Honor Your Masjid as a Place of Spiritual Repose

Honor Your Masjid as a Place of Spiritual Repose

Opening Praise and Testimony

Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah, we praise Allah and we seek His help and we seek His forgiveness and we seek His guidance. We seek refuge in Allah from the evil of our souls and from the evil of our actions. Whoever Allah guides, none can misguide him, and whoever He allows to go astray, none can guide him. And may His peace and blessings be upon the best of His creation, upon our master and beloved, the Messenger of Allah, Muhammad ibn Abdullah, and upon his family and those who follow him. And thereafter, O servants of Allah.

The Divine Declaration and Purpose of Prayer

Allah says in the Quran :

"Indeed, I am Allah. There is no deity except Me, so worship Me and establish prayer for My remembrance."

Allah sometimes addresses people directly in the Qur'an, other times He uses the second or the third person. But in this case He's using the first person إِنَّنِي أَنَا الله declaring that, I am your God, I am Allah. That's what Allah is telling us, إِنَّنِي أَنَا اللَّهُ لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا أَنَا there's nothing worthy of worship except Allah, me here He says, except me alone. And then He says, so worship me, so worship me, Ibadah, and establish the prayer for my remembrance, Lidhikri.

The Sacred Status of Masajid

Allah says:

- that the masajid are houses, in houses that Allah has permitted to be erected for Him, and that in those houses His name is mentioned يُسَبِّحُ لَهُ فِيهَا بِالْغُدُوِّ وَالْآصَالِ and they worship Him in those houses, in the ghudwa, in the morning, the early morning period, and in the afternoon period, because these are the two most important times of ibadah.

The Prophet ﷺ mentioned the Fajr and the Isha prayer:

(Sahih Bukhari 657, Sahih Muslim 651)

- they're the hardest prayers for the hypocrites, the early prayer and the late prayer. So these two times in particular are times, even the birds, if you listen in the morning, early morning, in the late afternoon, even the birds gather in the trees and you can hear them doing their tasbih.

The Prophet ﷺ loved the frogs, he said of all the creatures he loved the frogs the most because they did the most tasbih, and you can hear them in the early morning and in the evening doing their tasbih.

The People Who Are Not Distracted from Remembrance

So Allah says about these people:

- that they are men not preoccupied by their commerce and their trade from remembering Allah and establishing prayer and giving zakah. It doesn't preoccupy them. They remember Allah.

One of the Andalusian travelers went to Mecca and when he came back, people used to ask the question, what's the strangest thing you saw? He said, I saw an old man clinging to the Ka'bah asking for dunya. That was the strangest thing that he saw. An old man clinging to the Ka'bah asking for dunya. And he said, and then I went into the souk and I saw a young man in the midst of his trading remembering Allah. The heart, if it's connected to Allah, it remembers Allah.

The Reality of Heedlessness and Dependence on Allah

People don't think about what Allah has done for them. They don't think about it. They're in heedlessness. There are people now that haven't remembered God for years. They don't even think about Allah. And yet every instant is completely and utterly dependent on Allah. Your breath, your lungs, your kidneys, your digestion, everything is dependent on Allah. He is the one who has ordered the universe. He is the Qayyum, he is the one who has set it up.

Allah is doing everything for us and then he asks for us to do some things for him. To remember him at least five times a day. That's minimal. He is remembering us in every instant. Because if he didn't remember us, we wouldn't even exist.

- If you remember me, then I'll remember you. If you remember me in this way,

then I'll remember you.

(Sahih Bukhari 7405, Sahih Muslim 2675)

- Whoever remembers me in a gathering like this, Allah says he will make mention of him in a gathering better than that gathering amongst the angels.

There are people unknown to everybody that are known to the angels because they're simple people that nobody even thinks about or gives them the time of day, but they're up in the night before Fajr calling on Allah and Allah knows those people and Allah makes those people known to his mala, to his assembly.

The Sanctity of the Masjid

So Allah has given us masajid.

- The masajid are for the sake of Allah. Do not call upon other than Allah in the masajid.

Whoever asks for something in a masjid, according to the hadith, you're supposed to say:

(Sunan Abu Dawud 1079) - May Allah not return the thing you lost.

- Because masjids were not built to ask people if they know where you left your such and such. They were built for Allah or they were bought for Allah.

The Story of This Building

People build things, they don't know why they're building things. Somebody had an idea here and it's become another idea. The architects, when they built this, they didn't think about qibla, but it's maqdur, it's something Allah decreed people one day would be praying in this building, subhanallah. People in this country, you know,

Islam is showing up everywhere. You can't get away from Muslims in America. I can't. Wherever I go, I see Muslims.

