contact Prayers to Commemorate Me; singularly. God is telling us that we must commemorate him alone in the Salat, in The Contact Prayers. So I will give you the details of The Contact Prayers and we will go to the mosque now and give you a demonstration. But before I do this I want to clarify that the Tashahhud (Testification of Faith), or the recitation while sitting down, should be only:
Ash-hadu An La Ilaha Illa Allah, Wahdahu La Sharika Lah. (I testify that there is no god except God, He is One, and Has no partners)
Or just Ash-hadu An La Ilaha Illa Allah. (I testify that there is no god except God)
Or just La Ilaha Illa Allah. (There is no god except God)
This is enough. There is no god except The One God. And forget about all these names, Muhammad and his family, Abraham and his family, Muhammad and Abraham will be the first people to denounce this use of their name in The Contact Prayers. And you know something, all the Imams of Sunni and Shia, all of them, unanimously agreed that this mentioning of Muhammad and his family, Abraham and his family, while sitting down in The Contact Prayers, is not an obligatory part of the prayers. You heard me right. Unanimously, they agreed that this is just a desirable part, but it is not. It actually kills your Contact Prayer, makes it useless, and actually does harm to you. Because God will be offended to have other names mentioned besides him in the daily worship, you’re worshipping God alone. So just be careful. And this by the way led to the conclusion that you must recite only al-Fatiha, the opening Surah of the Quran while standing up in The Contact Prayers. Do not recite any Quran after al-Fatiha. And on the surface this looks like abandoning the Quran, it is not, it is the exact opposite. Because in The Contact Prayers, a lot of people end up memorizing the short Surahs, Qul Huwa Allahu Ahad, and Qul A’udu, and that’s it, and they think they know Quran. But I must tell you to read Quran every day. You must read the Quran every day. This is a commandment from our Creator, to read His message, the Quran, every day. The whole Quran, not just the short Surahs. But in The Contact Prayers, please, you need only recite al-Fatiha. And this is a unifying force of all the Muslims in the world. I was praying in Mecca one time, and the imam read al-Fatiha, and then he read the whole Surah number 32, Surat Al-Sajdah, after al-Fatiha. And I was thinking, you know, there are a few thousands of people in there around the Kaaba, praying behind this imam, and the vast majority of them didn’t know any Arabic. What is their fault? They just stand through all this recitation in Arabic that they do not understand. What is required is only recite al-Fatiha. And this will unify all the Muslims of the world. They will do the same thing in all the prayers. In Japan they know al-Fatiha, they read it in the contact prayer. In Sweden, in America, in Canada, in Australia, in Mecca, in Pakistan, all the Muslims of the world will do the same thing. But this business of reciting long portions of the Quran is wrong. It actually ruins The Contact Prayers. God wants things to be easy for us, but Satan wants to make things difficult for us, so he adds old things. Besides, when you recite the Qur’an, you mention Moses and Jesus and Muhammad and Pharaoh and the devil and all these things, you mention other names besides the name of God in The Prayer, and this is forbidden by commandment from God. We are not to mention any name. When you recite the Quran in the mosque and you mention other names, it’s because God says so in the Quran. It says, Wadhkur Fil Kitabi Maryam (Mention in The Book Mary), for example. this is God’s command, we say you can mention the name of Mary in the Quran in order to learn from the lessons of previous prophets, messengers, and so on. And it is a commandment from God to mention, so when we read the Quran, we mention these names only because God commanded us to do so, but in The Contact Prayers, in The Salat, we are commanded never to mention any other name but the name of Allah, the name of God.
Find a nice clean place
After you have done your Wudu’, and you are ready for the prayer, you go to a nice clean place. You don’t necessarily need a prayer rug. This is one of those innovations. You can pray in any clean place, even bare ground, as long as it is dry and clean.
Find the direction of Mecca
So you go to a nice clean place and you find the direction of Mecca, the direction of The Sacred Mosque, because this is a commandment in Quran that you must face. This is an organizational point. There is no other significance to it except an organization. You can imagine people going in a mosque and facing in different directions, it will be a mess. So this organizational point dictates on us that we must face the direction of Mecca, wherever we might be. So, in the United States, the direction generally is slightly south of east, slightly south of east, southeast.
