Preparing for the Month of Ramadan

Occasion: A transcription of a lecture delivered at the women's gathering on April 17, 2018Source: A transcription of a video lecture by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — Watch the original video on YouTube

Praise be to Allah, and peace and blessings upon the servant of Allah, His Prophet and His Messenger, our master and our Prophet Muḥammad, may Allah's blessings and abundant peace be upon him, his family and his Companions. O Allah, we ask You for all good, in this world and the next, and we seek refuge in You from all evil, in this world and the next, and we ask You, our Lord, for Your mercy that encompasses all things, and we seek refuge in You from Your wrath and Your vengeance, O Most Merciful of the merciful. O Allah, we ask You for pardon and well-being in our religion, our worldly life and our hereafter. O Allah, amen, O Lord of the worlds.

May Allah welcome you and bless you, our noble sisters, and I ask Allah, the Exalted, to place this effort of yours toward His house in the scales of your good deeds, complete and undiminished, by His leave, blessed and exalted.

Why Do We Gather?

It grieves me greatly that the meetings were interrupted in the past weeks. And we still hear those who keep saying that sisters should not sit with a shaykh while he lectures them. There is no need for us to recall the many prophetic proofs that the Prophet ﷺ, when he finished speaking with the men, would go to the women to admonish them; many narrations and varied ḥadīths have come on this, and all of them, in their import, do not prohibit the very act of addressing women. Otherwise there would have to be a barrier between every man and every woman in society.

But the texts adopted in the law of Islam adopted the principle of protection for both sides from the other side, while preserving the basic trust between believing men and believing women. Not every man has a disease in his heart, and not every woman displays herself in the manner of the pre-Islamic days of ignorance. The basic principle among believers is that when they meet, they meet upon obedience to Allah, blessed and exalted, and upon the table of knowledge that should gather us all so that we reach Paradise through it, not so that it becomes a means to transgression or error, and we seek refuge in Allah from that.

Ramadan Is a Race Against Time

We want to talk about our preparations for the month of fasting, the noble month of Ramadan. And when we talk about Ramadan, we are talking about particular phrases that recur with us every year: the month of forgiveness, the month of mercy, the month of emancipation from the fire, and a month in which Allah boasts of His servants to His angels.^[1] The Prophet ﷺ advised the believers to show Allah, the Exalted, something good from themselves in that noble month.

But how do we enter this race against the time of Ramadan? Ramadan is twenty-nine days or thirty, so the matter, mathematically, is known. And I remember my study days, we used to say: There are three months left until the exam. Then someone would come along and say: No, that's wrong, there are ninety days left until the exam. What do you mean three months! He tells you: If you count it that way you make the matter light in your hands, but if you count it with a specific number it is different. And what is harder still is to calculate how many hours you will study each day. Suppose ten hours a day: then you are talking about ten times thirty, three hundred hours. And you have ten subjects, each with a book, so you divide the three hundred by the number of pages and it comes out to so many minutes per page. So when you do this calculation it is as if you want to get up and take the book right now, because you know that a minute is slipping away from you now, and it is the due of one of the pages that are supposed to be studied.

Likewise when I reckon that what remains until Ramadan is approximately twenty-nine days, and Ramadan itself is twenty-nine days, then I am supposed to be in a race against time to obtain from Ramadan deliverance for my whole life from punishment, from the Fire.

Forgiveness Is the Believer's Great Wish

The Lord of the worlds, glory be to Him, if He bestows upon His servants the freeing of their necks from the Fire in the month of Ramadan, it is as if they have gained all the bounty. Nothing else remains that we could obtain after that except more of the good pleasure of the Lord of the worlds, glory be to Him. And among the wishes of believers there is nothing greater than to obtain the pardon of Allah, glory be to Him, the Exalted.

Imagine: when Allah, mighty and majestic, pardons a servant, his life becomes settled. You are talking about problems at home with your husband, or a problem with your mother-in-law, or with your son, or your neighbor, or with anyone at all in the world. All of this is resolved by the soul's settledness, steadiness and tranquility. And when tranquility is attained in the souls of servants, their lives become completely settled.

