Note: The following transcript was generated using AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Welcome to a brand new episode of Seat at the Table. We have our two guests here today, and it's really, really ... for coming, it's fantastic to have you here. I think let's, shall we start with an introduction? Is that a good place to start? Yeah. Okay. I think you two guys know me. Yeah. Is that right? Yeah. Okay. That's all right. So then I'll start with the introduction. Ibrahim, you can start. Tell me a little bit about yourself. Okay. My name is Ibrahim. I'm 11 years old, and I'm from the UK and Pakistan. Okay. MashaAllah. Have you been to both the UK and Pakistan or not? Not Pakistan, just the UK. Just the UK. Okay. Fantastic. What about you? My name is Mohammed. I'm 10 years old. I'm from Russia and Kazakhstan. Wow. Kazakhstan, huh? How many languages can you speak? I can speak English, Russian, and a little Kazakh. And what about you? Just English and a bit of Arabic. English and a bit of Arabic? Yeah. Do you think that we should all make a bit of an effort to learn a bit more Arabic? Yeah. Because neither of you mentioned Arabic there. You both, okay, you mentioned a little bit of Arabic. How about you? I don't speak Arabic a lot. Okay. But I learn it. Would you like to learn? Yes. Yeah? What about you? Are you trying to learn some more? Yeah. I might go to Egypt with my dad one day. Amazing. To learn more Arabic. That's fantastic. Amazing. So in this episode today, I wanted to talk a little bit with you about time and how we spend our time and the good things and the bad things, what we should be doing, and what we shouldn't be doing. And I want you guys to ask the questions. I don't want to deliver a lecture or something like that. Yeah. But I just wanted to start the conversation off and have us just maybe start thinking about the topic. And I think both of you for sure have memorized Surat Al-Asr, right? Yeah? Wal-Asr, Inna al-insana lafee khusr, Inna al-ladheena amanu wa'ama al-zarihaati wa tawa'asoo bil-haqi wa tawa'asoo bil-sabr. MashaAllah, you passed the first test. Amazing. Fantastic.
This Surah tells us all about time. It tells us, first of all, Allah swore by time, and in the Qur'an, Allah only swears by something that's really important. So it tells us that time is so, so important. Okay, so let me start by asking you guys a question. I mean, I want you guys to ask me, okay? But just to start us off, Allah SWT swore by time. Time is so important. If you don't take advantage of your time, you're going to lose out. Why do you think it's important? Ibrahim, go ahead and give us your thoughts.
So like, when you're praying your Salah, if you don't start praying when you're younger, when you're older, you're going to start forgetting the times and stuff. So the habit, like having good habits, filling your time with having really, really good habits, and that's why the Prophet ﷺ said, أَحَبُّ الْعَمَلِ إِلَى اللَّهِ - the actions which are most beloved to Allah - أَدْوَمُهُ وَإِنْ قَلْ - He said, it's the one that's most regular. You know, things you do all the time, regular things like prayer, every day, five times a day. That's what's really important, right? That's what Allah loves the most – the things you just do all the time, regular, even if they're not huge. Even if it's not a really, really big thing, it's something you just do all the time and you do really regularly. So that's an amazing answer.
What do you think, Ibrahim? What do you think about why is it so important for us to take advantage of our time?
Because Allah is warning us that there is going to be a day, يوم القيامة, which we are not going to be alive again. We are going to die, and not one human will be able to live. And right now, we have time to pray, to help others, make sadaqah, and read Qur'an. Because after that, in يوم القيامة, there's going to be no time for doing that.
It's very true. This life we live now is a time for actions. It's a time to do things. We've got time. Allah has given us time to do good deeds. Allah has given us time to do the things that by those things, Allah SWT would put us into Jannah. But if we don't take advantage of that, that time doesn't come back ever again. And this is really why I wanted to talk to you guys about this today because you said you're 11, and you said you're 10, right? 11 and 10 years old. In sha Allah, you have a long, long time ahead of you. But this is the problem. Everybody thinks they have such a long time ahead of them, and then they get to my age, and I'm nearly 40 years old, not quite, and you think, where did that time go?
