AN EVENING WITH MAWLANA SHAYKH NAZIM IN DAMASCUS

Mawlana Shaykh said to us:

The Prophet (s) said: Three are those whose prayer is not accepted, the runaway slave, the woman who dies while her husband is angry with her, and the man who leads prayers while those he leads dislike him.

For this reason when I am visiting somewhere and forward someone to lead prayers whom I see that people dislike to follow, and they prefer me to lead, I have to lead Tarawih, so I lead them with the greatest speed.

After Tarawih Mawlana said to us:

Those who pray 8 rak`ats of Tarawih – is twenty too much for Allah? Even twenty thousand would be too little. “I did not create jinn and humankind except to worship Me.” (51:56)

They say to themselves after 8 rak`ats: No more, this would be too much. They get — tired. Tired. But they could spend hours and hours in front of the TV without getting tired.

They spend 23 hours of their time daily for their nafs, their egos, but their entire amount of time spent in prayer in the day and night might add up to one hour.

Those who pray 8 rak`ats – their least excuse is that they are lazy. And their similitude is that of the Munafiqun in the Holy Qur’an: “And if they get up to pray, they get up lazily” (4:142). “Laziness and dislike” (9:54): and “whoever imitates a people, he is one of them” [hadith].

How dare they abandon fifteen centuries of Consensus of the Umma on twenty rak`ats and the Sunna of the Prophet (s) who said: “You must follow my Sunna and the Sunna of my rightly-guided caliphs after me”? Is this hadith sahih or not? [They answered “Sahih!”]

When they see people pray twenty rak`ats or spend more time in prayer they say Bid`a but they have no objection to their spending hours and hours watching TV, this to them is not a Bid`a!

They have no right to say such a thing when the Prophet (s) ordered us to stay with the greatest mass, the Sawad al-A`zam. And the Sawad al-A`zam prays twenty rak`ats since 15 centuries. How dare they come against that? I am asking Allah to remove them so they do not reach next year.

Sayyiduna `Ubaydullah Ahrar – Qaddas Allah Sirrah – said: “Whoever gets tired and stops is not of us.” Us meaning the wayfarers (al-salikun).

The mark of laziness is that they get tired. However, we are continuing on our way to our Lord. The servant _must_ be always on his way to his Lord. LA BUDD MIN AL-SULUK.

Allah created mankind in the best way then returned them to the lowest existence – asfal as-safilin (95:5). This is this worldly existence. There is no lower existence than this world, this vile world (al-dunya al-dani’a). But to those who believe and do good works “falahum ajrun ghayru mamnun” – “they shall have a reward unfailing,” (95:6), their existence is sweet. But those – they have preferred this vile world.

A man may have chambers filled with gold, silver, and precious gems. Or houses. Or blocks. Or an entire town filled with them, all to himself. Still when he dies, his inheritors will remove his rings from his hands the very night he died. If it is a woman, they will remove her bracelets, her necklaces, her earrings. They can have none of all they owned before. All this is for the living. The inheritors will even regret they have to throw away the sheets he died in. They will blame one another, “Why did you not call the ambulance earlier to take him to the hospital when you saw the signs of impending death?” This is dunya.

In the USA they put me in a great hotel. When I asked how many stars, they said: there are not enough stars for this, the stars are for you. If five for you, for us it might be fifteen. For us, the name is enough. And I was looking at the garbage collectors and porters going in and out of the hotel. They were welcomed, no-one objected to their entering and leaving. Then I thought: If the owner of this huge hotel died in his room at the top, what would they do? Would they leave him in it? Not for one moment. He would be unwelcome. They would wrap him up and take him down – through the elevators? Never. Not even through the stairs. But through the fire escape. And if there is none, then they would tie him with some rope or sheet and hoist him down slowly from the window so no-one could see. And if anyone should see, they would tell them: these are watermelons. Batteekh.

They do not want them to think anyone died there, because they might say: Maybe we shall die there also, then they will leave. They do not want to destroy their pleasures.

Remember the destroyer of pleasures, said the Prophet (s). Meaning death.

Allah has shown me the palaces of sultans and kings, he has placed me close to them and allowed me to see their lifestyles. But, al-Hamdu lillah, my heart never for one moment inclined to that. All I felt was that most of it was useless.

May Allah remove from our hearts the love of dunya and make us long for the riches and magnificence of Akhira.

ALLAH ALLAH ALLAH ALLAH ALLAH ALLAH `AZIZ ALLAH ALLAH ALLAH ALLAH ALLAH ALLAH ALLAH KARIM ALLAH ALLAH ALLAH ALLAH ALLAH ALLAH ALLAH SUBHAN ALLAH ALLAH ALLAH ALLAH ALLAH ALLAH ALLAH SULTAN ALLAH

O Allah, we long after your Sultanate. Ask for His endless Sultanate for He is the Sarmadi Sultan – everlasting.

Bi Hurmatil-Habib, bi Hurmatil-Fatiha.