That is why, when the Lord of the worlds, glory be to Him, wished to remind His Prophet ﷺ of the abundance of His favor upon him, He said to him, in the name of Allah: ﴿وَالضُّحَىٰ ۝ وَاللَّيْلِ إِذَا سَجَىٰ ۝ مَا وَدَّعَكَ رَبُّكَ وَمَا قَلَىٰ ۝ وَلَلْآخِرَةُ خَيْرٌ لَّكَ مِنَ الْأُولَىٰ ۝ وَلَسَوْفَ يُعْطِيكَ رَبُّكَ فَتَرْضَىٰ﴾ (By the morning brightness, and by the night when it grows still, your Lord has not forsaken you, nor has He detested you; and the hereafter is better for you than the first life; and your Lord is going to give you, and you will be satisfied).^[2] Then He enumerated the blessings upon him: ﴿أَلَمْ يَجِدْكَ يَتِيمًا فَآوَىٰ ۝ وَوَجَدَكَ ضَالًّا فَهَدَىٰ ۝ وَوَجَدَكَ عَائِلًا فَأَغْنَىٰ﴾ (Did He not find you an orphan and give you refuge? And find you lost and guide you? And find you in need and make you self-sufficient?). This is a material, worldly dimension. And after these blessings we are asked to repay the favor with such and such and such, then we continue reading and say: No, we have finished with these, but there is more: ﴿أَلَمْ نَشْرَحْ لَكَ صَدْرَكَ﴾ (Did We not expand for you your chest?). Imagine! So among the greatest blessings that Allah, the Exalted, bestowed upon His Messenger ﷺ was that He expanded his chest for him.

With what did the Lord of Might expand the chest of the Prophet ﷺ? Perhaps we say, and Allah knows best: He expanded his chest by removing from him the sense of the weight of sin.^[3] For sin weighs heavy. And it has come in the narration that the believer sees his small sin as though it were a mountain about to fall upon him and crush him, unlike the disbeliever or the disobedient one, who sees his sin as a fly that landed on his nose and he did like this. So if this one commits a great error it is normal to him, and if he falls into a calamity there is no problem, and if he commits one of the major sins he will pass over it. But the believer is the opposite.

So let us say it a second time: the basic principle of Ramadan for us is to obtain from the Lord of the worlds, glory be to Him, forgiveness and pardon. For if Allah, blessed and exalted, pardons, then we have gained the good of both this world and the next.

That is why you find, may Allah preserve you all, that the Prophet ﷺ, when he was asked about the most special moments of drawing near to Allah, blessed and exalted, in the greatest of nights, Lady ʿĀʾishah said: O Messenger of Allah, if I happen upon the Night of Power (Laylat al-Qadr), what should I say? So the Prophet ﷺ taught her the supplication: «اللهم إنك عفوٌّ تحب العفو فاعفُ عني» (O Allah, You are Pardoning, You love to pardon, so pardon me).^[4] Because when Allah pardons, He has overlooked, He has forgiven, He has granted, He has given, He has responded, glory be to Him, exalted in His highness.

Fasting: Abstention and Intention

And as we talk about fasting: fasting is abstention. And what does abstention mean? That I refrain from doing something I used to do and had grown accustomed to. He said to me: You will refrain from particular things at particular times. And I do not understand what this means, so he says: You will refrain from the things that break the fast from the rise of dawn until the setting of the sun, with intention.

And the matter of intention is a fundamental one, and it is in the saying of the Prophet ﷺ: «إنما الأعمال بالنيات» (Actions are but by intentions). Everything, and let us step out of the subject of fasting for a little and then return to it. When you are cleaning the house and it feels very heavy on you, and you see that the load is great, and the children have left the world to you after going off to school, and you say: Am I in this worry every day? We say to you: Just one point, and then carry on. This pause at which we stop and then go back, what do we say in it? We say: «Actions are but by intentions.» So make an intention. This one makes my eyes pop out, and that one drives me to exhaustion, no, I cannot. We say: Seek reward from Allah (iḥtasibī). And what does iḥtasibī mean? That we make the work sincerely for Allah, glory be to Him, the Exalted. Will I be a bit more tired? Don't talk to me, talk to our Lord. I didn't sleep well? Please don't talk to me, talk to our Lord. You are always tired, please don't talk to me, talk to our Lord. So whenever you speak to the Lord of the worlds, glory be to Him, about a matter for which you are exerting effort, Allah, blessed and exalted, rewards it.

And the husband who wore you out at home and made your eyes pop out, while you say: I am patient with him for the sake of the children. Please correct the sentence and make it: patient with him for the sake of our Lord. Then you will find that seeking reward from Allah gains you the reward that guarantees you Paradise, and makes your soul happy in this world. But if you feel you are doing it for the children, then the children, as soon as they grow up and find their feet and each one stands on his own two legs, each one goes to his own place; this daughter found a groom and got married and went off with him and settled in her home, praise be to Allah, and I was left alone. So the people for whom I spent my effort all my life have dissolved like a grain of salt and all gone. But if I worked for our Lord, where would our Lord go from me? It is I who will ask myself: Where shall I go from Him? If a person's feeling came to be within this frame, none of our deeds would be lost, and Allah, glory be to Him, would not waste our effort.