So I wanted to talk to you guys about what you think about this in terms of what you spend your time with. How is your, you know, in terms of Islam, what fills your time right now? What are you thinking about? Is it study? Is it what? Is it playing with your friends? Is it family? What are you filling your time with right now?
At the moment, like just about reading the Qur'an and thinking about the Day of Judgment, how much we can worship Allah before He asks us.
That's very true. I think the Qur'an is really a good place to start because this is exactly what I was talking about before, about having regular... doing things regularly. And I think the best example of that is the Qur'an. After the prayers, the Qur'an. Because the Qur'an is something, if you can do it regularly, you'll keep it in your memory, you'll be able to read it, and you'll benefit from it. But if it's just like you read the Qur'an sometimes but not other times, you don't read, you don't get through the same amount every day, and that causes you either to be close to forgetting or you just end up... you don't end up being close to the Qur'an. So Allah gave us the Qur'an for us to be a benefit for us, right? To guide us, to help us, to show us what to do, what not to do. But to do that, we have to... we have to think about it, right? We have to read it regularly. So that's a really good thing to fill your time with.
Okay, I got a question. You can answer honestly to this one. You have a mobile phone?
I'm going to ask you, Mohammed.
I don't have a mobile phone.
You don't have a mobile, MashaAllah. Amazing, right?
You have a mobile phone?
No.
No? What do you have in the house in terms of gadgets?
Yeah.
Do you think it takes too much of your time?
Yeah. I can like spend more time reading Qur'an, memorizing Qur'an than going on my device.
What do you think is the thing that makes that... you know, what is it that takes you away from reading Qur'an? What makes you... what makes you miss it out? Or what makes you busy with it?
Makes me busy reading Qur'an?
No, like instead of it. What gets in the way for most people, not for you personally. Like, you see, for your friends and stuff like that, they don't read it or they skip their classes because of what? Like for me, I think mobile phone, iPad, TV...
Yeah, those kinds of things, right? They take you away from... they take you away from using your time in a good way. And you can spend a long time, you get lost. You can get lost in your gadget. Your phone, an hour goes by, or your tablet, your iPad, an hour goes, two hours go, three hours go. You didn't realize what you were doing. And then all that time goes, and when it goes, it doesn't come back again, right? It doesn't come back.
So those are the sort of things I wanted to talk about. So thinking about that kind of thing, generally, and you don't have to stick to it, I want you guys to think about a good question you wanted to ask or something you've been thinking about for ages, and you're thinking, "Oh, I would really like to know about this." I would really like to know about this. I can give you an idea if it makes it easier, or you have something you wanted to ask about in this.
Yes?
Go on.
How will we know when the Umm al-Qiyamah will be?
That's a very good question.
There's two answers to that. The first answer is: nobody from us knows when Yawm al-Qiyamah will be. And that's why... do you remember a hadith called the hadith of Jibreel? Where Jibreel came to the Prophet ﷺ in the form of a man, and he sat down. Have you heard that hadith before?
Yes? Maybe? Okay. This hadith, that Jibreel, he came to the Prophet ﷺ in the form of a man. He didn't come like an angel, he came looking like a person, and he came and he sat down in front of the Prophet ﷺ. And he asked him some questions. And one of the questions he asked is, "When will the Day of Judgment be?" "Matassah?" When will the hour be? When will that time be?
And the Prophet ﷺ answered him and he said that the one you are asking doesn't know any more than the one who is asking. In other words, you and me, we don't know when it's going to be. But then Jibreel asked him a very good question. He asked him, "Tell me about the signs of it."
So if we don't know when it's going to be, then we do know at least what is going to happen before that, and what are the signs going to be like, what's going to happen in the world before it, right? And if we look at what's going to happen in the world before it, we can really see there's sort of two things that the Prophet ﷺ told us. Some things are like huge – like the whole world will change – and some things are actually just small things, but we see them everywhere, right?
So we call these the small signs and the big signs. The big signs are like the things that the whole world will change, like for example, the Dajjal. When he will come, this person who will say to people, "I am your Lord," and people will follow him, and people will stop believing in their religion and stuff like that. So that's a big thing, right? The whole world will change.
And then there are little, little things. So from the big, big things, the big signs, they haven't started yet. But when they start, there's not much time left. The time goes very quickly, and they all come together.
