The Quran and Us

My Dear Readers,

السَّلاَمُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ 

As-salaamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. (May the Peace, Mercy and Blessings of Allah be upon you)

بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمـَنِ الرَّحِيمِ
الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ نَسْتَعِينُهُ وَنَسْتَغْفِرُهُ وَنَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ مِنْ شُرُورِ أَنْفُسِنَا وَسَيِّئَاتِ أَعْمَالِنَا مَنْ يَهْدِهِ اللَّهُ فَلاَ مُضِلَّ لَهُ وَمَنْ يُضْلِلْ فَلاَ هَادِيَ لَهُ
وَأَشْهَدُ أَنْ لاَ إِلَهَ إِلاَّ اللَّهُ وَأَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا عَبْدُهُ وَرَسُولُهُ

(See end note in the first post)

The Qur'an and Us

الَر كِتَابٌ أَنزَلْنَاهُ إِلَيْكَ لِتُخْرِجَ النَّاسَ مِنَ الظُّلُمَاتِ إِلَى النُّورِ بِإِذْنِ رَبِّهِمْ إِلَى صِرَاطِ الْعَزِيزِ الْحَمِيدِ

Alif. Lam. Ra. This is a Divine Writ which We have sent down unto thee, so that thou might bring mankind, by their Sustainer’s leave, out of layers of darkness into the light, and onto the path of the Almighty, the One worthy of all praise.

اللَّهُ نَزَّلَ أَحْسَنَ الْحَدِيثِ كِتَابًا مُّتَشَابِهًا مَّثَانِيَ تَقْشَعِرُّ مِنْهُ جُلُودُ الَّذِينَ يَخْشَوْنَ رَبَّهُمْ ثُمَّ تَلِينُ جُلُودُهُمْ وَقُلُوبُهُمْ إِلَى ذِكْرِ اللَّهِ

Allah has sent down the best of speech: a Book coherent within itself, repeating the truth in manifold forms, whereat the skins of those who stand in awe of their Lord tremble, and then their skins and hearts soften to the remembrance of Allah.

These two descriptions are enough to tell us what the Qur'an is, and what it is not. It is not a text for decoration. It is not a cultural inheritance to be kissed, wrapped, placed on a shelf, and then left there. Nor is it merely a sourcebook from which information is extracted. It is a Divine address whose purpose is transformation. It came to move people from one state into another: from darkness to light, from heedlessness to remembrance, from fragmentation to inner order, from the slavery of the nafs to the freedom of servitude before Allah.

That is why the Qur'an does not describe itself only as guidance, but also as أَحْسَنَ الْحَدِيثِ — the best of speech. To understand something of this, I would like to share two telling anecdotes.

The first concerns Labīd, among the great poets of the Arabs, a man whose verse commanded awe even in the age of eloquence. Yet after embracing Islam, when Sayyidina 'Umar (رضي الله عنه) asked him to recite some poetry, Labīd began reciting Surah al-Baqarah. When reminded that poetry had been requested, he replied in effect that Allah had replaced poetry for him with al-Baqarah and Aal 'Imran. This is not merely a story of piety. It is a statement about rank. When the heart truly tastes the Qur'an, other speech falls into its proper place.

Another report mentions that an Arab once heard the Qur'an being recited and went down in prostration. When asked why he had done so, he replied that he was prostrating before the eloquence of this speech. Even a heart not yet trained in technical tafsir could still recognize that this was not ordinary discourse. It bore another light.

Not a book among books

I have long felt that there is great significance in rendering كِتَاب here not merely as “book” but as “Divine Writ.” A book, in common usage, is one object among many objects. It can be read casually, consulted selectively, and set aside indifferently. The Qur'an resists such flattening.

It does not enter the world merely to inform. It enters to unveil, to judge, to heal, to reorder, to purify, and to raise. The old alchemists dreamed of a philosopher’s stone that could turn base metal into gold. If one were to borrow that image only loosely, one could say that the Qur'an came to transform base men into noble souls. Even that comparison is inadequate, because the Qur'an is not magic, nor is it metaphor only. It is sacred address.

Iqbal captured something of this when he wrote: 

فاش گویم آنچه در دل مضمر است
این کتابی نیست چیزی دیگر است

I will say openly what lay hidden in my heart:
This is not a book — it is something else.

