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Sermon Introduction
Praise be to God, there is no other God except God. As you guys saw this sort of Adan or video intro or Friday sermon intro, let me just kind of tell the story about it. It’s mainly compiled of footage which we did from Hajj, as some of you might have noticed. Some of us took some footage, and yeah, it’s footage from Hajj. And I think it came out nicely, and the background voice and the music is taken from one of the movies which Rashad used as well.
Now what I want to focus on today is because the words which are there are Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, La ilaha illa Allah. So I want to focus on what is known as Adan, which from now on I’m going to call it the Friday gathering in English, the call to the Friday gathering. And the reason for this is because I have some really, let’s say, what turns out to be good news. Because what you just saw or what you just heard here online was actually not the Adan, was just an intro, an intro video which I used so that people who have technical difficulties to go to watch us live, basically to buy some time for them.
And the actual Adan, the actual Adan, or let’s call it in English because I want to correct it, the actual call to the Friday gathering was actually done when you received the email from me. As you, the submitters, know that you received an email which said, “God is great, God is great, God is great, God is great” four times, and “There’s no other God except God.” That was the actual call to the Friday gathering. What I showed here is just an intro just to buy some time.
And by the way, before I go to talk about the call to the Friday gathering, I just want to say that the intro, God willing, I’ll have a different intro, especially English ones, every, God willing, every Friday during every Friday gathering I’ll have a slightly different one. And hopefully, this will motivate the people to join in time so that they can see the different intro. It’s pretty much going to be the same footage, or similar footage, but it’s going to be a different, let’s say, music every time. Same words also, but kind of different music just to kind of make it more, let’s say, festive. I did it with AI, by the way, so like it wasn’t that much work. It’s not really my work, it’s AI work.
Understanding the Call to Prayer in the Quran
But I want to focus now on the actual topic of this Friday sermon. The actual topic is what is actually the call to the Friday prayer? What is the call, and what does it mean to make the call to the Friday gathering online, specifically online? How would how— So the question I’m trying to answer is: how do we do the call to the Friday gathering online? What you just saw, that was not it. The one which you received in the email, that was it. But how did I reach that conclusion? How can we reach that conclusion? Before we go there, let me actually share the verse, the key verse for this. Let me share the screen. Okay, I hope you guys can see it. Okay. So here we have the Quran glossary, and I’m showing verse basically Surah 62:9.
“…Oh you who believe. When the call is made for the prayer on the day of Friday, then hasten to the remembrance or the mentioning of God and leave the business that is better for you if you know.”
Now the key word in this verse which I want to focus on is that the call—the word “call” in Arabic here in the Quran, it’s not actually using the word adan. And when you look in the whole Quran, you don’t see the word adan at all mentioned for calls to prayer. It’s not mentioned at all. There’s another verse in the Quran which mentions this word, which is not adan, which is here, it’s nudiya. I hope I’m pronouncing it right, or nuda. So this word, which means call, is mentioned in another verse where it’s talking about how the disbelievers laugh at the call to prayer, but even there, the word adan is not used. It’s this word which is used. And nowhere else do you see, like, you don’t see the word adan used for the call to prayer at all in the Quran. What we see is this word being mentioned, which is nudiya.
Then why did God leave it for thousands of years for people to call it adan in Arabic, which is translated as the call or the announcement to prayer? Why did God leave the people use a word which is not even in the Quran for their call to prayer? And the reason for that, like to explain that, is because this word nudiya, “call,” is bigger than the word adan, meaning it includes the word adan. So I’m not saying the way people have done it traditionally, the way Rashad taught us to do it, which is Allahu Akbar, I’m not saying that’s wrong. All I’m saying is that there’s more, there’s more to it, meaning the word nudiya doesn’t include just that version, it includes other versions as well.