Intend your prayer
So find the direction of Mecca, you face that direction, and then you make your intention. This is the first step. You must say, I intend to do the morning prayer, in any language you like. If you want it in Arabic, you can say, “Nawaitu Salat Al-Subh”. This will be the niyyah, or the intention, for The Morning Prayer. Or if it is for the noon prayer, you say in your heart or in an audible voice, I intend to do the noon prayer; in Arabic “Nawaitu Salat Al-Zuhr”. If it is the afternoon prayer, it is “Nawaitu Salat Al-’Asr”. And for the sunset prayer, the niyyah or intention is “Nawaitu Salat Al-Maghrib”. For the night prayer, the intention or the niyyah is “Nawaitu Salat Al-’Eshaa’”. So, but you can do it in any language you wish, secretly or loudly.
Extol your Lord in Jubilation
Now after you do the niyyah, now you’re facing the direction of Mecca, you make your intention or niyyah, then you open the salat by raising your hands to the side of your face and saying Allahu Akbar like this. Allahu Akbar.
There is your opening of The Salat. Once you say Allahu Akbar in this manner, you have started your Contact or Salat, your
Contact with your Creator. Now after you make the opening Takbeer, Allahu Akbar.
Hand Positioning
You can either put your hands on the side, or you can choose to hold them like this, with your left hand on your stomach, and your right hand on top of your left hand.
It doesn’t make any difference. Some people make a big deal out of it, but there is no difference. Either way is correct. So this is the opening of The Salat, The Contact Prayer. Allahu Akbar. Now you are ready to recite Al-Fatiha, the opening Surah of Quran.
Transcribing the Arabic words
Ablution Intention
The easiest way for you is to have me write the words in English transliteration, English letters. So before you do the Wudu’, the ablution, you can say your intention. I intend to make the ablution or Wudu’ either in English or in Arabic. So I intend to do the ablution in English, the Arabic would be Nawaitu Al-Wudu’ and you write it like this Nawaitu Nawaitu Which means I intend. Nawaitu Al-Wudu’. Al- means the. Ablution. Wudu’. Al-Wudu’. Nawaitu Al-Wudu’.
Adhan
Below is the Adhan written down for you. So in the Adhan we say Allahu Akbar 4x. Allahu Akbar, Meaning God is the Greatest. Allahu (God) Akbar, Allahu Akbar 4x. Then, La Ilaha Illa Allah. La means no. Ilaaha, meaning god with a small g. Illa means except. Allah means God. So this is the complete Adhan, the original, without any innovations or additions or traditions:
A lot of people think that Allah is the name of God, but it is not. Allah simply means God. The English word for it is God. The non-Muslims in the Arabic world say Allah, because this is the Arabic word for God, even though they are not Muslims. They will say InshaAllah, say Allah, because simply that is the language. It is not the name of God. This is why I use the English word God for Allah.
Prayer Intentions
I’m going to write the niyyah or intention for every prayer for you, so you can see how it is spelled.
1. Dawn Prayer
Here’s the niyyah or intention for the morning prayer. Nawaitu, which means I intend. Salat. Salat Al-Subh. Al-Subh. I intend to do the morning prayer. Nawaitu Salat Al-Subh.
2. Noon Prayer
Now, to make it The Noon Prayer, you just say the same thing except you change Al-Subh to Zuhr, which means noon. Nawaitu Salat Al-Zuhr. This will make it The Noon Prayer. Al-Zuhr
3. Afternoon Prayer
For the afternoon prayer, you just make it Al-’Asr. Salat Al-’Asr. You write it like this, Al-’Asr. Nawaitu Salat Al-’Asr.
4. Sunset Prayer
The sunset, you make it Al-Maghrib. Nawaitu Salat Al-Maghrib. This is the sunset prayer.
5. Evening Prayer
And the night prayer is Al-Ishaa. Nawaitu salat Al-’Eshaa’. Nawaitu Salat Al-’Eshaa’.
Reciting Al-Fatiha (The Key) in the Prayer
And by now you know how Allahu Akbar is written. The opening of the contact prayer, Allahu Akbar, this is followed by Surat Al-Fatiha which in Arabic is:
“In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
Praise be to God, Lord of the Universe.
Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
Master of the Day of Recompense
You Alone we worship, and you alone we ask for help
Guide us in The Right Path
The Path of those whom you blessed, not of those whom have incur wrath nor the strayers”
After every change in movement Exalt God: from Standing to Bowing
After you recite al-Fatiha, then you make Ruku’ bowing. And as you bow, you say Allahu Akbar. And you know what that looks like. I wrote it for you. Then during ruku’ you say Subhana Rabbiyal Azeem. About three times. It doesn’t matter two, three or four times. Subhana means Glory be to. Subhana, Subhana, Rabbiya, means Glory be to my Lord, Rabbiya, Al-Azim, means the Great, Al-Azeem. Subhana Rabbiya Al- Azim. Glory be to my Lord The Great. Then you stand up and in this position only you say Sami’a Allahu Liman Hamidah. Means God hears anyone who praises him. And it is written like this. Sami’a Allahu Liman hamidah. Anyone hamidah, who praises him. Hamidah. Sami’a Allahu liman hamidah. سَمِعَ اللَّهُ لِمَنْ حَمِدَهُ As you stand up, then you make the first prostration, sujood. And when you do that, you say Allahu Akbar as you go down in prostration, and during prostration you say Subhana Rabbiya Al A’alaa. Subhana rabbiya. Then during sujood and prostration you say Subhana Rabbiya Al A’alaa. About three or four times. Al A’ala. Means Glory be to my Lord The Most High. Al a’la, the most high. And this takes care of all the words of The Contact Prayers. Now you know how to say all the words, and if you play the tape over and over, you can see how exactly they’re written down and how they are pronounced.
After every 2 units (Rakats) and at the end of the prayer we sit back from the second prostration and testify that there is no god but God
In the sitting position you say, Ash-hadu An La Ilaha Illa Allah Wahdahu La Sharika Lah. Which means I bear witness that there is no god except Allah, The One God. He is One. La Sharika Lah. He has no partners. And this is how I write it. Ash-hadu. Ash-hadu means I bear witness. Ash hadu. An La. Ilaha means god with a small g. Ilaaha. I bear witness that there is no god, Illa except, Illa Allah. The One God. Wahdahu. He is One. Wahdahu; He is One. Wahdahu, La Sharika Lah, He has no partner. La means no sharik means partner. La Sharika Lah. And this takes care of the Tashahhud. In the sitting position. Ash-hadu An La Ilaha Illa Allah Wahdahu La Sharika Lah.
Returning The Peace to The Angel on the right and left
And then of course to end The Prayer you look at the right side and say Al-Salaamu ‘Alaykum and then on the left side saying Al-Salaamu ‘Alaykum and this ends The Contact Prayer. So, let me write Al-Salaamu ‘Alaykum for you. Al-Salaamu ‘Alaykum. There you have it, the complete words of The Contact Prayers.
Additional Details and Advice for The Contact Prayer
Now let me explain a few fine details about the Salat, The Contact Prayers. One of the most important points is that there is a myth among the average Muslims that a woman who has her period or the menstruation cannot Pray. Now this has to be from Satan, because Satan is the one who does not want you, the Muslim woman, to pray. God did not say in The Quran at all, do not pray during menstruation. There is nothing in the Quran that says that. Even the Hadith, we learn from hadith that the Prophet’s wives used to pray during their menstruation. One hadith even says they put a bucket under one of his wives as she prayed. Ridiculous as this may be, but it demonstrates that the Muslim woman should pray during her menstruation. If a Muslim woman does not pray during menstruation, this means one week in the month without prayer. And this is like four years every ten years. Four years without any prayer. Imagine that. So this will be a satanic innovation to stop the women from praying during menstruation. So, please, menstruation or not, the contact prayer, the salat prayer, is the only worship that must go on, there is absolutely no excuse for not doing The Contact Prayer.
Conditions for Shortening or Lessening The Contact Prayer
Even God provides that you can pray walking or riding in a car or riding in a plane or in a bus or even if a person is very sick, very ill, cannot move, that person can pray with his or her eyelids, just or even mentally. If you are working in a crowded place and you cannot find a place to pray, you can pray at your desk sitting down just mentally going through the motions and the words. So there is absolutely no excuse for missing any Contact Prayer.
So whether the person is ill, unable to move, or riding, trapped in a car or a bus or a plane or in a working place where there is no place available for prayer or during menstruation or the after birth bleeding, any of these conditions cannot, nothing stops you from performing, observing The Contact Prayers.
