Foundations of Islam Series- Pillars of Practice - Part 1

Foundations of Islam Series: Pillars of Practice - Part 1

Opening Invocation

In the name of Allah, the most Merciful, the most Compassionate. And peace be upon the Prophet, the most honoured of the Prophets and Messengers. Or that I should oppress, or that I should be oppressed. Or that I should show ignorance, or that I should be the victim of somebody else's ignorance. So that was a prayer that he made when he began his day. Today, this lecture, inshallah, is going to be on the topic of Islam.

Introduction to Studying Religious Traditions

To begin, I'm not going to talk today about the Shahada, because that's going to be in the section on Iman. So I'm going to really more focus on the four pillars after that, and then look at the Sharia. So, I would begin by saying, the best way to understand a tradition, in my estimation, is what they call through the normative practice in comparative religions.

I studied that my undergraduate work was in comparative religion, and I noticed that teachers tended to take two routes, one of two routes. They would either use the class as a way of analyzing a teaching, allowing the teaching to speak for itself, or they would use the class to superimpose their prejudices on the tradition, and really tell what they thought about the religion, instead of allowing the tradition to speak for itself.

The Descriptive Approach and Its Limitations

One of the best ways to do that, and it will seem like they're being objective, but it's actually quite problematic, and I don't know if there's malintent, and I'm not going to get into that, but one of the best ways of doing that is to look at a religion from what they term a descriptive approach, which is where instead of looking at what the religion says, you look at what the people who practice it do.

And then you can just explore a lot of problematic aspects of any teaching. You can say if you have a bone of contention with Catholicism, you'll really emphasize in your course on the Inquisition, and how horrific the Catholics were. That's true, but the problem is that to the non-believer, one looks and sees that which is being practiced or being practiced upon.

You can say that all religions preach humility, and love thy neighbor, and all of the things that we consider as positive. But if you are being harassed, or being told what to do in the name of God, you tend to focus on that. How does one get out from that? These are good points, and this is why people will often focus on that.

The Importance of Normative Understanding

We live particularly in an age when secularism has become quite dominant, and the religious world view, certainly in the West, has taken a back seat. But my point of bringing that out is that I would prefer that anyone who looks at a tradition, and this is my practice with any religious tradition, is to look first and foremost at how

the tradition itself is articulating itself, how the tradition is describing itself, irrespective of how it's been practiced in the past by people, whether it's Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism, and then to move into a descriptive examination of the teaching, of how has this teaching impacted human cultures.

So I think both views are valid, but when there is an emphasis on one as opposed to the other, I think that's going to lead to some very serious misconceptions with any tradition. And that on top of biases that people might have, so they'll examine certain areas to the exclusion of other areas.

The Meaning of Islam in the Quran

So what I would like to do is look at a few verses in the Quran dealing with the idea of Islam, the word itself, in the Quran. And the first one is in the third surah, chapter, it'll say S3, it's on page 165 of your blue text, S3 which means surah 3, and then at the bottom it's the ayah or the verse 83, page 165.

Understanding the Word "Deen"

It says:

"Do they seek other than the deen of God?" (Quran 3:83)

So I want to look first at two words here. Deen in the Arabic language is related to debt. You know, it's interesting that guilt in German is the origin of guilt is also debt. And there's an argument that a lot of religion is based on a sense of indebtedness or guilt towards God.

The word deen is related to debt. And the idea with the word deen, because Islam is called in Arabic دِينُ الْإِسْلَامِ the deen of Islam. Literally, you could translate it as the debt of Islam. The debt of submission. In other words, the idea is, is that we have been endowed or given blessings by the creator and the debt that we owe is submission to the creator.

Multiple Meanings of Deen

So deen, now if you look, the word has many meanings and it comes from a root word دَانَ يَدِينُ. One of the meanings is to discipline something. There's a tradition where the Prophet said:

"Whoever disciplines his soul."

So deen is related to disciplining the soul. Another meaning is the day of judgment.

In the first chapter of Quran, it says the day of judgment, the word used for the day of judgment is يَوْمُ الدِّينِ )Quran 1:4). The day the debts fall due. The day the debts fall due. The day of reckoning. The day of حساب.

Another meaning is a rain that returns again and again and brings the earth back to life. That's another meaning in the Arabic language. So deen, you get a semantic field and you start getting a feel for the word, what it means.