So the matter of intention is what our shaykhs, jurists and scholars say is a pillar in all the acts by which we worship Allah, glory be to Him, the Exalted.

The Sacred Ḥadīth: "Fasting Is for Me and I Reward for It"

When we welcome Ramadan we recall a group of ḥadīths of the Prophet ﷺ. Among them is what the Prophet ﷺ relates from the Lord of Might, glory be to Him, the Exalted. We are used to hearing from our Lord in the Qur'an, and when a ḥadīth comes to us that he relates from his Lord, we call it the sacred ḥadīth (ḥadīth qudsī), but within the frame that our Lord is speaking about a subject. So can you imagine that our Lord speaks about trivial subjects? Allah, mighty and majestic, is speaking! So when Allah, blessed and exalted, speaks about a matter, it is only a matter of weight.

So the Lord of Might, glory be to Him, the Exalted, says: «كل عمل ابن آدم له إلا الصوم، فإنه لي وأنا أجزي به» (Every deed of the son of Adam is for him except fasting; it is for Me and I reward for it). And fasting is the only thing that Allah, glory be to Him, the Able, takes from the servant as it is, as it comes out of him, and takes for Himself. So what do we show our Lord, glory be to Him, the Exalted, of ourselves when the matter of fasting is complete in our hands?

Then the Prophet ﷺ said: «والصيام جُنّة، فإذا كان يوم صوم أحدكم فلا يرفُثْ ولا يصخَبْ ولا يجهل، فإن شاتَمَه أحدٌ أو قاتَلَه فليقل: إني صائم. والذي نفس محمد بيده لَخُلُوف فم الصائم أطيب عند الله تعالى يوم القيامة من ريح المسك. وللصائم فرحتان يفرحهما: إذا أفطر فرح بفطره، وإذا لقي ربه فرح بصومه» (Fasting is a shield; so when it is the day of fasting of one of you, let him not engage in obscene speech, nor raise his voice in quarrel, nor act ignorantly; and if someone insults him or fights him, let him say: I am fasting. By the One in whose hand is the soul of Muḥammad, the breath of the fasting person's mouth is better with Allah, the Exalted, on the Day of Resurrection than the scent of musk. And the fasting person has two joys in which he rejoices: when he breaks his fast he rejoices in his breaking of the fast, and when he meets his Lord he rejoices in his fasting).^[5]

These are a set of sentences through which the Prophet ﷺ drew for us the road as we walk through Ramadan.

Three Axes: Body, Mind and Soul

As we welcome Ramadan we want to prepare spiritually, prepare mentally and prepare physically. Three fundamental axes that we must focus on.

Physical preparation. It begins with preparing the body for what it will meet in Ramadan. Where will the body tire in Ramadan? I have people who drink coffee in crazy quantities, and I say to him: Be careful, Ramadan will come upon you and you will find yourself, from the call to the dawn prayer to the call to the sunset prayer, unable to drink even a sip of coffee. So what do you do? Instead of drinking five cups, he begins to cut down a bit, three, then cuts down to two. By Allah, other than whom there is no god, this gradual work in itself has in it a seeking of reward from Allah, glory be to Him, and has in it the training of the soul. So I have begun training my soul, and this is in the first place an educational goal in Ramadan, but I started from the beginning of Shaʿbān, not just from the beginning of Ramadan. Do you know why I do that? Because I want to be first in Ramadan. They say to us: First to what? I say: First, first, I want to be first to the good pleasure of Allah, blessed and exalted.

And if we imagine people entering a running race, and we bring a man from his office where he sits twenty-four hours among calls and people and discussions, and we say to him: Come, stand here, this is the race, go, run. Run? Where? I am here on my chair, I cannot move, so where do I go? I cannot run. But if this man knew that a race would take place in two or three or five months, and we said to him: Please start from now, loosen your muscles and move, walk two steps, so we walked five meters today, and seven tomorrow, and a kilometer the day after, and after a week we walked a much longer distance, then when the time of the test comes I am practicing something I have grown used to doing; it has no longer become strange to my mind, nor has my body become distant from performing it, and the body itself has acquired a kind of practice.

So they say to us: If you are able, fast a lot in Shaʿbān. That is why the Prophet ﷺ would fast a lot in Shaʿbān.^[6] Why? Because he ﷺ is teaching us to prepare for Ramadan. For when the acts come, our noble sisters, as if they were a shock, the body is thrown into confusion, and when a person practices something as if it were a shock, as if compelled to it, it is heavy on him.

