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Praise be to God. There is no other god except God. As you know there is a difference between “the Shahadah” the witnessing which is proclaimed by the Sunni Muslims and the Shahadah which is found in the Quran. The witnessing according to the Sunnis goes “La ilahe ila Allah. Muhammad resulullah”. We do not find this witnessing anywhere in the Quran. Instead the witnessing in the Quran in verse 3:18 is found to only be “La ilahe ila Allah.” The question is historically where did this difference come from? Well, the difference comes from the fact that accepting God is mandatory at all times, and accepting a certain messenger from God is mandatory under certain circumstances only.

For example, it was not mandatory for people who lived before Muhammad to accept that he was God’s messenger, because they did not know who the next messenger will be. They can go to Heaven without ever having said that Muhammad will be God’s messenger. So, as you can see accepting God’s messenger comes with certain conditions, especially because we have the Quran now. So, what are the circumstances in which a person has to definitely accept God’s messenger, or otherwise he will go to hell?

The first condition is if he rejected him (the messenger) before. So, if a person said that prophet Muhammad was not God’s messenger, or maybe he said that Muhammad was a fake messenger, in that case it is mandatory for that person to accept Muhammad as God’s messenger. Otherwise he will go to Hell. He can not just say that I am just going to do the Contact Prayer and the Obligatory Charity, and this is a sign that I repent. Well, you have to correct the earlier mistake. So, if someone has said before that Muhammad is a fake messenger, he can join the believers without publicly stating now that Muhammad is God’s messenger. And this is where the misunderstanding in the difference of Shahada comes from. When people came to join the believers in the past and they met Muhammad, he would ask them to say the Shahada first which was, “La ilahe ila Allah.” However, there were groups of people in Arabia who had said that Muhammad is a fake messenger, and they fought, and Muhammad won, and so they were humbled and had to accept Islam with their tails under their legs, after having been defeated. In this case, when they brought them to Muhammad, he would ask them to say “La ilaha ila Allah, Muhammad resulullah.” in order to join. This is to correct their mistake. You can not go around telling people that Muhamamd or Alban is a fake messenger, and then want to join without correcting your mistake. So, whether people are required to accept Alban Fejza as God’s messenger, first depends on whether they have rejected him before, so it depends on the person’s personal circumstances. If he never rejected Alban Fejza, he only needs to give the Obligatory Charity and do the Contact Prayer and he has joined us (the submitters). However, if he rejected Alban Fejza before, he has to repent first for his mistake, as we are told in verse 9:11. Of course, repentance for crimes which can not be fixed is accepted, but repentance for crimes which can be fixed is not accepted unless the person fixes that crime. So, if you said before that Alban Fejza is not God’s messenger, this is a crime which can be fixed. All you have to do is publicly say now that Alban Fejza is God’s messenger, and the crime is fixed, and only then your repentance is accepted.

So, again when people join us, their only decision which they need to make is to do the Contact Prayer and give the Obligatory Charity correctly, and they don’t have to accept Alban Fejza’s messengership. However, if they rejected Alban Fejza before, they must decide to accept him now, in order to be allowed to join. When we say “rejected, we mean, if they said that Alban is a fake messenger, Alban is not God’s messenger, or Alban is trying to fool you, or things like that.” If that is the case, they can not join us, without correcting this mistake publicly. The arrogant ones must eat the humble pie before they join. You can not join while maintaining your old arrogance.

The second case when it becomes mandatory for a person to accept Alban Fejza as God’s messenger is if he is a religious leader. So, if anyone is a religious leader, he can not go to Heaven without accepting Alban Fejza as God’s messenger. Now, whether someone is a religious leader or not is debatable, because someone might claim that he is not, but he might be, or someone might say that he is, but he is not. So, who is truly a religious leader is debatable but there are signs which show that, like for example:

Who has registered a religious organization?

Who has the right to make modifications to the mosque?

Who owns the keys to the masjid?

Is the masjid open, or do people have to depend on someone to open it for them?

Do they speak only for themselves, or for the whole group?

Do they maintain webpages?

And other similar signs.

Someone might say. What do the keys of the mosque for example have to do with being a religious leader? Well, they show a person’s internal belief about who he thinks he is. Let us inform you of one of Alban Fejza’s personal stories. The government in his state and the religious leaders in his state had a legal dispute about the oldest mosque in his country, which is in the center of the capital, which is a preserved artistic masterpiece. They disputed who has the right to repair the artistic works inside, and so they locked it, and it went unused for several years, and the drug addicts broke the door of the mosque, and for years they would stay there doing drugs and prostitution and so on, and they would sleep there, and Alban Fejza heard about this from the news. That is God’s mosque and the believers should protect it, and no one should have the right to do that. So, during Ramadan nights Alban Fejza went and slept there while the door was broken. So, every night whenever the drug addicts would come, Alban Fejza would turn the lights on. They would go away. He would do that for several nights, and they (the drug addicts) realized that someone is staying at the mosque, and they stopped coming there. Alban Fejza fixed a new door, sent the key to the authorities, and they told him that they do not intend to use it. So, Alban Fejza invited all the submitters to do the Friday prayer there. On the first day when the submitters went there, because Alban Fejza did not consider himself a leader then (before Organized Religion was established), he made a copy of the key for everyone, and he gave everyone a copy of the key. So, anyone of the submitters could go there at any time, without Alban Fejza’s permission. Why would they need Alban Fejza to open God’s mosque for them? It’s not Alban Fejza’s own house. It’s God’s house. Masjids should be open for every submitter at all times. Now, if you have to lock it to protect it from thieves, you should guarantee that every submitter gets a copy of the key.

So, if someone is a leader, he is required to decide whether someone is God’s messenger or not. He can not stay undecided like the other people. Now, here is the irony. God has guaranteed it in the Quran that no religious leader ever will accept God’s messenger.