The Unbroken Chain of Deen

There is an idea definitely in the Quran, there is a concept that deen, there has been an unbroken chain of deen since the beginning of the Adamic experience on earth. An unbroken chain since the beginning. There's an idea that there has been prophetic dispensations to human beings since time began. Or at least since the experience of time for the human being.

Now, the verse says, do they seek other than the deen of Allah, while all creatures in the heavens and the earth have willingly or unwillingly bowed to His submission. Now in the Arabic it says:

"Do they seek other than the religion of Allah while to Him have submitted all those within the heavens and earth, willingly or by compulsion, and to Him they will be returned?" (Quran 3:83)

The First Meaning of Islam: Universal Submission

So what it's saying there in the Arabic is, do they seek other than this deen, when in reality, everyone is in a state of submission, willingly or unwillingly. And to Him is their return. So the first meaning of Islam that we're getting in the Quran is, all of creation is in submission. That's the first meaning. Because the word Islam means submission. It means, aslamah means to submit.

Now if we break down the word, so this is the first meaning that you will find in the Quran. That the idea that everything in reality is in submission to God. Willingly or unwillingly. We are all in submission.

Types of Submission in Human Nature

Now there are areas of submission that the human being recognizes. One of them is the call to nature. Right? We have to do certain things that we cannot avoid. One of them is to eat. That is part of our nature. We get hungry, we must eat or we die. We have to relieve ourselves once we've eaten or taken drink. We have to sleep.

Right? Byron called sleep the gentle tyrant. It oppresses us, but it's not an oppression that we mind. But sleep comes upon us and we can't fight it, eventually. Few days, maybe. Go too long and you go into acute psychosis.

So the idea is that there are aspects and then we have submission in our being. There are limitations to the physical body. We have limitations. We can only eat so much. We can only do so much physically before we're exhausted. We have limitations in our movement given the structure of our bodies. So there is a type of

submission of the self given that we are temporal creatures limited to physical and limited by physical aspects of our nature.

The Return to Non-Existence

So in the Quran there is an idea that everything is in submission and then there is a reminder that we will be returned. That if you look at creation things are emerging and then returning into non-existence. Everything that has life comes into existence and then returns to non-existence. The plant, the vegetable kingdom, the animal kingdom and ultimately the mineral kingdom. All of this is going into non-existence after it had come into existence.

The Second Meaning: Islam of the Prophets

Now the next verse that I'd like to look at is 2:133. It's page 53. Page 53 in the blue book. Surah 2, verse 133. The verse says:

"Were you witnesses when death came to Jacob? Behold, he said to his sons, What will you worship after me? They said, We shall worship your God and the God of your fathers of Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac the one true God to whom we submit."

Now in the Arabic it says:

"And we are Muslims to Him." (Quran 2:133)

So here is an idea that the previous tradition because remember this is the Quran coming the Prophet Muhammad is teaching this Quran. And there's an idea certainly in most people's minds that Islam is the religion of Muhammad. Right? This is the idea that most people have. What's being emphasized here is something else.

This is the religion also of Isaac, of Abraham. Because they're saying we are submitting to your God and the God of those who went before you and we are Muslims. So the second definition is Islam as guidance from Prophets. Islam as guidance from Prophets irrespective of one individual Prophet like the Prophet Muhammad or Jesus or Moses or Buddha if he was Krishna. I don't know. I mean there's Prophets we don't know about.

The Quran says some of them we've told you their stories and others we have not. But there is definitely an idea in the Quran that Islam is the teaching of all of these Prophets.

The Third Meaning: Islam of Prophet Muhammad

Now the third aspect is Islam as the religion of the Prophet Muhammad. So the Quran is telling us that every creature is in submission to God. The Quran is telling us that previous Prophets were teaching Islam as a

religion. And then the idea that this is the religion because there is a verse in the Quran that says:

"Today I have perfected your deen for you, and I have completed My blessing upon you, and I am content with Islam as your religion." (Quran 5:3)

That was on the final Hajj the pilgrimage of the Prophet. He said this in front of a multitude. So this is that the final form of this Islam was perfected in the Prophet Muhammad. This is how the Muslims view Islam.

