From the Secrets of the Prophetic Supplication: The Muslim Home 1

Occasion: Transcription of a Fajr khatira delivered on 7 May 2025 Source: A transcription of a video khatira by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — Watch the original video on YouTube

All praise is due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon the servant of Allah and His Messenger, our master and our Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, and upon his family and companions, with abundant peace.

O Allah, we ask You for the good of this day, the good of what is in it and the good of what comes after it, and we seek refuge in You, our Lord, from the evil of this day, the evil of what is in it and the evil of what comes after it. O Allah, set right for us our religion, which is the safeguard of our affairs; set right for us our worldly life, in which is our livelihood; set right for us our Hereafter, to which is our return. O Allah, make life an increase for us in every good, and make death a rest for us from every evil. O Allah, guide us, make us content, mend our hearts, ease our affairs and fulfill our needs. O Allah, be for Your servants in Palestine, O Most Merciful of the merciful, and in every land where Your servants have been oppressed; O Allah, help them, make things easy for them, establish them, make their steps firm and strengthen their hearts, and be for them a rescue, a help, a support, a reinforcement, a backer and a helper, and be against their enemy, O Most Merciful of the merciful. Amen.

A New Heading: Building the Muslim Home

Our new heading in these recurring gatherings on the art of dhikr and supplication can be summed up in building the Muslim home. And our shaykh, Shaykh al-Ghazālī, may Allah have mercy on him, introduces it by speaking about that instinct firmly rooted in the human soul, which no one can go beyond; it is speaking and talking, looking and seeing, active inside the body, moving the person and moving within him, and he cannot give it up, cast it off or be distracted from it, unless he has a fence of obedience and an establishing of faith within himself.

The Spouse Is a Means and the Offspring Are the Goal

And the Lord of Might, glory be to Him, expresses that for His believing servants there is, behind these relationships and behind the empowering of this instinct, a goal greater than the goals of the rest of people, so He says: ﴿وَالَّذِينَ يَقُولُونَ رَبَّنَا هَبْ لَنَا مِنْ أَزْوَاجِنَا وَذُرِّيَّاتِنَا قُرَّةَ أَعْيُنٍ﴾ ("And those who say: Our Lord, grant us from our spouses and our offspring comfort of the eyes")^[1]. And one who reflects on the noble text sees that the verse did not say: «ربنا هب لنا أزواجًا» ("Our Lord, grant us spouses"), but said: «هب لنا من أزواجنا» ("grant us from our spouses"). So the relationship between man and woman has a third dimension, which is the existence of these offspring; as if the husband or the wife is not intended for his or her own sake, but for a goal that is generated from this relationship between the spouses.

And we are speaking of people who are certain that the making of children and their existence is not so much a human capacity as a gift from the Lord; for the Lord of the worlds gives whom He wills what He wills, ﴿يَهَبُ لِمَنْ يَشَاءُ إِنَاثًا وَيَهَبُ لِمَنْ يَشَاءُ الذُّكُورَ أَوْ يُزَوِّجُهُمْ ذُكْرَانًا وَإِنَاثًا وَيَجْعَلُ مَنْ يَشَاءُ عَقِيمًا﴾ ("He grants females to whom He wills and grants males to whom He wills, or He gives them both males and females, and He makes whom He wills barren")^[2], glory be to Him, He does what He wills. That is the most complete purpose behind that relationship.

Establishing the Prayer Is the Goal of Offspring

Then Allah follows with the saying of Ibrāhīm, upon our Prophet and upon him be prayers and peace: ﴿رَبِّ اجْعَلْنِي مُقِيمَ الصَّلَاةِ وَمِنْ ذُرِّيَّتِي﴾ ("My Lord, make me an establisher of the prayer, and from my offspring")^[3]. It is as if he does not bring forth offspring except to complete a message that the Lord of the worlds chose for us to be a goal in our lives, and it is the establishing of the prayer.

