Note: The following transcript was generated using AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Welcome to a new episode of A Seat at the Table, and we have some guests who’ve returned, Alhamdulillah. We didn’t scare you guys off the first time, although it wasn’t with me, so let’s see if you’re back for a third time, InshaAllah. Today, we have Abdullah and Osama, BarakAllahu Feekum.
Our discussion today is all about university and the challenges at university. I think you both are at university right now, correct? What are you both doing?
So, I’m in my second year of university, studying computer science.
Computer science! That’s my field too, when I’m not doing this. So, when you're not doing this, what are you up to?
Okay, both of you are in it, so we could just completely change our discussion and talk about computer science instead, right? SubhanAllah.
Okay, challenges at university... Should we start with you, Abdullah? Do you have a question for Osama so we can see where the conversation goes?
Yeah, so the thing I want to ask is, as a university student, I often find that balancing university studies and giving time to Islamic studies is quite difficult. How do I balance between the two?
Well, that’s a very good question, and I actually find it quite amazing, because it shows how studious people can be—you're actually thinking about university like that. Many people I meet in the UK would ask me how to balance Islam and partying. The university studies don’t even play a role in what they do. SubhanAllah.
You’re there for a reason, and you want to do well. There’s that desire to excel in your studies, but at the same time, we must give Islam its due time. I think there are many ways to tackle this. I want to begin by mentioning the hadith of Hanzala al-Asadi, a long hadith that I’ll summarize, but I'll mention the key points from what the Prophet ﷺ said at the end.
Hanzala was a noble companion and used to write the revelation. He met Abu Bakr, and when they greeted each other, Hanzala said, “Hanzala has become a hypocrite.” Abu Bakr was shocked. “What do you mean?” he asked. Hanzala explained that when they were with the Prophet ﷺ, he reminded them of the fire and Paradise as though they could see it with their own eyes. But when they left and went back to their families, businesses, studies, and everything else, they became preoccupied with the world. He felt like a hypocrite because of this.
Abu Bakr said he felt the same way, so they both went to the Prophet ﷺ and mentioned what they were feeling. The Prophet ﷺ replied that if they remained in the same state as they were with him, remembering Allah constantly, the angels would shake their hands when they were on the road or lying in bed. But of course, this has never happened to any of us.
The Prophet ﷺ then said, “There is a time for this and a time for that.” Some hadith mention this three times. The key point I want to take from this is that it’s about doing the right thing at the right time.
The first point is that you won’t be able to give Islam 100% of your time in the sense of dedicating all your time to Islamic studies and practicing Islam. You’ll have times when you need to focus on other things like your studies, work, or family. But even in those times, you must make sure Islam doesn’t get forgotten. There’s a time for your studies, a time for your family, and a time for your faith.
The second point is about doing the right thing at the right time. When the adhan is called, the time to pray is there. When your lecture time comes, that’s when you focus on your studies. It’s about making sure that Islam doesn’t get forgotten. Even if you can’t give as much time to your studies as you did in your first year, or if things are different in your third year, as long as Islam isn’t forgotten, it’s about striking a balance. The obligatory deeds (wājibāt) and also the optional deeds (nafl) should be given their share of time.
So, in summary, I would never want you to get to a stage where you’re giving 100% of your attention to university and not giving any time to your religion. Remember, your religion is what matters. We ask Allah not to make the dunya our biggest concern, and not to make it the limit of our knowledge.
I mean, I know a lot about computer science, but I don't know anything about Islam, you know. Don't make it the limit of our knowledge. Don't make it the biggest concern we have, and don't make the fire our destination. So I think that's how we should understand it. Makes sense?
Okay, Usama, let's see what you have to say.
Um, I have a question regarding the surah that we do have many classes, let's say like one hour each, one and a half hours each. So during one of our classes, let's say we hear the azan, we have to go for prayer, but we can't because of our classes. So at these times, even let's say a person takes a break, let's say like a five-minute break, he prays, and he goes for the prayer, and he returns back in 10 or 15 minutes, then he missed the 15 minutes of lessons. And if he's trying to concentrate on the rest of the class, he won't understand the context of it because he has missed the 15 minutes of...