You can't get away from Muslims, so even America, who would have thought? Well actually they thought early on about Muslims here because it's mentioned in the earliest documents about making a safe place for Jews, Christians, infidels, and Mohammedans, Hindus. Jefferson mentioned Mohammedans and Hindus. That was his idea and there were already Muslims. They knew there were Muslims. George Washington in a letter was requesting somebody to go find workmen for his plantation and one of the things he said, I don't mind if they're Mohammedans. Why would he even mention that if there weren't Mohammedans around offering their services?

So there have been Muslims here from the very start, but now increasing numbers and masajid are being built or bought in different places, but the masajid have a hurma and a lot of Muslims don't think about this anymore.

Proper Adab When Attending Jumu'ah

I'll give you an example. The Prophet ﷺ said that whoever does wudu - If a person goes on Jummah, he does a good wudu and in the other riwayah, the Prophet ﷺ said: Whoever takes a ghusl on Jummah, like Janabah, as if he was in Janabah, and then he goes to the first hour, it's as if he gave a camel, a big camel in sacrifice in the first hour.

But in this hadith, he said whoever does ikhtasada or does the wudu, and then wears his best clothes, see like Haroon, we were Christian before we were Muslim. I was a Christian before I was Muslim. We had to wear what was called your Sunday best to go to church. You didn't go to church wearing a t-shirt. In fact, you wouldn't even think of that. And if somebody did, people would have stared at them, shocked, like why are you showing such disrespect to a house of God? That's how Christians would look at it. Why are you showing such disrespect to a house of God? By not even bothering to dress appropriately, by not even bothering to dress nicely, one day out of the week, well, it's a casual day at work.

We don't have to wear nice clothes. We've been doing that all week. That's not, that's not, the Muslims have a, we have a sanctity to the day of Jumu'ah.

- O children of Adam, take your adornment at every masjid. Ornament yourselves. Wear a nice perfume for other people.

The Prohibition of Bad Odors in the Masjid

The Prophet ﷺ said:

(Sahih Bukhari 855, Sahih Muslim 564)

- Whoever eats garlic, or onions, or leeks, let him not come near our masjid, for indeed the angels are harmed by what harms the sons of Adam.

So if you come to the masjid smelling like last night's meal, and then you pray next to a person who's thinking about paradise, and you're reminding him of hell, seriously, we have a problem. We have a problem. The masjid is supposed to be a place where you come for spiritual repose. It's a place of dignity. It's a place of sakinah.

The Proper Conduct in the Masjid

The Prophet ﷺ said, if you come into the masjid, don't raise your voice, don't talk. He said you're in prayer until you leave the masjid. He said one of the signs of the end of time is voices would be raised in the masjid. He said one of the signs of the end of time is people would talk about worldly affairs in the masjid. You have the whole world to talk about worldly affairs. Leave the house of God to Allah.

- So you can see Islam spreading in America, but the question, what kind of Islam? What kind of Islam? Is it going to be slacker Islam? Is it going to be like the slacker culture that's out there? Or are we going to be shuhada' al-nas? People that still have human dignity in an age of utter and complete human degradation. That's the question to ask yourselves.

The Call for Dignity and Modesty

Are we going to be dignified people that dress in a dignified manner? Just because everybody else is dressing like that, look at how Muslims dress for centuries. Even the poorest Muslims dress beautifully. Go to Said, Egypt. Go to the Swat Valley. Go to the Malaysian villages and look how Muslims dress in traditional clothes with human dignity. They never dress wearing billboards selling people's products that they don't even get paid to do.

People wearing billboards, wearing all these things on their, you know, Nike and Tommy Hilfiger or whoever. I ask people, are they paying you? Do you have a contract? You're a human billboard. They pay money to put their name on billboards, cardboard boxes out there. They put money, they give money to put their names on billboards. They give money to put their names on pixelated images on the internet and yet you're allowing them for free to put their name on your body created by Allah and you don't even think about it. Human billboards. Total, complete, utter human degradation.

The Exalted Status of Humanity

This is what's happened to Bani Adam, the khalifa. The khalifa of Allah, the only creature that walks upright, straight, mustaqeem, with dignity. The only creature that can articulate his needs, that can complain if he has complaints, that can praise if he feels a need to praise, that can give thanks and gratitude. We're the only creature that can do that. Other creatures, dogs can show some gratitude, but they can't write a thank-you note.