Verse 34:34 says, Every time we sent a warner to a community, the LEADERS of that community said, “We reject the message you are sent with.”

It says “every time”. So, all leaders are locked by God into a position which prevents them to accept God’s messenger. There has never been a religious leader who accepted God’s messenger, and there will never be. And it makes sense. If they were worthy to be chosen, God would have chosen them. But because there was something wrong with them, God chose someone else. Otherwise, the best thing to do would be to choose the leaders as God’s messengers. That would be more effective. They would spread the message more quickly. But because there is something wrong with them, God skipped them, and chose someone else. But not all hope is lost. If someone wants to be unlocked from this curse of not being able to accept God’s messenger, they can unlock themselves from this curse, by giving up their leadership. Which means that they make everyone else equal to them in the decision making, and the keys of the mosque, and the things like that. Only after they do that, they are unlocked from the curse. Then they can discuss and evaluate whether someone is God’s messenger or not. And if they do that, God will restore them to their position of honor, and even better, except if they are dumb or weak. Dumb or weak people should not be leaders, as it is said in verse 247 of chapter 2.

So, to conclude people do not need to make a decision about who is God’s messenger and who is not, except if they have rejected him already, or if they are religious leaders.

Let us also address the argument of some people who find it strange when we tell them that they do not have to make a definite decision about Alban Fejza’s messengership to be able to go to Heaven. Well, Alban Fejza was not the first messenger who says this. He is the third messenger who says this.

First, Muhammad himself said it. Verse 2:62 tells us that surely those who believe in God, and believe in the last day, and lead a righteous life, they have nothing to fear and nor will they grieve. So, these are the three minimum requirements for belief.

Second, Rashad Khalifa himself said that believing in a messenger is not required. He said: “I must mention here that the three minimum requirements in the Quran, in Sura 2, verse 62, and also the same thing is repeated in Sura 5, it says the minimum requirements are belief in God, belief in the Hereafter, lead a righteous life. These are the three minimum requirements, and you make it to Heaven. You believe in God alone, believe in the Hereafter, and lead a righteous life. There is nothing about Moses and Jesus, Muhammad. You don’t have to believe in them. There is nothing about the Quran or the Bible, or the Gospel. You don’t have to believe in them. There is nothing in there about anything, the angles. Do you believe in the angles? Of course, we believe in the angels, but it is not a requirement. It’s a piece of information. It’s an additional piece of information. There is a difference between the knowledgeable person and the ignorant person, and all of them if they satisfy these three requirements, they make it to Heaven. But to believe in the angles, the messengers, the scriptures, all these are additional pieces of information, valuable pieces of information…”

And, Alban Fejza is the third messenger who says this. He is the third messenger, because this is the situation after the Quran. It was slightly different before the Quran, but after the Quran, we have the Quran for all times, and therefore making a definite decision whether someone is a messenger or not is not a requirement, except in special circumstances, which is if you have rejected him already, or if you are a religious leader. In those two circumstances, it is a requirement to openly accept God’s messengers. Otherwise, it is optional. If you do accept the messenger, good for you. You are smart. By the way, if you make a decision, and you can if you want, because Alban Fejza gives sufficient proof, sufficient verses from the Quran about that, so if you are smart enough to understand that Alban Fejza is God’s messenger, and you want to tell the others, then please don’t tell Alban Fejza. Alban Fejza knows that he is God’s messenger. Tell the others. Alban Fejza does not need to hear that. Alban Fejza will consider you as one among us if you do the Contact Prayer correctly, and if you do the Obligatory Charity correctly. Because ultimately that is what matters. It’s not about whether you should accept God’s messenger. It’s about whether God accepts you in his purified congregation. If God accepts you, surely He is generous and will accept you with gifts waiting for you as soon as He accepts you. God’s gifts for us in this world are the Contact Prayer and the Obligatory Charity. So, the first things you should worry about is whether you are doing the Contact Prayer correctly, dedicated to God alone, and whether you are doing the Obligatory Charity correctly, according to how God prescribes it in the Quran, the whole Quran, not just one verse of the Quran.

And as it is partly indicated in verse 58:12, it is not God’s messenger who leads you to the correct obligatory charity, but it is the correct obligatory charity which leads you to God’s messenger, similar to the case of Joseph and his brothers. Did Joseph bring his brothers to poverty, or did poverty bring his brothers to Joseph? Did God talk to Moses, after Moses decided to bring some fire for warmth for his family, which is charity, or did Moses wait until God talked to him, and then decide to help his family? We don’t need to wait to decide about God’s messenger as a condition to do the right thing. Waiting to decide to do the right thing, only after you decide about God’s messenger, this idea has been said before by the Children of Israel when they disbelieved. Verse 91 in chapter 20, says that they said, “We will continue to worship the golden calf, until Moses comes back.”. See, they had a condition for that. When the two messengers went to Abraham, for example, to tell him about the future son, which he was going to have, did he serve them meat first, which is charity, or did he wait until his son is born, to see if that is true, and then call them back to serve them meat? See, doing the right thing, treating the guests correctly, should be done without waiting to decide whether someone is God’s messenger or not. Did the Obligatory Charity exist before Muhammad received the revelation or after Muhammad received the revelation?

