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Ramadan Reflections (2025)
Fasting & Prayer: The Amazing Hidden Connections | Ramadan Reflections
Fasting and prayer are more connected than you realize. Dr. Omar Suleiman explores the deep bond between sawm and salah—and how they elevate your worship in Ramadan and beyond.
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings.
00:00So yesterday in the khutbah, I alluded to a connection between as-siyam and as-salah, fasting and prayer.
00:09And a very obvious one that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala brought these two pillars of Islam together in the Qur'an. وَاسْتَعِينُوا۟ بِالصَّبْرِ وَالصَّلَاةِ
00:19Hold on with as-sabr, patience, which is fasting, as-siyam, and as-salah and prayer.
00:29And verily it is difficult except for the people of khushu', the people who are khashi'een, the people who have humility.
00:37And subhanAllah, there is something so deeply profound about this because I actually want to give you a high level overview of the five pillars of Islam and how beautiful they all connect together.
00:48You will notice something about these five pillars of Islam. That if someone does not take one of them seriously, they almost certainly don't take the other one seriously as well.
01:00Meaning the attitude that would exist with one of them will certainly be reflected in all four of them. So if there is a person who views these things as something that just came to them in life, right?
01:13They're nonchalant about it. And who is at most risk of becoming complacent with these pillars of Islam? Obviously those who were born and raised Muslim. And 'Umar, radi Allahu 'anhu, said as much.
01:26He said that I don't fear Islam being lost except إِذَا نَشَأَ فِي الْإِسْلَامِ وَلَمْ يَعْرِفِ الْجَاهِلِيَّةَ When people grow up in Islam and they don't know the days of ignorance, meaning people that were born and raised Muslim and they just took it for granted.
01:38That same attitude towards the shahada of لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ وَمُحَمَّدٌ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ You know I mentioned the sister, subhanAllah, who she had the whole room crying. Because the amount of passion and love in her shahada was beautiful.
01:52But someone that just kind of grew up with a shahada لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ وَمُحَمَّدٌ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ They might, if they're complacent with that, they look at salah like, okay fine, I've got to pray, I get it, I've got to pray. Because they were used to their parents telling them they have to pray.
02:05And then alright, Ramadan's coming around, great, what day is it going to be? Okay, well I need to, you know, fine, I won't eat and drink, I'll fast. I'm going to keep it, when is Eid going to be by the way? It's going to be a rough month, okay fine, inshallah I'll get through it.
02:17Zakah, maybe, I may or may not, like I'm kind of looking at it, but do I take my zakah seriously? Probably pretty nonchalant. And by the way, I want to make a point here.
02:27That subhanAllah, the pillar of Islam that is most often not taken seriously, and the Prophet ﷺ talked about it haunting a person on the Day of Judgment is zakah.
02:38Like who's really taking the time out at the end of the year once a year, seeing how much they owe to make sure they're paying their zakah. And the first way that people, the first pillar of Islam to go was the one that was underestimated the most,
02:52which was the zakah. The first deviation in regards to the pillars of Islam was in regards to zakah. The first deviation, so it's the last of them, and the first deviation in regards to the pillars of iman was al-Qadr, Divine Decree.
03:05People left off al-Qadr, because they just didn't take it seriously. So, you know, if I have that attitude of mediocrity towards the shahada, just kind of grew up with it, then I'll have that attitude with salah, I'll have that attitude with my fasting, I'll have that attitude with my zakah.
03:19Hajj, yeah, one day, maybe I'll get to it inshallah. Listen very closely to this warning, by the way. He said, whoever has the means to do hajj, and does not seek to fulfill their right of hajj,
03:32let them die a Jew or a Christian. Might as well not even die a Muslim. Like, hajj is a pillar of Islam, why aren't you taking this seriously? But it's like, it's like, ah, one day.
03:43So the attitude towards one of the pillars of Islam will naturally find itself reflected towards all of the pillars of Islam, which is an attitude of mediocrity, complacency. That's the first one, right?
03:56And so, إِنَّهَا لَكَبِيرَةٌ إِلَّا عَلَى الْخَاشِعِينَ It's heavy, except for people of khushu', people of depth, people who are listening on the inside, who are trying to internalize these acts of worship, not simply get through them.
04:09It's going to be difficult upon them, and the attitude will be, ah, yeah, whatever. Hayya 'ala as-salah, I'll wait until the very end of the time of salah, drag my feet, and I'll just get it over with.
04:20Ramadan is here, alright, fine, I'll just get through Ramadan. All of these things, I'll just get through them. The opposite of that is our Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam. أَرِحْنَا بِهَا يَا بِلَالُ
04:33Comfort us with the prayer, O Bilal. Praying the sunnah of salah, fasting Sha'ban before Ramadan, right? Getting yourself ready for the act to come, and then greeting it with an open heart and love,
04:46and let me immerse myself in this as if nothing else is in the world right now. The attitude of the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam, in salah, was the same attitude of the Prophet, sallallahu alaihi wasallam, in siyam. Completely immersed, sallallahu alaihi wasallam.