Human beings are something exalted. We're an exalted species and yet we've allowed Iblis to completely and utterly abase us. To rub our noses in the dirt, not for the sake of Allah in sajdah, but to show what utterly degraded creatures we are because that was his claim. He said you're choosing him over me. I'm a high thing, he's a low thing, he's nothing. And Iblis has been given respite until the end of time to prove to God that God was wrong.

That's what Iblis wants to do. He wants to prove to God, to Allah, that you were wrong in choosing Bani Adam. You should have chosen me and my progeny. I'll show you really how to worship you. Envy. And so that's his mission, 7-24. Seven days a week, 24 hours a day. To degrade human beings, strip them of their ornaments, make them naked.

Signs of the End Times

The Prophet ﷺ said one of the signs of the end of time is you'll see people walking in marketplaces, meaning they're not aboriginal people. Where aboriginal people are like children. They have a purity, so they dress, they have so attained. They're not in marketplaces. He didn't say public, he said in market, in civilized places. You will see people walking with their thighs fully exposed. That's a sign of the degraded state of people, not aboriginal people, like native peoples that don't look upon each other lustfully in that way.

But civilized people degraded to the point where they walk around with no shame. No shame. Shame is a beautiful thing. Modesty. Every religion has a quality and a characteristic and the quality and characteristic of my religion is modesty. A sense of shame.

The Prophet, they said that he was more modest than a virgin that was still cloistered, that hadn't come out. That was his modesty,.

The Prophet's Inquiry About Those in the Masjid

One day he went to the masjid and he found people in the masjid and he said:

- What has brought you sitting here in the masjid? And they said, the only thing that brought us here was we came to remember Allah. He said

- Allah! Allah! That's the only reason you came? And they said

. He said والله didn't ask you in this interrogative with suspicion, you know, like out of تُهْمَة. But Jibreel came to me and said that Allah was making mention and proud of those sitting in the masjid. So he wanted to go see who they were and what brought them there.

The Hours of Jumu'ah and Their Rewards

The Prophet ﷺ said on يَوْمُ الْجُمُعَةِ if you come in the first hour, and there's 12 hours of the day, 12 in the night, and they differ because we don't have 60-minute hours in traditional reckoning. The hours are based on the Maghrib and Isha, so you can have an hour that's 30 minutes one part of the year and it's 70 minutes another part of the year. That's the way it works.

So when you look at these, he mentions five hours before Jum'ah. That's the idea that Fajr was at 6 o'clock and then the Jum'ah is at 12 o'clock. So there's your six hours. But if Fajr is at 4 o'clock and Dhuhr is at 1 o'clock, then the hours are extended. So that's how you have to figure it out.

He said if you go in the first hour, which is the hour after Fajr on يَوْمُ الْجُمُعَةِ to wait until the Imam. This is what Muslims used to do. He said it's as if you sacrificed a camel. If you go in the second hour, it's as if you

sacrificed a cowa بَقَرَة If you go in the third hour, it's as if you sacrificed a horned ram كَبْشًا أَقْرَنَ . And if you come in the fourth hour, it's as if you brought a chicken. And if you come in the fifth hour, it's as if you brought an egg. That's it. It's as if you brought an egg. And then when the Imam comes out, there's no more gifts to bring. Once the Imam's out, if you come at that point, it's closed.

Examining Our Priorities with Allah

That's what we're giving to Allah these days. The best of us are giving eggs. Seriously, and then you wonder the state of the Muslims. Serious people wonder like what Ibn Atayla said, if you want to know where you stand with God, look at where Allah is with you. Where is He on your list of priorities? If He's number one priority, then you're number one priority with Him. If He's number five on the list, my work, my money, my wife, my family, whatever. Everybody has their priorities. Then that's where you stand. And if He's not even in the list of priorities, it's just lip service.

Supplication for the New Place of Worship

So that's something for Muslims to think about. So as we embark on a new place of worship in our community, may Allah make it a safe place, a blessed place, a respected place. May Allah put respect of these places in our hearts. Because now this is, it's consecrated for the sake of Allah. Whatever it was before إِنَّمَا الْأَعْمَالُ بِالنِّيَّاتِ (Sahih Bukhari 1, Sahih Muslim 1907) - It was bought with an intention and then that intention manifests. So people should think about that.

A Gentle Reminder, Not a Rebuke

And then also about clothes, it's تَنْبِيهُ الْغَافِلِ - a reminder for the heedless. You know, alhamdulillah, your people praying Jumu'ah, there's lots of Muslims out there right now, they're not even bothering praying Jumu'ah. The good people, you know, inshallah, we ask Allah to be amongst the good people. But the good people come, even if they come in less than the highest desirable state. You know, so I'm not in any way, it'