Another point that I wish to mention is The Group Prayer or The Jama’a. In The Jama’a, one person leads The Prayer, and the rest of the group stand behind him, behind the Imam, and do exactly what he does. You do not have to recite Al-Fatiha or The Quran after the Imam. Remember, all that is required in The Contact Prayer is Al-Fatiha, the first Surah of The Quran. So you just mentally follow the Imam as he recites Al-Fatiha during The Contact Prayers. And then of course in Ruku’, The Bowing position, you say Subhana Rabbiya Al-’Azim (Glory be to my Lord The Great) as usual, and in the Sujood or Prostration you say Subhana Rabbiya Al-A’laa, as usual. So you only listen to the imam when he recites Al-Fatiha in the Standing Positions. If a person comes late and finds The Jama’a, the group, already did one or two or three Rak’ahs, Units, if you come late, you just join the group in whatever position they are in, and then after they finish, when they say Al-Salaamu ‘Alaykum, the first one, you stand up and you complete the part that you missed. So this is how you make up for missing Units or missing Rak’ahs when you join a group.
What happens if you miss a prayer
What happens if you miss one of The Prayers, one of The Contact Prayers? You’re supposed to do all Five Contact Prayers during each one of the five periods. The Morning Contact before sunrise, The Noon between around 12 and 4, The Afternoon between 4 and sunset, The Sunset Contact immediately after sunset, and The Night prayer after all the twilight disappears from the horizon, about two hours after sunset. Now what happens if you miss one of these Prayers? There is a myth that you can make it up or combine Prayers, and it is just an innovation, you cannot make up missed Prayer. If you miss The Noon Prayer on any day, you just cannot bring yesterday back, you missed it and it is too bad. So you just ask God for forgiveness, repent, and promise God that you will never, to the best of your ability, miss any more prayers, and you just go on doing The Prayers. See, the idea of The Contact Prayer is to contact our Creator within a certain period of every day. And when you miss that, it is gone, you cannot bring it back, and you cannot make it up. But you can ask forgiveness and repent.
Demonstration of The Contact Prayers
And now, the best way to describe The Contact Prayers to you is to demonstrate exactly how it is done. So now I will demonstrate for you The Morning Contact Prayer, The Noon Contact Prayer, The Afternoon Contact Prayer, the Evening Contact Prayer, and the Night Contact Prayer.
Do you remember the first thing you have to do in order to observe The Contact Prayers? That’s right, The Intention. You declare your intention, in Arabic, Niyyah. I will proceed with the prayer and you just watch everything I’m doing, and this will be the correct way for observing the contact prayer. So, first I face the direction of Mecca, and I am going to make my intention.
Below is the demonstration of 1 unit of the Contact Prayer.
Contact Prayer Timing
Number of Units
Dawn
2
Noon
4
Afternoon
4
Evening
3
Night
4
You must say “La elaha ella Allah” at the end of the first 2 units of each prayer, and also at the last unit of each prayer. And then you exit each of the 5 prayers by giving “salam” to your right, and then to your left.
In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. Islam actually began with the first man, the first human being, Adam; he was the first messenger of God; he brought to his children and grandchildren the message of worshiping God alone and this is Islam, submitting to God, worshipping God alone.
Prophet Muhammad’s Role Was to Deliver God’s Final Message – the Quran
The prophet Muhammad contributed the message, the scripture of Islam, which is the Quran. God revealed the Quran to us through the prophet Muhammad. The prophet Muhammad was born in the year 570 AD, and when he was 40 years of age, he was appointed God’s final prophet. Prophet means he brought a new scripture, the final edition of God’s message to the world, and that is the Quran.
The Quran was given to the prophet Muhammad in one night as we see in the Quran in many verses – in Surah 17 verse 1, in Surah 44, verse 3, and in Surah 97. The release of the Quran from Muhammad’s soul to his mouth and his hand was done over a period of 23 years – from his age of 40 to the age of 63 – he died at the age of 63. So, over a period of 23 years, the Quran was being released after being placed in Muhammad’s heart on the Night of Power (in Arabic, Laylatul Qadr). The purpose of releasing the Quran over a 23-year period is to help the prophet and the believers at the time to memorize the Quran as it was being released and this is stated in the Quran. In the Quran it says, “to fix it in your memory” (25:32). So, the release was very slowly, very gradually, and it took 23 years.