The small ones, most of them, if not all of them, have already happened. The small signs. So there are loads, there are, you know, tens if not hundreds of small, small signs. But one thing we know is that it's getting closer and closer, because the Prophet ﷺ himself, he said... He held his fingers like this. He said, "Me and the Day of Judgment, we came like this close," like the distance between this finger and this finger. Just very, very close.
But then the second way of answering... I said there's two answers, right? The second way of answering is that for you as a person, just you, or just me, or just somebody who's watching at home, when does their... when does their Yawm al-Qiyamah start? Like, when does their life sort of go on to the life of the next life, right?
When they die, right? So when you die, when a person dies, that's it. You know, like after that, things are going to start happening, the life in the grave, and the questions, and the... you know, then eventually, the Day of Judgment will come.
So everybody, what matters for you is not when will the world end, because maybe you and me will not be alive. Maybe we will, we don't know. When the world actually... when this whole world ends. But the question is for you, what matters is: if someone comes to you and says, "When will I die?" What are you going to say to him? Right?
If someone comes to you and says, "Ibrahim, can you tell me when am I going to die?" What would you say?
"When Allah decides." You don't know. Could be today, could be tomorrow, could be the next five minutes, could be fifty years away. We don’t know. Nobody knows. And that's even more reason why it’s so important to take advantage of your time because you just don't know how much you have left. If Allah came and said, "Ibrahim, you have 60 years from here to here," you’d know how much time you have left, right? But you don’t know if it’s 60 years, 100 years, 10 years, 2 years, or even 2 days. Nobody knows. So that’s another reason why you have to take advantage of your time.
Also, because time goes away and never comes back. Money goes and comes back, right? You could get money one day, sometimes you have it, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you ask your mum and dad, "Can I have some money?" and they say no, and sometimes they say yes. You have some days, good days and bad days. But time just goes away from you. You don’t get it back again.
That was a really good question. Did I answer your question?
Yes.
Did it make sense?
Yes. You can say if it didn’t, I can answer it some more. It did make sense, right?
So, we said, when will the world end? We don’t know. And when... does it matter? What matters for us is when we will die, right? Because when we will die, that’s when everything will start. And we don’t know when we will die.
So, what do you think happens to a person? I know it’s a bit off-topic, but I thought maybe people would have this question. They want to ask, and I wanted to ask you guys, what do you think happens to a person when they die?
Generally speaking, like, where do they go?
The answer: The people, like, the people bury them and then the angel of death comes and takes their soul and tells them not to be afraid.
Okay, so definitely the angel of death takes their soul. That’s when they actually die. It’s before they get buried, so this is before they... when they actually die, the moment they stop being alive. The angel of death takes their soul. And then people bury them. And then what happens? Where will they live now until the world ends? What do you think?
Another answer: They will not live. They're not going to eat or drink because they died. The angels are going to come and ask, “What religion were you in?”
Very good! "Were you praying to Allah? Were you reading the Quran?" And if you didn’t... then... they're going to like... beat you with... I don't know... something bad.
So let’s go back a little bit. So the angels will come—two angels will come—and they’re going to ask three questions. They’ll ask, first of all, "Who is your Lord?" And so what do you answer to that?
The answer: Allah.
And they’re going to ask, "What is your religion?"
The answer: Islam.
And they’re going to ask, "Who was that man that was sent to you?"
The answer: Rasool Muhammad ﷺ.
Okay. These three questions. Do you think everybody... they’re easy, right? I mean, I think everybody watching at home, everybody knows the answer to those questions. "My Lord is Allah, my religion is Islam, and my prophet is Muhammad ﷺ." Everybody knows that. But do you think everybody will be able to answer those questions?
The answer: No.
Why not? It’s easy, right? I mean, everybody can answer. Even if you ask some non-Muslims today and say, “Okay, if you were a Muslim, could you answer? Who is your Lord?” They’ll say, “Yeah, Muslims believe in Allah.” “And what’s your religion?” “Islam.” “And who is their prophet?”
Why do you think so many people will struggle to answer that question?
Because people have different kinds of religions, for example, true Christians, but even Muslims—people will struggle. Some people will struggle to answer that question because Allah will not make it easy for everybody to answer, right? It’s about how you live your life. This is why my question comes back to the issue of time: how you live your life will depend on whether you'll be able to answer those questions properly or not.