Imagine that the Lord of the worlds sees you fasting on the first day of Ramadan while you are resentful, upset, disgusted, unable to bear it: Nobody talk to me, nobody look at my face, nobody raise their voice, I have a splitting headache because I am fasting! What is the matter with you, my dear? Fasting? And what does fasting mean? I am worshipping my Lord. And what is the matter with you being so disgusted while you are worshipping your Lord? The natural thing is for you to be happy and delighted. But I shocked my body by what I did, so all the cyclical movement in the body was thrown out of order. Accordingly I must begin preparing myself from now so that I can begin the race with the racers in Ramadan to gain the good pleasure of the Lord of the worlds, glory be to Him, the Exalted.

So physical preparation: that we begin reducing the amount of food as much as we can, so that when Ramadan comes my body does not trouble me on the first day. Because if my body is troubled my brain is troubled, and if my brain is troubled my morale changes, and if my morale changes I am not performing the worship in the most complete way. Hence the Prophet ﷺ would fast a lot in the month of Shaʿbān, as though teaching us to prepare for fasting in Ramadan.

Is there anyone among us who objects to fasting in Ramadan? Is there among those sitting here one who says: No, I do not want to fast in Ramadan, Ramadan is not for me? If we are going to fast in any case because we are believers, praise be to Allah, then why do you fast while feeling upset? Even if your morale is good and you feel that you are seeking reward (apparently; the word is unclear in the transcript), why would you be suffocating? If I do some exercises from now I will be fine in Ramadan. So instead of eating four times a day, or three, or five, I reduce the quantities as much as I can, within what is customary and acceptable to the body.

And we have some bodies that need certain quantities of food at certain times because of illness; these go on in a normal way, and Ramadan may come upon them and they are not required to fast at all, and they stay on the same program. But I am talking about the ordinary person who can reduce the quantities of his food so as to catch Ramadan in a very normal way.

And some people say: Don't worry, it's very ordinary, we fast all day and stay asleep until sunset, or until before noon or after noon or before the afternoon prayer, and when I wake up, God willing, I make use of some time and read something of the Qur'an, and as soon as sunset comes I pounce on the food. So I have lost nothing, praise be to Allah, and Ramadan has not cost me anything. This mentality thinks in an unsound way. The natural thing is that I come out of Ramadan sound in health, soul and mind. Ramadan came to treat all things. Ramadan is a training course^[7] for human beings that they enter in order to come out of it in their natural, healthy state. You know that when you restart a computer it starts from the beginning, and everything comes out set in an excellent configuration. The same thing: I am supposed to come out of Ramadan having done a reset and restart of everything I have.

This is number one: physical preparation.

Mental preparation. And what is this subject of mental preparation? What is the matter with the mind? Will I install a new mind? No. Rather I ask you: What are you thinking about now? I want to hear the opinions of the sisters (if I were with the men I would take their opinions until they drove me up the wall, but here we are with the sisters, so we will be brief). What are you thinking about now? Someone may say to me: By Allah, I am thinking about the car I will buy, and the house I will build, and the food I will make, and my son who is at school and my daughter who is at university, and my husband, where is he, and my wife, what is she doing. Fine, with your permission let us think about these things, but let us gather them a little, so that instead of taking ninety percent of my brain they take only thirty percent. And you say: And what do I do with the remaining seventy? Are you stealing from me? No, no. I will leave you everything you have, everything, but make only thirty percent for this world, and begin adjusting the way of thinking so that seventy percent is for the hereafter.^[8]

So if I am fasting in Ramadan, the natural thing is that my aim is the good pleasure of Allah, glory be to Him, the Exalted, as though the world dissolves completely from my head, and as though the mind thinks in a different way so as to gain the pleasure of Allah, and our Lord, glory be to Him, the Exalted, becomes the whole axis of thinking for me. But if I cannot do that from now and prepare for it, and begin training myself, so that I raise my morale a little, and purify the soul a little, and develop the self a little, and prepare myself spiritually, I will not be able to do so in Ramadan. The same mentality will remain, in the same way and with the same thinking. Accordingly, because my brain works in its usual way, I will pounce on the breakfast and gobble it down, and my belly swells in front of me like this, then I go to pray tarāwīḥ and find myself dozing off^[9] in the second rak'ah of the ʿishāʾ prayer, then I finish: as-salāmu ʿalaykum wa raḥmatullāh, as-salāmu ʿalaykum wa raḥmatullāh.