And what do I mean by this? Let me give an example. So let’s say that the Quran tells us to wear upper body clothes. The Quran says, okay, let’s just assume that, which kind of says it anyway, but let’s say that the Quran says you should wear upper body clothes. And then imagine in the time of Muhammad, Muhammad is telling them—he’s not using the same word as the Quran—he’s telling them, “Wear a shirt.” A shirt is upper body clothes for a warm weather. But in today’s world, someone in a colder weather might say, “Wear a jacket.” That’s also upper body clothes. Or, “Wear a sweater.” So as you can see, the word “upper body clothes” includes both the shirt and the jacket.
In the same way, the word nudiya here, which is the call, includes both the adan and what I’m going to call it in English, the call to the Friday gathering. And here, probably it’s maybe it’s important to specify something even more. Now the reason why we can, let’s say, this includes more than just the adan, because the adan, as we know, is the call to the salat, to the contact prayer, is because this word “the salat” here, which is mentioned, even this word because in this context, in this verse, because it’s talking, it says “call when the call is made for…” They’ve translated it here as prayer, but actually, as we know, this word actually means connection, connection. And it’s on purpose like that, connection. It means connection with God, of course. But here, there’s another context as well.
By the way, everything I’m saying, I’m not denying what we know so far. Let me be clear, I’m not denying what we know so far. All I’m saying is that there’s more to it, there’s more knowledge which is included in the Quran compared to what we’ve known before. So what I want to, let’s say, draw the attention to is that the fact that the word “prayer,” which here it has been translated as prayer, in Arabic actually literally means connect, to connect. And here in this verse, we can understand the word “connect” in two ways: one is to connect with God, but it’s also talking on the day of Friday, and juma in Arabic means gathering, when people gather. So to connect on the day when people gather, what does it mean? It also means to connect with people.
So basically, this word connection is about connecting with, in this verse, it’s connecting with God, but also connecting with people. So we, in this case, because we are doing it online, we have connected with each other. Basically, I’m live streaming, God willing we’ll add the chat function and stuff like that in the future. So basically, it’s telling us to connect. It’s not specifying what kind of connection. We definitely know that it’s connection with God when we do the contact prayer, but here it’s talking connecting on the day when people gather, so it must be also some sort of other connection, to connect with people, with other people, or we can say to connect with God together with other people.
A Human-Made Decision Across History
So, given that this is the the meaning, let’s say, the additional meaning of this word, the word salat in the Quran, then when we talk about the call to connection, the call to connect here, the call, it specifically means two things. First one meaning is adan, the adan which we know traditionally, and the other meaning is the call to the Friday gathering, which specifically has to do with the connection online. And I deal with in another video, I think I’ve explained partly, and God willing I’ll explain it again in future videos, that Friday gatherings or Friday sermons are okay to be done online in specific circumstances, which are our circumstances.
But given that we are doing it online, the specific meaning here of this word nudya, it’s on purpose that the word adan is not mentioned. Because if God used the word adan, we would have to assume that it is the adan which traditionally traditionally has been done in the way it was done, which was in Arabic, Allahu Akbar, and they do it in the mosques to this day, they do it in the mosques. And by the way, if we have a a local mosque, we should do it like that as well in Arabic. But we here here we are talking about online, and the question is: why, let’s say, did I take the liberty to do it English online? Well, let’s say, who gave me the right, who gave me the right to do it in English online when we’re doing it online? No one had to give me the liberty.
The reason is that the adan which Muhammad did, which also Rashad did, if we analyze it carefully, it’s actually a human decision. So it’s not that God said, “Oh, this is should be the adan.” God told us about about Nudya, which is the call to prayer, which one version of it one version of it is the adan, but that version is a human-made decision. Let me go back again to to the same example. If God told us to wear upper body clothes, it’s a then after that, it’s a human decision whether they wear a t-shirt or whether what type of t-shirt or what type of shirt, or whether they will wear a jacket, or how thick that jacket will have to be. It’s a human decision.