This “something else” does not mean that the Qur'an ceases to be language. Rather, it means that Divine speech cannot be approached with the same inward posture with which one approaches ordinary writing. Ja'far ibn Muhammad al-Sadiq (رضي الله عنه) is reported to have said:

والله لقد تجلى الله عز وجل لخلقه في كلامه ولكنهم لا يبصرون

By Allah, Allah has manifested Himself to His creation through His words, but they do not see.

Whatever one says about the depth of that statement, its warning is plain enough: many recite, many hear, many memorize, and yet few truly see.

The Qur'an was sent to be lived

This article is not chiefly about tafsir in the technical sense, for the classical treasury is full of precious works, and one may spend a lifetime benefiting from them. Rather, what concerns me here is something more urgent for our condition: how to form a living relationship with the Qur'an, so that it becomes a force of transformation in our lives.

The real miracle of the Prophet ﷺ was not only that the Qur'an was revealed to him, but that through him the Qur'an descended into character, conduct, community, and civilization. Men who had wandered in tribal darkness were turned into carriers of light. In that sense, the first generation became walking witnesses to the Qur'an.

Nothing expresses this more beautifully than the well-known statement of Sayyidah 'Aishah (رضي الله عنها) concerning the Messenger of Allah ﷺ:

فَإِنَّ خُلُقَ نَبِيِّ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ كَانَ الْقُرْآنَ

Verily, the character of the Prophet ﷺ was the Qur'an.

That is the measure. The Qur'an had not merely passed through his tongue. It had permeated his being.

How the first generation learned it

It is here that we must pause and ask ourselves a painful question: why did the Qur'an transform them so deeply, while it so often leaves us comparatively unchanged?

Part of the answer lies in the way they learned it.

'Abdullah ibn Mas'ud (رضي الله عنه) said:

كَانَ الرَّجُلُ مِنَّا إِذَا تَعَلَّمَ عَشْرَ آيَاتٍ ، لَمْ يُجَاوِزْهُنَّ حَتَّى يَعْرِفَ مَعَانِيَهُنَّ وَالْعَمَلَ بِهِنَّ

When one of us learned ten verses, he would not move beyond them until he understood their meanings and acted by them.

And Abu 'Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami (رحمه الله), transmitting from those who taught them the Qur'an, says that they used to learn ten verses from the Prophet ﷺ and would not go ahead until they had put those verses into practice. Thus, they learned knowledge and action together.

This is a very different model from our prevailing one. We often separate recitation from reflection, reflection from submission, and submission from action. We praise fluency, speed, melody, and retention, but we do not always ask the harder question: has the Qur'an altered my speech, my anger, my appetites, my choices, my relationships, my loneliness, my spending, my ambitions?

There is also a frightening warning in the tradition that the majority of the hypocrites of this ummah will be among its readers, meaning those who recite but do not live by what they recite. And Ibn Mas'ud (رضي الله عنه) also observed with piercing insight that for the early generation it was difficult to memorize the Qur'an but easy to act upon it, whereas a time would come when memorization would become easier, but acting by it harder.

I do not mention these reports to discourage recitation. God forbid. Rather, I mention them because recitation without surrender can become evidence against us. The Qur'an is either a proof for us or a proof against us.

Tilawah is more than sound

For this reason, I have often felt that translating tilawah simply as “recitation” does not fully exhaust the meaning. Recitation is part of it, certainly, but not the whole of it. The Qur'an itself says:

وَالْقَمَرِ إِذَا تَلَاهَا

And by the moon as it follows her.

The moon here does not merely “mention” the sun. It follows and reflects it. There is sequence, imitation, and visible correspondence. In that sense, true tilawah of the Qur'an is not complete when the tongue has finished. It is complete when the life begins to follow.

This, in my view, is where we have often failed to do justice to the Qur'an. We have recited it beautifully, preserved it carefully, printed it widely, memorized it in great numbers, and displayed it prominently — yet the Qur'an seeks something more demanding and more beautiful: that it should become visible in us.

Until the Qur'an reflects in our dealings, our priorities, our patience, our modesty, our truthfulness, our courage, and our mercy, we have not yet answered its call fully.

Our tragedy is not absence, but estrangement

The tragedy of the Muslim today is not that the Qur'an is unavailable to him. It is that it is near in form and distant in effect. We carry a living Book and yet often live like men spiritually scattered.