If somebody lived their life and didn’t really pay much attention to Islam, didn’t care about it too much, maybe when they go into their grave, they won’t be able to answer those questions. They’ll say, “I don’t know,” like stuttering, and they can’t find the answer. “I heard people saying something, but I didn’t really know.” So some people will not be able to answer. So how you spend your time... we came back to this when we talked about Surah Al-Asr. How you spend your time in this life, how you spend your time when you're young, how you spend your time when you're old—that’s how you’ll be able to answer those questions.
And then the person stays in their grave, and like you said, the grave will either become like a garden from the gardens of paradise, where the person is just resting in peace and everything is good for them, or it will become a part of the fire, and they will get burned, and bad things will happen to them, and horrible things will happen to them. So either they will have that or they will have that, depending on how they answer the questions. And how they answer the questions depends on how they live their life, what they do with their life, and how they live their life.
So this is another reason why it’s so important to go back to Surah Al-Asr now. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala said:
إِلَّا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا وَعَمِلُوا الصَّالِحَاتِ وَتَوَاصَوْا بِالْحَقِّ وَتَوَاصَوْا بِالصَّبْرِ
“Except for those who believe, do righteous deeds, advise each other to truth, and advise each other to patience.”
So, everyone is going to lose, right? It’s like you played a game. All of you are going to lose. Everyone lost. إِنَّ الْإِنسَانَ لَفِي خُسْرٍ—all lost except some people. The people who didn’t lose and got paradise—those people were the ones who had Iman (faith), who believed in their religion, وَعَمِلُوا الصَّالِحَاتِ (and did good deeds), وَتَوَاصَوْا بِالْحَقِّ (and advised each other to the truth), وَتَوَاصَوْا بِالصَّبْرِ (and advised each other to patience).
So, I want to ask you about each one of these four things, and then I want you guys to ask me questions as well. I just put some things in front of you. We have to believe, we have to do good things. Okay, we’ve mentioned how many good things so far? We talked about reciting the Quran, we talked about praying. What else have we not talked about? There are loads of things, but which one were you thinking about that we should fill our time with? If you’re going to give advice to people watching at home, say: “What are you going to fill your time with?”
How did the Prophet ﷺ spend his time? How did the Prophet ﷺ spend his time? That’s amazing. So, like, ask yourself the question, “What are the good deeds the Prophet ﷺ did? How did he spend his time?”
The first thing is, every single thing, his whole goal, everything was Jannah (paradise), right? It was what is with Allah, the religion of Islam. Not to get caught up in the world. Some people get caught up in the world, don’t they? They forget about Islam—not because they don’t like Islam, but because they become busy with everything—jobs, school, exams, friends, playing, and they forget about Islam. So that’s one thing.
And then, the things that Prophet ﷺ spent his time doing—what was the... what do you think the Prophet ﷺ spent the most time doing? What do you think? If I was to give you some things, I’m not going to say number one, number two, number three, just what you think—the things that he spent the most time with.
Answer: Like reading the Quran?
Okay, so what do we say before all of them? Maybe we could say Dhikr—remembering Allah, including the Quran. Because the Prophet ﷺ seemed to remember Allah all the time, always remembering Allah. So, whether it’s small words like SubhanAllah wa bihamdihi, SubhanAllah al-Azim, whether it’s reading the Quran, whether it’s saying Alhamdulillah, Allahu Akbar, whether it’s praying, and the things when you remember Allah in your prayer. He used to spend his time remembering Allah.
So, that’s something really important because you can always remember Allah. You can always find time to say something. Even if you’re busy with something, you can always find time to remember Allah, right? So that’s really important.
What else do you think?
Um, because the Quran was given to Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, and before him, some of the Prophets didn’t have the Quran. So maybe they were helping the poor, giving sadaqah, providing food, and giving them what they really needed. The Prophet ﷺ used to do that too. He used to spend his time helping people and giving to the poor and looking after them. Yeah, he used to do that as well.
What about praying, though? We didn’t talk about praying properly. Yeah, we didn’t talk about praying. You know, we pray how many times a day?
Answer: Five.