And some of our brothers go out, praise be to Allah, and light two or three cigarettes at the door while walking, barely having caught their breath. Then what? He stands talking with people a little so as to feel psychological comfort that he went at prayer time and returned at prayer time, meaning he went at the start of the prayer and came back at its end. So he tells himself: Here I am returning with the people who prayed tarāwīḥ, and I am at my best. No, you did nothing. Why? Because your brain is not running in the right way. So to what did you direct your brain?

And some of the early generations (salaf) would refrain from many of the works they performed day and night in their working lives, in order to devote themselves to worship in Ramadan. So you say: And does this not need a brain, does it need a body placed in the mosque? No, no, no. The mentality, our sisters, is the road.

What are you thinking about? Watch out for Ramadan cooking, and the Ramadan kitchen, and the Ramadan dishes. Many people make special daily programs for Ramadan dishes. And I always talk about man and woman, and that they walk in two slightly different directions: the man strikes out in the land and this is his way, and thus Allah created him, and the woman excels at home and in the needs of the home, and thus Allah created her. So she thinks from now: How will I show my skill in food in Ramadan? No, be yourself, please. On the contrary, teach those you have manners. Discipline the people in the house a little and teach them that Ramadan is not for eating. Ramadan is named the month of fasting, not the month of eating.

Ramadan is not the month of food that gets thrown away like that, and this is a point we must stress, so please spread it among the sisters: Ramadan is not the month of food that is thrown away. Ramadan passes over people who cannot find a morsel with which to break their fast, people who cannot find anything to eat for the pre-dawn meal.

So once again: we must change the way of thinking by which we operate. I said physical preparation, then mental preparation: what does the brain think about? How do I think today and how will I think in Ramadan?

Spiritual preparation. And the third matter is spiritual preparation. I imagine Ramadan coming straight in to enter the human soul and mend what is in it. But you have filled it with clutter. The soul inside is full of things, in darkness, in a mess, with pots and knives and very strange things. So Ramadan comes to enter: People, make room for me. It is told: Widen a little, move this. And it finds the world in a jumble. So you must first empty out, and clear space, so that when Ramadan comes to mend the soul it finds the place empty. Imagine when you bring someone to fix a faucet in the house, you empty the place so he can move and go back and forth and lift this and install that and do his work in a natural and spontaneous way.

Accordingly, when Ramadan comes to enter upon me it finds me still holding a grudge against so-and-so, and furious at so-and-so, so inside me there is a quantity of envy and rancor and hatred and spite, and a quantity of ignorance and arrogance, large quantities crowded inside. Then Ramadan comes to enter and finds no place. So it will leave the world to you, and the pipes will burst inside, and you will soon find yourself in a sea of darkness, unfortunately. We ask Allah for safety.

Accordingly, when Ramadan comes, it must find my soul as close to purity as possible. So what do we do? Number one: can we forgive one another? This is a very important question. Can we forgive people or can we not? Your son's wife who has been wearing you out since the day of her wedding and plays tricks on you, can I forgive her or not? And your mother-in-law who sits with you at one o'clock. And people complain of the same misfortunes, so we sit together at one o'clock and talk about so-and-so and so-and-so and this one and that one with empty talk. Accordingly, when Ramadan comes it needs to see refined souls, because Ramadan's level is refined, a gift from the Lord of the worlds, glory be to Him. And it does not speak to the trivialities below, nor to people who want to sink themselves into mire and mud. It speaks to people who want to go up and rise. Imagine a university professor speaking on a particular subject and addressing a particular level of people.

As for those who chose for themselves to remain in more darkness inside the heart, and compounded ignorance, and buried rancor, and the attempt to take revenge and retaliation upon people, as though one of them was created to be an instrument set over the necks of servants, this kind of people, I do not think Ramadan addresses them, except that it pats them and says to them: What do you say we begin to deal with one another?

Why Do Problems Multiply in Shaʿbān?

So we spoke about physical preparation, mental preparation and spiritual preparation. (Were you wanting to say something?) One of the sisters said: We always notice that problems multiply greatly in the month of Shaʿbān. They begin in Shaʿbān, not in Ramadan? Yes, in the month of Shaʿbān.

