How Tahajjud Will Make You Unbreakable

The Weight of Prophecy

The way the Qur'an is going to make the Prophet not just claim that he's a messenger, which was hard enough, but the way the Qur'an is going to make him offend the society, offend the most powerful people in the society. Things are about to get a lot harder and anybody who believes in him is going to be tortured in front of him, beat in front of him, killed in front of him even, and he can't do anything about it. This is gonna get harder.

Building Connection Through Night Prayer

Why should you recite the Qur'an in this slow way and allow it to soften your heart and build this deep connection with the word of Allah inside of you, that you start seeing the world through the word of Allah? Your heart becomes illuminated with the word of Allah, and then Allah says why is the Prophet being told to go through this exhausting exercise?

We, in fact, are going to throw upon you, cast upon you, and I'll get into the meanings of the word نُلْقِي in a second, on you a heavy word. Allah is saying, I want you to go through this exercise because a much heavier problem is coming your way, a much heavier responsibility is coming your way. You are not going to be strong enough to handle that responsibility if you do not build the strength and the endurance and your heart is not ready and the only way for your heart to get ready is the night.

I'm preparing you for something. Now Allah is telling him he's preparing him for something. The word لَقِي is something you drop down from high to low.

You have been given the Qur'an from above, meaning it's been dropped on you. It's been put down on you from someone who has all wisdom and all knowledge. وَحَقِيقَةُ الْإِلْقَاءِ رَمْيُ شَيْءٍ مِنَ الْيَدِ إِلَى الْأَرْضِ — The truth about الْإِلْقَاء is when you sprinkle something or throw something on, Allah is putting the Qur'an down on you. Allah says I'm about to put something on you that's extremely heavy.

The Prophet Wrapped in a Blanket

Now we started this surah with: He's wrapped up in a blanket. You remember? Why was he wrapped up in a blanket? Because he couldn't handle it. The idea is he's under so much burden and so much pressure, and now Allah is saying, yeah, I know the real pressure is coming. We started with there's too much pressure, get up, and Allah says get up because the thing that made you want to wrap yourself up in a blanket is nothing compared to what is now coming. What's coming is much heavier.

The Difficulty of Being the First Muslim

And here, man, I really need you to put yourself in the situation of the Prophet. I want you to empathize with our beloved messenger when Islam began. He first experienced the angel coming and speaking to him and now he has this Qur'an and he has to share this Qur'an. How easy is it to just talk to a stranger about: by the way, I'm the messenger of God and the angel came and spoke to me and if you don't accept this message, then you will ruin this life for yourself and the next, and the words that are coming out of my mouth aren't even my own words. They're the word of God. How easy is that? Where do you begin?

Sometimes people do street dawah. You know what's behind them? What's behind them is 20% of the world's population, an entire legacy of Islamic scholarship, billions of people. They're not the first Muslims. Imagine you're in the park and you say: God speaks to me. God speaks to me. Here's God's word. I'm telling you this is from God himself. Even if you were living 1400 years ago and you lived in Mecca and you just went to buy some tomatoes in the market and you see a man saying these words, I just want to tell you about the fact that I'm Allah's messenger. What would you do? What would most people's reaction be? They'd ignore him, walk away. They're not gonna just sit there and listen to him. Best case scenario, best case scenario, they're going to ignore him.

But then there are some people who enjoy humiliating others, they enjoy an opportunity to make a scene. And Rasool Allah has to go do this with no followers. Imagine zero followers. Who's the follower? His wife is a follower. His best friend is a follower, his nephew Ali, who's a kid, he's a child, he's a follower. So who believes in this religion of yours? Oh, my wife does. Oh, okay. My best friend. My nephew. Okay. And you want me to join your little religion? Is that what you want? Tell me more about this. Can I see the angel? Can you show me? So you got Qur'an, huh? Can you get some Qur'an right now? You can't? Oh, okay, that's convenient.

The Daily Psychological Burden

We have some reports of some things they used to say, but you know what we have maybe not even 1%. Rasool Allah was giving dawah all day, all day, talking to all kinds of people and getting all kinds of different insults. And by the way, this is someone who had a reputation in Mecca. He was a respected member of that society, and now he has to put himself in this terrible situation every single day.