Praise be to God! There is no other god except God. Many times when people get stuck into a dilemma, they try to find the answer about it, not realizing that there is no correct decision in that situation. Let’s take one imaginary example to show you what I mean. Let’s say that your work manager invites you at a party, and you don’t want them to think that you do not go along with them, and you do not wish to risk your job, so you go there. Once there you don’t want to leave the party early, because then your manager will notice it. You stay a little bit later and then there is no bus home. Your female coworker tells you that they can go home with the manager’s car all together, but only if you go along with her, because she does not feel comfortable to go alone with him. So, all three of you get in the car, and after your manager starts driving, only then does he tell you that he has to make a couple of quick stops along the way. He stops to buy a beer, and offers you one. Of course, you tell them that you don’t drink beer. He drinks his own beer, and is about to open the second one. Now, you are in a dilemma. What should you do? You tell him to stop drinking, but he insists that he is totally under control, and that he has done this before. If you tell him to stop the car and just leave you outside in the highway, you promised your female friend that you would go along with her all the way. Now what should you do? Well, every choice you make in this example is a bad choice. And this happens only because you have made an earlier bad choice? You probably made a bad choice when you decided to go to the party, and you were invited to the party, because your social circle at work insisted, and they insisted because they did not know who you really are and what you really believe, and they did not know, because you did not tell them. So, the bad decision was made months ago when you decided not to preach. So, now you have been trapped into dilemma, because days ago, or months ago, or years ago, you decided to hide the truth when a clear opportunity to preach the truth arose. Now, had you preached during that first lunch break you had at work, when your coworkers asked you what you believe, then the people who drink beer would probably not like you as much, and then they would not offer to give you a ride, and so on, and you would prevent yourself from being trapped into a dilemma.

Now, let’s take a slightly more extreme, but more clear-cut example. Let’s say that one of the people you know comes and tells you, perhaps braggingly that they had slept with someone with whom they are not married. And then 3 of their friends say that it’s true. Now, according to the Quran there is no such thing as police which enforce justice. Everyone is responsible for enforcing justice when they see it. They can consult smarter people, but ultimately, if you are dealing with a crime, and the state does not enforce justice for that type of crime, you have to enforce the justice yourself. So, now you are in a dilemma. You just heard four people claiming that someone has committed adultery, which means that you must beat him with 100 lashes. But if you do that, chances are that they will beat you back, or most likely they would report you to the police. So, now you are in a dilemma, should you do the right thing and go to prison, or should you not do the right thing. This is a big dilemma. Well, had you preached on time, you would never end up in this dilemma. Trust me, it would never come up. When the person started bragging about how handsome he is and how females like him, and so on, you should have immediately said that you would like to talk about something else, and start your own preaching, so that he does not get a chance to reveal his personal crime. Or actually, had you told them months ago that you believe that an adulterer should be punished, then they would not feel comfortable to brag about their crime in front of you. Even if a discussion comes up about someone else who is not there, you should try to stop the conversation by preaching what you believe first, and not let them share someone else’s crime with you. As you can see, if you preach beforehand, on time, this prevents you from being trapped into a dilemma, because once you get trapped, there is no right choice. Every choice is the wrong choice, for one reason or another. So to prevent ourselves from being trapped into dilemmas, we should preach. There is no alternative to that.

Here is another example from an article in Daily Mail, which is a British newspaper. Here is the title of the article, “Property millionaire who denied his wife a Jewish religious divorce faces jail after engaging in ‘coercive or controlling behaviour’ after SHE prosecutes him in landmark court case” I did not read the rest of the article, but the title is enough to get an idea what is going on. Her is a Jewish guy who does not believe that a woman has the right to divorce without a man’s permission, which is a Jewish belief, but he never preached that. He wanted to be a millionaire first, so he never preached what he believes about these things. Now, he is trapped. Had he preached those things from the beginning, he would not end up married with that exact wife. We are not talking about who is right here, the husband or the wife. That is another issue. We are talking about the fact that had this property millionaire preached during his life, he would not end up in that situation. The best way to prevent being married to the wrong person is not to investigate them, as most people do. The best way is to tell them who you are, and that will drive wrong people away, or bring them closer to you, if they are the right person. So, preaching the truth and not hiding it is the only solution to untrap you from all these situations.

Now, here is the most extreme but clear-cut example from the Quran: The case of Jonah. God ordered him to preach to his city, to the people closest to him. What did Jonah do? He was afraid of how they will respond, so he decided to escape to another city on a ship. And what happened? He Got trapped inside a whale? So, because Jonah did not preach, he Got trapped, literary trapped. Had he preached when he had a chance, he would not get trapped. If you don’t preach, there is no escape from being trapped.

The trapping is less extreme these days, because everything else is less extreme, but you can be sure that you will be trapped if you do not preach. You can be trapped in the wrong relationship, or in the wrong location, or in the wrong job, or without a mosque, or without friends, or with the wrong abusive friends or whatever, or in wrong small daily situations, and you will know that you have been trapped when you don’t know what to do. It’s not your knowledge now which is lacking, it’s the courage to preach years ago which was lacking

Now, here is another example: Let’s say that you don’t know whether some people in a masjid are believers or not. Well, who said that you should know? Who said that you should decide about who they are? God has made our hearts hidden inside our chest because it is not something we should know. Instead, you should preach to them, without hiding what you believe, and they will exclude you, if they are disbelievers, or keep you included if they are believers. You can not know otherwise. You say what you believe, and depending on how they treat you afterwards, you will know whether they believe. You should not make any decision about anyone belief. You preach what you believe, and let the problem solve itself without you ever making a decision about anything. Preaching the truth always untraps you from having to make any decision about anything. If you are afraid to preach, then you trap yourself into thinking that you have to make a decision whether some people are believers or not, whether you should do this or that. Don’t focus on that, just think what is it that I want these people to know about my beliefs, and then the situation will flow from there, and it actually gets easier and easier the more you do it. Don’t think about consequences or solutions. Just focus on preaching. Now, of course, that preaching will lead to the wrong results, if you do it incorrectly. Let’s take an example of bad preaching:

Alban Fejza knew an Albanian guy who came all the way from Greece to ask him how to count the Quranic initials. After Alban Fejza told him, he went into some popular blogs and youtube pages and started preaching there. But here is his mistake. He did it under a fake name, anonymously. Alban Fejza asked him, “why do you do it anonymously?’ He said, “I work as a butcher in a market, and if my Christian Greek manager finds out about this, he might fire me.” Alban asked him, “Do your children and wife know about what you are preaching.”, and his response was that he did not tell them because he is afraid that they will not believe him. This is how the situation seemed to him, but had we done a deep psychological analysis the situation would turn out to be different, as it was exposed several years later. Here is what happened with him. When he accepted the truth, he accepted it only with his mind but not with his heart. So, deep in his heart he did not believe it, and he could not decide in his heart whether it was true. So, he decided to preach to the others anonymously, to see whether the others will believe also, and then he would make a definite decision, if he saw that others also believe. So, he was desperately seeking other people’s approval about his own belief which in fact is his disbelief. If you need the approval of other people about your own belief, that is not true belief. So, what happened with him is that thousands of people read his anonymous blogs, and none of them believed him, and so he changed his mind. He “vanished”. All this because he never got the courage to do it properly.