04:59And the attitude of ihsan and excellence is that. Like this is special, this is important. I need to take it seriously. You greet it before it greets you. You ask about your zakah before it's due upon you.
05:12You try to go to hajj before you even have the means to go to hajj. You're already thinking about when you can go to hajj, right? So you're trying to greet the ibadah before the ibadah comes upon you.
05:21So there's an attitude adjustment towards how you approach the pillar of Islam in the first place. That's the first thing that I want to mention. The second one is rushing through.
05:32The equivalent of rushing through the salah is hastening towards Eid. As Al-Hafiz Ibn Rajab, rahimahullah, makes this beautiful connection, right, in that regard. I'm paraphrasing him obviously in this regard.
05:45But what's the equivalent of someone that just tries to get through their salah quickly? Someone that's asking, is it Eid yet? 27th night is over and you're already partying like it's Eid, right?
05:56And you still got the 28th, the 29th and possibly the 30th night where Laylatul Qadr could be there. But hey, everybody else, they've already passed out the sweets. And I'm pretty sure it was Laylatul Qadr, I'm good now. Is it Eid yet? I'm already doing my Eid shopping on the 10th day of Ramadan for some reason.
06:10Alright? It doesn't make sense. But that's the equivalent of rushing through the salah. Someone goes to hajj. And by the way, like I just have to say this, please don't be offended, but American hajjis, probably the most difficult to deal with.
06:24I'll count myself in that group, right? Want all the convenience in the world, want all the luxury in the world. Like, alright, is this here yet? Is this here yet? But where's the immersion in hajj? And then you have the nerve to mock that illiterate Muslim
06:38that's going around the Ka'bah and doing the best that they can but crying and trying to come close to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, rushing through to the end. When can I get the first flight out of here? Right? I gotta get back to work.
06:50So there's an attitude of istiqbal, how you receive, and then an attitude of how you proceed. That's number one that's consistent across all the five pillars of Islam. And Allah 'azza wa jalla speaks to that attitude.
07:02The second thing that we learn from these pillars of Islam and the connections is that all of them have us disconnecting from something in order to connect to something. You have to disconnect from something in order to connect to something.
07:14And there's a remarkable coherence there. Salah, you disconnect from your daily life, from your daily routine, to enter into a conversation with Allah, and what do you connect to? The Qur'an, dhikr, and du'a.
07:28Ramadan, you disconnect from something of your daily routine, and what do you fill your cup with? Qur'an, dhikr, du'a. It's the same thing, right? In salah, you're not allowed to talk.
07:40In siyam, you're not allowed to talk about people. So in salah, you can't talk to people. In siyam, you can't talk about people. It's disciplining your conversation as well, and how you connect to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala,
07:53the unique ways that you connect to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Now here, subhanAllah, is also something in the divine scheme that I want you to pay attention to. Imam al-Jawzi, rahimahullah ta'ala,
08:05he talks about what the pillars of Islam guard us from. And ultimately, I want you to see that the pillars of Islam break us off, or they guard us from two things.
08:17Number one, the destructive flaws, al-muhrikat, the destructive flaws. Number two is routine. Routine. Very interesting, subhanAllah, if you think about this.
08:29The five pillars disconnect us from what is sinful, and they disconnect us from what is familiar in order to reorient us to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. When it comes to disconnecting us from al-muhrikat,
08:42cutting us off from destructive flaws, the first part of the shahada is negation. La ilaha. There is no god but Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. La ilaha illallah.
08:56Right? So negation of shirk, the most destructive of all flaws. Disconnecting you from the idols, disconnecting you from shirk, disconnecting you from worshipping anything besides Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. Salah.
09:08إِنَّ الصَّلَاةَ تَنْهَى عَنِ الْفَحْشَاءِ وَالْمُنْكَرِ Prayer is supposed to protect you from wickedness and shamelessness. It's supposed to disconnect you from these things. لا رَفَثَ وَلا فُسُوقَ وَلا جِدَالَ فِي الْحَجِّ
09:22There is no intimacy, obviously, but the argumentation and the sinfulness in Hajj, it's supposed to disconnect you from those things.
