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Neglecting Prayers @ Work

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Neglecting Prayers @ Work
Anonymous
08/09/02 at 04:34:43
Neglecting Prayers

Most of the muslims at my work place neglect the prayers, there is nothing  
stopping them,  
The time for the 1st prayer comes, they don't pray and the time for the 2nd prayer comes  
and they still don't pray....I am never judgemental but they make me very angry, you do  
whatever else you want to do but prayer is a MUST. The other day I specifically reminded a  
sister to pray, and she gave lame excuses of how she didn't have wudu and how her hijab  
wasn't proper, I told her go make wudu and pray regardless, allah is forgiving but praying  
the prayer on it's time is more important, she said she will go home and combine all the  
prayers. There some who pray on some days and leave it off on other days(and these are  
the brothers). It is obvious that they don't care about the prayer and It is a fact that I  
am not good at giving dawah. So how should I go about telling them to pray? I want them  
to pray and on time.  Keep in mind that I am a sister and I don't know most of the guys.
Re: Neglecting Prayers @ Work
Anonymous
08/09/02 at 04:38:46
Admin Note: Similar Q from Anonymous #2:


...in others.

How do show others the importance of praying fajr on time, and the importance of
regularly praying all 5 prayers?

It hurts to see close friends, even siblings avoid prayers. Gentle reminders dont seem to
work.

There is no force in Islam, it is said that the best way to encourage others to do right
or stop them from doing wrong is to tell them, if they do not listen, at least you know
that they are not ignorant, and not being able to force them there is nothing more, but to
show by your example.

But sometimes when nothing seems to work, it feels frustrating to watch the lack of
action, the lack of dedication.....how would you go about reinforcing their faith? How would
you tell them, show them, convince them that being Muslim is more than just 'being muslim'
but it is 'living as a muslim'?

Any thoughts, advice, stories would be greatly appreciated.


Re: Neglecting Prayers @ Work
theOriginal
08/09/02 at 09:41:01
[slm]

There's a brother that works at my firm, who is very good at getting us all to be energized to pray (along with other activities).  I work in a fairly large firm, and there are now (finally!) a fair number of muslims here (masha Allah).  Anyway, I remember his days of extreme frustration when people would simply not show up to the daily jamats that he organized.  But he tried and tried and tried and tried.  Everyday, he sent out an e-mail reminding people where he had set up a designated prayer area, and what time the Jamat would be.  Then he would call us all up individually, asking us if we could make it.  Most of the time, people used the "I have a closing this month" excuse. (Bahh@lawyers)  Anyway, the brother decided that everyone needed an incentive, and started organizing luncheons for the many professionals that work in the area.  Funny, how everyone showed up when there was food!  People realized that he was really serious about this, though, and now, mashaAllah, we regularly have a Jamat everyday, and everyone walks to the mosque together for Jumaa prayers (which is progress).

Anyway, it takes patience, but remember you can't make someone "see the light" .. leave that to Allah (swt), but don't forget to keep making an effort, insha Allah.    

Good Luck! Wasalaam.