Here is how it should be done properly. Preaching is an obligation, and it should never be done anonymously. Verse 4:108 says that the disbelievers care to hide from the people and do not care to hide from God. And the preaching should be done in order. You should not preach to your friends without preaching to your children first, for example. It will backfire, if you skip the closest people to you and go to strangers first. It will eventually turn into disbelief in your heart. Instead, what you should do is preach the truth to your children, then to your parents, then to your wife or husband, then to your siblings, then to your grandparents, then to your uncles and aunts, then to your friends, then to your colleagues, then to the people on internet. If people you know in real life don’t know about what you believe, don’t bother preaching on the internet. That is the last step, and if you do it anonymously, that is the wrong step. See, if you find these rules as extremely risky, or unacceptable, maybe you should start questioning whether you truly believe or not. If you truly believe what is true, you would want all your loved ones to know the truth, which can potentially save them. So, verse 26:214 tells us to preach from those who are closest to us to those who are further away, and the word closeness has many meanings in this verse. The first meaning is “closeness in relationships”. The second meaning is “closeness in faith”. So, you start preaching from those who are closest to your faith, and your strength of faith, to those who are farther away. So, first you preach to those who share most of the beliefs with you, then to others who share less beliefs with you, and so on.

The other meaning of “closeness” is “closeness in location”, simply preaching to people because they are close to you. Or closeness on internet. These days very often people on internet are closer to us than our own cousins for example. So how many of the articles from this website have you shared for example? Were you afraid of what others might think? If you don’t use social media, that’s ok. You don’t have to. But if you use them for other purposes, and don’t use it for sharing the truth, then you are hiding the truth, and when you hide the truth you get trapped, and when you get trapped, you have dilemmas, and when you have dilemmas, you have questions, and when you have questions it will slow you down, or you will slow the other submitters down with questions. So, preaching is the solution to our dilemmas. It takes courage, but it’s not as risky as it seems. We have preached for more than 14 years now, and no one has hit us, no one has fired us. The most they did was insult us, mostly behind our back.

And you know what? When you preach, it also removes your own doubts, and here is the best part, you lose your bad friends, and as a result God supports you with inspiration. So basically, if you had bad friends, you can not feel God’s inspiration. This is in verse 58:22. So, the condition to feel inspired, and to feel the truth, is to preach, which leads to losing all your bad friends, or some of your bad friends if you do it partially. If you are not a good preacher, if you are not very skillful with words, then support those who are good at it. You can share what others prepared. A combination of both is even better. It’s even better is if you know the Quran very well and tell the people what the Quran says directly. Verse 6:51 says, “preach with the Quran to those who reverence the summoning before their Lord. And some people will try to discourage you from preaching by pointing out at the results. According to verse 26:136, they might say, “It is the same whether you preach, or not preach” we will not believe you. Well, that should not stop you from preaching. Preach to the next person and then to the next one, and so on. And you might very likely preach to 100 people and only one of them will probably be converted. The reason for this is because some of them have already been partly saved through the preaching from other religious groups, but that is another issue. In the past, when people preached, every tenth person would believe, and in those circumstances where families would have about 20 members, the message would spread very quickly. So, when people would preach to their family, about two of them would believe, and then they would have marriage relationships with other families and then two others would believe them there, and this would spread very fast. These days, it spreads slower, because families only have about 5 members, and you need to preach to about 100 people to convince one. And you can see how this slows down everything, but for good reasons. The good news is that because of the gradual growth, we will always be the correct group until the end of the world. So, basically, people who followed other messengers of the past, the message spread quickly, reached its peak, and once it reaches the peak, it turns into a disbelieving group, since then after reaching the peak, it also suits the disbelievers to join, but our group will reach the peak when the end of the world comes, which makes us the correct group until the end.

Praise be to God! There is no other god except God. Let’s hopefully help us understand the Friday Prayer in more depth which will hopefully then lead to an easier acceptance of all the rules and freedoms during the Friday Prayer. First, let’s look back at the history of how the Friday Prayer emerged. As we know the religious rituals like the Contact Prayers, Fasting, Obligatory Charity and Hajj Pilgrimage were revealed through Abraham. However, that did not include the Friday Sermons. The Friday Prayer did not exist then. After Abraham, God revealed the 10 commandments through Moses, and one of those commandments was the Sabbath, basically not working during Saturday. And because the Children of Israel did not engage in any work during Saturday, not even cooking, or going to the market, the Children of Israel for practical purposes started doing these thing on Friday and having them ready for Saturday. So, basically, in practice, Friday became the market day, the trading day, the Bazar day, when the Children of Israel would go to buy and cook food, and then they would have it ready for Saturday when they were not allowed to trade and cook. And this affected the whole region of the middle east, because knowing that the children of Israel would buy more on Friday, the other people also go and sell their agricultural products on Friday, knowing that more people would be there to buy it. So, gradually, the whole middle eastern culture became a culture in which pretty much in all the cities, people would expect that Friday would be the market day – the day when people come down from the villages to sell their vegetables, and their cattle and so on, and they would also buy things and go back to their village. So, this culture existed in the whole region for thousands of years, and even to this day, in many middle eastern cities, people will come down from the villages to the cities to trade their products for other products.