And how do we know that it’s a human decision? First of all, studying the Quran. If God wanted us specifically to tell us the words that these are the words of the adan, God would tell us, but he didn’t. And he didn’t because God knew that people will reach the correct decision about this, a specific decision for every time. During Muhammad’s time, they reached a specific decision and it was correct; it was correct for them in that specific place and time, in those specific circumstances, they reached the human decision. And by the way, if any Sunnis or Shia might think might be like might think that I’m kind of changing something or anything, I I just want to remind them that even the hadith, their hadith says that and this according to their hadith, this is how adan came to be. And the hadith proves their hadith proves that it’s a human it was a human decision.
So, according to their hadith, here’s how adan came to be. And by the way, before I go to the to to to tell that story, let me just say that this this word nya, nudya, or whatever, actually in which is here the fifth word in in in surah 62:9, it actually includes, ironically, even the human decisions which existed in the past. But of course, here is talking about about the Friday prayer, so they didn’t do the contact like the gathering on Friday, they did it on Saturday or whenever before I’m talking before Muhammad. But includes it includes even those because it’s a human decision.
And in the past, let’s say during the time of David, they decided, it was a human decision, they decided that they are we’re going to use the horn, the horn to do the to call the people to to the to the congregational gathering. Then it was Saturday. And then after after that, the Christians, after Jesus, Jesus use the bell. What I’m saying is even those are legitimate as long as people agree that that is the correct thing to do, as long as they agree and it’s a correct decision. It was correct for the time and place. And Muhammad never actually sort of said that they are wrong, never said that, “Oh, if you call the people with a horn or if you call the people with a with a bell like they do it in the churches…” He never said that it’s wrong.
What Muhammad said, according to the Sunni hadith and the Shia hadith, is that he wanted to have it different, not that it was wrong, but he just wanted a different version so that—and which shows that he was aware that it’s a human decision—so that so that people can distinguish whether they are being called to a church, to a synagogue, or to a mosque. So he just wanted to have a to have it different so that to know where where people are being called now. So what I’m saying is this: the word nudya includes even the horns and the bells which the church has used for the past, of course, or the adan, the traditional Arabic adan for circumstances outside of online, but it also includes this word also includes what I’ve sent in the email earlier. It also includes that because God left it up to us to make a human decision. It doesn’t have to be revealed by God whether we want to wear a t-shirt or whether we want to wear a jacket, God all God told us, “Wear upper body clothes,” for example. Let’s say that’s just an example.
So let me go back now to the hadith which the Sunnis and Shia use. By the way, we don’t believe in hadith, we don’t rely on them as a source of religion, we know that. However, the Sunnis might say, “Oh, you guys changed it, you guys changed it online.” If they say we changed it, we tell them that their hadith, the Sunni hadith and the Shia hadith according to them, tells us about how the adan came came to be like this. So Muhammad one day wanted to come up with a way to call people to prayer, but he wasn’t, let’s say, he didn’t want to mix it up with the bells which the churches use or the horns which the Jews use, so he wanted to have a different version, which shows that he was aware that it’s a human decision. Then, as he was, let’s say, discussing this, he was discussing this, imagine he was discussing it with with the believers. They didn’t say, “Oh, God told me this is the adan,” he was discussing it with the believers.
While he was discussing it, according to their hadith, while he was discussing it, a person came, one of the, let’s say, people in the group came, and he said, “I saw in a dream that someone was just saying aloud…” basically the adan, and Muhammad said, “Oh, that’s a good idea, that’s a that’s a good idea, we should do that.” So basically, adan was not revealed by God to Muhammad. Adan is a human decision which Muhammad made for that time in their circumstances. And the idea came in a dream to another person, it was not even Muhammad. And God did it like this, did it like this so that we can have the liberty to to specifically, let’s say, do it in our way, not thinking that we go we are going against Muhammad, because it was not never revealed to Muhammad, it was never Muhammad’s idea, it was someone else’s idea. Anyone can go and search it online how the adan came to be, and you can see that someone else proposed it by saying that, “Oh, I saw it in a dream,” and then Muhammad Muhammad liked it, he said, “Oh, let’s do it like that.”