Can you imagine eight, nine, ten, twelve hours of this? Imagine him trying to talk to somebody and the shopkeeper says: hey get away from here, scaring my customers. Imagine somebody actually talking to him just to make fun of him. Imagine somebody else: yeah, just get out of here, you back again. Didn't I tell you to leave yesterday? Back here again. Haven't had enough. What's wrong with this guy?

Can you imagine these kinds of things happening? Can you imagine the psychological traumatic effect of experiences like that? People have one experience at their job, their office — somebody insulted them, one experience. People have one experience with a police officer, one experience at a store. Some guy insulted them in the store and they want to go viral with it. I'm so traumatized by what happened. Just can you imagine what he has to go through all day?

And what burden does he bring with him at night when he wraps himself up in a blanket? How alone does he feel? How isolated does he feel? Nobody — even though Khadija believes, she can't possibly appreciate the weight that is on him. The experience that he has is only for him to carry, only him. And Allah takes that experience and says I need you to stand up and heal.

The Night Prayer: Building Unbreakable Strength

Can you imagine? We will never experience what he experienced, and Allah is telling him that he will find — he will reconstruct the strength in his heart to get up and do the same thing again the next day. And by the way, when he goes back the next day those same people are not going to be more receptive tomorrow. They're going to be more aggressive tomorrow and the day after they will be twice as aggressive and the day after they will be three times as more aggressive. As the days go by this will not get easier. This will get more and more and more difficult.

And every time he's talking to someone — by the way experience is a teacher, isn't it? If you know anything about door-to-door sales — can I talk to you? Thank you. Slam the door. Don't come back. Slam the door. Can you imagine the messenger of Allah? People think he's trying to sell them something. I don't have time for this. Okay, I have time for this. Oh my god, he's here. Can we just go the other way?

And he could see it, he could see all of this happening. His own family getting awkward around him. His own loved ones now treating him different, like he's lost his mind. It is a pretty heavy thing. And now what Allah is saying is: all of that's already there. I'm about to make things heavier.

He's already Muslim. I need you to stand up at night because you need to be ready for something bigger that's coming. So what's bigger than this? No, no, no, this is just the beginning of your challenges.

Confronting Cultural and Religious Powers

The next thing that's going to happen is the Qur'an is going to — unfiltered — go after the most powerful people in Makkah. It's going to go after the religious practices of the majority. It's going to go after the culture of a society. If you speak against something in your family, some cultural thing in your family that's against Islam and you're Muslim, if you speak against something in your family that's culturally everybody does it but you know it's wrong, what happens to you? What happens to you the next Eid? They're not thinking of slaughtering a cow or a goat, you know.

Imagine doing this. Imagine: I'm Muslim today, going to a Hindu temple and talking to them about shirk. Just imagine it. What would happen? Imagine a Muslim today walking into a synagogue and talking to them about Islam and telling them what Allah says about Bani Israel. Just use your imagination. What would happen? Killed, beat, burnt alive, mobbed.

We don't know the level of abuse the Prophet had to face in Makkah. By the way, the Arabs of Hijaz, they were tribal people. And tribal people are hard people. Tribal people are set in their tradition. Their tradition is their identity. City people are not set in their identity. Their sense of identity comes loosely from: we're citizens of this country, and their sense of collective comes in the middle of a sports game. That's it. That's the only time they're waving a flag.

Tribal people, man — our family, our elders, our tradition. This is how we do things here. There are sometimes I've given khutbah in a village or in a smaller town in Muslim countries, and they have a tradition. Like there's some places where if you're gonna give a khutbah you have to hold the staff in your hand. Okay. And they said you have to wear this and you have to hold this. Okay, okay. That's their tradition and if you put it down the entire crowd — bro it's not the عَصَا مُوسَىٰ. It's not gonna turn into a snake and come get you. But it's a thing.

When you have a culture and that's tribal, then the sense of identity is very strong. And the Qur'an is gonna come along and start insulting their ancestors: you didn't know and your fathers didn't know. Whoa. These people are writing long qasida about the power of their ancestors, the honor of their ancestors. They're talking about the greatness of their wealth and the Qur'an is gonna attack them for their wealth. They're talking about their power and might and how they can kill their enemy and the Qur'an will talk about them being oppressors.