Iqbal grieved this condition with remarkable force: 

گر تو میخواهی مسلمان زیستن
نیست ممکن جز بقرآن زیستن

If you desire to live as a Muslim,
it is not possible except by living through the Qur'an.

And elsewhere he laments that one may fall low through estrangement from the Qur'an, even while holding a living Book close to one’s breast. That image is painfully accurate for our times. We are not starving for access. We are starving for surrender.

What is required from us now?

What then should we do?

Perhaps we begin by slowing down. By taking fewer verses and taking them more seriously. By refusing to move on too quickly. By reading not merely to finish a portion, but to allow a portion to question us. By asking, after every passage: what does this demand from me? What in me resists it? What in my habits must die so that something Qur'anic may live?

We must restore adab before the Qur'an, but also honesty before it. The Qur'an is not honored only by kissing it. It is honored by obedience. It is not honored only by reciting it in a pleasing voice. It is honored by letting it interrupt our self-deception. It is not honored only by memorizing its words. It is honored when those words become judgement upon our vanity, comfort for our grief, discipline for our tongues, and light for our decisions.

If the character of the Prophet ﷺ was the Qur'an, then every one of us must ask: what portion of the Qur'an has entered my character?

Conclusion

To conclude, I would like to share a du'a narrated from Anas bin Malik (رضي الله عنه), which the Messenger of Allah ﷺ taught to Sayyidah Fatimah (رضي الله عنها):

يَا حَيُّ يَا قَيُّومُ بِرَحْمَتِكَ أَسْتَغِيثُ، أَصْلِحْ لِي شَأْنِي كُلَّهُ وَلَا تَكِلْنِي إِلَى نَفْسِي طَرْفَةَ عَيْنٍ

O Ever-Living, O Self-Subsisting! By Your mercy I seek help. Set right for me all of my affairs, and do not leave me to my own self even for the blink of an eye.

May Allah bless us with hearts that do not merely admire the Qur'an from afar, but be guided by it to transform our lives.  Let us allow the Quran to the heart of our Lebenswelt, transforming it from a text into the daily, lived reality of our community. May He make the Qur'an the spring of our hearts, the light of our chests, the remover of our grief, and the guide of our conduct. May He save us from being among those who recite much and change little. And may He bless us with even a small share of those whose lives bear witness that they have been touched by His Book. Aameen.

والله أعلم
Wa Allahu 'Alam (And Allah is the All-Knowing)

Tahajjud

My Dear Readers,

السَّلاَمُ عَلَيْكُمْ وَرَحْمَةُ اللهِ وَبَرَكَاتُهُ

As-salaamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. (May the Peace, Mercy and Blessings of Allah be upon you)

بِسْمِ اللّهِ الرَّحْمـَنِ الرَّحِيمِ

 

الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ نَسْتَعِينُهُ وَنَسْتَغْفِرُهُ وَنَعُوذُ بِاللَّهِ مِنْ شُرُورِ أَنْفُسِنَا وَسَيِّئَاتِ أَعْمَالِنَا مَنْ يَهْدِهِ اللَّهُ فَلاَ مُضِلَّ لَهُ وَمَنْ يُضْلِلْ فَلاَ هَادِيَ لَهُ

وَأَشْهَدُ أَنْ لاَ إِلَهَ إِلاَّ اللَّهُ وَأَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا عَبْدُهُ وَرَسُولُهُ

(See end note in the first post)

Tahajjud:

تَتَجَافَىٰ جُنُوبُهُمْ عَنِ الْمَضَاجِعِ يَدْعُونَ رَبَّهُمْ خَوْفًا وَطَمَعًا

“Their sides draw away from their beds, calling upon their Lord in fear and hope...”
(al-Sajdah 32:16)

There are acts of worship which are visible to people, and there are acts of worship that unfold almost entirely in secret, known in their truest form only to Allah. Just like fasting, Tahajjud belongs among the latter, and that is one reason why it has always been of utmost importance in the Qur’an, in the Sunnah, and in the lives of the righteous.

Many people remain awake at night; but wakefulness alone is not qiyam. Tahajjud is something else altogether. It is when sleep calls, the bed pleads, the limbs become heavy, the world is quiet, and yet a devoted 'abd rises, performs wudu’, stands before his/her Lord, recites His words, bows, prostrates, asks, weeps, repents, and returns with a heart unlike the one he had before, transformed, transmuted. That apparent loss of sleep is a gain mainfold.

