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 come back alhamdulillah and we didn't scare you guys off the first time although it wasn't with me so we'll see if you're back for a third time inshallah to that we have Abdullah we have Osama barakallahu fikum okay so our discussion today is all around university and challenges at university so i think you guys are both both at uni right now yeah what are you doing right now so i'm doing my second year of university in computer science computer science okay that's my field when i'm not when i'm not doing this what's what are you up to okay both both in it so we could just completely change our discussion and just talk about computer science instead right subhanallah okay so challenges at university um okay should we start start with yourself Abdullah do you have a question you want to ask him so we can see where we go from there yeah so the thing that i uh i want to ask is as a university student um i often find that the balance between uh studies university studies and giving time to uh giving time to you know islamic studies how do i balance between the both well i find it it's a very very good question i actually find it i might actually find it an amazing question since a lot of you know it shows how studious people can be that you're actually thinking about university like that because so many people that i meet in the uk they would might ask me how can i how can i balance between islam and partying you know because the university study doesn't have any part to play in what they do um but yeah subhanallah you know you're there for a reason you're there to study and you want to do really well and there's that there's that uh desire to have ihsan to excel in your studies at the same time we need to give islam its time and i think there are so many ways to tackle that but i think i would like to tackle it first of all by the hadith or by mentioning the hadith of hanbala al-asadi and it's a long hadith uh of his rabbi allah i'm so i'm just going to summarize it and then i'll mention that some of the things the prophets have said at the end so hanbala he was a a noble companion prophets i said used to write the revelation and uh he met with abu bakr and when he met with abu bakr and they greeted each other he said to him hanbala has become a munafiq he's a hypocrite and abu bakr was shocked what is this you're saying and he mentioned the reason and the reason is that when we are with the messenger of allah he reminds us of the fire he reminds us of paradise as though we see it with our own eyes and then when we leave and we go somewhere else we become busy with our family our business our trade our study whatever you know you can add to that he talked about his family uh and his his uh business and so on and and his his other things but people become busy with the world and the surprising thing is when he mentioned this i he felt it made him a hypocrite abu bakr said that he experiences the same things the best of the sahaba you know he says i go through the same thing let's go to the messenger of allah and let's ask him about it and so when he went to the prophet said the same thing he said hamdallah is a munafiq i became a munafiq prophet just said to him what what is what he came to about himself and said he said hamdallah is a munafiq the prophet said to him what's this all about and he said to him when we're with you to the kira binari you remind us of fire and paradise though we see in front of when we go all our families our kids our businesses all that stuff it we become preoccupied by we forget a lot about of the things which you had told us about and the prophet said that if you remain if you stayed like that how you are with me and remembering allah the angels would have shook your hands you know on the road when you guys are when you are lying in bed the angels would come to you and greet you and shake your hands and i guess that's never happened to to any of us and so we can honestly say it's he said there is a time for this and a time for that some of the hadith mentions he said three times there is a time for this and a time for that there are two things i really want to take from this this hadith in regards to the statement of the prophet s.a.w. there's a time for this and a time for that the first thing is that it's doing the right thing at the right time so the first thing is that you are not going to be able to give islam a hundred percent of your time in the sense of a hundred percent dedication to islamic studies and islam and practicing islam and you're going to have times where you have to get distracted by things that are in the world your studies in the university could be your job it could be your family but having said that you need to make sure islam doesn't get forgotten because he said there's there's a time for this and a time for that so you have to give islam time don't let don't let there be a case where i've stopped reading the quran because of my studies i've stopped praying because of my studies i've stopped going to classes because of my studies but give it give it its time and then the next thing is the right thing at the right time so the time when the adhan is going the people have gone to the masjid there's a there's a place you should be at that time and then the time where you're supposed to be in your lecture you know you're working for that there's a time for that so it's about making sure that islam doesn't get forgotten so it's still you may not be doing as much as you were doing you know in your first year because you had a bit more time or you may be different things may be different in your third year you're adjusting it but islam has not been forgotten it's been given its share of time particularly in the wajibat in the obligatory deeds but also in the optional deeds as well but also the fact is that you are looking at at this moment in time right now what should i be that moment in time is it a time i should be uh doing something islamic or it's a time where i should be studying that's how i would approach that that that issue so i would never want to get to the stage where you're giving a hundred percent of attention onto university and you're not giving that attention to your to your religion because you know your religion is what is what matters right that's why we say Allah don't make the dunya our biggest