Anyway, when Jesus came, God revealed that Saturday is no longer an obligatory vacation day. So the Sabath which was revealed through Moses ended with Jesus. However, the culture of getting ready for the Sabath did not end. People continued to gather every Friday in the whole region and do their trade. So, this became a culture. It was neither a religious thing, neither a law, but a cultural thing, and actually a very good practical solution to more efficient trading, by doing it once a week knowing that the buyer and the seller would both be there in the city center to buy and sell on the same day. Anyway, so, by the time of Muhammad, the Sabath did not exist anymore as a religious law, but culturally people would gather on Friday for trade, not for religious purposes. And in that context, God ordered organized religion again through Muhammad, when he moved to Medina, and as we know everything which was revealed through Muhammad, it was all through the Quran. There were no other alternative revelations. This means that in whatever way Muhammad constructed the Friday Prayer, it must have come from the Quran. He did not know about it before the Quran, unlike how he knew about Contact Prayer and fasting and so on before the Quran. Muhammad learned the Friday Prayer directly from the Quran. So, if we want to know how the Friday Prayer should be done, we should be able to reconstruct it from the Quran, just like Muhammad constructed it from the Quran. So, the Friday Prayer is a Quranic law, not an Abrahamic tradition. It’s a replacement for one of the 10 commandments of Moses, not the four religious rituals of Abraham. So, we can potentially know how to do the Contact Prayer even without the Quran, but we can not know how to do the Friday Prayer without the Quran. So, all we need to do to reconstruct the rules of the Friday Prayer is to find them in the Quran. So, let’s look in the Quran and see what are the rules of the Friday Prayer. However, before we do that, let’s not forget that the assumption in the Quran is that the people did gather in the city on Friday for business purposes and this assumption is given in verse 62:11, and within this context, the laws and the rules for the Friday Prayer are given. So, again all the rules and flexibilities of the Friday Prayer should be found in the Quran. We do not need to look at the Abrahamic tradition for this. It does not need to agree with any tradition. It’s not a tradition. It’s a law. Tradition came through Abraham but laws came through Moses. It’s a law, like the laws of Moses. It’s a replacement for one of the laws of Moses, and it came to us as slightly modified, since the believers today are weaker than the believers during the time of Moses. So, it’s a law which came specifically for us in the Quran, as a substitute for the law of the Sabath which Jesus abrogated to reserve his right to reorganize the religion in the next world. So again, the Friday Sermon is a Quranic law, and everything about it should be extracted from the Quran.