The only ayah in the Qur’an that explicitly mentions the word Tahajjud by name is in Surah al-Isra’:

وَمِنَ اللَّيْلِ فَتَهَجَّدْ بِهِ نَافِلَةً لَّكَ عَسَىٰ أَن يَبْعَثَكَ رَبُّكَ مَقَامًا مَّحْمُودًا

“And in a portion of the night, keep vigil with it as an added devotion for you; perhaps your Lord will raise you to a praised station.”
(al-Isra’ 17:79)

But Tahajjud and qiyamullayl, reveal themselves across the Qur’an like open secrets. In Surah al-Muzzammil, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ is told:

قُمِ اللَّيْلَ إِلَّا قَلِيلًا
نِّصْفَهُ أَوِ انقُصْ مِنْهُ قَلِيلًا
أَوْ زِدْ عَلَيْهِ وَرَتِّلِ الْقُرْآنَ تَرْتِيلًا

“Stand through the night, except a little; half of it, or a little less, or a little more, and recite the Qur’an with measured recitation.”
(al-Muzzammil 73:2-4)

Then Allah Himself explains the secret: 

إِنَّ نَاشِئَةَ اللَّيْلِ هِيَ أَشَدُّ وَطْئًا وَأَقْوَمُ قِيلًا
إِنَّ لَكَ فِي النَّهَارِ سَبْحًا طَوِيلًا

“Surely the rising of the night leaves a deeper mark and makes speech more upright; indeed by day you have long occupations.”
(al-Muzzammil 73:6-7)

This, to me, is among the most profound explanations in the whole Qur’an of why the supererogatory prayers at night matter so much. By day, we are all over the place The mind is dispersed across duties, worries, screens, noise, errands, and endless outward movement. But the night gathers what the day scatters. The heart becomes more present, mindful, lucid. The tongue returns to truth and authenticity. The Qur’an lands differently. Du‘a’ rises differently. 

And perhaps one of the spiritual illnesses of our age is that we want softness of heart without stillness, tears without solitude, intimacy with Allah without withdrawing even briefly from the noise of the world. The Qur’an points us to the path:

It points us to the people whom Allah praises, the "Ibadur Rahman" in Surah al-Furqan:

وَالَّذِينَ يَبِيتُونَ لِرَبِّهِمْ سُجَّدًا وَقِيَامًا

“And those who spend the night for their Lord, prostrating and standing.”
(al-Furqan 25:64)

It points us to the muttaqun in Surah al-Dhariyat: 

كَانُوا قَلِيلًا مِّنَ اللَّيْلِ مَا يَهْجَعُونَ
وَبِالْأَسْحَارِ هُمْ يَسْتَغْفِرُونَ

“They used to sleep only a little of the night, and in the pre-dawn hours they would seek forgiveness.”
(al-Dhariyat 51:17-18)

It points us to the special quality of the one who stands in the stretches of the night:

أَمَّنْ هُوَ قَانِتٌ آنَاءَ اللَّيْلِ سَاجِدًا وَقَائِمًا يَحْذَرُ الْآخِرَةَ وَيَرْجُو رَحْمَةَ رَبِّهِ

“Is one who is devout in the hours of the night, prostrating and standing, fearing the Hereafter and hoping for his Lord’s mercy...”
(al-Zumar 39:9)

And what is particularly beautiful is that the Qur’an does not restrict this praise to this Ummah alone. It says of an upright group from the People of the Book:

لَيْسُوا سَوَاءً ۗ مِنْ أَهْلِ الْكِتَابِ أُمَّةٌ قَائِمَةٌ يَتْلُونَ آيَاتِ اللَّهِ آنَاءَ اللَّيْلِ وَهُمْ يَسْجُدُونَ

“They are not all alike. Among the People of the Book is an upright community who recite Allah’s signs in the hours of the night while they prostrate.”
(Aal ‘Imran 3:113)

SubhanAllah. The people of the night form, as it were, a fellowship stretching across human history. Wherever there were hearts truly awake to God, the night knew them.

And the Qur’an also singles out the hour before dawn:

وَالْمُسْتَغْفِرِينَ بِالْأَسْحَارِ

“And those who seek forgiveness in the pre-dawn hours.”
(Aal ‘Imran 3:17)

So the map is before us: Tahajjud, qiyam, sujud, qiyam again, Qur’an, fear, hope, munajah, and then istighfar at sahar. This is perhaps an architecture of the righteous night.