Fine. If we believe the ḥadīth of the Prophet ﷺ that the Lord of the worlds, glory be to Him, locks up the devils in Ramadan, then this is just a very simple understanding on my part, and Allah knows best, it may be right and it may be wrong, but we are thinking together out loud.^[10] You know when you want to get a ball over there, but the door will not let you in, so what do you do? You take the ball, then throw it all at once, and the ball runs on its own, running by what is called self-propulsion. So the devil does that: he sets the world ablaze between every couple three days before Ramadan, so Ramadan enters upon them while they are already quarreling. Then it becomes Ramadan and fasting while we are at odds, until the noble month passes by and we are still at odds. And although Ramadan has come, you find me saying: What are these wretched days, she did not even come to knock on my door, she would not reconcile with me, she did not pay me any attention. And I begin to make excuses: this one did not put the salad in its place, this eggplant did not come out even, this molokhia was spoiled. And I sit making excuses, and the devil nearly says: My own wish was that I had thrown the ball and it runs by itself.

And imagine any ball in the world, a snowball for example: when it starts to roll it starts at a small size, but it ends at a large size. So the devil throws it from the start and makes a calamity between two partners in a shop, or makes a disaster between two neighbors who are next to each other night and day, or makes a problem for you with your sister who is in the home country while you live in America, and she had asked you for an iPhone 6 and you brought her an iPhone 4! Stories and tales and movies. The devil knows very well.

Someone may say to me: And why do we focus so much on the subject of the devil? Is he that strong? The point is that the devil has experience. Meaning: if I bring an employee today, a recent graduate, and appoint him, is his competence at work that of someone with ten years of experience in the same subject? And what if I found someone with sixty years of experience, with the same strength and vitality and mental alertness, and he has sixty years of experience in the very same job? Which of them, I wonder, will accomplish the work faster and know the hidden aspects of matters? The one who has experience. The devil has experience in handling the afflictions of the human soul over the course of time, since Allah created humanity. So the devil knows how to enter all souls.

So he does not go to a man to say to him: What do you say to stealing these two coins? He will not do that. But he goes to him and says: Masha'Allah, your voice was very beautiful in the ʿishāʾ prayer today, you captivated the people, people would have gone mad for you. So he enters upon him from the matter of arrogance, or enters upon him from the matter of self-admiration. And he goes to a married woman who could never commit the forbidden, but he makes her backbite her neighbor until she cuts the woman's reputation to pieces. And he goes to another and makes him do such and such. The devil's ways of entering upon a person are varied and many, according to the variety of their aims, purposes and methods, according to the devil's experience in seducing the human soul.

So your question: that problems multiply in Shaʿbān, this is natural if we imagine this picture, that we fear the devil in Shaʿbān more than we fear him at any other time.

But pay attention again: if he is locked up during the month of Ramadan, in the way we imagine and believe, then what will he do on the day of ʿĪd when he comes out? This is a matter we will discuss, God willing, later, but imagine what he will do.^[11] Imagine a criminal locked up and bound for a whole month, seeing the people outside and wishing to be released so he could destroy them but unable to, so as soon as the shackles are undone he is let loose upon the whole world. That is why, as you kindly said, there are many problems in Shaʿbān, but there are more problems on the day of ʿĪd, and more crimes on the day of ʿĪd. Our friend comes out longing to destroy the relationships between people.

The Two Keys of Ramadan: The Qur'an and Fasting

Send blessings upon the guide, the bringer of glad tidings. So we agreed again: we have physical, mental and spiritual preparation. And so that we can welcome Ramadan well, we must take hold of the keys with which we enter Ramadan. The first key is the Book of the Lord of the worlds, glory be to Him, the Exalted. And the second key is fasting. And fasting we agreed that we will deal with in the simple way the Prophet ﷺ used to do: he used to fast Shaʿbān, or most of Shaʿbān, or from Shaʿbān, according to the differences in the existing narrations, and the Prophet's ﷺ practice in his various conditions.

But the matter of the Qur'an is something we need to stop at for a little. How many times do you read the Qur'an in Ramadan? If we went around among people we would find many and varied answers. And how many Ramadans have passed over us to this day? Ten Ramadans have passed over us, or twenty, or thirty, or fifty, according to the number of years of those fasting. So what, I wonder, are our states of faith? It is supposed that every Ramadan that passes over me, Allah forgives me in it all my sins, and makes me an angel, another person, and so on. So why are we still in the same afflictions? Why is it still the same long tongue that I want to cut off? Why is it still the same soul full of rancor toward people? Why is it still the same lying in some people? Why can we not uproot ourselves from these afflictions although many Ramadans have passed over us?

Someone says to me: I read the Qur'an last year five times, Shaykh. Another: seven times, Shaykh. Another: I used to complete it every three days, Shaykh. You say a complete reading every three days? Masha'Allah, very nice. And what did you benefit? What did we benefit?