Preserving Unity and Language Online
So in the same way, then the question is, then they made a human decision how the nudiya, the call to prayer—the nudiya is the one which is mentioned in the Quran—how the nudiya will be executed in Muhammad’s circumstances in an Arabic world in the, whatever, seventh century. And that’s what they called adan. We don’t need to call it adan. That is the adan, the Arabic one which was done in that specific form. But here in the Quran, there’s more than that.
So then when Rashad came, he made again a human decision that we should still do the adan the same way in circumstances within mosques, but even when there’s people who do not speak Arabic, let’s say in US, Canada, Europe. So even in places where people don’t speak Arabic, Rashad thought that it’s a good idea if we still do it in Arabic so that we can keep the unity. Basically, I would also stick or I would also continue, if we today have a mosque, I would still do it in Arabic. And the purpose and the reason is not because that’s how God revealed it, but because I don’t want to break the unity, that’s how people have done it. And there’s a verse in the Quran which says, first of all, that the believers are united, so if you kind of change it, you are kind of causing disunity.
And second of all, there’s a verse in the Quran which says, “Do not betray those who trust you,” so we shouldn’t betray those who trust us. So basically, Rashad trusted that we will do it in Arabic, we’ll just do it in Arabic in a mosque, though, because he never did it online. So what I’m saying is I do not want to go against the verses which tell us to not break the unity, to be united, and to not betray each other. I don’t want to go against that verse. That’s why mosques, I still believe that’s how it should be done. It’s a human-made decision, it’s not God’s decision, it’s a human-made decision, but we respect it. I respect there’s nothing wrong with it.
There’s nothing wrong with the way adan was done during the time of Muhammad, the way Muhammad approved it, there’s nothing wrong with it for that circumstance. There’s nothing wrong with it outside of the Arabic world to do it still in Arabic in a mosque, there’s nothing wrong with it either. But because we are in a circumstance which has never happened before—I wouldn’t break the unity, I wouldn’t, let’s say, cause disunity if we decide to do it the way we do it. So today, it’s a human decision, I know it’s a human decision, just like during Muhammad’s time it was a human decision, just like during Rashad’s time it was a human decision. In our time, because it has never been done online—I mean, people publish it online, but they never—they don’t believe in the online prayer, online Friday gathering—so it has never been done online.
That means that we get to decide, we have the privilege, we are the lucky ones. God gave us the opportunity to decide how the adan should be for the online circumstances. And for the online circumstances, I’m deciding, it’s a human decision, but it’s binding, because why would you break the unity? By the way, I’m not breaking the unity with the traditional because this is totally different circumstance, it’s different. The way they’ve done it in mosques, I still want to do it like that. The way they’ve done it in Saudi Arabia, let them do it in Saudi Arabia. Online they have never done it, so that means that God gives us the privilege or the chance or the opportunity to decide how the adan should be, in a similar way that God gave us the opportunity to decide what type of clothes we want to wear as long as they are within the Quran. So as long as it is within this nudiya idea, the call to prayer.
And by the way, the reason why, let’s say, I want to do it in English is because there’s a verse in the Quran says that all the messengers are sent in the language of the people, and the language online is English. So now from now on, the Arabs are going to have to get used to the online idea of doing it in English, just like the rest of the world was used to the traditional idea of doing it in Arabic. So from now on, online—only online, I’m not talking about in mosques, I’m talking about online—we’re going to do the call, the call to the Friday gathering, to connect for the Friday gathering in English, which is—let me show it actually, let me share the screen.
