Review: Steps to Khushoo' in Salat

Thursday Halaqa Notes

2/14/13

MCA Santa Clara, CA

Sr. Dana Jarrar

Steps to Khushoo’ In Salat, review

“Allah gives worldly things to the ones he loves and the ones he doesn’t love, but he gives the religion to those he loves.”

1. Being conscious that Allah is with us during Salat

• How can we bring back the rooh, spirit, to our Salat?
• Last week we talked about the secret key to khushoo’, concentration, in Salat: that when you stand to pray you have that strong feeling that:

1. you are talking to Allah
2. that Allah is listening to you
3. and that Allah will answer your du’a

2. Putting a Niyya for everything you do in your day increases khushoo’ in Salat

• But how can we reach that feeling and awareness of Allah in our prayers? We need to remember Allah throughout the day. The more we think about Allah outside of our prayers, the more we will think about Him inside our prayers. 
• We are all busy and the people with khushoo’ are busy too. The trick is in changing the way you look at things. When you tie everything in your life to Allah, each thing you do in your day will bring you closer to Allah, which in turn will increase your khushoo’.
• For example, let’s take a normal thing we do everyday - cooking. If you go into the kitchen and make an intention ‘I am doing a sadaqa, charity, for my family’ and you cook the meal. Then you hear the adhan and you pray. How do you think your khushoo’ will be in that prayer? 
• Another example is when we go shopping. If you went shopping and bought what you wanted, this should increase your khushoo’, because Allah hasn’t deprived you of anything. 
• So khushoo’ is not just about putting effort in your prayers, it is also putting an effort before your prayers.

3. A part of developing Khushoo’ is to increase your love of Allah.

• We talked about the high khushoo’ of the Sahaba (radia Allahu 3anhum) in their Salat. How did they reach this? By having a high love of Allah. 
• We can increase our love of Allah too by getting to know Him through his names and attributes, Asmaa wal Sifaat. And we can teach these to our children to develop their love for Allah. 
• Usually we love Allah depending on how much He gave us today. Today Allah gave me something so I love Him. Tomorrow my husband got laid off and we say why Allah did you do this to me? 
• But there is a wisdom behind each thing we get or don’t get, but we don’t know what is the wisdom. We have to thank Allah for everything He gave us, even the tests. 
• We should say ‘Allah you are Kareem, generous, even if you didn’t give me, you gave others.’ The Sahaba had the love of Allah + the fear of Allah.

4. Understanding the Qur'an increases Khushoo'

• These days, we only open the Qur’an in Ramadan, competing with each other to finish reading it. Yes we are busy. But Allah gave us 24 hours in the day, we should give some of that time back, as zakat. 
• Find 15 minutes in your day and give this time to Allah by reading Qur’an. If we read it in a rush just to get it done, we get the reward of reading, but we don’t benefit from what we’ve read. We did not have khushoo’ in our reading. 
• Sayyidina Umar took 8 years to memorize Surat Al Baqara! Because he wouldn’t go to the next ayah until he had memorized it and applied it to his life. 
• So in these 15 minutes that you put for reading Qur’an focus on how much you can understand of what you read, not how much you read. 

5. Learning the Tafseer of Surat Al Fatiha

• Surat Al Fatiha is the surah we read in every rak’ah of our Salat, so if we learn the tafseer we would increase our khushoo’ in Salat, since we would be understanding what we are saying.