SF.
Re: Neglecting Prayers @ Work
DO3aa
08/09/02 at 18:05:35
[color=Blue][/color]hi sis.  :-*
it's really difficult to remind our friends or mates about something they don't take seriously but u're getting a good "agr" from ALLAH (inshaa ALLAH)... just resisting that with ur heart & with ur own acts may be a good "da'wah".....
by the way there's a good & moderate "daa'iah" called [color=Black][/color] "AMR KHALID" [color=Blue][/color] , he gives many lessons about islam ( the way to ALLAH - 3ebadah - akhlaq .......& other topics ) , u can listen 2 his lessons -(& also tell ur friends about these lessons)- or download it from [color=Green][/color] www.forislam.com[color=Blue][/color] , or u can buy his lessons online from [color=Green][/color] www.sindbadmall.com [color=Blue][/color]
i'm not making an advertisement  ;) ... actually he's a gift 2 make many poeple love & understand their true simple religion ...
but i hope u could understand ARABIC well coz his lessons are given in ARABIC.....
peace be upon u..
ur  :-) in islam.....
Re: Neglecting Prayers @ Work
Ameeraana
08/09/02 at 22:13:18
speaking of praying during work... like for instance, if I convert to Islam...I work for an airline, and everyday is very different with how busy we are, flights being delayed, cancelled, etc... breaks are whenever we can take them because they cannot schedule them. I could not, for example, say, one of our flights gets delayed and a passenger will miss a connection so I have to go on to call other airlines and find an alternate route, I could not say "Oh, I must go pray, I will be right back" !!  I would not be able to pray during work unless it fell on one of my chances I can take a break.  Since I wouldn't be able to due to my situation at work, will it still be considered as wrong-doing?
Re: Neglecting Prayers @ Work
Traveler
08/10/02 at 01:59:08
[slm]
 considering the circumstances I am sure you can put it off till you get a chance. I don't think it would be considered as a wrong doing.
But I don't know, lets see what others have to say on this.

Traveler
Re: Neglecting Prayers @ Work
bhaloo
08/10/02 at 02:05:51
[slm]

Nice story SF, almost makes me want to become a lawyer. :)   I said ALMOST.  It would be nice to see that out in the workplaces around here.
Re: Neglecting Prayers @ Work
jannah
08/10/02 at 03:10:04
I don't think you should convert to Islam depending on whether or not your breaks fall into prayer times :)  Take your time and decide if Islam is from God or not.. That's the real question to be answered.  [It's better to be a Muslim committing sins, than dying in a disbelieving state!]

But as for breaks and all that. You usually have a window of time to pray in.. So say for the afternoon prayer.. right now it's from about 1pm to 5pm... so anytime during there, preferably in the beginning you can try to schedule lunch or a break. All you need is a quiet area and 5 minutes:) If you work in a major airport, there are always chapels and prayer areas.. JFK and OHare both have designated prayer areas for Muslims. For a long time when I worked tech support my boss thought I was going to the bathroom and then one day she said "How come Khalid goes to pray and you don't?" Imagine my consternation... :)  Anyways whether you tell them or not.. you can make the time inshallah.

I mean if we really think about it, if you have to go the bathroom you stop and go right.. so this is also a need we have that can become part of our daily routine...
Re: Neglecting Prayers @ Work
HK
08/10/02 at 18:34:32
[slm]  :D


I was curious about the chapel and "prayer area" part in your post Jannah. If there's no such area in the airport where do you pray?  ;D Prague airport is always teeming with police and a friend of mine who carried a water bottle to do wudu was thrown in jail for a week. They thought the bottle could have something to do with a bomb and they kept him in jail until they could verify that he indeed was a british citizen  ;D Hmmm....I was returning home to UK a couple of winters ago and a fellow passenger (a rastafarian) told me to "bless" the airport by praying there  :) I found this quite amusing because I could just picture myself being carted off by the police whilst he continued to smoke pot right under their noses  8) Ah the joys of air travel  ;D

[wlm]  ;-)
Re: Neglecting Prayers @ Work
jannah
08/10/02 at 18:42:57
True especially nowadays people are freaked out if you try to find a private room or area or something and start praying.. so try this.. just find a quiet corner somewhere in the lounge and go for it. you'd be surprised how many muslims are travelers in the world ;) one time at OHARE a bunch of people came and JOINED us .. pretty crazy huh... so just relax and go ahead and do it openly so they don't get suspicious.. or even go to any worker there and ask them.. I need to pray.. Where can I go?