Then he mentioned the reward: that for every letter there is a good deed, and the good deed is multiplied tenfold, and Allah multiplies for whom He wills.^[12] And Allah, the Exalted, said to His Messenger ﷺ: ﴿وَرَتِّلِ الْقُرْآنَ تَرْتِيلًا﴾ (and recite the Qur'an with measured recitation).^[13] Then what? When the Lord of the worlds commanded the Prophet ﷺ to recite the Qur'an with measured recitation, then I recite the Qur'an in the sense of: ﴿أَفَلَا يَتَدَبَّرُونَ الْقُرْآنَ﴾ (do they not reflect upon the Qur'an?), do they not think, remember, reason. All are expressions indicating that the words of the Noble Qur'an should not be passed over in passing, but rather that reading the Qur'an must be in a way that suits the station of the Qur'an, with reflection.^[14]

The principle in Ramadan is that what is most present alongside fasting is the matter of prayer. So if we began with the subject of humility (khushūʿ), by accustoming ourselves to humility in prayer, this would be a start. Begin by my paying attention to the prayer so that I can then pray tarāwīḥ.

Then the Qur'an, how can we reflect on it and how can we understand it? How do you read? Try to read the Qur'an as if you were explaining to someone, without any additions. So we say, for example, in the prayer: al-ḥamdu lillāhi rabbi l-ʿālamīn, ar-raḥmāni r-raḥīm, … aḍ-ḍāllīn, āmīn, Allahu akbar! What are you doing? What are you doing? I am praying like this. You are not praying like this, you are pecking at the prayer. And what are you doing? I am reading the Qur'an. How do you read? I read Sūrat al-Baqarah today, all of it: Alif Lām Mīm, dhālika l-kitāb, … al-muttaqīn. Slowly. Seek guidance from Allah. Like this you are not reading the Qur'an, like this you are holding the Qur'an and counting it. You are rushing along.

Do we agree, our noble sisters? The matter of reading the Noble Qur'an is simple, and I will not go into any details, but read the Qur'an as if you were explaining to someone. Try sitting with Anas and saying to him: Come, let us read Sūrah such-and-such, read. So we say, for example: ﴿اقْرَأْ بِاسْمِ رَبِّكَ الَّذِي خَلَقَ ۝ خَلَقَ الْإِنسَانَ مِنْ عَلَقٍ ۝ اقْرَأْ وَرَبُّكَ الْأَكْرَمُ ۝ الَّذِي عَلَّمَ بِالْقَلَمِ ۝ عَلَّمَ الْإِنسَانَ مَا لَمْ يَعْلَمْ ۝ كَلَّا إِنَّ الْإِنسَانَ لَيَطْغَىٰ ۝ أَن رَّآهُ اسْتَغْنَىٰ ۝ إِنَّ إِلَىٰ رَبِّكَ الرُّجْعَىٰ﴾ (Read in the name of your Lord who created; created man from a clinging clot; read, and your Lord is the Most Generous; who taught by the pen; taught man what he did not know; no indeed, man transgresses; because he sees himself self-sufficient; indeed, to your Lord is the return).^[15] If we read the Qur'an in this way, it is a preface to the matter of reflection.

All of us hit «qul aʿūdhu bi-rabbi n-nās» in the two rak'ahs and fly off, we take the two rak'ahs at a hundred miles an hour while flying, and we turn the prayer into: run, run. This is not worship, this is making light of it. By this we are clowning around, by this we are offering Allah, glory be to Him, the Exalted, something bad, not good in itself. There must be a very great difference between performance and shrugging a task off the shoulder. I do not have a sack on my shoulder that I want to put down; I have a trust that I am fulfilling, so I must fulfill it in the best way.

So if we try to read the Noble Qur'an as if we were explaining to someone, slowly and calmly, we will find that we take in a quite large proportion, and then we begin to feel the sweetness of the Qur'an. By Allah, other than whom there is no god, you may find yourself in some situations repeating the same verse more than once, because you finally felt that this verse is very sweet. And sometimes, although you have read the Qur'an dozens of times, you pass over some verses as if you had never read them before, as if it were the first time you see them in your life, because you have begun to feel the sweetness of the Noble Qur'an and its effect on the heart and its influence on the mind and its direction of the brain and the way of thinking that has changed. And when I go back to one of the sūrahs and read it, you may find yourself reading the sūrah twice: What is this sūrah, what is it talking about? And that is after thinking.

And as long as we read without thinking, we will work without thinking, and we will plan without thinking, and we will apply without thinking, and our whole life will rest on a system of randomness with which we will find no practical result. And the whole world around us is racing ahead, because the whole world around us understands what it is doing and thinks about it and reviews its brain, then begins execution after understanding and prepara...