Okay, so I think there's a few things to take for this answer. The first is that Allah said the prayer has been assigned for the believers at fixed times. We know we have a beginning prayer time and we have an end prayer time. So within that time, we have to pray. There is no other option. This is just at the most basic level. We cannot miss a prayer inside of that time that we've been given, whether it is between Dhuhr until Asr, or Asr until Maghrib, or Maghrib until Isha, and so on. The beginning time and the end time, that's the first thing.
That's not the only thing though. You then have the issue of the azan, and we know that a blind man came to the Prophet and he said that, “I’m a blind man, I don’t have a guide to bring me to the masjid.” The Prophet (peace be upon him) gave him permission to pray in his house. Then he called him back, he said, “You have to answer it if you hear the adhan. You have to go,” even if you're blind. And in some of the narrations, it mentioned he lived far away from the masjid and he wasn’t near, and the road was difficult for him. He had nobody to guide him to the masjid, and the Prophet (peace be upon him) said, “You have to answer it.” And Allah said, “O you who believe, answer the call of Allah and His Messenger when they call you to that which will bring you life.” (Qur'an 8:24)
So the answering of the adhan and the praying in the masjid, sometimes you are too far away. You either don’t hear the adhan or the masjid is very, very far away. It’s extremely difficult for you to reach the masjid. It’s not a case where you can go to the masjid and come back and not miss the whole lecture or a large portion of it. In this case, then it becomes obligatory that you’re going to have to pray in jama'at (congregation), so you’re going to have to pray on time and you're going to have to pray in jama'at.
Many of the scholars were asked about situations where people were working in an office building, and they said, “Between us and the masjid, there is a busy road. And for us to get out and into the masjid and get back again is difficult.” And the key thing is that you pray in jama'at.
So the reason I’m answering like this is that different people watching this will have different situations. Some of them will have a masjid right outside the door. Yeah, those people, they have to go and pray in the masjid. We’re going to talk about how to cope with the class in a second. They have to go pray in the masjid; they don’t have a choice. Some people, the masjid is very hard for them to reach. So these people, they have to pray on time, i.e. within the time allocated for the prayer, and they have to pray in jama'at.
So even if there were a group of Muslims who agreed, “We’re going to pray in jama'at,” and the Dhuhr adhan goes off halfway through the lecture, the whole prayer session in the masjid is gone, but they’re still going to pray together. They’re going to all go to the masjid or the musalla (prayer area), wherever they’re going to all pray in jama'at, and then they’re going to go. So that is not a problem. That’s not a problem if the masjid was not possible for them to reach during the lecture. And I mean by that, for example, they were not allowed, and sometimes it can be the case in some places where you cannot leave, or sometimes it’s a case of kids who are not in university but they're in, let’s say, for example, college and they’re physically stopped from leaving the premises (during exams, for instance). They’re not allowed to leave or the masjid is so far for them that it’s very hard for them to reach it. It’s very difficult.
So these people are going to say, “You need to pray on time.” Don’t let the time for Dhuhr end, and you need to pray in jama'at. You don’t want to be praying on your own, Allahumma (unless you come to a place where there’s no one to pray with you, then you can pray by yourself—that’s okay).
So now the question is, if I can leave the lecture hall and go to the masjid, now the question is, how do I manage that with regard to the lecture? So, I’m going to presume, for the purpose of answering this part of the question, that the person’s not going to suffer any great harm, like a penalty, but they’re worried about their studies—like no one’s going to say, “You’re kicked off the course, you have to leave the university,” but, “I’m just going to miss out on my studies.” So I think here that you want to minimize that harm upon yourself while still going to the masjid.