Five obligatory prayers. Five you have to do. There are other prayers that are recommended or optional, but five you have to do. Why do you think or what do you think is the benefit of your time if you have five daily prayers versus having one prayer or three prayers?
Answer: Because Allah actually deserves much more prayers.
That's true, but why then, how do we end up with five?
Answer: Oh, because when the Prophet ﷺ went to Al-Isra' and Mi'raj, Allah took him to Jannah and he went up to the highest place in heaven. Yeah, he got told how many prayers to start with.
Answer: Fifty.
Fifty a day. Can you manage fifty prayers a day, Muhammad?
Answer: Um, I don't know. Fifty prayers maybe not. No, fifty.
Okay, you know, like we do five: Dhuhr finished, Asr started, Asr finished, Maghrib started. Can you imagine if between every prayer, there were ten—like, you know, nine, ten more prayers like that? Pray. Even in this video, we would have stopped three times to pray so far. What I mean is, stop guys, let’s pray, stop, pray, stop, pray.
So, we ended up, Allah blessed us by giving us five prayers that equal fifty. So, every time you pray, you get ten prayers. You prayed Asr right now? That Asr prayer was worth ten Asr prayers. So, the Maghrib prayer you’re going to pray is worth ten Maghrib prayers. So every time, you get the reward of fifty prayers every day. It's a lot.
But why do you think people... how does it affect people’s time, and why do you think for us, it’s a good idea for us to pray five times a day from the point of view of our time and stuff like that?
Answer: Because when you make mistakes and if you pray after that, Allah will forgive you for everything. You made the mistakes that you made with your hands, so you, me, and everyone watching this at home, we all make lots of mistakes all the time. We make mistakes sometimes we know we’re making a mistake, and sometimes we don’t know we’re making a mistake, but we make it anyway. So when we make mistakes like that, we need something to make up for it, and the prayer is exactly like you said: between every prayer, what happens? Allah cleans it for you, forgives you for it, wipes it away. So you can start each prayer fresh.
Also, do you remember we talked about how people get caught up in this world, right? Like, they get caught up with their friends, and their games, and their gadgets, and if they’re working, their work, and if they’re at school, their school, and it’s not that they don’t care, it’s just that they forget a little bit about Islam. So the five daily prayers remind you. So every time it’s time to pray, it’s like, right, what’s important is Islam, and Allah, and Jannah, and getting away from the hellfire. This is what’s important, and it’s not important that my schoolwork...
Answer: And my... okay, don’t tell your dad I said that, right?
Answer: Okay, maybe it’s okay. So, I mean, I don’t mean it’s not important at all, but I mean it’s not important compared to Islam. You know, nobody wants to come on the Day of Judgment and have passed their school exam and failed their Islamic exam. So it’s like, congratulations you got an A star, or a nine, or whatever it is these days, but...
Answer: Yeah, you’re not going to paradise. Sorry, yeah. That’s no good.
So we want you guys to get really good grades at school, but we don’t want you to forget about Islam while trying to get good grades at school. If that makes sense. That’s what a lot of people forget, and when they get older, they forget because of work and become busy and stuff like that. So the five daily prayers remind you. You pray five times a day, and it's like, "What’s important to me? It's here." Then you get busy again, and then you come back and pray again. Yeah, so this is one of the things I think is really important.
Okay, quickly, because we’ve only got a few more minutes to talk, and I want to talk about two more things. Then I want to hear a question from both of you, and I’m going to try and squeeze that into the time. One of the things we have to spend our time with is telling people about Islam, telling people about what’s right, and helping people to do what’s right, like now. Yeah, like now. This is, Insha'Allah (If God wills), I hope that was very clear. Masha'Allah (Praise be to Allah), Allah bless you. I really hope that this sitting we have right now, this seat at the table we have right now, is actually a chance for us to have this Tawasi bil haqq (the mutual encouragement of truth), teaching each other, learning from each other, and telling people what’s right and what we should do and what we should keep away from. But when you do that, you need to have a lot of patience, a lot of sabr (patience). Why? Because you think it’s easy to tell people to do the right thing? No, it’s not easy, right? Sometimes you have to be patient.