concern and don't make it the limit of our knowledge i mean i know i know lots 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 that makes sense okay usama let's see what you have to say um i have a question uh regarding the surah that uh we do have many classes let's say like a one hour each one and a half an hour each so during uh 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 let's say a person takes a break let's say like a five minute of break he pray like takes 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 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 the within that time we have to pray there is no other option there's no way that we this is just at the most basic level that we can 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 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 he prophesized and gave him permission to pray in his house then he called him back he said he said then you have to answer it if you hear the adhan you have to go even if you're blind even he was 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 has no body to guide him to the to the masjid and the prophet said you have to answer it and allah said that all you who believe answer the call of allah and his messenger when they call you to that which will bring you life know that allah comes between a person and his heart and you're going to be gathered to him so that 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 you can go to the and come back you're going to 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 so you're going to have to pray on time and you're going to have to pray in jama'at and many of the scholars were asked about situations where people were working an office building and that you know between us and between the masjid there is a busy road and we come down for us to get out for us to get into the masjid and to get back again is difficult for us and the key thing is that you pray in the in the jama'at so the reason i'm answering like that is 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 in jama'at so even if there were a group of people that of muslims and they agreed we're going to we're going to pray in jama'at that we've got time the lecture finishes at let's say the dhuhr adhan goes halfway through the lecture the whole prayers that in the masjid is gone but we're going to pray together we're going to all go to the masjid or the musalla or wherever we're going to all pray in jama'at and then we'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 you cannot leave and 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 exams yeah or during exams or something like that 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 i 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 the place that there's no one to pray with you 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 the person's not going to suffer any any great harm like penalty but they're worried about their studies like no one's going to say you know you're kicked off the course you have to leave the university but i'm just gonna my studies are gonna suffer so i think here that you want to to minimize that harm upon yourself while still going to the masjid so 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 agreement with someone that like you know just for those few minutes i'm going to go and pray 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 this i am doing it asking allah that he uh helps me in my studies that i don't miss out because of this because i'm going for allah i need to stay i want to stay but i'm for the sake of allah i'm going to go but also thinking about practicalities of when to go also you know for example the adhan goes maybe there's 20 minutes between the adhan and the iqama 15 minutes or in some countries there's an iqama time like dhuhr might be at 12 o'clock at the iqama time might be at one o'clock in some places so the person you know just before the iqama so they don't you know they're not missing too much of the lecture they excuse themselves they already have wudhu like how many people are not thinking about they're not prepared in advance so they don't have wudhu so they go out they make wudhu they go to the masjid they pray in the jamaat they take their time they come out they come back again they missed loads of the lecture versus the person who's ready for it like right i know the adhan is going to go i've made wudhu before the lecture i'm ready okay iqama is in five minutes 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 got someone making notes for me i'm recording the class there and inshallah 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 the something which was an exam or something like you physically couldn't read then again the same thing is like how do i manage to pray in in jamaat and organize that and 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 and worse as time goes on of um people work at jobs you can't leave your job you know like where are you going why are you taking this break why you need to pray you know 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 it's the idea is not 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 you know when i can't do that i've got my backup which is my salah in jamaat i won't miss praying in the jamaat and you know we balance it and we manage the situation like that inshallah i have a question related to that so what if we we have like a lunch break or something because dhuhr is around that time and let's say they have 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 i have to pray like you know 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 it's not okay i think the easiest way to answer if you think about the the prayer at the time of war so this is like at 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 and if there's a war going on and you still pray in jamaat you know you still and allah unless you can't pray in jamaat and you're physically your life is in danger you you still pray you still pray one group defends the other one group stands and defends the other group and then the other group prays and then they swap over and then that group defends the other group and then they uh you know they they pray so so has this happened in the life of us all yeah the ayat were revealed on this topic about about praying on the battlefield and so on in jamaat