The Reality of Nominal Muslims

Now you will meet many Muslims that might not have this idea because like many Christians they've never studied their book. They've never really... You know they're nominal Muslims. They were born Muslim. They might believe it because their fathers told them that this is true or because like many people in this country they have fond childhood memories of Christmas, things like that.

So they relate to Christianity or their Judaism, whatever. I mean many people this is really bottom line why they are what they are because they were born into certain environment. So if you were born in Sri Lanka you might be Buddhist. If you were born in China you might be a Taoist or Confucianist. If you were born in America you could be a myriad of teachings following even now Paganism.

I know a woman in Santa Cruz who's raising her child as a Pagan quite consciously. They have altars to different gods like the moon goddess and things in the house and that's how she's raising her child. Right? And this will become more and more common as people begin to break off. You know the homogeneity of previous periods is really breaking down.

Like one of the poets said the center is no longer holding. Right? We're really seeing a breakdown of what some of them would call the grand narrative of cultures. That probably is not true in the Muslim world to the extent it is in the West for a number of reasons. But certainly here we're seeing that.

The Fourth Meaning: Death as Submission

So now there is a fourth aspect of Islam that I'm gonna add here which is death. Because the word in Arabic to die is Aslama.

"He gave up the ghost."

Right? And this is what we used to say. I remember hearing that expression when I was younger. He gave up the ghost. Right? The spirit. He died.

Right?

And it's interesting. I had a course from an excellent professor on death and dying in religions and he had this sheet of euphemisms about death that was about you'd be amazed in our culture alone how many ways we can say somebody died. Right? Kick the bucket. That's all she wrote. Bit the dust. There's a lot of ways to say.

You know one of the Arab poets he said:

"If you don't die by the sword you're gonna die some other way. The causes of death are many but death is one."

Right? So this idea here really I think goes back to the fact that there's a verse in the Quran in the chapter called The Event in which the Quran says:

"When the soul reaches the throat"

"And you are at that time looking on"

Right? And you're looking, you're watching this thing happen. Then it says in the Quran make it go back. Make it go back. If you're in control, make it go back.

The Ultimate Submission

So the idea there is and then it says and we're closer to Him than you are but you don't see. The idea is that when the ghost gets to that point, the self, the soul, there's nothing we can do. That is absolute submission.

Right? And we can try and we're pretty good now at doing I mean I've seen people you know I worked in a critical care for about four years and was in a lot of codes. You know what they call codes. And it's pretty amazing. You see somebody, they're dead. You come in, no pulse, no heart, no breathing. Defibrillate. Do some CPR. Defibrillate. I've seen people come back, start breathing and it's pretty amazing but how long can we do that for?

Ultimately that stops and even the success of that is quite small. Unlike television. I think it works 90% of the time on television. It works about 8% in the hospital. Right? They had all these physicians complaining about that because if they coded their relatives they'd say, why didn't it work? It always works on television. Right? Welcome to reality folks. You know. Things aren't like television unfortunately or fortunately.

Islam in the Gospels: The Disciples of Jesus

So the next thing here I want to go to is 5:111. It's page 325. So there it says:

"And behold, I inspired to the disciples to have faith in me and my messenger. And they said, we have faith and to you bear witness that we bow to Allah as Muslims." (Quran 5:111)

Now the disciples there are the Hawariyeen or the disciples of Jesus. So again, here's the idea. We have the idea that Isaac who is the father of the Jewish tradition. We have the idea that Jesus the prophet or the savior of the Christian tradition according to the Christians. They're saying we're Muslims.

So this is, I think, really important to see that from, just to understand how the Muslims view the matter. They really do view the matter that Islam is an unbroken chain. It's not something new. And the prophet Muhammad did not see himself as bringing a new religion. He really saw himself as a renewer of a ancient tradition.

Understanding Islam Through the Tradition

Now once you've seen those, what we're obviously, what we're attempting to do in this two week period is understand Islam from the perspective of the religion of those who believe in the prophet Muhammad and his tradition. Not so much, we're not here to study comparative religion. I'm not here to teach you about your own traditions or anything like that.

But just as a starting point, I think it's important to recognize that that is definitely part of the Muslim world view. That Christianity, it was an Islam. Judaism was an Islam. And there were many Islams that we don't know about and don't name because the Quran does not mention them. It talks about other traditions simply. And it does not mention them by name.