That's sad about the water bottle thing... ignorant racist people :(
Re: Neglecting Prayers @ Work
humble_muslim
08/10/02 at 23:37:15
AA

Since 9/11, prayer in public has become a lot more difficult.
NS
Re: Neglecting Prayers @ Work
sofia
08/11/02 at 21:50:32
As-salaamu 'alaikum wa rahmatullah,

You'd also be surprised at how many Muslims *work* at airports, let alone travel through them! I've hardly ever come across a situation in which I was reacted to negatively because I asked for a place to pray, whether at work, an amusement park, the mall or an airport. Alhamdulillah. People can be pretty accomodating, I'd agrue, especially now.  And the last airport that I went to without a prayer area (seem to be fewer and fewer of them), I found the nearest airport employee (which alhamdulillah, was a Muslim), who pointed me towards an undesignated spot that he usually prayed at.  Best thing to do is to ask the nearest employee where the "meditation room" is. Most airports have this interfaith area, alhamdulillah.

The whole earth is our masjid, so don't be afraid to pray on it. The parts of the earth that once had worshippers pray there, longs for worshippers to pray there!
NS
08/11/02 at 21:51:12
sofia
Re: Neglecting Prayers @ Work
readagain
08/12/02 at 00:13:58
[slm]
oh yeah i agree...ppl can be really nice when it comes to "religious reasons"...like i use to work at this store in the Mall..and i would pray in the fitting rooms  8) (hey they were pretty big)...and then i use to work at this other store and like during ramadan i use to pray at my manager's office lol...kick her out and close the door and pray  ;D..she was really sweet tho... or if she was busy i wd just go out and pray inside my car..but u gotta pray...no qs abt taht.
:-)
sana
Re: Neglecting Prayers @ Work
Anonymous
08/12/02 at 05:05:13
[slm]

 I don't think I can tell you how you should go about giving dawah but I think I can
tell you why they are so neglectful of their prayers, which I think might help to come to a
solution.
  In one word it all has to do with Imaan(faith). How do I know? Well, because I used to
be one of them. It was quite recent when I started taking salah seriously. There were
times when people like you would remind me of salah and I would make some excuses up and
pretend I had some genuine reason not to. Strange as it may sound, I even use to get upset
on those people who kept reminding me of things like Islam tells you to do this Islam
wants muslims to do that. I used to say to myself, can't these people see I'm not interested
in there daily nagging. It was not that I didn't believe in Allah or Islam. I just didn't
care at the time. I always thought I had lots of time to think about less important
things like religion and life.
 So what made me realize the importance of salah? Well, it all started with my interest
in life.  I don't know if it was age or divine inspiration but questions like why are we
here? and what are we doing in this world ? started popping into my head. I always knew
Islam claimed to have those answers so I started reading about islam.
      I'm sure most muslims would agree with me on this, Islam has this great attractive
force which is very difficult to resist.  Initially things didn't go that well. After
sometime I stopped reading cause I though I had found things, which didn't stand to reason.
So I just stopped. But whatever I had read kept going through my head. I had to force
myself to shake these thoughts out of my head. But if you live among muslims, it is quite
hard to live your life without either hearing someone talk about Islam or without coming
across books on Islamic belief. And as I said earlier, Islam has this powerful force of
attracting a persons attention. The more I read the more it started to sound reasonable. So
I ended up reading enough to take the religion seriously. I finally thought I should read
the Quran in its entirety. Before I started to read the Quran I thought it would be easy
but boy was I wrong. To understand the Quran I had to read Tafsirs(explainations). In an
attempt to explain the verses of the Quran these authors of the Tafsirs kept referring to
incidents from the life of the Prophet  [saw]. So as a consequence I had to read a
detailed biography of the prophet to better understand the Tafsir. It's not that I didn't know
anything, but what I knew was mostly hearsay.
     It was this long and arduous study of the Quran which finally made me realize the
importance of everything islam had to offer.  Even today I sometimes miss my salah if I'm
very busy with something but the only difference is now I feel guilty if I miss it and I
try to make it up.
  So the main reason I think is knowing too little about islam and as a result having a
very weak Imaan. So if you can find a way to persuade them to study Islam and to
strengthen their Imaan, they will by themselves, start performing their obligatory prayers.


Re: Neglecting Prayers @ Work
Kashif
08/12/02 at 06:57:13
assalaamu alaikum

Yet another difference between the UK and the US. *smile*

At London Heathrow we have a deignated prayer area for Muslims, and Muslim and non-Muslim staff will be happy to point out its location to you.