It could be something as simple as recording the class, having somebody in the class take responsibility to just, you know, leave my phone here. I’m going to leave my something on the table, just record the class, and I will go and come back. It could be a case of having an agreement with someone that, “You know, just for those few minutes, I’m going to go and pray, and this person’s taking notes for me, and I’m going to take those notes.” And when I do that, I’m going to have in my mind that I am doing this asking Allah to help me in my studies so that I don’t miss out because of this. I’m going for Allah. I want to stay, but for the sake of Allah, I’m going to go. But also think about the practicalities of when to go. For example, the adhan goes, maybe there’s 20 minutes between the adhan and the iqama (the call to prayer).
So the person, just before the iqama, so they’re not missing too much of the lecture, they excuse themselves. They already have wudu (ablution). Like, how many people are not thinking about this? They’re not prepared in advance, so they don’t have wudu. They go out, make wudu, go to the masjid, pray in jama'at, and take their time. They come out, come back again, and they missed loads of the lecture. Versus the person who’s ready for it: “Right, I know the adhan is going to go off. I’ve made wudu before the lecture. I’m ready. Okay, the iqama is in five minutes. The masjid’s five minutes away. Off I go, pray, come back, and I missed 15 minutes of my class, and it was worth it because I did that for the sake of Allah, and Allah will make up for me what I missed while still tying your camel. I’ve got someone making notes for me. I’m recording the class there, and inshaAllah (if Allah wills) you will not lose. You will not lose out.”
If you ever feel like it’s a really serious situation, like, for example, you’re in something which was an exam or something like that—you physically couldn’t leave—then again, the same thing: how do I manage to pray in jama'at and organize that? The thing is that if you can build this habit now, this habit is going to serve you so well for your life at work because it’s going to get worse. It’s not going to get easier. It actually gets worse and worse as time goes on.
Um, people work at jobs where you can't leave your job, you know? Like, "Where are you going? Why are you taking this break? Why do you need to pray? Why does it take so long?" And you're going to implement the same idea, the same system, inshallah. Did that kind of answer the question? It's not easy. No one said it's easy, but the idea is not for it to be easy, but to do something that you set for yourself: a red line, which is, like, "I pray when I hear the adhan and I'm within reach of the masjid. I go and pray, whatever the situation might be." And then, inshallah, when I can't do that, I've got my backup, which is my salah in jama'at. I won't miss praying in the jama'at, and, you know, we balance it and manage the situation like that, inshallah.
I have a question related to that. So, what if we have like a lunch break or something, because Dhuhr is around that time, and let’s say they’ve given a time for lunch break, and we have time for lunch and the salah as well. What if a person... I have like, I have friends who say this to me in school and universities. What they normally say to me is, "I’ll go home and pray," like casually—not like, you know, "It's time for salah, I have to pray." More like, "I’m just going to pray at home. I'm just going to have my lunch now, I'll pray at home before Asr or something." Is it normal and is it okay to do that?
No, it's not okay. I think the easiest way to answer this is, if you think about the prayer at the time of war. So this is like a situation where you're facing your enemy on the battlefield and your people are pointing guns at you, and you know you're pointing yours at them. If there’s a war going on and you still pray in jama'at, you still pray, and unless you can’t pray in jama'at because your life is in danger, you still pray. One group defends the other group, and then that group prays. Then they swap over, and the other group defends and prays. So, has this happened in the life of us all? Yeah, the ayat were revealed on this topic about praying on the battlefield and so on in jama'at.
And, you know, the Prophet (peace be upon him) had this hadith, which was amazing. When he had this intention, he said, “I had made this intention to command for wood to be gathered. Then I intended to command someone to lead the prayer and then for me to go to the houses of the people who don't attend the jama'at so I could burn their houses to the ground.” And it's the Prophet ﷺ. The Prophet was the most merciful of people to anyone, and he wanted to burn down the houses of the people who don’t come to the jama'at. And he said, "It wasn't for the women and the children in the homes. I would have burned their houses down." And, you know, subhanAllah, he mentioned some of the hadith that if one of them found, like, a rib with some meat on it... You know, if someone told him that you’re just going to get a small benefit, like, a piece of meat or a couple of ribs, he would have come to Isha. He would have come to the prayer and prayed in the jama'at. Like if someone told him, “You’re just going to get something, you know, come to this lecture, be a benefit,” any small benefit, they would come for. But when it comes to the prayer, they’re easygoing about it.