The Prophetic Tradition

But like Dr. Shafia mentioned the other day, there is a tradition from the prophet Muhammad that there have been 124,000 prophets. There have been 313 or 314 messengers. There have been over 100 books that have come down. And all we're told about is four books and then the tablets of Abraham and Moses.

So there are many things that we don't know about traditions. And this is why the Muslims traditionally have tended not to say we don't believe like I mean, I would say that Hinduism, even though from a Muslim point of view, there are many things in it that are very problematic. Still, I would hesitate to say that it wasn't a prophetic tradition personally because it's a very ancient tradition. And from a Muslim point of view, the previous traditions have been distorted. That is the Muslim worldview.

The Five Pillars of Islam

So the next thing to understand is how is Islam identified in terms of believing in the prophet Muhammad? How is Islam? How is a Muslim a Muslim not as somebody in submission to God, but as somebody following the teaching of Islam as a word that describes a religion of about one-fifth of the world's population?

The best thing to do again is go to the tradition. And in this book here, the 40 Hadith, there is in the second Hadith, which is a very famous Hadith, it's a Hadith in which the prophet, according to the tradition, is asked by Gabriel, and they don't know it's Gabriel yet. And he asked them, it's the second Hadith, page 28, he asks him:

"Tell me about Islam."

The Hadith of Gabriel

And the messenger of Allah, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, said:

"Islam is to testify that there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger."

So the first one is what's called Shahada. The second, he says:

"And that you perform prayers."

So what's called Salah. The third, Zakat. The fourth, fasting. And the fifth, Hajj.

So this is how Islam is defined by the prophet Muhammad, in this Hadith. And that, therefore, would be the best description in terms of a normative understanding of the tradition.

The Shahada: Witnessing the Truth

The first one, again, I don't want to go into it, but I will briefly mention. The word Shahada means witnessing. And it usually means witnessing with the eye.

"Ashhadu means I witnessed, I saw with my eye."

It also means a testimony. In other words, a person can bear witness, and it's interesting because in Islam, you have to have eyewitnesses. Right? You can't have testimony that's not an eyewitness. In any of the Hadd punishment, you have to have somebody who saw the act. Who saw the person stealing.

There's not circumstantial evidence, it's really hard to hold up in traditional Islamic courts. So, the idea of Shahada is something that a person sees for themselves. That there is no God but Allah. That is something, from the Muslim point of view, it is something that they witness and see for themselves, and that Muhammad is his messenger. It's something that they witness. That they believe based on witnessing.

The Problem of Unreflective Belief

Now, obviously, many Muslims in the world, they're Muslim again because they heard this from their parents. Their parents told them:

"La ilaha illallah Muhammad Rasulullah" - There is no god but Allah, Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.

That's why they believe it. Which gets into circular reasoning. You know, why do you believe or really regressive reasoning. Why do you believe Islam is true? My father told me. Why did he believe it? His father told him. Why did he believe it? His father told him. Or, why do you believe in Islam? Because the Quran says it's true. Well, how do you know the Quran is true? Well, because the Quran says it's true. Right? This type of reasoning that really, in the end, is actually quite flimsy.

And again, we get into this idea of unreflective, undifferentiated people. People that have not given a lot of thought to their traditions. And the Muslims are as much a victim to that phenomenon as any other people. Really.

And I think that, and in many cases, it can be actually more exacerbated. You know, because the tradition in this culture, now with the breakdown, you know, we're in a kind of post-Christian period. There's a breakdown and it has enabled people to look and examine their own traditions. There's a lot of critical awareness in this culture. In the Muslim world, there really isn't a critical examination of their beliefs. Why do we believe? You know, very few people will, and I think it's actually very difficult in a lot of Muslim countries for people to do that.

The Importance of Self-Examination

But I think a belief that's not rooted in self-examination is ultimately very limiting. Abu Alal Ma'arri, who's kind of considered a heretic in the Muslim tradition, that was one of his things about religion. He just felt religion was just something that was, you know, was, people just didn't reflect on it at all.

The Second Pillar: Salah (Prayer)

Now, if we look then, I don't want to cover this, but I want to go to this, because I'm going to do this in detail on the section on Iman. If we look at prayer, Salah, the word in Arabic is, it's a word that comes from a root word that means, it can mean a few things. One of them is to burn up.