So what can we conclude from the Quran about the Friday Prayer? Well, first of all, according to verse 5:58, the Quran does mention that there is a call to prayer for every prayer time at the masjid, regardless if it is Friday or not. So, on Friday there is a call to prayer for the Noon prayer, just like for all the other prayer. It’s not a special prayer. It’s a call for the Noon prayer, like the calls for the noon prayer for all the other noon prayers in other days of the week. And then in verse 62:9, it tells us that when the call for prayer is done on Friday, we should hasten to the commemoration of God. So, during other days, when the call for prayer is done, you do not necessarily have to respond, you can do the prayer alone, but on Friday you have to respond immediately. And the response is to hasten to the commemoration of God, and it does not mention the location. It does not say go to the mosque and commemorate God. It says “go to the commemoration of God.” So, where should we go? Well, God intentionally leaves flexibility here, knowing that if we are honest we will choose the best practical option. So, the location is not given, but the community is given. Verse 62:9 says, “O you who believe”, so the community of believers, so we should observe this law with other believers. It’s like the Christian idea of communion or Eucharist. Communion means becoming one body of believers to worship God together. That is the Friday Prayer – all the believers worshiping God together as one body. The location does not matter. Obviously, if there is a mosque maintained by believers, that is the best location to gather. If, the mosque is not maintained by believers, you have no guarantee that you will find believers there, so that would not be the best practical location. And actually, the law is given in the Quran as an obligatory law without any consideration for location. So, this idea that the Friday Prayer is not obligatory sometimes when the location is too far, that is false. The Friday Prayer is always obligatory according to the Quran, because God knew that the true believers will never find themselves in a situation where they can not observe the Friday Prayer. Let’s explain this further. Let’s say that you lived in the past. How would you hear about submission? There was no telephone then, no internet. So, the only way you could hear the correct version of submission, when you initially converted, is if someone came to you and told you. However, if he was a believer, he already was doing the Friday Prayer somewhere, and if he could come all the way from the mosque to preach to you, then obviously the mosque is not far away for you to go there. So, there would always be a mosque nearby, whenever submission was preached correctly. Islam would never spread further than the mosques. So, if the religion was spread correctly, the believers would never find themselves in a situation where they can not observe the Friday prayer. Now, since the existence of internet, it is possible for people to preach in faraway locations, but if you accept the idea that preaching can be done through the internet, it automatically means that the preaching during the Friday Sermon can also be done through the internet. So, you can not have it both ways. Either you accept that preaching is allowed through internet, and you must also accept that preaching the sermons during the Friday prayer is also allowed through internet, or you do not accept preaching through internet, and you should also prohibit yourself from preaching at all times through the internet. It is actually deeply irresponsible to try to convert others through the internet and once they convert not offer them an immediate option for the Friday Prayers. “Ok, so now let’s say that I converted, where is the Friday Prayer?” So, all the people who are preaching on the internet and not offering an immediate option for the Friday Sermons to those who convert, they are being deeply irresponsible, and just creating chaos. Someone might say, but the preaching during the Friday Prayer is kind of different. Well, actually, it is not, because we already established that the Friday Prayer is not a tradition. It’s a direct Quranic law. So, where in the Quran do you find the idea that the preaching during the Friday should be different from the preaching outside of the Friday? This brings us to the topic of sermons during the Friday. They are not part of the noon contact prayer, but they emerge from other Quranic laws. So, in verse 62:9, we already established that we should get in communion with other believers to commemorate God during Friday. This only mentions the DAY of Friday, in Arabic. It does not mention the time of the day. However, according to the Quran, only the day is considered a day. The night is not considered as part of the day. So, the verse must be talking either about the noon or the afternoon prayer, which are the only two prayers done during the day. And then in verse 5:48, it tells us that the believers should compete in righteousness, which means that if we have a choice between noon and afternoon, if we are believers, we will choose the earlier one, to commemorate God as soon as possible. So we are in competition, and the noon time comes earlier, and therefore the believers would compete and not wait until afternoon. So, now we know that the Friday Prayer should be done during the noon time on Friday. But, why not just do the noon prayer, as usual? Why are there modifications like the addition of sermons and the shortening of the prayer from four rakats to two rakats. Well, all of these are laws in the Quran. Verse 4:101, if you check it in the Arabic Quran, it tells us that we may shorten the prayer when we travel, and because we already established that we go to the Friday prayer from the market or from your business, not from your home, then we must be going there from a traveling state, and therefore we may shorten the prayer. There is another verse in the Quran from which we can conclude that the shortest contact prayer should be two rakats, but that is beyond the scope of this sermon. So, we already know that the Contact Prayer can be shortened to two rakats when traveling, and this condition applies to the Friday Prayer as well, when it is a traveling fear prayer. So, so far we concluded that the Friday prayer is done at noon, and as a shortened noon contact prayer. But where do the sermons come from. Well, we already established that the believers will gather during the Friday noon shortened prayer, and when they are together they are closer to one another. And then verse 26:214 gives an order to preach to those who are closest to you. So, basically, this verse is saying that since you have gathered anyway, it is appropriate to preach to them. Who should do the preaching is another issue again, but we established that when believers gather, someone should preach. It’s just a natural behavior of believers. They don’t speak over one another. The smarter people who have to say something important speak, and the rest of the people listen. This the behavior of believers at any time when they gather together. So, anyway now we established that during the Friday, there must be preaching as a natural consequence of what believers do in a large gathering anyway, and there must be a shortened noon contact prayer together. These are all from the Quran. Now, there is another verse in the Quran, verse 9:11, which talks about organized religion, which tells us that two things should be considered to regulate whether someone has joined the community of submitters, but the verse mentions a third thing which. The verse also mentions the third thing which is repentance. So, besides the Contact Prayer and Zakat, repentance is also a community ritual. So, this means that when submitters get in communion with one another during Friday, they must also repent. It’s a law to repent when getting in communion with other submitters, because once you meet people whom you should consider better than you, it should naturally make you repent for your mistakes. When a pure community of believers gather together, they always consider the others better then themselves, because you have witnessed your sins, but you have not witnessed the other people’s sins. So, anyway, repentance is a law when gathering during the Friday Sermon. However, the time when you should repent is not mentioned, and anytime you do the repentance during the sermon, it will effectively cut the sermon into two separate parts, which we today call two sermons, but according to the Quran they are one sermon separated with a repentance in between. How you choose to count them is not important. We can count them as two if the topic changes, and if the topic stays the same, we can count them as one. It really does not matter.

Anyway, so, so far we have found from the Quran that during Friday, believers should:

• enter into communion with one another,
• do the contact prayer,
• preach, and
• repent.

These are all in the Quran. Now, here comes the most important part – the commemoration of God. The most important part of the Friday Prayer is commemoration of God, which is why this is the only part which is mentioned directly in the verse about the Friday Prayer. Verse 62:9 says, “O you who believe, when the Friday Prayer is announced on the day of Friday, you shall hasten to the COMMEMORATION OF GOD…” So, because the preaching might or might not involve the commemoration of God – as you know, the preaching can talk about community issues where God is not mentioned at all, just like some chapters in the Quran do not mention God at all. So, because the preaching might not involve the commemoration of God, it is wise to make sure that the most important commandment is fulfilled first, before you proceed with the preaching, just to make sure that you have fulfilled this commandment, so you don’t forget about it, which is why at the beginning we must start by mentioning God. But how should we mention him. Well, when the preacher stands up to preach so others can see him, and the fact that the preacher stands up is mentioned in verse 62:11, and so when he stands up, verse 52:48 says that he should praise God when standing up. Because, he stood up to preach aloud, he praises God aloud. This means that he should start the sermon by saying “Elhamdulilah” Praise be to God”, and because not everyone in the Congregation might have the same definition of what the word “God” “Allah” means, the preacher defines this word by saying “La ilahe ila Allah”. “There is no god except God”, which is again a commemoration of God.

So, from the Quran we established that during the Friday, believers:

• make the call for prayer,
• get into a communion with one another,
• someone stands up to preach,
• and he praises God when he stands up,
• then he preaches, which can be as short as the shortest chapter of the Quran,
• then he must repent, which effectively might divide the sermon in half or not,
• then they do the shortened version of the traveling fear Contact Prayer which involves two rakats,
• and there we have it all from the Quran.

So, the Friday Prayer is a collection of Quranic laws, but not a specific religious ritual. And it is important to realized that because they are laws and not rituals, therefore what is not mentioned in the Quran is actually intentional flexibility for us. For example, it does not mention that the believers should do it in someone’s home when they have no mosque, which is an intentional flexibility to do it online, as long as everyone fulfills the Quranic requirements. So, there is no such thing as Friday Ritual. It’s just a collection of about 10 laws from the Quran which we obey, which lead to one another, and as long as we follow those laws, we are doing the correct thing. By the way, here is something new. Because the Friday Contact Prayer, the actual Contact Prayer (the Salat) is shortened not because it is Friday, but because it happens to be done as a traveling fear prayer, if you have to do it at home because there is no permissible mosque nearby, that means that you have no reason to shorten the prayer. You are not a traveler in fear in your own home, so you have no reason to shorten the Contact Prayer. So, you do four rakats of the Contact Prayer, when you are obliged to do it at your home. This makes the idea of doing the Friday Contact Prayer at someone else’s home, which does not belong to you or your family members, at least a suspicious idea, because there would be a conflict whether you should do two or four rakats as a group, depending on whether you are the host or the traveling guest. Anyway, that is another issue which should be resolved when analyzing the Online Friday Sermons. But the good news is that we actually deliver the Friday Sermons (not prayers) online for people who join us as submitters.