The Online Call to Friday Gathering
And by the way, why did I decide on those specific words? Because those specific words are here where it says, “When the call is made for prayer,” it says, “hasten to the…” to the mentioning of God. So basically, I wanted a call to prayer where God is mentioned, and when we say, “God is great, God is great, God is great, God is great,” God is mentioned, so we’re fulfilling that commandment. And then we’re specifying which God: “There’s no other God except God.” So basically, that’s going to be the call to prayer in English now, in online. Now because online, people don’t—unless they go online already, they don’t hear it, they probably read it first, so it’s going to be in the written version. Let me share the screen.
Okay, so here it is. So this I, as a human being, am deciding that for our circumstances—and God gives us the liberty to decide about this on our own—I am deciding for us, because I happen to be the leader, that for our group, the adan online, only online, is: God is great, God is great, God is great, God is great, there’s no other God except God. So this is the call to the Friday gathering. Let’s not call it adan anymore, because adan is that specific Arabic version. Here I’m talking about the English version, the English version which is still within what the Quran says, it’s still that word, the call, nudiya. So again, it’s easy also to remember, we know the words, so it’s: God is great, God is great, God is great, God is great, there’s no other God except God.
And then every person can add it in their own way, where the person can connect. Here I said, “Live Friday gathering within minutes at the submitters.org.” In the future, it might be different, these specific words might be different. Now, why did I say “within minutes”? The reason why I said this is because in the Quran, the minimum unit of time is hours. So basically, we are fulfilling the verse. Let me just check if—okay, let me just make sure that you guys are seeing it. Yeah, I think you guys should be seeing this in the screen. Okay.
So yeah, the call to the prayer for our circumstances online should be—it’s a human decision, but that’s what I’m deciding: God is great, God is great, God is great, God is great, there’s no other God except God. And everyone can decide how they put the link there, you can decide on your own. So why did I say here “within minutes”? It’s because the minimum unit of time in the Quran is the hour. So the Quran doesn’t mention minutes or seconds, that means that as long as we do it within that hour when the time for the gathering is, as long as we do it within that hour, it’s specific enough.
Meaning that you can send this adan 30 minutes ahead of time, 40 minutes ahead of the time, 20 minutes ahead of time, 10 minutes ahead of time, and they still are within that time, within that unit of time which the Quran mentions. So basically, it’s specific enough. Some people might have to wait a little bit, but as long as it is within that hour, then it’s specific enough, and that’s why I said “within minutes,” because minutes are within an hour, so it has to be within an hour. And for letter band: Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, La ilaha illa Allah.
Utilizing Social Media for Promotion
Praise be to God, there’s no other God except God. Okay, so we just included what the call to the Friday gathering should be for the online circumstances, which is live online circumstances, which is our circumstance. And I also did, let’s say, actually, my wife helped me as well, which is as you can see, it’s a human decision, it’s not revealed by God, it’s a human decision. We also came up with, let’s say, a photo version which can be posted on social media. And let me share the photo version. Okay, I think you guys are seeing it now.
So it’s just kind of like, let’s say, darker with a darker background. The reason is so that it can stand out a little bit more when you post it on social media. Again, it says, “God is great, God is great, God is great, God is great, there’s no other God except God.” And my words are, “Live Friday gathering within minutes at the submitters.org.” Now, why is this still within the Quran and kind of like is confirmed that it is within the Quran? I’m not saying that this is what the Quran tells us to do. What I’m saying is that the Quran gives us the freedom to do things like this, and all of this is within the Quran. There’s a verse in the Quran which says, “Force yourself to be with those.” And a lot of us know this verse, force yourself to be with those who call God. And here, we’re calling God.
So this is the best way to call people to us. We don’t call them, we don’t go there, “Oh, can you please join for the Friday sermon? Can you please…” That’s almost like begging. “Please guys, join in this group.” You know what they do, some of the, let’s say, half-submitters and traditional, let’s say, any type of religious people, they’ll go online and they’ll call people, “Oh, can you please join us?” Once people do that, that’s actually a sign that you shouldn’t, because God tells us, “Join those who call on God,” not to call you. So here, we’re calling God. We’re not calling people necessarily, we’re calling God. We’re saying, “God is great, God is great, God is great, God is great, there’s no other God except God.” And then there’s a verse in the Quran which says to the believers, “Go after those who call God.” So this call to the Friday gathering is within that verse, it confirms that verse.