The idea that prayer burns up wrong actions. That is one of the meanings. Another root meaning is a connection, a silah. A connection with God. That prayer is a connection with God. Another idea of the prayer is submission itself. That the prayer is a form of submission.

Universal Prayer in the Quran

Now, the Quran, the idea in the Quran about prayer is that all peoples and all creatures have been given a prayer. If you look in 22:18, it would be page 954. It says:

"Have you not seen that all prostrate to Allah, all things that are in the heavens and the earth, the sun, the moon, the stars, the hills, the trees, the animals, and a great number among mankind, but a great number are also such as unto whom the chastisement is justly due." (Quran 22:18)

So here is an idea that everything is prostrating. Everything is in a state of prostration. The heavens, the earth, the mountains, the trees, that everything is worshipping. This is something in the Quran it says, everything is glorifying God, but you do not hear its glorification.

The Prophet's Example with the Pebbles

There is a tradition that the Prophet Muhammad picked up some rocks, pebbles in his hand, and he held them out, and some of his companions heard the rocks glorifying God. And then he put them away. But so the point is that that was an example in the Muslim tradition of the Prophet showing people that everything is in glorification.

The Introduction of Free Will

Now, if you notice, when it gets to man, it changes the way it says. It says, and a great number from humankind. Now this is where the Quran introduces the idea of free will. Not everybody, unlike the rest of creation, not all of human beings are in a state of awareness. So, only a great number of people are even aware. Many people are in heedlessness of prayer itself, or that they should be worshipping.

So there is an idea in the Muslim tradition that we as human beings, can either be conscious of our praising God, or we're in a type of unconscious state. And this goes back again to the idea, everything is in submission, willingly or unwillingly, and also wittingly or unwittingly.

The Body in a State of Worship

From the Muslim perspective, the body is in a state of worship. The heart is in a state of worship. You know, the movement in and out of the heart, in Arabic is called qabd and bast. In Arabic, qabd is contraction, bast is expansion.

And there are two names from the 99 names of God, al-qabit and al-basit. The contractor and the expander. So the lungs, expanding, contracting. The pupils, expanding, contracting. The heart, expanding, contracting. The body is always moving in a state of expansion, contraction.

Majesty and Beauty

And this again relates to the two dominant attributes, where I'm going to talk much more about it when we deal with Iman, of majesty and beauty. Majesty is contraction, beauty is expansion. And these are the two dominant

The Ideal Muslim

So the Muslim is the one who is supposed to, and I'm using Muslim in its ideal sense, in a normative sense, not the quote-unquote Muslim world. I really want to get out of that idea of, you know, I'm not talking about Algeria or Afghanistan or Iran. I'm talking about the Quranic view of a Muslim, not how people believe what they believe or their deluded states and things like that.

The Reality of Delusion

You know, there's crazy people all over the world. You know, I've spent a period of time working in a psych unit. And very interesting. People really believe they're prophets of God. And you kind of, you watch this guy and he's telling you, he said, look, I've got a message from God. And you say, uh-huh. And he says, and God says that this, this, and this. And you're in big trouble if you don't believe me.

And there's a kind of, you know, I used to listen to these people because that was part of what we were supposed to do. I used to listen to these people and there was kind of, there was something in me that wanted to say, come on. You know, you're just pulling my leg, right? There was really something in me that just wanted to nudge this person. But after a while you start realizing they're not pulling your leg. They really do believe this condition.

Our Capacity for Self-Deception

And we have a phenomenal capacity for delusional states. And most of us, and I would include myself, are walking around with our own delusions. We're just simply unaware of them. And I would really recommend a book, if you're interested in this subject, by Goleman, the man who wrote Emotional Intelligence. He has another book that is actually, I think, much better than the first one.

The first one became popular interestingly enough. The second one is not as popular, but it's called Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self Deception. Very interesting book. Because here's somebody who's just looking at now what we know about our brain and our delusional states. And I think that religion is really one of the big opportunities to go into serious delusional states.

Islam as the Process of Waking Up

So, the human being then is the individual that can either become conscious of the fact that everything is in praise and everything is in glorification and everything is in prostration or they can be heedless of this fact. The idea then within the Muslim tradition is that Islam is the process of waking up to this reality.