Praise be to God! There is no other god except God. In the clarification about places of worship, one of the burning issues there was the prayer in the masjid while others are also there praying. It was concluded there that if the congregation is not doing the movements simultaneously, then we do not join them in prayer. The clarification does not mention the word “Sunnah”, but actually that is what it is in practice when you see people, in all of the Muslim world, the Sunnah prayer in the masjid is done INDIVIDUALLY, and the so called obligatory (Farz) prayer, which is like our contact prayer, is done together simultaneously. So, based on the clarification about places of worship, people can make the right decision, even if they don’t know what Sunnah is. The clarification simply solves that issue by saying that if they are not bowing and prostrating together simultaneously, don’t join them. The other people almost always minded their own business, and a lot of them actually do not do the Sunnah prayer either, even though they might consider themselves Sunnis. But, let’s actually analyze “the Sunnah” a little bit, not from the religious perspective, but from the historical perspective. So, what the Sunni Muslims have is what they call the confirmed Sunnah prayer. What they mean by that is that they have a common agreement among all Sunni groups about what it is, while the unconfirmed Sunnah prayers are those where each group has a different version, and the other group does not agree with that. Whether it is confirmed Sunnah or unconfirmed Sunnah, they do not call it Salat, or Contact Prayer. They just call it Sunnah prayer. Anyway, let’s just focus on their so called “confirmed Sunnah prayer”, and analyze it from the historical perspective, not the religious perspective. The so called “Sunnah prayer”, is most likely a human relic which had its reasons in the past but now it is more damaging than beneficial. It’s not a Contact prayer which God ordered Muhammad to do. And actually, even in their Hadith which supposedly tells them how Muhammad was taught by Gabriel how to do the Contact Prayer, in that Hadith the Sunnah is not mentioned at all, and there is no mention at all in the Hadiths of Muhammad teaching people how to do the Sunnah prayer. He never taught them that, even according to their own sources. But then how did it emerge? Well, according to the Hadiths, they saw Muhammad do it, and they imitated him, even though Muhammad never told them to do it. So, the question is if Muhammad did it, (and we are not necessarily concluding that he did it), but if he did it, and yet he did not tell them to do it, he must have had other non-religious reasons. For example, when a lot of people joined the mosque in Medina and it became overcrowded with people, Muhammad, being a very smart man, noticed that whether people get up to go home or whether some of them wait in line at the mosque for a while, it takes them just as long to get outside of the mosques. Typically, it takes the people about five minutes to get outside of the mosques when the mosque is full, since there are line bottlenecks at the door where people have to find their sandals or shoes and put them on, and that prevents others from going out, even if they are ready. So, Muhammad, being a genius, instead decided to use the time to worship God for extra credit, knowing that he cannot leave, even if he wants to, knowing full well that a lot of the people would see him and do the same thing. This would manage the crowd in such a way where people would wait inside the mosque instead of waiting just outside the door of the mosque. If people waited just outside the door of the mosque, it would be less comfortable for them, because at night, it would be dark, and they would especially not be able to find their sandals because of the crowd, and darkness. And during the day, waiting outside, it would be extremely hot during the noon time in Arabia. So, Muhammad chose to use that extra unused time for beneficial purposes, to worship God, and manage the crowd at the same time. This is why the so called “Sunnah” was only done in dark or very hot times. There is no confirmed Sunnah for the Afternoon time, when it is neither dark, neither too hot.  Of course, inside the mosque there were candles during the night, and it was cooler during the day compared to the outside. But outside, it would be completely dark at night and without street lights, and it would be hot during the middle of the day. And this idea matches with the so called “confirmed Sunnah” prayers. They consist of 2 Rakats before the Dawn prayer, because before the dawn prayer, it would be darker outside, and after the Dawn prayer, it would be brighter, and there was no need to manage the crowd after the Dawn prayer. At Noon when it was too hot to wait outside of the mosque, he would do 4 Rakahs before the Noon prayer, and 2 Rakahs after the Noon Contact Prayer. As you can see, it was too hot before and after Noon prayer, so it made sense for Muhammad to implement this crowd management system when people come in the mosque and also when they leave at Noon. Of course, the Afternoon prayer does not have any confirmed Sunna Rakats. This is because, as we said, during the afternoon it would cool a little bit, and also it would not be dark. It would be a nice time for people to wait outside rather than inside the mosque. They could chit chat outside of the mosque while waiting in line, and so on and the weather would be nice to just hang around. For the Evening Prayer, it would be bright enough towards the beginning of the Evening Prayer, so it was fine for people to wait a little bit outside of the mosque to get in, but when they left, it would be much darker. So, the Evening Confirmed Sunnah was done by Muhammad after the Evening Contact Prayer. Please bear in mind that the evenings are shorter Arabia, because the sun sets at a more direct angle, and people also recited the Quran to memorize it at the mosque back then, and this means that they would pretty much go in the mosque just after sunset and leave probably about half an hour later, when it was much darker. For the Night Prayer, a lot of people would actually stay at the mosque from the Sunset Time, since it would be very close in time with the Sunset Prayer in Arabia, and then there was no need to introduce a Sunnah Prayer before the Night Prayer, although some schools of thought do have a Sunnah Prayer before the Night Prayer, which might indicate that Muhammad sometimes did it and sometimes did not do it, depending on how many people stayed at the mosque, and after the night prayer, when it was definitely dark, all “schools” of traditional scholars agree that Muhammad did do a Sunnah Prayer after the Night Contact Prayer. So, as you can see all the Sunnah prayers match with the idea that Muhammad was simply trying to use his time efficiently, and not waste his time, and the people’s time by waiting in line, but rather use that time to worship God, and since this prayer was voluntary, not all people would do it, which means that some of them left and some waited, and so on, gradually, until the whole group left the mosque or entered the mosque. However, Muhammad never told the people to do the Sunnah Prayers. He simply did himself, if he did it, and most of them copied him. He did tell them however not to write it down, because he knew that the circumstances might not be the same in other times and places. But centuries later they eventually did write them down, without his permission. And in the beginning the purpose of those written books was to be used as books of history, not as religious books, and then soon whenever people had religious arguments with each other, they would start to use the books of history to prove their arguments, and thus effectively turning the books of history into religious books, and this is how the world most likely ended up with the so called “Sunnah Prayers”. So, the Sunnah Prayers were most likely Muhammad’s human solution for crowd management. He was acting like a city mayor in that circumstance, not like God’s messenger. He was only God’s messenger when delivered the Quran. However, no matter how good his solution was as a city mayor for that time, his solution was still a human solution, and eventually would not apply to other circumstances. What Muhammad could not predict is that there will come a time when his crowd management solution would absolutely not be necessary, and here is why. Today, it’s extremely unlikely to find a mosque where it is completely dark around it outside. All the crowded mosques are within cities, where there are street lights outside, and there are mosque lights outside. We have electricity now. Also, most of the mosques are not in Arabia, so there is no reason to try to avoid the noon heat. Actually, it is healthier in most cases around the world to wait a little bit more outside rather than inside, if you have to wait, since we do need some sun tanning these days, vitamin D, and a lot of mosques are usually cold inside. So, we are neither suffering from darkness, neither from the sun heat, in most cases, and Muhammad’s crowd management solutions are not necessary. If they happened, they were meant only for those specific circumstances. But the Quran applies to all circumstances. The Quran was meant for all times, while Muhammad’s on-the-spot solutions as a city mayor were only meant for the exact time and exact place. Actually, the way the people are implementing those human solutions now are doing more harm than benefit. For example, they waste their time doing a prayer in Arabic when they don’t understand anything, and then they remain ignorant, and then they will waste the time of the religious leaders later by asking them question about what the Quran says about certain issues. It would have been more efficient for them to read the Quran in their own language during that time, and in that way save the time of their religious leaders, and everybody would be better off. This solution was not possible during Muhammad’s time since most people did not have a copy of the Quran. But nowadays, we all have a copy of the Quran in our smartphones, which we keep constantly with us. So, because people disobeyed Muhammad when he told them not to write from him anything except the Quran, the circumstances changed in such a way that those things which they wrote about him, even if they were true, because they wrote them without his permission, they turn out to be more harmful than useful today. The Sunnah is not helping with effective crowd management today at all, while at the same time it is only keeping the people more ignorant, since they are wasting precious time, which they could use to properly understand the word of God.