Before they just had an area behind some stairs with some prayer mats laid out, but now its actually a room in the airport with space for about 30 people, and copies of Sahih al-Bukhari and the Qur'an in it.

Kashif
Wa Salaam
NS
Re: Neglecting Prayers @ Work
ascetic
08/13/02 at 21:57:58
Assalam Aleikum,

It really takes a lot of effort to ask people to pray. The reason is because you have to do it 5 times a day, 365 days a year. It really helps if an environment has been established which is conducive to prayers. For eg. at my work, we have a designated rest area. So just letting people know that there is a place where they can offer their Salat encourages them. But I can understand how you get mad when people don't take prayers seriously. Do you have a Muslim mailing list or newsgroup at work where you can post Salat-related ahadith? Really you can only push people to a certain extent beyond which it is really their responsibility. Also don't underestimate the power of dua'. Just praying for them to get 'hidaya' to pray will go a long way.

Speaking about the power of du'a, something interesting happened to me this weekend. When I was at college I had to pray many prayers on-campus. Since there was absolutely no room for me to pray, I had to kind of sneak into a little storage space and pray there always scared that someone was going to pop-in and ask me what I was upto. I would always make dua' that we would have some permanent place on-campus to pray. This weekend I went to attend a wedding in Atlanta and decided to drop by my college. Alhamd'lillah they now have a permanent prayer area for students to pray. And guess where? Exactly the same corner I used to pray in! Yup, they've neatly carpeted the small area and have a blackboard, shelf-full of Islamic books et al. I was really pleased :)

Wassalam,
Zahid.
Re: Neglecting Prayers @ Work
sista
08/14/02 at 01:59:02
[slm]

There's an Arab proverb that says: "The tongue is the translator of the heart."

In other words, if the tongue is constantly reminding the heart of what needs to be done, sooner or later it WILL take effect.  Naturally it would be better if the tongue belonged to the same individual whose heart was in question, but if not, let it be your tongue that affects others' hearts...GENTLY!  ;) Rest assured, there will be an effect, inshallah - whether you see it or not in this life is not important.  

The whole prayer issue is one I can totally relate to, since its something I'm dealing with presently (or trying to  ;D)  - with my own family, friends, relatives, etc. People have started to excuse themselves and hide as soon as they see me coming when its prayer time as they know I'm going to ask them to pray!  But I take this as a good sign because it shows that they feel guilty (and there's nothing more effective in instilling guilt than reminding them that death can take them ANY moment NOW) Pheir excuses are often lame, but this is better than apathy since it gives you something to work on.  Another useful tool is using their good opinion of you to motivate them (although of course you have to be careful that you do not become the sole reason for their prayer) - nothing like the large, tear-filled eyes and wobbly lips to show how upset you are at their refusal of this beautiful gift called salaah, nothing like the reminder that, "I'm only telling you this because I respect you and care about you" or "I want this for us both, I want you to come to Jannah with me" to make them ruefully shake their heads and go off to make wudu!  Male or female, they all get the same treatment (although with men, especially younger ones, I try to first persuade someone close to them to go strike a chord in their hearts, or if this is not possible, I tell them myself, speaking quietly and with lowered gaze.  The 'uncle-types' are relatively easy - you can always play with the 'fatherly feelings' they claim to have for you, or remind them of their obligation to TRY to take THEIR families to Jannah ;D)

Anyway, thats my long-winded response, make of it what you will, and good luck to you, anonymous poster and any other brothers and sisters experiencing this problem!  May Allah make it easy for you all.  

[wlm]

:-)

>:(Re: Neglecting Prayers @ Work
safa
08/14/02 at 04:54:13
I think when it comes 2 prayers at work, imaan is more of an issue than convenience.

Here in Saudi Arabia, almost all work is suspended during prayer times, but u still have muslim employees, sitting in a corner, smoking away, grateful 4 the 10-min break.

Such is the state of the Ummah   >:(
 


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