And one who looks at the establishing of the prayer sees it as the pillar of the religion, as is related from the Prophet ﷺ;^[4] so these are only carrying out the pillar of the religion. And the pillar of the religion is exemplified by the prayer, but its effect extends to the remaining foundations of life. For the one who comes to pray has left his house, so he has learned striving and moving about in the land. The one who comes to pray has taken his place among people in the row of prayer, to learn the concepts of soldiery in his movement during the movement of life. The one who came for the prayer has memorized texts of the noble Qur'an that he recites slowly, just as a person keeps in mind the goal he repeats in life. The one who came to pray was not, throughout his prayer, in one continuous standing, but stood and bowed, then stood, then prostrated, turning among movements to learn how flexibility is shown in dealing with the circumstances of life.

And the one who came to pray entered the prayer with "Allahu akbar" and ended it with peace upon the believers; and his initial magnification of the Lord of the worlds trains him to possess this temperament and this spirit with which he deals with those around him, so that at the start of his affair he is one who magnifies Allah, so that this magnification produces mercy toward these human beings among whom he moves. Moreover, he did not come to pray alone and isolate himself from the rest of the people; rather, it came in the ḥadīth, in the sense of it, that there is no prayer for one who stands alone behind the row;^[5] so that he may be integrated into the parts of this society whose individuals represent the pillars of this great, strong structure. So he is not cut off from life, not arrogant toward creation, not unique in opinion nor a self-appointed leader, but a soldier on the earth. You can imagine how many lessons the prayer teaches us when we stand before Allah, blessed and exalted, establishing the prayer.

So since Ibrāhīm's, peace be upon him, call for his offspring and those who come after him was that he be an establisher of the prayer, it is as if it is an indication of the cultivation of the earth with all the foundations of this cultivation and its circumstances. And our Lord, glory be to Him, did not speak to people in vain.

The Prophets' Goal in Their Families

And as our shaykh mentions at this point, the prophets have a special role and a particular goal in the existence of these households and these families. Here is Yaʿqūb, upon our Prophet and upon him be prayers and peace, in the verse of al-Baqara: ﴿أَمْ كُنتُمْ شُهَدَاءَ إِذْ حَضَرَ يَعْقُوبَ الْمَوْتُ إِذْ قَالَ لِبَنِيهِ مَا تَعْبُدُونَ مِن بَعْدِي﴾ ("Or were you witnesses when death approached Yaʿqūb, when he said to his sons: What will you worship after me?")^[6]; his goal was nothing but to devote these sons to worship the Lord of the worlds, glory be to Him, and to be an extension of his call on the earth.

When the Goal of Marriage Was Lost

As for our goal in life, unfortunately, for most of those who marry now they do not have this goal. They know no goal behind marriage except satisfying desire, and fitting this instinct together with another person so that the two match, and there is between them a purely physical pleasure, which perhaps does not go beyond it even to building a family or completing a household.

And among the very frightening things that we notice standing in these lands is that someone comes to you to propose to your daughter and knocks at your door, very respectful and polite, "and offers you his ten fingers as candles," and sometimes he says: We want to conclude an Islamic marriage. So you say: Our whole marriage is Islamic, and God willing we will document it in the future. Then he stays with us for a month, very happy, and his mother-in-law is delighted with him, in the honeymoon month. And after a month you cannot find him; he disappears! Then the family comes, and her father, shouting: Help us, our master, the man has disappeared, we do not know his phone number and cannot reach him, and we do not know where he went! So we say: We were saying from the start, let us go to the court and write the two words, so that we would know how to bring him; we report the name and they bring him and stop him anywhere in the country. Glory be to Allah, the All-Powerful! The point is that this one entered for the purpose of desire, and those entered for the purpose of shelter, and things matched. The matter of the great goals behind marriage no longer exists.

And therefore you see that the concept of enjoyment, unfortunately, has come to dominate even the minds of fathers and mothers, so they have begun to stipulate to the one who comes to them in joy an amount of such-and-such, and a wedding at such-and-such a place, and an invitation for so-and-so and so-and-so, so they burden themselves with what they cannot bear in what is to come of their lives, and life after that becomes hardship rather than ease, a cost and a burden rather than a gain.