Actually, even their hadith books where they base the so called “extra voluntary prayers” they tell us how Muhammad was afraid that the people might misuse his solution.

In the Sahih Muslim Hadith, Book 4, Number 1666, it says:

“’Aisha reported that the Messenger of God prayed one night in the mosque and people also prayed along with him. He then prayed on the following night and there were many persons there. Then on the third or fourth night many people gathered there for the prayer after the obligatory prayer, but the Messenger of God did not come out to do it. When it was morning he said: I saw what you were doing, but I stopped coming out because I feared that this prayer might become obligatory for you…”

So, as you can see even Muhammad was afraid that they might turn it into a religious ritual, when he actually was just doing it as a time management solution, and a personal thing, in a world without clocks, without proper lighting, and in the hot desert circumstances at noon, and when people did not have copies of the Quran with them. But none of these circumstances are true for us today. We all have clocks in our smartphones, and we know exactly when the prayer will be done, and we can prepare even beforehand and go there in a more gradual crowd. During Muhammad’s time, they would realize that the prayer time has come when the call for prayer was made, and then all of them at the same time would go to the Mosque, and if there was no indirect crowd management system, it would be inefficient. Nowadays, we have clocks, and some people will already be there 5 minutes earlier and so one, because they have a clock and know in advance exactly when the call for prayer will be made, and actually they would rather wait in line outside to make an urgent phone call about whatever they left unfinished at work or something like that.

Anyway, this is only a historical analysis of this issue. This is not a religious approach. The religious approach is this. It’s not in the Quran, we don’t have to follow it. Simple. But, the so called “Hadith books” can be used as historical books, not as religious books. Contrary to what some people might think, Rashad Khalifa did use Hadith books, but only for historical purposes. For example, in Appendix 25, Rashad says, “While Hadith is forbidden as a source of religious teachings, it can be a useful source of history. We can derive a lot of information about historical events and local customs and traditions during the early centuries of Islam.”

So, in this sermon, we analyzed from the historical perspective how the Sunna Prayer most likely emerged, and why it is useless today, because those circumstances do not apply today. However, because history is one of the least exact sciences, we should never use it to reach religious conclusions, because historical sources are always doubtful, and even if they happen to be true, the circumstances are always at least a little bit different from today. But anyway, the historical sources are always doubtful, so why should we follow doubtful sources, when we have the confirmed truthful source, the Quran? And actually, imitating Muhammad is not the same as following Muhammad. Imitating means doing what he did, even if it does not apply in our circumstances, while following Muhammad means using the Quranic commandments in all cases where he used Quranic commandments, and using our own reason in all cases where he used his own reason. That is true following. Imitating is not following.