The way the Qur'an is going to make the Prophet not just claim that he's a messenger, which was hard enough, but the way the Qur'an is going to make him offend the society, offend the most powerful people in the society. Things are about to get a lot harder. And anybody who believes in him is going to be tortured in front of him, beat in front of him, killed in front of him even, and he can't do anything about it. This is gonna get harder.

Empowerment, Not Victimhood

And I need you to be ready. So you notice in the beginning we saw Allah is empathetic. Allah understands that he's going through a lot. But Allah also said — Allah is also telling him as difficult as this is, I know you are much stronger to withstand not only this but even much more than this. And I need you to build up. This is the building of the most mighty messenger of Allah through the Qur'an.

I gave you the Qur'an so your heart can become stronger and stronger. This is the personality that was being built. I was telling you: Muslims, we can experience Islam without the Qur'an, but experiencing Islam with the Qur'an and experiencing Islam without the Qur'an are completely two different steps. They have completely two different effects on our personalities and our realities.

There's a few things to notice in this ayah. إِنَّا — and I actually suggest it is — because سَنُلْقِي has the نون in it also. So that suggests the same one who is giving you comfort is also the same one who is going to give you a bigger task. A lot of times when you want to help someone you feel like you just need to comfort them. But comforting someone might actually reinforce the idea that where they are in the sorry state that they are, or the pain that they're in, that's all they can ever be. Just give them comfort.

Allah doesn't just give the Prophet comfort. He says not only am I giving you comfort, I'm gonna make you stronger. Not only will you come out of this discomfort, you're gonna be ready for a much bigger discomfort. So instead of just feeling sorry for someone, or sorry for his Prophet, Allah is empowering his messenger. This is an empowerment message.

This is particularly important for young Muslims to understand nowadays because you guys are living in the explosion of self-victim culture. I'm a victim. I'm a victim. I'm a victim. Now. We're not victims compared to Rasool Allah. We're not. And he's being told to rise up.

The Urgency of the Message

Then سَنُلْقِي — عَلَيْكَ — meaning it's gonna come very soon. I will not wait for you to heal from all of this and eventually I will give you more responsibility. It's coming very quickly. Get ready. If the bigger responsibilities are heading your way, I'm not gonna give you a few years to just kind of, you know, get ready, I'm working on myself. No, no, no, no, none of that. You're going to have to deal with this responsibility and it's coming very, very quickly.

Then نُلْقِي — it's going to be dropped on top of you as if to say another burden is coming on top of you which builds on the imagery of the weight. And then عَلَيْكَ is مُقَدَّم instead of saying إِنَّا سَنُلْقِي قَوْلًا ثَقِيلًا عَلَيْكَ. The عَلَيْكَ is brought earlier. What that means is there's going to be a burden on you and only you, like no one else in humanity. You're burdened like nobody else. You're charged with it.

The Meanings of "A Heavy Word"

قَوْلًا ثَقِيلًا — Allah says we're going to drop on you a heavy word. What is that heavy word? It's the Qur'an itself. And in what ways can we think about that?

We can think about that in terms of the word that you're about to be given has so much value. It's going to impact the world so much. You need to be ready to carry that word. There's going to be a social weight — what that means is the ثَقِيل — this word is going to be offensive to those that are in power and it's going to make them come after you, not just make fun of you or dismiss you. They're gonna try to kill you. They're gonna try to torture you.

The experiential impact, the physical and psychological impact. There are narrations when the Qur'an used to come and the Prophet was on a camel, the camel would kneel and it would start sinking into the sand. There are Sahaba that report: the Prophet, they were sitting next to the Prophet. They're sitting on the ground like we sit in the masjid and their knee was right under the Prophet's knee. So they're close enough that their knee is touching and the Qur'an started coming and he said my knee was going to shatter. I felt my knee was going to crack open because the Qur'an was coming. So there's actually a physical heavy weight that was coming in the Qur'an, too.

But there's also an emotional heavy weight. Rasool Allah actually used to sweat even in the middle of the cold desert freezing winter. He used to start sweating profusely when the Qur'an would come.