And accordingly, if we begin to face the small particulars of life, when we enter to marry, the whole marriage at its start is a wedding and joy and hullabaloo and stories and tales and a wedding night and a honeymoon. But the girl has not yet said "ouch" to anyone, and she is tired and wants to go to the doctor, and our man has not seen this kind of talk before. Likewise she, who was fed lunch in her father's house and no one could raise his voice at her, and she is the lady of the whole house and the one in command here and there, and you find someone waking her from her sleep in the morning: Get up, make me a bite to eat! So she says: Get off our backs, we want to sleep! He says: No, my dear, where are you? You left your father's house and came to the house of a man you were not familiar with before and you are not used to such feelings. So whether it is the state of the man or the state of the woman, we see that there is a new life, and a new life must have an initial settling-in and preparation.

Comfort of the Eyes in the Righteous Child

So once more, so that we do not depart from the root of the subject: the first point we are speaking about today in these supplications and the art of dhikr, when we say: «الذين يقولون ربنا هب لنا» ("Those who say: Our Lord, grant us") — and it is not we who will grant — «هب لنا من أزواجنا» ("grant us from our spouses"), who are a means and not a goal, «قرة أعين» ("comfort of the eyes"). The comfort of our eyes is in the righteous child, in obedient sons and daughters, in sound offspring who worship the Lord of the worlds, glory be to Him, in all patterns of worship.

And we see Ibrāhīm, upon our Prophet and upon him be prayers and peace, in his unrestricted call as he says: ﴿رَبِّ اجْعَلْنِي مُقِيمَ الصَّلَاةِ وَمِن ذُرِّيَّتِي رَبَّنَا وَتَقَبَّلْ دُعَاءِ﴾ ("My Lord, make me an establisher of the prayer, and from my offspring. Our Lord, and accept my supplication")^[7]. And we have the third supplication we looked at, which is Yaʿqūb asking his sons: What will you worship after me? ﴿قَالُوا نَعْبُدُ إِلَٰهَكَ وَإِلَٰهَ آبَائِكَ إِبْرَاهِيمَ وَإِسْمَاعِيلَ وَإِسْحَاقَ إِلَٰهًا وَاحِدًا وَنَحْنُ لَهُ مُسْلِمُونَ﴾ ("They said: We worship your God and the God of your fathers, Ibrāhīm, Ismāʿīl and Isḥāq, one God, and to Him we are Muslims")^[8]. We are before sons who, when they mentioned their father, mentioned him with the line of his origins and his roots striking deep into history; before sons who do not disown their origins, do not disown their fathers and grandfathers, who know history correctly.

But today we are before offspring whose utmost effort is to get to know ChatGPT, and who know that Facebook is old and "belongs to the old generation," and if you say something to one of them he says: "No, it is an old fashion, our shaykh, we use such-and-such." So they deal with this, and it is all their utmost effort. And among the important matters is that children know their family, for without that they cease to exist.

The Lesson of "Your Family, Do Not Be Destroyed"

And I still remember a day when one of the neighbors, a friend of my late father, may Allah have mercy on him and on everyone, we were in the mosque and I acted in a certain way, I moved forward toward the qibla, and he took hold of me, and he is not one of the close parties of the family, there is a family tie between us, and he says to me: Did you not see your uncle so-and-so? Why did you not put him forward to lead the prayer? I said to him: The Qur'an and priority, and I began to explain the lesson of fiqh. He replied to me, saying: "Your family, do not be destroyed," and left me and went on. So what did this man mean? And what did he want from me in the first place? I had done nothing wrong; I followed the Sunna of the Prophet ﷺ, and established the divine guidance on earth by doing what the Prophet ﷺ enjoined.