God created the universe, and created the human race, and out of his mercy, He sent messengers and books to tell us about Him. All these messengers and all the books that God sent to us preach one and the same religion. The first messenger was Adam himself, the father of all humanity. After him came messengers, like Noah, Jesus, Moses, Muhammad. Muhammad was the last prophet, bringing the last scripture, the Quran, and in the Quran we find everything we need – all the duties, obligations, commandments, prohibitions in Islam. Quran is the final scripture. It is the completion of the message, because the previous scriptures were suited for that stage of human development, the Quran came to complete the picture, and now we have the final, the complete religion, Islam. The Quran is all you need, in fact, because God said that the Quran is complete perfect and fully detailed, if you go to any other source, you will be disobeying God, and disobeying the messenger of God, Muhammad, who brought this Quran, out of his mouth. God brought to us the Quran out of Muhammad’s mouth, and you would be disobeying God and disobeying Muhammad, if you follow any other sources besides the Quran, and specifically, I mean sources like Hadith, Sunnah and all the other books and things that the traditions and the customs invented. If you go to any source besides the Quran you will be disobeying God, because clearly God says in sura number 6 verse 114, for example, that the Quran is fully detailed – you don’t need anything else. God says in verse 19 of sura number 6 that the Quran is what was given to Muhammad to deliver to the world and it is the only source for religious guidance and religious education. The Quran tells us exactly what the essentials of Islam are, and they are very quickly – I’m going to go into details of this later on:
The First Pillar of Islam is: Worship God Alone
First, you should believe in God alone. You do not have any other idols. You are devoted to God alone, and this is represented by the Shahada, the first so-called pillar of Islam. Let us go along with that idea -the first pillar of Islam is the Shahada, and the Shahada is stated in the Quran in sura 3 verse 18. It says, “God bears witness that there is no God except He”, and also the angels and those who possess knowledge will make this Shahada, which is La ilaha ela Allah. This is the first pillar in Islam – sura 3, verse 18 – the Shahada, the first pillar of Islam is “La ilaha ela Allah”. If you want to make it complete, then you say, “I bear witness that there is no God except Allah, the one God. Now, don’t add anything else. Some people who imitate old inventions and old traditions will say Ashadu An La Ilaha Ila Allah and then they make another Shahada that Muhammad is a messenger of God. We know that Muhammad is a messenger of God, but if you inject this in the Shahada, this ruins everything, because now you don’t have God alone – you put an idol, Muhammad, next to God, and this, by the way, is a very strong prohibition in the Quran – to put any other name besides the name of Allah, the name of God. We find this in sura 39, verse 45 – you must devote yourself to God alone – you do not idolize Muhammad and put him next to God. This will be going against God and against Muhammad. So, the first pillar of Islam is Shahada, La Ilaha Ila Allah.
The Second Pillar of Islam is the Contact Prayers (Specific Actions and Words)
The second prayer is the Noon Prayer and it begins as soon as the sun declines from the highest spot in the sky. That is the Noon Prayer. It consists of four units. (The morning prayer is 2 units; the Noon Contact Prayer is 4 units).
The Afternoon Contact is done about three or four hours after the Noon Prayer in the mid-afternoon and the fourth Contact Prayer is the Sunset Prayer, and it is done immediately after sunset. And the final Contact Prayer, the night prayer, must be done about two hours after sunset. So, these are the five Contact Prayers, and they represent the second pillar of Islam.
The Third Pillar of Islam is Fasting During One Month (Ramadan)
The third pillar of Islam is fasting (in Arabic, “Seyam”) (2:183).God commands us to fast during one month of the year, and it is the ninth month of the lunar calendar (2:185). Now, I’m smiling because there is a tremendous test in this system where the lunar year is shorter than the solar year and this makes the month of Ramadan move about 10 to 15 days every year. So, it comes in the winter sometimes, when the day is nice and short, and fasting is very easy, and moves to the summer where the days are very long 16 hours or more, sometimes, and the day is hot and you can’t eat or drink during this long period, and a lot of people will drop out. They will they will not fast, even though nobody dies by not eating or drinking for 24 hours. But, some people will drop out, and you can see that the system is designed to show who will fast and would obey God’s commandment no matter how long the day is. This changing of the day from short and cold to long and hot days will show us who are the dropouts, who will fast only if the day is short and nice and cold. So, this is the third pillar of Islam, fasting during the month of Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar.