(The recording breaks off at this point before the sentence is complete.)

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: The speaker mentioned these phrases as meanings that recur every year. As for the phrase "Allah boasts of His servants to His angels" in Ramadan, he gave no wording or attribution for it, and the editor was not certain of its authenticity in this form, so it is conveyed as what the speaker said. ^[2]: Editor's documentation: The recited verses are from Sūrat al-Ḍuḥā (1–8), then al-Sharḥ (1); the lecturer did not name the two sūrahs or the locations of the verses. ^[3]: Editor's documentation: This is an inference by the speaker in interpreting the expansion of the chest, offered in the form of a possibility («ممكن نقول», "we could say"), and he did not attribute it to a report. As for the ḥadīth he alluded to, al-Bukhārī narrated it from Ibn Masʿūd as a statement of his: «إن المؤمن يرى ذنوبه كأنه قاعد تحت جبل يخاف أن يقع عليه، وإن الفاجر يرى ذنوبه كذباب مرّ على أنفه فقال به هكذا» (The believer sees his sins as if he were sitting under a mountain fearing that it will fall on him, and the wicked one sees his sins like a fly that passed over his nose and he said so with it, like this). The speaker cited it by its meaning. ^[4]: Editor's documentation: Narrated by al-Tirmidhī and Ibn Mājah from the ḥadīth of ʿĀʾishah (may Allah be pleased with her), with the wording «اللهم إنك عفوٌّ تحب العفو فاعفُ عني». The end of the supplication is disordered in the transcript («فعفو عنه»), so the wording of the narration is retained. ^[5]: Editor's documentation: The speaker cited the ḥadīth piece by piece; the beginning of the passage is the sacred ḥadīth «كل عمل ابن آدم له إلا الصوم…», and the rest is from the words of the Prophet ﷺ, and the ḥadīths are in the two Ṣaḥīḥs in close wordings (al-Bukhārī and Muslim). The wording has been fixed according to the well-known narration, while retaining «ولا يجهل» as he mentioned it. ^[6]: Editor's documentation: The speaker mentioned no wording or narrator; what is known in the two Ṣaḥīḥs, from the ḥadīth of ʿĀʾishah (may Allah be pleased with her), is that the Prophet ﷺ used to fast a great deal in Shaʿbān. His later saying «he used to fast Shaʿbān or most of Shaʿbān» is an allusion to the differences among the narrations. ^[7]: Editor's documentation: In the transcript it reads «دورة تدريبية ثانوية» ("a secondary training course"); the editor judged it more likely to be «سنوية» ("annual"), i.e. one that comes every year, so it is read on this possibility. ^[8]: Editor's documentation: The ratio of 30% for this world and 70% for the hereafter is an illustration offered by the speaker to bring the meaning closer, not a rule of the law. ^[9]: Editor's documentation: The verb is disordered in the transcript («هقي نفسي بتوب»); and «أنعس» ("I doze off") is an estimate from the context. ^[10]: Editor's documentation: The speaker alluded to the ḥadīth reported about the shackling of the devils in Ramadan and did not mention its wording or source. His analysis of the reason problems multiply in Shaʿbān he presented as a personal understanding («والله أعلم، قد يكون صحيحًا وقد يكون خطأً», "and Allah knows best, it may be right and it may be wrong"). ^[11]: Editor's documentation: His statement that crimes and problems increase on the day of ʿĪd is a personal picture that the speaker put forward in the form of "imagine," and he did not rely in it on a text or a statistic. ^[12]: Editor's documentation: His sentence here is disordered in the transcript («مسألة أن أجد السنة ترتل القرآن كله…»); so only what became clear from the mention of the good deeds is retained. ^[13]: Editor's documentation: The verse is in Sūrat al-Muzzammil (4). ^[14]: Editor's documentation: The speaker did not cite the verse in its wording, but only gave the phrases «أفلا يتدبرون القرآن، أفلا يتفكرون، يتذكرون، يعقلون» to draw attention to the meaning of reflection; the closest places for «أَفَلَا يَتَدَبَّرُونَ الْقُرْآنَ» are in Sūrat al-Nisāʾ, verse 82, and Sūrat Muḥammad, verse 24. The editor has retained the wording of the verse here to the extent the speaker mentioned it. Before this phrase in the transcript came very disordered words (negating a meaning of measured recitation) that were not retained. ^[15]: Editor's documentation: The verses are from Sūrat al-ʿAlaq (1–8), recited by the lecturer, who did not name the sūrah.