And I think if you ask about the Prophet (S.A.W.) and if you look at his whole life, what he did, his whole life was patience, right? He was being patient a lot. Difficult things happened, things didn’t always go the way you would imagine, but they went the way that Allah (SWT) decreed for it to happen, and it all worked out perfectly in the end. But you have to be patient. And it’s not just that you have to be patient when difficult things happen, but you also have to be patient to do good things. Reading the Quran every day means patience, right? Keeping away from things that are haram (forbidden) every day means patience. Yeah, so that’s really what I wanted to talk to you a little bit about today. And you guys have given me so many ideas and answers, and Masha'Allah, I’m really happy with that. But I just want to get a question from each of you to finish up, because it’s more about you asking than me answering, right? So who’s going to go first? Who has a question they want to ask first?
I have a question. You have a question? Okay, go on.
So, where did the name of the prayers come from? Like Maghrib (sunset prayer), Asr (afternoon prayer)?
So, the name of the prayers comes from the time of the day, right? The prayers are named after the time of the day. So, Fajr (dawn prayer) is something that exists. It’s a time of day. It exists before the Fajr prayer. Before Allah (SWT) told us about the Fajr prayer, there was something called Fajr, and that’s when the light just starts to break on the horizon. There was something called Dhuhr (midday prayer), which is just after the middle of the day. There was something called Asr (afternoon prayer), which is the afternoon. There was something called Maghrib (sunset prayer), which is when the sun goes under the horizon, the ball of the sun disappears. And there was something called Isha (night prayer), which is the time of night when that redness disappears from the sky. So they were named after the times of the day that you pray. But then the Prophet (S.A.W.) came and he gave us the specifics: exactly what is Fajr, because there’s a real Fajr and a false Fajr, there’s a true Fajr and a Fajr that isn’t true, and exactly when is Dhuhr, and exactly when is Asr, and how do you know that? All of them, you know it by the movement of the sun and the sky. Right? And now we have prayer time tables, but those prayer time tables just explain to us where the sun is in the sky. So it’s that basic idea of the means for the prayer.
Some of them are mentioned in the Qur'an (the Quran), and others are mentioned in the hadith (sayings of the Prophet S.A.W.). But all of the five prayers are mentioned in the Qur'an by time. All of them are mentioned. For example, when Allah (SWT) said, "أَقِمِ الصَّلَاةَ لِدُّنُوكَ الشَّمْسِ إِلَى غَسَقِ اللَّيْلِ وَقُرْآنَ الفَجْرِ إِنَّ قُرْآنَ الفَجْرِ كَانَ مَشْهُودًا" (Surah Isra 17:78) Perform the prayer from the time when the sun is in the middle of the sky. What time is that? Which one is that one? When the sun is in the middle of the sky, which prayer is that? Dhuhr. Until the night time has come. So the night time has come is Isha. Yeah, so from the Dhuhr until Isha, that’s Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib, Isha. وَقُرْآنَ الفَجْرِ And recite the Qur’an at Fajr time. Pray at Fajr time. إِنَّ قُرْآنَ الفَجْرِ كَانَ مَشْهُودًا The angels witness the Qur’an at Fajr. Okay. Alright, now, what was your follow-up question to that? No? Okay, that’s cool. Because Masha'Allah, you’ve given me so many questions already today, and I think we’re more or less out of time. I’m really, really happy with how this seat at the table work today was. It was really good. I benefited a lot from it. I hope you guys benefited from it. Yeah? And I hope, Insha'Allah, we’ll see you again, and Insha'Allah, I hope that everybody at home benefited from it as well. And we ask Allah (SWT) to make it easy for us to benefit from our time, and to allow us to get the most of our time, and to make us from those people who are successful in the Hereafter, from the people of Paradise, to keep us away from the fire, and we ask Allah to teach us what benefits us, and to benefit us with what He teaches us, and to increase us in knowledge, and to give us the ability to act upon it.
And that’s all we have time for for this episode today. And I want to say a big JazakAllah Khayran (May Allah reward you with goodness) to you guys for your time, your questions, and your contributions, and also to everybody at home as well. JazakAllah Khayran. Wa sallatu wa sallam 'ala nabiyyina Muhammad wa 'ala alihi wa sahbihi ajma'in (And peace and blessings be upon our Prophet Muhammad, and upon his family and companions).