09:32And your zakat is supposed to disconnect you from greed. And your siyam, the Prophet ﷺ is saying about fasting, whoever does not give up false speech and acting upon it, then Allah 'azza wa jall has no need for them
09:46to give up their food and their drink. All of them disconnect us from something, the sins of the tongue, the flaws of the tongue, or the flaws of the eyes, or whatever it may be, but they're disconnecting us from these destructive flaws that can overtake us
10:00and that can lead us to a path of destruction. So they protect us from al-muhrikat. They protect us from the destructive flaws, but then they protect us from routine. And this is very profound. Because I'm gonna bring it to something
10:14that we all find ourselves with, or many of us find ourselves with in this day and age in regards to routine. When Allah 'azza wa jall talks about al-salah, prayer,
10:26the main function of the prayer in terms of what it breaks of your routine is what? Can anybody tell me?
10:34إِنَّ الصَّلَاةَ كَانَتْ كِتَابًا مَوْقُوتًا The prayer is to be established on its time. Salah disrupts your time.
10:47It stops you from getting into the routine. You know, they talk about the rat race or the cycle. It stops you from getting caught into that. It cuts off your schedule, cuts off your time. Because a person can find themselves in their time
11:01doing what they do every single day and getting lost in their time. And that routine can overcome them to where they don't ever take a moment to actually be purposeful within the midst of that routine of time. So it breaks off your routine of time.
11:15The function of siyam is to break off your routine of consumption, food and drink. You eat and you drink. So first the time is disrupted. The schedule is disrupted. It brings you back to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
11:29so that you don't become captured by that routine. Siyam disrupts the routine of your food and your drink and your mindless consumption, right? Eating and drinking and you're being thoughtful about what you're putting inside your body.
11:42Zakat disrupts the routine in the general sense of charity because zakat used to mean in the early days of Islam before it was defined as an institution, the purification of wealth meaning it was interchangeable with sadaqah, with charity as a whole.
11:55It disconnects you from your earning and your spending, right? And getting attached to this idea of earning and spending and how you deal with your money. Now subhanallah, if you think about what that actually does to you.
12:09Number one, there is an implicit recognition. Allah owns my time. Allah owns my consumption and Allah owns my earning and my spending.
12:23Allah owns these things. And to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is the greatest right of these things, not myself. That's the first thing. Like you take zakat for example. And subhanallah, zakat,
12:37a lot of times it's like we think of it as if we're doing something extra. What's implied in the zakat is that in a normal financial system, you would have had a certain amount of your wealth
12:49that is the wasah, that is the filth of the people that has maybe come through some impermissible earning or somewhere along the process of that circulation of wealth, something wrong was done to someone else, that there is an implicit recognition that
13:02even if you have the most halal income in the world and you're functioning in one of the purest financial systems in the world, there's something that's come into your wealth that's not good and needs to be purified, right? And then beyond that, the higher ethic of charity
13:16that you're supposed to spend upon people and supposed to spend in good causes, not just on yourself and getting attached to wealth. But Allah 'azza wa jall owns what I own. Allah owns my time. Allah owns my blessings.
13:30Therefore, my ihsan is to take the routine and turn it into the righteous. Is to take the things that people take for granted and to make those things a means by which I seek Allah's reward.
13:44So I use my time in accordance with pleasing Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. I use what Allah 'azza wa jall has given me of blessings to be grateful to Him
13:55and to provide those blessings to other than myself. I use the wealth that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has given me to pursue Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala's bounty in the hereafter. It's to actually recognize Allah owns it
14:09and then to take it. To where even the feeding of your family becomes 'ibadah. Even the feeding of your family becomes 'ibadah. Everything you do starts to become an act of worship. And so all of these acts of, all of these pillars,
14:23they disrupt on purpose. And Hajj is the ultimate disruption after shahada. Hajj disrupts everything. It disrupts your schedule. It disrupts your food and your drink. It disrupts everything. It disrupts your wealth and the circulation.
14:37It's meant to be an ultimate disruption so that you can break off from those things. Because you don't just need to, if you forget everything else I said, the pillars of Islam are teaching us you don't just need to protect yourself from sin.
14:51You need to protect yourself from routine. You need to protect yourself from getting complacent with the dunya. You need to protect yourself from being mindless in the things that you do and how you carry yourself throughout the day.
15:05And is there anything, subhanallah, is there any time in history where we more mindlessly consume than now where you, you know, immediately you pick up your phone and you're always looking and seeing You have to break these attachments.
15:18You have to break them. And each of them breaks it in some way or the other so that your heart and your mind are focused on Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala and your deeds follow in the process.
15:31And so I want you to think in Ramadan, think about yourself right now in one long salah. Think about yourself in Hajj but still at work and still going about your day to day.
15:44It's the same mindset that you're supposed to have right now that I should treat this with a level of reverence and I shouldn't rush it till its end. And I pray that Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala allow all of us to achieve the full blessings
15:58of these pillars of Islam so that we could build in our hearts a construction of the love of Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala and the pursuit of Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala through ihsan, through excellence. Allahumma ameen. Barakaallahu feekum.
16:12Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Al-Fatihah. Al-Fatiha.
