Is waking up for Fajr difficult for you?

One often hears Muslims and non-Muslims saying that Islam is a hard religion with too many restrictions and commands.  I have heard people say things like ‘you have to pray so many times a day, it’s like every time I turn my head it’s time to pray again’. On the surface, Islam may seem like a difficult religion but it isn’t – it’s only hard until you have taqwa. That is the beauty of this religion, once you understand it and your iman soars, everything else becomes easy and things start to make sense. We all have moments when we feel our iman is strong; we develop high ambitions to memorize and recite the Qur’an, lengthen our salah and study the Qur’an. But we also have times when our iman dips and we wait till the last minute to quickly pray our fardh only to return to our worldly activities, when days and weeks may pass without us picking up the Qur’an – this is when Islam becomes hard, when our iman fluctuates.

 It is important for us to make dua that Allah keeps our iman strong and forever increasing, that Allah keep us in a state of constant taqwa. We have to internalize the fact that we all are accountable for everything we do and for everything we do not do, that one day Allah will question us. Then it won’t be so diffcult to wake up early to pray fajr. Everyone knows that we will be held accountable but we need to move from knowing to believing and feeling this reality. Once we believe and feel that Allah is the Knower of the unseen and the seen. He is the Merciful, the Mercy-Giving then our duties towards Allah and His creation will be easy to fulfill.

Once I had come home late from a dinner party and slept at 2:00am and fajr was at 4:00am. When my alarm rang, I was in such a deep sleep I wanted to press the snooze button, knowing that I won’t be able to wake up later. Sometimes I would make excuses, I’ll skip fajr for just today or if I don’t get enough asleep, I’ll have headache the entire day. One day I realized that I’m only fooling myself and by not praying I’m bluntly rejecting Allah’s call to prayer, how will I be able to justify and explain my actions on the Day of Judgment? All of sudden I was up.

We must also make sure that our salah does not become a routine that we stop heeding what we recite. Every salah should be unique, a remembrance of Allah, a window for repentance, a feeling of humility towards our Lord. We should struggle not to lose sight of the Truth in the midst of our busy days and make dua that the guidance Allah has given us stays steadfast. Taqwa keeps us in check of reality and makes it easy for us to fulfill our duties.

Wassalam 

Aamna Saleem