And then the other reason why we should do it like this is because there’s another verse in the Quran which says that if you support God, God will support you. So basically, we shouldn’t go there and call people, “Oh, come here, let’s do this, let’s do that.” The verse says you support God, we support God, God supports us. So this is the best way, let’s say, to promote the message, to have more people join us in the cause of God. The best way is to support God, and then God will support us, we’ll let other people join us. This is the best way.
And by the way, this solves one of the most long-standing problems which we’ve had as a community. We’ve talked about this a lot, especially with people who had marketing backgrounds. What is the best way to promote the message? And finally, I think we have found most of the answer. We tried, as you guys know, we’ve tried many methods. We—I compiled an email, we tried some Facebook ads, we’ve tried many different things. And finally, I think this is the answer. This is the answer to how we should promote the message, and it’s simple. It has been all along in the Quran. All we have to do is say in front of others, “God is great, God is great, God is great, God is great, there’s no other God except God.”
And because it’s online, we tell them where the link is. In this case, I’m saying, “Live gathering within minutes at the submitters.org.” By the way, the reason why they didn’t add this part in the past—they actually added it in certain circumstances, things like this—but the reason why they didn’t add it because they would call it from the mosque, everyone would know where the sound is coming from, so they would go there. Here they wouldn’t know where the message is coming from, they have to know where the message is coming from, where they can join, so we had to add that.
And again, this is a human decision just like in the past it was a human decision. There’s again, historical sources which say that Muhammad, when it was raining, he would say, Allahu Akbar, and then he would say, “Pray in your homes.” He would add that because the circumstances were different in that day. Let’s say it was raining too much, he didn’t want people to get all muddy, so he told them, “Pray in your homes” at the end. And in the same way, we’re adding this because it’s a necessary information where to join us. It could be that this website today we’re doing it in this website, if we ever change it, which I don’t think we will, God willing, but if we do, it’s going to be something else, some other information. But the actual call to the Friday gathering is: God is great, God is great, God is great, God is great, there’s no other God except God. And this, again, this solves one of our biggest problems because we couldn’t figure out how to promote the message to other people. We just couldn’t come up with the best way to promote the message, to call the people to God’s cause, and finally I think this answers most of it, like it solves one of the biggest problems we’ve had as a community.
The Role of the Community
Now, what’s your role in this? So basically, the way you can, let’s say—by the way, before I go there, who is supposed to call, to do the adan? Who should do the adan? Let’s not call it adan anymore, sorry for using the term. Online we call it the call to the Friday gathering. So who should do this? Who is supposed to do this? The answer to this is similar to the funeral prayer. Both the funeral prayer and the call to the contact prayer, or in this case, the call to the Friday gathering, are mentioned in the Quran but not as an individual obligation. They are mentioned that they exist. For example, in the Quran it says, “Do not do the funeral prayer for the disbelievers, for those who were believers once and now they are disbelievers, don’t do the funeral prayer for them.” That’s what the Quran says.
Now, it’s not giving a rule that every individual should do the funeral prayer, but it’s mentioning it. The fact that it’s mentioning it, it assumes that someone, at least someone, is doing it. So basically, the rules of the funeral prayer are that at least someone in the community should do it. It could be one person, but more people is better. More people is better. As long as one person does it, the obligation is fulfilled, but if more people do it, it’s better. In the same way with the call to prayer: if one person does it, the obligation is fulfilled, but more is better. If other people do it as well, it’s better.