The Difficulty of Saying Hard Truths

There's of course the psychological impact of the coming of the Qur'an. The Qur'an sometimes came with very heavy words. And you know something, especially when you hear the word قُل in the Qur'an. What does قُل mean? Say it. Say it. We just say it so easily. Can you imagine someone you love? Someone you've lived your whole life with, someone you have cared for, someone you pray for, and now you have to say to them:

It's not easy to say and Allah says go say it. قُلْ يَا أَيُّهَا الْكَافِرُونَ لَا أَعْبُدُ مَا تَعْبُدُونَ. قُل لِّلَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا. Sometimes the قُل is very hard. We just recite it as a short surah, but those words sometimes they are extremely heavy for the Prophet to be able to say.

Then think about what Allah says about the Qur'an in places like Surat al-Hashr:

If we sent this Qur'an on a mountain, it would have shattered. The Qur'an would have shattered a mountain, but you can carry it. Just think about that for a second. A mountain can't handle the Qur'an — you will.

The Unique Burden of Muhammad ﷺ

And what that one man had to carry, then that weight was distributed over an entire ummah. We're supposed to carry it collectively because we alone can't carry it. The only human being who could have carried the burden of the Qur'an alone was Muhammad Rasool Allah. The rest of us have to share that burden and even now we're not carrying it. Billions of us and we can't collectively carry it the way he was carrying it alone.

The Intellectual Weight of the Qur'an

There's the intellectual weight of the Qur'an, meaning I'm about to give you a word that any ideology, any isms will come and go. You know, ideologies will come and go. Social movements will come and go. Political movements will come and go and the word of Allah will stand in its place. قَوْلًا ثَقِيلًا — when something is heavy, it actually means it's settled. It's not going anywhere.

I'm about to give you a word that will not disappear. It's as if Allah is saying: the message that was given to Jesus, they made it disappear. The message that was given to Moses, they made it disappear. The message that will be given to you is too heavy. They won't be able to make it disappear.

And its true weight will show on Judgment Day. It will stay where it is. You know, the French Revolution will happen and political revolutions will happen and technological revolutions will happen and AI will come. Some Muslims are like: Ustad, AI is here. What are we gonna do with Islam? Why are you asking me? Go ask AI. We get so nervous about any new thing that comes out that somehow Islam is in danger because some new technology came out or some new trend. How do we respond to LGBTQ-WPX?

You know what my response to all of that has always been? Stay with Islam. Because these things are like what Allah was saying — they are like froth in the waves at the ocean. They come and then they go. And then they come and then they go. And they come and something else comes and says no, no, because none of them have a root.

Allah says about the Qur'an: whatever benefits people will stay deep inside the ground like water that goes inside the soil. These things that don't benefit humanity, they come and then they go, they get replaced by something. Why are you worried? Why are you worried about that? You have something so much more stable.

When Allah describes the Qur'an: قَيِّمًا — the Qur'an is قَيِّم. قَيِّم should be there, standing upright. Everything else is moving. The world is going through a flood. The only tree that's standing where it's supposed to stand and not moving is the word of Allah. That's it.

Beyond Human Comprehension

It's as if the intellect — the human intellect will never be able to fully carry the burden and the might and the weight of the word of Allah. All of creation will be left incapable.

ثَقِيل also means noble. Arabs used to say someone is heavy on me means I have a lot of respect for them. I have a lot of respect for them. أَكْرَمُ عَلَيَّ. So meaning: Allah, I'm about to give you a very noble word, a word that is — whoever carries it has respect. The word itself is respectful and honored and whoever carries it will be honored.

Why is this important to hear? Because everywhere the Prophet turns he's being humiliated and Allah says: don't worry about the humiliation. The honor you're receiving is greater than any humiliation anybody can give you. It'll be nothing compared to what you're getting.

The heavy word means it's so heavy that unless you have a strong enough heart you won't be able to carry it. And the only hearts that can carry this Qur'an are those that have been aided by Allah with a special ability. The Qur'an will truly be carried by those who are aided by Allah with a special ability and those hearts that have been beautified with true faith in Allah.

So it's as if Allah is saying this Qur'an that's being given to you, it's not for everybody. It's for special people. May Allah make us all those special people.