And a little later I asked him: Uncle, why did you say that to me? He said: My son, you know that he likes to go forward to lead the prayer, so whatever knowledge you have, put him forward when he comes, to please his heart. "Your family, do not be destroyed." So he had an art; an artful point in calling to Allah. When we pray behind the man our prayer is not invalidated, for he performs the prayer in full, praise be to Allah. We held on to one side, and he looked at another dimension, he looked at a more complete dimension, a dimension of calling to Allah called the dimension of reconciling hearts and being keen that people be on an equal footing. We looked at a simple point, as they say "we looked under our feet," but he looked at the more complete dimension.

The Family's Cause Is the Nation's Cause

And the point of the saying is that the matter of marriage, the matter of the household and the matter of the family is a matter of the nation; if it stands, the nation stands by it, and if it collapses, the nation collapses behind it. And we have seen the consistency of the social pattern in the lives of individuals as long as families were cohesive. A boy who went out in the street was afraid to do something wrong, because one of his uncles, whose kinship to them was very distant, might be passing by and see him and discipline him! He is a man distant from us in kinship, but he has over him an authority like his father's authority, and if he put a matter to him he cannot raise his eyes or his head before the elders.

But the children here have disowned the matter of family loyalty and disavowal, and the matter of one's belonging to his father and his family and his shaykh and his teacher, so he respects this one and fulfills the right of that one. They look at themselves as if they were created from themselves. They do not have the matter of honoring the elder and respecting the more learned in fiqh and venerating the more knowledgeable, nor the matter that when there is a guest in the house the state of the entire home is turned upside down out of respect for the presence of this alien who has entered upon us; this one brings water, that one brings food, this one serves here, that one spreads out. These concepts no longer exist; they have vanished among us. ﴿رَبِّ اجْعَلْنِي مُقِيمَ الصَّلَاةِ وَمِن ذُرِّيَّتِي رَبَّنَا وَتَقَبَّلْ دُعَاءِ﴾ ("My Lord, make me an establisher of the prayer, and from my offspring. Our Lord, and accept my supplication"); this concept, with Ibrāhīm and with other prophets of Allah, blessed and exalted, no longer stands in people's lives.

I will not prolong this for you, but we will go on, God willing, blessed and exalted, and continue our talk about the matter of the family.

And we ask Allah, blessed and exalted, to mend our hearts concerning our children, not to disappoint our expectation in those we have begotten, and not to try us through them or in them. O Allah, make them stand firm on Your religion, make them for Your Islam, and make them among those who call to You, O Most Merciful of the merciful. O Allah, make us firm and make our dependents firm on guidance. O Allah, we ask You for Your pleasure and Paradise, and we seek refuge in You from Your anger and the Fire.

--- ^[1]: Sūrat al-Furqān, verse 74. Editor's documentation: The speaker cited the verse excerpted to this extent and followed it with reflection on "from our spouses." ^[2]: Sūrat al-Shūrā, verses 49–50. Editor's documentation: The speaker cited the verse to this extent within his talk, and "glory be to Him, He does what He wills" came from his own words. ^[3]: Sūrat Ibrāhīm, verse 40. Editor's documentation: The speaker cited it here excerpted, and its completion is: ﴿رَبَّنَا وَتَقَبَّلْ دُعَاءِ﴾ ("Our Lord, and accept my supplication"). ^[4]: Editor's documentation: «الصلاة عماد الدين» ("The prayer is the pillar of the religion") is related as a raised report, but its chain is not sound; what is established is his saying ﷺ: «رأس الأمر الإسلام، وعموده الصلاة» ("The head of the matter is Islam, and its pillar is the prayer"), narrated by al-Tirmidhī and Aḥmad from the ḥadīth of Muʿādh (may Allah be pleased with him). The speaker did not attribute it. ^[5]: Editor's documentation: Its meaning came in the ḥadīth of Wābiṣa ibn Maʿbad and ʿAlī ibn Shaybān (may Allah be pleased with them both) in Aḥmad, Ibn Māja and al-Tirmidhī, and the jurists have a well-known disagreement over the ruling on the prayer of one who stands alone behind the row; the speaker did not attribute it. ^[6]: Sūrat al-Baqara, verse 133. ^[7]: Sūrat Ibrāhīm, verse 40. ^[8]: Sūrat al-Baqara, verse 133.