And in the traditional circumstances, that’s why many mosques have many minarets, many places where they make the call to prayer. Traditionally they would have, like if you go to so many mosques in the Middle East, you will see that some mosques, the big ones, have more than one minaret, like two, three, four, five, six. So some of them have six minarets. Minarets are the places where they make the call to prayer. So why six minarets? The reason is that they understood that more than one person can do the call to prayer. And especially if, let’s say, when someone does the call to prayer, some other people don’t hear him, then another person does the call to prayer. This is according to even according to historical sources: Muhammad would tell someone to do the call to prayer, and if others didn’t hear it, someone else who heard that first person then would call the others. So it’s a way to call the people to the Friday gathering.
Now, in the online circumstance, let’s say the congregation director—in this case, I sent it automatically, the computer did it. I wrote it once, but, God willing, it’s going to be sent automatically by computer. Once that is done, that means you received that call. But let’s say you’re on Facebook at that time or some sort of social media. Did the people to whom you’re talking or socializing with hear the call? No, you heard it, they didn’t hear it. So in that case, the best thing you can do is actually make that same call to other people. Let’s say you’re on Facebook, or Instagram, other social media, or even direct messages.
Especially the ones where you can delete it later, because this is a call for a specific time. We’re calling God, but indirectly the people are supposed to join at a specific time, which in our case is 12:00 Universal Time (UTC). It doesn’t have to always be like this, but in our case, it’s at 12:00 UTC. So it’s a specific time that we’re calling them, say 30 minutes ahead of time or 20 minutes ahead of time, so that they can see the message or the post. This is actually most suitable for social media, not emails, because emails you cannot delete later. If you call them at a specific time and they see it later, what are they going to do? It’s not very useful.
But it’s very useful if you post it on social media. God willing, this is the best way you can help. You don’t have to try with old methods we’ve done, or that others have done, or traditional Muslims and Christians do. God willing, you’ll see this will work the best. All we have to do, about 30 minutes or 20 minutes or 10 minutes—you decide based on the social media how fast people see the messages, or 5 minutes if it’s a direct message—you decide. You decide whether it’s going to be 30 minutes, 40 minutes, 20 minutes, or 10 minutes ahead of time.
- You take those words.
- You copy-paste them from the email.
- You post them where you want to post them.
Just post that, and you don’t have to engage. If they say, “What is this?” you don’t have to engage, because now we’re doing the Friday sermon. You don’t have to engage with them. When the Friday sermon is finished, you go and delete it, because it’s not applicable anymore. Next Friday, you can do the same thing, call them again. In this way, they don’t get bored as much, in the sense that the post is not going to stay there all the time. So this is how you can help.
So God willing, from now on, the way I’m going to do the call to the Friday gathering online is through an email with those words. That is the call to prayer, that is the call which is mentioned in the Quran. But because most people who are communicating with you don’t hear it, it would be best if you share it. It’s not an obligation, because as long as one does it, it’s done, but it would be better—just like in the funeral prayer, it’s better if more people do it within practical reason. I would say it’s actually an obligation within practical reason, meaning that do it if it makes sense. In most cases, it makes sense.
You can go on Facebook, let’s say you know the Friday prayer is going to be 30 minutes or 20 minutes later. If you have some time and you’re out of work, you receive the email, you copy and paste the message, and post it on social media. You can post it as a photo or as text, depending on the social media, and in this way—with the link there—people, even the non-submitters, join and check what the message is.
And by the way, the additional reason why this is good is because you can also post it in groups of other religious groups. You can post this message at a specific time. The reason why this method is so good is because the administrators or leaders of those groups don’t have time to delete it so quickly, so within minutes, some people might join and listen. And then after that, you delete it. The leader might not even see it. It’s fine; if two or three people see it, you’ve done a good job. It’s okay as long as you do it.
Now, not everyone uses social media, and that’s okay. What I’m saying is within reason, whatever you use, if you use it, why not use it to call God, which indirectly calls people to the cause of God?
I hope I didn’t forget something about this. It’s quite an important Friday sermon because I think it’s going to resolve a lot of issues. So, for those who have to do the contact prayer, you can do the contact prayer at this time if it’s the due time. For the rest of you, peace be upon you, peace.
Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director