As you see, the fasting of Ramadan is also designed to tame the wild horse, your body. See, your body wants to eat and drink, and you the real person or the soul dictates on the body saying, “No, you’re not going to eat or drink until sunset”, because the fasting consists of not eating or drinking or engaging in sexual intercourse from dawn to sunset. Dawn means about two hours before sunrise, to sunset. No eating, no drinking, no sex, and this is control of your wild horse. You are taming the wild horse, your body, and you can see that God is training you, is teaching you to be a person of strong will, and preparing you for the eternal life of the hereafter, the real life, because in the real life that comes after this life, God wants the people who are strong, who practiced and exercised, and know how to control themselves, I mean their bodies. This also causes your soul to feed, grow, and develop.
The Fourth Pillar of Islam is Zakat Charity
The fourth pillar of Islam is Charity (in Arabic “Zakat”) (2:43). There is an Obligatory Charity where you sit down and you calculate exactly what you possess, what your possessions are, and you give away a portion, a fixed portion of your net worth. You do this once a year, you pick out a specific day in the year, maybe the last day of Ramadan, or the first day of Ramadan, or the first day of January, one day, one fixed day in the year, and you sit down on that day, and you calculate how much you are worth. This means that you add up the market value of your house, your car, your clothes, anything that you possess. If you sell it all today, how much would it be worth, the fair market value, not the price of the new thing – but the present market value of everything you possess, and then you give away 2.5% of that. See it’s a small percentage, and you do it once a year, and it goes to specific people. The Quran lists them in this priority: first, your parents. If your parents are rich – and these are the recipients of your charity – if your parents are rich, the second in the list are your relatives – you give this 2.5%, you give it to your relatives. If they’re all rich, then you find some orphans, people who do not have support, parental support or other support or something, and you give this charity to them. After the orphans, you give to the alien, somebody who’s traveling, and is stranded and doesn’t have the money or the bus fare to go to his hometown. You help that person. So, the order in the Quran is: the parents, the relatives, the orphans, the traveling alien, the poor, the beggars, and so on. So, there is a specific order for giving these charities. However, there is also a general charity called “sadaka”, and this is an on the spot charity; you’re walking in the street and you see a poor person, and you want to help, then you help that person and this is called “sadaka” or charity. You’re supposed to be charitable the whole year, all the time, you must be charitable, but the Zakat is the Obligatory Charity where you give it to someone you personally know, you personally know that this fellow is poor and needs help, and you give your 2.5% to these people that you personally know. You cannot consider the taxes for example as Zakat charity, because you don’t know where the taxes will go. They can go to fix the street or something, or to the army or something, but the idea behind Zakat is that you give it to the people that you personally know are in need, and the Quran lists the parents first, the relatives, your own; you start with your own people and then you go to other strangers, in that order.
The Fifth Pillar of Islam is Pilgrimage – Hajj to Mecca
The fifth pillar of Islam is Hajj pilgrimage to the holy land in Mecca (2:196). And this is only, of course, for the people who can afford it. When you can afford it, you go to Mecca, and you observe Hajj, and this is commemoration of the prophet Abraham, not the man Abraham, but his exemplary submission to God. He thought, he saw a dream one time, and he thought that God was commanding him to sacrifice his only son, Ishmael, and he proceeded to carry out this command, even though, God did not order him to do it. He just thought in a dream that God was ordering him to do it, but he was willing to sacrifice his own son in submission to God, and, of course, God intervened to save Ishmael and Abraham from this tragedy and the God substituted a sheep to be sacrificed instead of Ishmael, and this is what you do when you go to Hajj. And Hajj consists of arriving in Mecca dressed only in untailored clothes – just a sheet or something – and seamless shoes or sandals – seamless clothes and seamless sandals – the women dress in a regular dress that is simple, so you cannot tell the rich from the poor.