So it’s really important to take it seriously. And like I said, if you can take it seriously now, inshallah, you'll take it seriously for your whole life, and it will be something that is non-negotiable for you. It’s a red line. "I pray when I hear the adhan and I'm near the masjid, I pray in the masjid. If I don't hear the adhan or I’m too far away, it’s too hard for me to reach... Sometimes with the microphones you hear the adhan, but you reach the masjid, it’s a whole different thing. But I pray. When I can’t, I pray in jama'at. I always pray on time." And, you know, if you think about what Allah azza wa jal said, the hellfire will be for the people who delay—who are forgetful about delaying their prayers. This forgetfulness about delaying the prayer happens when people say, "I’ll pray just before Asr,” you know, inshallah, “Before Asr, I’ll pray.” How many times have I heard people say, "I’ll pray, and then Asr comes." “Oh, I thought I didn’t pray Dhuhr!” "Okay, I’ll join," you know? And then Maghrib and Isha. We have people come and say, "Yeah, I pray five times a day—four of them I pray at once, and I pray Fajr when I wake up and the sun is shining in my eyes, and I pray the other four when I get back from work."
So, to stop that from happening, we have to have that habit. And regarding that, you have said that there’s a time limit for every prayer. So what is the time limit for the prayer of Isha, like when it starts and when it ends?
Let's recap all the prayers, because maybe some of the people watching at home are interested in any of them. So we know that Fajr starts when the light starts to go along the horizon, right? So when you have the sky, the sky is dark. Sometimes you get that false light that comes up, but it comes and goes. The sky is still dark, and you see a white light spread along the horizon, like as if somebody had just, you know, taken a paintbrush and spread it out like that. This is the start of Fajr, and Fajr ends with the sun rising. So as soon as the ball of the sun, the tip of the sun, just comes above the horizon—not the whole thing, just the tip of it—Fajr ended.
Okay, so that’s the time. They rise, Shurooq. Dhuhr starts when the sun just moves past the middle part of the sky. It's not right in the middle, it’s just started to move. So you would know that by the shadow. Your shadow has gone shorter, shorter, shorter, and then it starts to get slightly longer again. Then, right away, it's Dhuhr time, and Dhuhr extends all the way until Asr.
Asr is when the shadow of something is equal to its length. So if you put a tree or stick or something in the ground, and you look at the length of the height of the tree and the length of the shadow is the same, it's Asr time. And Dhuhr ends at Asr time.
Asr has two times. It finishes—the time you should pray Asr before is before the sun turns yellow. So generally, the sun in the sky is white, a white-yellow, because it’s very bright. You know, in the late afternoon, just before sunset, the sun kind of goes yellow, and it becomes... you can look at it. It doesn’t become blinding anymore. Before that happens, you should have prayed Asr. But in an emergency, if you couldn’t and you did pray Asr before Maghrib, that would be accepted from you, but you would be out of the proper time for it because the proper time for it is before the sun becomes yellow, that yellow-orangey color that happens to the sun.
Maghrib will start when the sun has completely gone below the horizon. So the ball of the sun has just gone below, and that's Maghrib time. And Maghrib extends until Isha, although it’s better to pray as quickly as you can. It extends until Isha, and Isha starts when the redness has disappeared from the sky.
So, when you look at the sky and the sun sets, there's loads of color in the sky, and then it gets less and less. When that red color has gone from the sky, that's when Isha time starts. Now, when does Isha finish? Isha finishes, according to the stronger opinion, after half of the night, which means halfway between Maghrib and Fajr. This could be midnight, it could be 11:30, it could be 12:30—half the amount of the night, halfway. But if you were to pray afterwards, if you missed it, and you prayed afterwards, it would still be accepted, but it's not the proper time. The proper time would be before half of the night has passed. So, it's not always midnight. Some people have a mistaken idea; they think it's midnight, but it's not. It's half of the Islamic night, which is between Maghrib and Fajr.