And the Prophet Muhammad said, peace be upon him, he said:

"[Human beings are asleep and when they die, they wake up.]"

So, there is an idea that we are in a dream-like state and I find it really interesting that the word in Arabic for child which is ghulam, comes from ghulma which means to lust after, to desire.

The Meaning of Childhood and Puberty

غُلْمَة from غُلَامٍ

That a child is a ghulam until they enter into what is called puberty and the word in Arabic for puberty is ihtalam. The root word comes from a word which means to dream.

احْتِلام

Now, when you take the root meaning of this ihtalam, it literally means to internalize the dream. If you take the word to reach adulthood, it means to internalize or become aware of the dream. The idea there I think is that children are in a dream world. It's a beautiful world that they're in but they're not aware of the dream-like nature of the world that they're in and it's a gift and actually from the Muslim point of view, children have no accountability and the beginning of discernment is about the age of seven where you begin to take them to account gently.

The Development of Children

Prior to that, traditionally the Muslims did not encourage any type of discipline for children before the age of seven. The discipline should be very gentle discipline. The idea is that they literally do not have within them the capacity to restrain themselves from their actions.

Now, children obviously you'll see, my child is five years old and he's getting a sense of right and wrong but the idea there is that really that their brains, you can tell them don't do this. They'll do it again, oftentimes not because they're disobeying you and they might appear to be guilty when you remind them because suddenly they become aware but there is a type of forgetfulness that takes place in the child's world because the brain cannot maintain this continuity and you'll see it, Chilton Pierce talks about this phenomenon when the neural networking is taking place in those first seven years that a child at about the age of two and three, the will is developing and it's a very important time and what he says one of the tragic aspects is that the will in children is broken at that age.

The Development of the Will

The parent will literally want to break the will because they see this child rebelling. They see this child saying me and no. They learn no. It's the first word that children really get in contact with. Very interesting that they do a negation to negate which is very important in the Islamic understanding because the first and primary task of the human being is to negate, to negate creation and this is why the shahadah itself begins with a negation.

لَا إِلَهَ

"La ilaha" - no god.

That the human being must learn to negate before it can learn to affirm and so the child first learns negation and then it learns affirmation and it's interesting that a child when its will is developing, one of the examples Pierce uses is a child will beeline for something and the parent or the adult will say don't touch that and the child will look at the parent and just keep going and the parent will interpret that as gross disobedience.

What Pierce says is the fact is that his will, the volition in his very primitive neurosystem the volition reached critical mass and at that point the adult says don't touch that and the child I can't help myself anymore it can't stop you see and it goes and it does it. Now we can see that in our own lives as adults, right? There's a point when human beings reach a critical mass. You see the chocolate and you say you know I'd really I don't know go ahead just try I really don't want go ahead just try and then suddenly it gets to critical mass and that's it you know they can't stop so we see that in adults as well but in children it's blameless whereas in adults I think there's you know come on you didn't have to eat it, right?

Prayer as Connection and Submission

So the first the second pillar which is prayer is trying to connect people to God to put people into a state in which they are connected. Now how is that done? It's done by obligating prayer. Prayer is not choice in Islam. There are prayers that you can do out of choice but there are prayers that you have to submit to so again the idea of submission comes into the idea of praying.

I submit to five prayers a day. That is something that I submit to. That's a rule. I'm being told pray five times a day and I can either say no I don't want to pray or I'm going to pray. I recognize this is an obligation binding on me and that's belief in Islam. Now there are many Muslims that don't pray anyway which is another matter and again it's like anybody who doesn't follow their tradition they still might believe in it they're just not practicing it.

The Five Daily Prayers

Now the prayer, there are five prayers in a day and this is based on equatorial day, alright? Here's sunset and here's sundown here's your meridian point, here's your midnight point. So this is day, this is night.

The First Prayer: Maghrib (Sunset)

Now the first prayer begins at dawn for people normally. If you ask you know what's the first prayer? Most people will say dawn prayer. In reality the first prayer according to the Muslims is the sunset prayer. This is also people who know the Jewish tradition are familiar with the fact that the day begins at sunset. Right? This is the same in the Islamic tradition. The day begins at sunset because it's based on a lunar month. The month begins at the sighting of the lunar moon for the Muslims and the lunar month begins with sunset.