To observe Hajj, you go to Mecca, dressed in seamless clothes, and seamless sandals – this is for the men. The women dressed modestly in regular modest dress (all white dress for example) so you cannot tell the rich from the poor. You get to Mecca, and you go around the Kaaba, in Mecca, seven times, then you go between Safa and Marwah, the knolls of Safa and Marwa, seven times, then you go to Arafat, mount Arafat, and you stand there the whole day. You spend that whole day on mount Arafat commemorating God, worshiping and praying, and then you go to Minna. It’s a little town near Mecca. You go to Minna for two or three days. Then, you go back to the Kaaba, go around it seven times, which is called “the farewell circumambulation” around the Kaaba, and this is it,
Animals that die of themselves without human interference.
Pork, the meat of pigs.
Running blood, running blood that you can put in a glass and cook or drink.
Animals dedicated to other than God, that are specifically dedicated to Muhammad or Jesus or Ali or somebody.
These are forbidden. So, if you go to the market, you go to Safeway Market, for example, and you look at the meat, if you want to know if it is Halal (permitted) or Haram (prohibited), you ask yourself these four questions: (1) Is this meat pork? The answer is “no”, then (2) did these animals die of themselves without human interference? The answer is “no”. (3) Is this running-blood? The answer is “no”. (4) Was this meat dedicated to Jesus or to anyone else or Saint Francis? The answer is “no”. Therefore, this meat is Halal, it’s ok, you can eat it. If you make it Haram, if you prohibit it, then you are following some other religion. You’re not a Muslim, when you do that. So, it is very important to follow specifically what the Quran prohibits. If you prohibit anything else – some people go to funny lengths, like prohibiting soaps and brushes and shoes and things like that, and of course, this is a religion that is not Islam. It has nothing to do with Islam.
Of course, the major prohibitions are listed in the Quran: Adultery is prohibited, murder, stealing, cheating, lying. God wants you to be a perfect person, a nice person. Even breaking the promise is prohibited. You must be a person of your word, you must be a man of your word or a woman of your word. When you say something, you do it, and people must know you as such. This is what a Muslim is all about.
Some Hajj Advice
Now, some people are fascinated by Hajj pilgrimage, and they just want to do it right away. They’re fascinated by the exotic country, you know, Saudi Arabia, and the trip, and all that, but my advice to you is to perfect your religion first. Speaking from experience, it is not a very pleasant trip. There is a million and a half or two million people making pilgrimage, and it is an exacting trial. Instead of enjoying – you’re not going as a tourist – it is a difficult process and some people may become disillusioned when they go too early before the faith is strong enough. So, be sure you perfect your religion first, and then make the Hajj pilgrimage.
Another thing to guard against with regard to Hajj is that some people go and do the Hajj pilgrimage, like I said, before their faith is strong enough, and they come back puffed up and thinking, you know, “I’m perfect now, I’m cool, and nobody’s like me. I did Hajj.” You know, it goes to their head and it brings the reverse result. They become worse Muslims than better Muslims. So you want to go and do Hajj pilgrimage, after you perfect your religion, and this must make you humble, more humble. And I remember the proverb that says, “Don’t be humble. You’re not that great”.
The Usual Process of Hajj
Observing, the Hajj pilgrimage is very easy. All you do is get ready financially, and with your vacations and everything and then you travel to Saudi Arabia (Jeddah Airport). As soon as you land there, they will assign a guide to you and he and his assistants will tell you exactly what to do. But the main thing is that you memorize the statement, “Labbayka Allahumma Labbayk”, which means, “My Lord, I respond to your call.” “Labbayka La Shareeka Laka, Labbayk.” I respond to you. There is no partner with you.” And the whole statement will be taught to you by the guide. The main statement that you need to know throughout Hajj goes like this: “Labbayka Allahumma Labbayk”, which means, “My Lord, I respond to your call”. “Labbayka La Shareeka Laka, Labbayk.”, “I respond to You. You have no partner. There is no partner with you. I respond to your call”.
So, “Labbayka Allahumma Labbayk. Labbayka La Shareeka Laka, Labbayk.”. This is all you need, and you utter this statement, you memorize it and answer it all the time during Hajj – throughout Hajj, anytime you change direction, you climb a hill, down a hill, you meet friends, you say that.
The details of the Hajj will be given to you by the guide that we will be assigned to you as soon as you arrive in Saudi Arabia.