I had a question related to something I personally struggled with or that university students in general go through: group assignments and group projects. As the name suggests, it's a group, and teachers sometimes don't separate boys' and girls' groups. It's sometimes mixed. How do we deal with this or how do we react?
So, I think the first thing is to avoid it where you can. That's just a basic answer because some people watching are in situations where they can avoid it. So, where you can, avoid it. If you can ask to be moved out of it, swapped into something else, or if you can have your own group, then yes, for sure. Where you can avoid it, avoid it. When you can't, the key is to interact with that girl in a professional, need-based manner. You know, I need to check the data you've gathered here; I need to check how you're going to approach the project. I don't need to sit and have a coffee with you. That's the reality of it. I don't need to ask for your phone number. There's a lot of things I don't need. What I do need is to know: have you gathered this data? What's your approach going to be? What part of the project am I going to take, and what part will you take?
You're blessed because you're in computer science. A lot of stuff can be done remotely, so maybe they won't accept everything, but you can work around that a little bit. I work really well when I'm by myself. I don't like working in coffee shops where you might end up talking about unrelated things. So, you try to reduce the fitnah wherever it is. The kind of interaction you’ll have in a coffee shop is worse than in a student life environment where things are more likely to be work-related and focused on the project.
This is true for everything when you deal with women in general, in work or your professional capacity. You will try to avoid it where possible, limit it to what you need, and nothing more than that. You reduce the fitnah. There's no doubt that there are times when the environment is worse than others. I personally feel that working in your field is better than a lot of others because you generally have a more professional environment.
Okay, we have time for one last question before we finish. Go ahead, Osama.
So, this is also related to communication. Personally, we all meet new people from different cultures and backgrounds. Joking around and conversations are often different, and something that is unavoidable is gossip and backbiting. It's common, and a person may try to distance himself from these kinds of conversations. But what can a person do if they have weak iman? They try to distance themselves from these talks, but no matter how far they go, they get pulled back in, and sometimes, they end up participating. What should they do?
I'll give you a few simple points. The first thing is to look at who your friends are. Having the right group of friends will help reduce this. I'm not saying it will become zero, but it will be a lot less. With bad people around you, it becomes a lot more. With good people, it becomes a lot less.
Second, when it does happen, stop yourself and don't allow yourself to get carried away by it. If someone says, "Oh, you know that guy? Remember what he did?" You can say, "You know what? I don’t like to talk about people when they're not here. If it's a Muslim, you can say, 'Don’t backbite.' If it's a non-Muslim, just say, 'I don’t talk about people when they're not here.' Because at the end of the day, if you do it to them, they will do it about you."
Once you say this a few times, it will become a habit. Analyze how it happened. How did you fall into it? Was it because of joking around? Joking around itself is often a problem because you tend to either fall into haram or come very close to it. There's nothing wrong with a gentle joke that's not at anyone's expense or the expense of religion, which is even worse. But many times, joking leads to things related to religion or people, both of which are really bad.
Figure out where it came from and try to make changes. But it just requires you to be brave. If you don't feel brave enough to be really direct, at least mention something good about that person. For example, if they say, "Oh, this guy is like this or that," you could say, "He's a nice guy," and that's it. Then, walk away.
At the very least, you should hate it in your heart. And by hating it in your heart, I mean you can't bear to stay there anymore. So, you have to turn away from those people until they change the topic.
As Allah says, don’t sit with them until they take a different topic. And when you remember that you messed up and fell into gossip and backbiting, don't go back to that same gathering again and again. Learn from it.
If you get into the habit and you’re brave, inshallah, you’ll be fine. It doesn’t require you to be particularly religious. But at least say, "Look, I don’t talk about people when they’re not here. It’s bad manners." If you do that, they will either stop or you’ll distance yourself.
That’s all we have time for today in this episode. I really enjoyed it, and your questions were fantastic. May Allah bless you both and grant you success. I hope to see you again for another seat at the table, inshallah. That’s what Allah has made easy for us to mention in this episode, and Allah knows best.