صَلَاةُ الْمَغْرِبِ

That's the first time that the moon is visible when it's new. Now this prayer last it's got a short window until the red is gone out of the sky. That's the time for maghrib. So Muslims are supposed to pray it very quickly.

The Significance of Dawn and Sunset

Now it's interesting that the Quran says in many places that the two ends of the day are the times when people should remember God. Particularly these two ends. The dawn and the sunset. And I think something that many people notice and the Muslims take it as you know this is one of these aspects that they take from the Quran of everything being in praise that often times animals gather at those periods.

You'll see birds gather at sunset and they'll gather at the early part before the sunrise and chirp away. They literally gather and congregate during that time and chirp away. The crickets in the evening start the frogs. These are all seen as literally praises. That's the way the Muslims view it. Now I'm sure evolutionary biologists would say the cricket's cooling himself off. But it's interesting I mean why things in creation do these things, gather and do these things. The Muslims view it as really acts of praise.

The Second Prayer: Isha (Night)

The next prayer goes from when the red is gone. And this is called maghrib prayer or the sunset prayer. The next prayer is when the sun, all the red is gone. And this goes basically until midnight one should do it. And really for the first third of the night if you divide the night into three parts between 6am and 6pm it should be done in that first third of the night. After the redness is gone. That's the best time. And then after that you're delaying it and the prayers are not encouraged to be delayed.

صَلَاةُ الْعِشَاءِ

And it's prohibited to delay them until they actually go out of the time altogether. So that is the next prayer. And then this period is all encouraged for people who want to do extra prayers.

Night Prayers and Spiritual Practice

The night time in particular is encouraged. Many Muslims do night prayers. Many do not. But there are many Muslims that do night prayers some portion of the night. My teacher, I think minimum was maybe three hours. That was his practice to stand in prayer. And you know, the man who's here, that's his practice because I've lived with him for over a year in different places and that's his practice. So many Muslims will make it a practice to pray at night. It's a good time. It's a time of meditation. It's a time of tranquility and stillness.

And also there's a nice Hasidic tale of why the prayer is a special time. In this Hasidic tale, I think Buber talks about it, that the seeker of God is like a thief trying to steal something precious and the thief always works at night.

The Third Prayer: Fajr (Dawn)

The next prayer is dawn prayer and that begins at the first light. Now there's an interesting phenomenon called the false dawn, which is a white light that will show up towards the middle of the eastern horizon and then it disappears and then after that the second dawn comes up.

صَلَاةُ الْفَجْرِ

The second dawn is the dawn that the Muslims begin their prayer and that will go until right before sunset. All of that is time that you can pray. The preferred time is at the first time, but any time before that you can pray. So technically we could pray anyway from 4:30 till about... Is it time to break? No, you said sunset. Okay, sunrise. Yeah, sunrise. Until the sun rises. So we could technically here pray any time from 4:30 to about probably quarter to six or 5:30 whenever the sun rises. It would be perfectly acceptable.

The Responsibility of the Sleeper

Unless if you overslept there's nothing, there's no responsibility. The Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him said:

"The sleeper has no responsibility. The madman has no responsibility and the child has no responsibility until they reach puberty."

So the sleeper has no responsibility, but there is an idea that if you went to sleep not intending to get up for the prayer then you are responsible. That you should intend to get up for the prayer. That if you just say, you know, I set your alarm for 8 then that would be considered something wrong, that you've done something wrong.

Understanding Time Through the Sun

And then the sun comes up now you will notice a phenomenon because all of the prayers are based on the sun. The night prayer when all the red is gone from the sun. The dawn prayer when the first light of the sun comes. And then the next prayer, what you'll notice as the sun is moving up in the sky and I think this will be a really interesting exercise to give to some of your students if you're interested in doing this because it will teach them some very interesting things.

Astronomy and Early Mathematics

One of the interesting and fascinating things about human beings is that astronomy is really where we get our mathematics from. Early man became very fascinated with the sky and began to examine and watch the sky and watch the movements of the stars and began to discern certain patterns.

And over centuries an accumulation of knowledge occurs. I mean this is what Richard Feynman mentioned that the people who are familiar with him, Six Easy Pieces and he was a Nobel Prize winning physicist from Cal