The Sunnah shows the way.

The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, in a rigorously authentic hadith of Sahih Muslim, that the best prayer after the obligatory prayers is the night prayer. This by itself should have been enough to awaken our longing.

And in both Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, he ﷺ informed us that in the last third of every night, our Lord calls out: who is asking of Me so that I may give him? who is seeking My forgiveness so that I may forgive him? who is supplicating to Me so that I may answer him? We affirm this hadith as it came, without distortion, and we understand from it what every believer understands instinctively: that the last portion of the night is a time of nearness, opening, and response.

He ﷺ also taught that the most beloved prayer to Allah is the prayer of Dawud (عليه السلام): he would sleep half the night, stand for one third, then sleep for one sixth. This is such an important corrective.  It calls us to a disciplined, sustained, living relationship with the night, rather than a heedless one.

And how did the Prophet ﷺ himself stand? Sayyidatuna ‘A’ishah (رضي الله عنها) tells us that he would stand until his blessed feet swelled. When asked why he did that when Allah had forgiven him, he replied:

أَفَلَا أَكُونُ عَبْدًا شَكُورًا

“Shall I not then be a grateful servant?”

This one sentence affected me deeply. I used to think of night prayer only as a means of asking. The Prophet ﷺ teaches us that it is can be that of deep gratitude.

He ﷺ further taught us its adab. Night prayer is prayed two rak‘ahs by two rak‘ahs, then one seals it with witr. Whoever rises at night should begin with two light rak‘ahs. Whoever feels confident he can wake later may delay witr to the end of the night, because the recitation of the latter portion is more witnessed and better. And whoever begins the practice should beware of abandoning it, for he ﷺ disliked that a person should know the sweetness of a devotion and then let it die.

The hadith also describe the inward battle that occurs before qiyam. Shaytan ties knots at the back of a sleeping person’s head. When he remembers Allah, one knot is undone. When he makes wudu’, another is undone. When he prays, all are undone, and he rises with a good soul and energy. What a striking image this is. The struggle to wake up for Tahajjud both physical and spiritual. Likewise are its rewards.

And then comes Ramadhan, the season in which this secret worship enters the life of ordinary believers more visibly. The Prophet ﷺ told us that whoever stands in prayer in Ramadhan with faith and seeking reward will be forgiven his past sins. In the last ten nights he ﷺ tightened his waist-wrapper, revived the night, and woke his family. He ﷺ also taught that whoever prays with the imam until he finishes, it will be written for him as though he prayed the whole night. Thus Tarawih is not something separate in spirit from Tahajjud; it is one of the doors by which the Ummah is reintroduced to it.

Let us make it a family effort. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ invoked mercy upon the man who rises for prayer and wakes his wife, and upon the wife who rises and wakes her husband. Another narration says that if husband and wife pray two rak‘ahs together at night, they are written among the men and women who remember Allah much. Thus qiyam can be deeply personal, but it can also become the radiant blessing of a home.

When one turns from the Qur’an and Sunnah to the speech of the righteous, one sees the same theme repeating with consistency.

Abu Talib al-Makki regarded qiyamullayl as one of the great marks of hidden sincerity. Imam al-Ghazali wrote that fear of the Hereafter may first wake a servant at night, but the highest motive is love; once the servant tastes that he is privately conversing with his Lord, the sweetness of munajah begins to carry him. The school of Ibn Qudamah, in its books of tazkiyah, gives a very merciful counsel: if a person cannot manage long rising in the depths of night, then let him not abandon the period after ‘Isha’ and the hour before dawn; and if he cannot stand long, let him at least sit, remember Allah, and ask. This is a great principle. One should not abandon the whole because one cannot yet hold the larger share.

Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani described qiyamullayl as the work of the strong, a robe of honor Allah grants to some of His servants. Imam ‘Abdullah al-Haddad pointed out that the soul finds Tahajjud heavy at first, especially after sleep, but with patience, habit, and striving it becomes light, and then beloved. In my opinion this is one of the kindest things the scholars tell us on this subject: difficulty at the beginning is not proof that the path is closed; often it is proof only that one is still at the gate.

Among the early ascetics are sayings that pierce the heart.