and and you know the prophet so i sent him this hadith was amazing when he had this intention and he said 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 jamaat so i burned the house to the ground and it's the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam you know 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 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 with some meat on it you know if someone told him that you're just going to get a small you know like a 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 jamaat like if someone told him he's going to get a small benefit like the university someone told him he's just going to get something you know come to this lecture be a benefit any small benefit they will come for but when it comes to the prayer they're easy going about it so it's really important 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 you it's non-negotiable for you it's a red light cycle 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 in the masjid is a whole different you know whole different thing but i pray when i can't i pray in jamaat i always pray on time and you know if you think about what allah azawajal said the hellfire will be for the people who delay who are forgetful i forget forgetful about delaying their prayers and this forgetfulness about delaying the prayer it happens when people say i'll pray just before asr you know inshallah before asr i'll pray how many times i'll pray and then asr comes oh i thought i didn't pray for her okay i'll join you know and then maghrib and isha and 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 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 aisha like when it starts and when does it end like so let's let's recap all the prayers because maybe some of the people watching at home uh maybe they're 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 if you are looking at the sky the sky is dark sometimes you get that the false light comes up but it it comes and goes the sky is still dark and you see a white light like spread along the horizon like as if somebody had just you know took a paintbrush and spread it 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 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 moved 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 your shadow has gone shorter shorter shorter and then it starts to get slightly longer again then right straight 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 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 uh yellow so generally the sun in the sky is like white a white yellow because very bright you know in the late afternoon just before sunset the sun kind of goes yellow yeah and it like becomes you can look at it it doesn't become like 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 of it is before the sun becomes yellow yellow that yellow orangey color that happens to the sun maghrib will start when the sun has completely gone below the horizon so there's the the ball of the sun has just gone below that's maghrib time and maghrib would extend 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 have when you look at the sky when when the sun sets there's loads of color in the sky and then it gets less and less and less and when that red color has gone from the sky that's isha time now when does isha finish isha finishes according to the stronger opinion after half of the night which means halfway to maghrib and fajr which could be midnight could be 11 30 could be 12 30 half half the amount of the night halfway but if you were to pray afterwards if you missed it and you were to pray afterwards it would still be accepted but it's not the proper the proper time the proper time would be before half of the night passed so it's not always midnight some people have a mistaken idea they think it's midnight you know it's not midnight but it's half of the islamic night which is between maghrib and fajr so i had a question related to related to something that i i personally struggled with or university students in general we go through you know group assignments we have group assignments group projects so you understand by the name itself as a group and teachers sometimes they don't really see a separate group for boys a separate group for girls it's sometimes mixed how do we deal with this or how do we react so i think the first thing is avoid it where you can and that's just a basic answer because people maybe in some people who are watching are in a situation where they can avoid it so where you can avoid it where you can ask to get changed out of it or moved out of it or swapped into something else or can we have our own group or whatever then yeah 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 according to according to need like needs-based interaction you know i need to check the data you've gathered here i need to check how you're going to approach the project you know i don't need to sit and have a coffee with you you know like that that's reality of it you know i don't need to ask about how what i don't need your phone number i don't need like i there's a lot of things i don't need what i do need is i need to know have you gathered this data have you uh what's your approach going to be what part of the project am i going to take you're going to take i mean you guys are blessed because you guys are computer science right so a lot of stuff can be done remotely you know maybe they won't accept everything but you know you watch that a little bit you know i i work really well when i work by myself you know like i don't like i don't work well in coffee shops and you try and like you know and then you try to reduce the fit wherever it is so there's no doubt the kind of interaction you're going to have in a coffee shop is going to be worse than the kind of interaction you have in student life for example where it's more likely that it's going to be work related and you know needs related as opposed to you know where it's going to go off topic so this is true for everything you're going to deal with with women in general in work in your professional capacity you're going to try and avoid where possible you're going to limit it to what you need because islam didn't forbid you what you have a hijab or you have a need for it and you're going to do so in a way that reduces the fear so you're going to try and