Scheduling the sunnah way

What are your assets? Your money, your education, your intellect, your health,....., your time? Time is one of the most precious assets we have, yet it is often misused, mismanaged and not given its due importance. People claim to be very busy, when all they are doing with their time is finding newer and better ways of earning more and more; their primary and ultimate goal is earning as much as possible. However, we as Muslims and even as people with common sense should know that life and its purpose is much greater than just that. So lets learn the value of time and how to put it to its best use.

One misconception amongst people is that they believe they’ll have freer time later on in life, a student will think “yaar vacations mein ye karun gi”, a person getting married will think “shaadi ke baad he ab karun gi” etc etc. But people fail to realize that with the passing away of time, time only gets less and less and less. SO VALUE FREE TIME, BEFORE YOU BECOME BUSY. You know how they say that an idle mind is a devil’s workshop; similarly think about what an idle day or rather idle days are for a devil, it’s literally like a devil’s field trip or something.

So how was the schedule of the Prophet (s.a.w.)? One of the characteristics of his schedule was that it revolved around salah and salah timings.

So the schedule starts from fajr;

      ·        A sahih hadith tells us that the reward of praying fajr, then sitting their doing dhikr and then subsequently praying the ishraq prayer receives the reward of a maqbool hajj and umrah. The masnoon way of praying ishraq is to pray 4 nafl.

(one thing to note however is that one cannot pray during the time of fajr to ishraq, and we can only do dhikr or tilawah etc.)

     ·        Then after praying ishraq, we can get started with our daily activities like going to college for students etc. Sleep isn’t an option after fajr, because sleeping after that time removes barakah from our activities. One may argue that they have enough barakah in their lives, but the point to realize here is that Allah being Ar-Rahman has put barakah in our lives despite our not following the sunnah way so imagine how much more barakah He’ll put if we follow the sunnah way. Also not sleeping during this time, increases our productivity and if we learn anything in this time, we are able to better retain it, this is even proven scientifically and medically.

     ·        The working time according to the sunnah lasts from the ishraq time to zawwal time. Just like the duration of fajr and ishraq, one cannot pray at the zawwal time either. There are a number of things, however, that one can do in this time e.g. we can take a 20-30 mins nap, start preparing for zuhr salah or eat.
     

     ·        Zawwal time ends with the azaan of zuhr prayer, so after praying the zuhr prayer again the question arises of what to do next? The time after zuhr prayer is also called a productive time, however if one wants then they can have a mid-day nap also known as qaylula in this time, it is permissible.

     ·        Then comes the asr prayer. Now the time after this can be thought of as a break. So there are again like a few options regarding what you can do in this time, some of them can be:

1.      Eat; this was one of the two meal times of the Prophet (s.a.w.),

2.      Meet with family, relatives, relax or exercise etc.,

3.      Do dhikr, now this is obviously the choice of people who even in their break remember and want to remember Allah.

     ·        And then right before maghrib, is a time for the qubooliat of duas.

     ·        Then is the time of maghrib to isha; we shouldn’t sleep in this time because its not recommended to sleep before isha. So in this time we can either do ibadat, we can spend time with our family or we can have dinner at this time as well. The awaabaein prayer can also be prayed at this time, its time is from after maghrib to isha, and the masnoon amount of nawafil in this namaz are 12 nawafil.

     ·        Then comes the question of when should isha be prayed? According to Islam the night starts after maghrib and goes on till fajr. And it is considered better to wait for the first one-third of night to pass away and to then pray isha; meaning that if maghrib is at 7.30 these days and fajr is at 4.15-ish am then it is “afzal” to pray isha at 10.30. However if a person feels that they’ll have better concentration if they pray earlier on or later on then that is allowed too.

     ·        Then what to do after isha? Ideally we should just go to sleep after isha. And it’s a sunnat to not to eat after isha.

     ·        Then after one goes to sleep, they should try to wake up for tahhajud. When we do wake up for tahhajud, we should try to make a lot of istighfar and send lots of durood to the Prophet(s.a.w.).

It is convenient to note here though that if a person is sleeping late as it is, e.g. most students stay up all night or till very late when they have to study for something, then they should pray tahhajud before sleeping, that is allowed too.

And last but not the least, the most afzal time for praying and making dua is in the last portion of the night, that is the time just before fajr.