Ibrahim al-Khawwas said:

دَوَاءُ الْقَلْبِ خَمْسَةُ أَشْيَاءَ: قِرَاءَةُ الْقُرْآنِ بِالتَّفَكُّرِ، وَخُلُوُّ الْبَطْنِ، وَقِيَامُ اللَّيْلِ، وَالتَّضَرُّعُ عِنْدَ السَّحَرِ، وَمُجَالَسَةُ الصَّالِحِينَ

“The heart has five medicines: reciting the Qur’an with reflection, an empty stomach, night prayer, pleading at sahar, and the company of the righteous.”

How appropriate that is is listed as a medicine?

Abu Sulayman al-Darani said:

لَوْلَا اللَّيْلُ مَا أَحْبَبْتُ الْبَقَاءَ فِي الدُّنْيَا

“Were it not for the night, I would not love remaining in this world.”

And he is also reported to have said that the people of the night experience more joy in their night than the people of amusement experience in their amusement. This is not the language of burden. It is the language of tasted intimacy.

Al-Hasan al-Basri is reported to have said that he found nothing harder among acts of worship than prayer in the depths of night. Yet when asked why the people of Tahajjud have such luminous faces, he answered: because they were alone with the All-Merciful, so He clothed them in His light. Hard on the limbs, light upon the face.

Sufyan al-Thawri would rejoice at the coming of night. He also regarded sins as a cause for being deprived of qiyam. And that too is worth reflecting upon. Sometimes the difficulty is not only tiredness; sometimes the soul itself has become weighed down by what it carries.

The biographies of the great Imams reinforce the same theme. Abu Hanifah was known for long standing in prayer. Al-Shafi‘i is reported to have divided the night between knowledge, worship, and sleep. Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal, despite illness and hardship, guarded his share of the night. So when the jurists, the muhaddithun, the ascetics, and the Sufis all meet in the same dark hour, the lesson is plain: Tahajjud is not the possession of one school or temperament. It is part of the rigor of serious faith.

And let us not miss a subtle point here. Night prayer is not valued merely because it is at night. It is valued because it combines so many realities at once: struggle against the nafs, ikhlas, Qur’an recitation, prolonged standing, sujud, du‘a’, istighfar, and remembrance at a time when distractions are least. 

Time itself is not spiritually flat. It has elevations and low places, moments of greater opening and moments of lesser receptivity. Among the highest of these openings is the last part of the night. The Sunnah directs us there, the Qur’an adorns it, and the righteous guarded it like treasure.

How then should someone begin?

I would say: begin modestly, but begin with sincere resolve.

Sleep with the intention to rise, even if only for two rak‘ahs. When you wake, start with two short rak‘ahs as the Prophet ﷺ taught. Read whatever is easy from the Qur’an. Stand a little. Bow slowly. Prostrate with your heart. Ask Allah for what you need. Ask Him also for what you are not wise enough to know you need. Then, if the night is drawing near dawn, seek forgiveness in the hour Allah Himself praised. If possible, keep witr for the end. If not, pray it before sleep and thank Allah for whatever opening He gave you.

Do not wait for a heroic night to begin. A regular small opening is better than a brief enthusiasm followed by abandonment. The Prophet ﷺ loved deeds that were continuous, even if small. And if you miss your nightly portion, do not surrender to discouragement. The Sunnah itself teaches making up one’s portion by day.

A believer should also guard the inward etiquette of Tahajjud. Let it be hidden where possible. Let it not become a matter of display. Let it soften you in the day. If your night prayer does not make your tongue cleaner, your heart more forgiving, your gaze more restrained, your repentance more frequent, and your reliance upon Allah more sincere, then something in it still requires repair.

In truth, Tahajjud is not simply about rising from bed. It is about rising from heedlessness. It is about leaving behind, if only for a short while, the tyranny of appetite, anxiety, noise, routine, and self-occupation. It is about learning to stand poor before the Rich, weak before the Strong, sinful before the Forgiving, broken before the Mender of hearts.

And perhaps that is why the righteous loved it so much. In the night, one remembers what one is, and Who Allah is.

May Allah bless us with a portion of the night in which our hearts are awake, our tongues truthful, our tears accepted, our sins forgiven, and our souls returned to Him with humility and hope. May He not deprive us of the sweetness of standing before Him when others sleep. May He make us among those whose sides part from their beds for His sake, those who seek forgiveness at sahar, those who spend the night prostrating and standing, and those whom He clothes in light through secret obedience. Aameen.

والله أعلم   
 Wa Allahu 'Alam (And Allah is the All-Knowing)