control the environment you're going to try and control communication for example if we're going to communicate i'd rather we have a group where all communicate and see each other's communication than maybe private messaging someone you know where that that conversation may not stay you know on uh on on topic and again what you need and and there's nothing wrong with being polite there's nothing you don't have to be particularly nasty or really you know like really difficult to work with just professional and you know when you have that professionalism you will find that that itself even the body language that it will make a distance between you and them they won't be interested because they know that they're not going to you know there's nothing good so friendly when i get there anyway i'm not gonna you know it's not that i have nothing against you i want you know one good for you and everything but you know i'm just i'm here to do my work you know so that's what i'm here to do and that kind of attitude will help you a lot you know it's the same when you go into a shop or anything else you you have to deal there will always be times in your life we have to deal with opposite gender who are not you're not going to happen to them that's that's going to happen every day you're going to have it but how you do it and how you manage it and if you follow those basic principles avoid it where you can uh stick to what you need and nothing more than that and try to reduce the business so no doubt there's times you're going to meet are going to be worse than you know other times and so on i personally feel it is a good field to be in that way you have generally it's better than a lot of fields it's better than a lot of fields and we have time for one last question okay before we finish up so go for it go for it osama yeah so the thing is uh cms communication it's also related to communication so personally we all meet new people new new cultures like they come from different backgrounds and stuff so you know joking around and the conversation is different always and something which is unavoidable is gossips and the backbiting this all are like frequent in common a person may try himself like try to distance himself from these kinds of you know talks but what can a person do who has a weaky man he tries to distance himself from this kind of conversations but he keeps how much ever far he goes he gets back into it and sometimes you know he he gets into it so i try and give you a few points that are really uh simple the first thing is um look at who your friends are because with the right group of friends around you that will reduce i'm not going to say it will become zero but it will be it'll be a lot less with bad people around you it becomes a lot more and with good people around you it becomes a lot less second thing is when it does happen stop yourself and don't allow yourself to get carried along by it right because someone will say oh you know that guy and you remember what he did and you say some guys you know what it is i don't i i don't like to talk to talk about people when they're not here uh you know if it's a muslim you can say don't backbite and whatever if it's a non-muslim look i don't talk about people when they're not here because the end of the day someone's going to do if you do it to them they're going to be saying the same thing about you they're going to be saying the same thing about me so now i'm not going to say something bad about someone when they're not here that's it and and just when you do that a few times it will become a habit for you you know and you won't get into it analyze how it happened you felt you fell into something like how did that happen okay it happened because of this it happened because of that it happened because we started joking around joking around in itself is a problem because usually most things with joking around is you tend to either fall into the haram or you come very near to the haram there's nothing wrong with a gentle joke that isn't at the expense of anyone and it's not at the expense of the religion which is even worse uh but too many times when you joke around it'll either fall into something related to the religion or it'll fall into something related to a person both of those are really bad so figure out where it came from and try to make changes but it just requires you to be brave um and if you even don't feel brave enough to be like really brave and say i don't want to do this then at least mention something good about that person like they say oh this guy you know he's like this he's like this things like that he's a nice guy and that's it at least you did something to him and then you have to walk away you know that's the minimum you have to hate in your heart and hating in your heart means that you can't bear to be there anymore you know um so you have to turn away from those people until they take a different a different topic you know so just you know like what Allah says as you just said don't sit with them until they take a different topic of conversation and then Allah says if the shaitan makes you forget then when you remember don't sit again with those oppressive people like once you've remembered that oh i messed up and i fell into backbiting and gossiping whatever now after that don't don't make that same mistake again and again by going back to that same gathering at the same time where same topic is there and you fall into it again and again learn from from from what happened if that makes sense but once you get that habit and you're brave you'll be fine inshallah like it doesn't require you to be religious in the sense of say islam prohibits us from like that's great if you can do it but at least to say look guys i you know i don't talk about people when they're not here they will do it about you it's a bad habit it's really bad manners with people it's just a horrible thing to do you know it's not me so if you guys are going to stop it stop it if not you know i'll see you guys in a bit that's it so that's all we had time for today in this episode i really enjoyed it was amazing you guys asked fantastic questions may Allah bless both and give you every tawfiq i really appreciate it i hope you guys are going to come again for another seat at the table inshallah and that's what Allah made easy for us to mention in this episode and Allah knows best
