Al-Baqarah 239: If you fear (anything), you can pray while walking or while riding. When you reach safety, remember Allah as Allah has taught you while you were not knowing.

We are explaining verse 239. If you fear anything: we are on the road, we are travellers, the road is dangerous, there are lions, there are tigers, or there are bandits. Perform your prayers walking or riding, it says. It says. That is, whatever you are riding, whatever you are on: if in a car, on the car, if on a camel, on the camel, if a donkey, a mule, a horse, on that. When you reach safety, remember Him the way Allah has taught you when you did not know; pray. When you reach safety. In the way Allah has taught you. How? Ruku, qiyam, sajda, tahiyyat. Well, why can't you really do this on a camel, in a car?

You can't really do it. So when you reach peace, when you reach safety, not peace but when you reach safety, when you return home.

You: our Lord, in the way He taught us, commands us to perform the prayer; in this case, prayer, while travelling, too, on foot, 18 hours, in kilometres, when one goes 90 kilometres away, the traveller's status begins. Our Lord, of our four-rakat obligatory prayers, drops two. Do not suffer hardship on the journey. I have granted you two rakats of prayer, He says. Yes. I explain it here. Let's see. What did we explain?

Let us also read our tafsir.

When a person, during a journey, is going (?), the road being dangerous or passing through a (?) where there are wild animals, if, when prayer time comes, you cannot find a safe place, on your mount, intending the Baytullah, whichever direction you face you can perform your prayer. Yes. Because you are travelling. You are going west. The prayer time is passing. Whereas the Baytullah is to the south. That is why Allah Almighty in His verse first one searches for the qibla, then all directions are Allah's qibla, it says. It is Allah's direction.

Whichever direction you stand, you will search like that, of course. If you cannot find it, whichever direction you stand, that is Allah's direction, it says. That is, you will have turned towards the Baytullah. Deeds depend on intention, according to the word of the verse. In this case, if possible, well, if you are travelling on a donkey, on a horse, on a mule, you turn towards the qibla, on the horse, on the donkey, you say the takbir, and again you perform your prayer facing the road you are going. You are on a plane and you cannot turn the plane that way.

Where you are: deeds depend on intention. You cannot know the qibla either, which side it is; you don't know which way the plane is going. But if you find something according to (?), with a slight lean that way, saying the takbir, you can perform your prayer in front of you, where you sit.

If you are in a car, you are driving the car anyway, you cannot turn. You say the takbir where you are. And you go on your way at the wheel. Because there is no place to stop on the road. Traffic is flowing. You are in the city, the prayer time will pass. You cannot stop on the road either. In this case too you go on with your prayer. Yes.

During a journey, when you are 18 hours or 90 kilometres away from where you live, (?) of Allah to people, the obligatory prayers are performed as two rakats. Allah Almighty drops two rakats from you.

Only the obligatory evening prayer is performed in full. Because it is three rakats. Allah Almighty does not drop that one rakat from you, He has you complete it as three rakats. When going (?), when you pass dangerous roads, when safety is reached, prayer is performed according to its manners and rites. What is this? (?) you came to a safe place. There is time, too. You stop. You get down. You perform your prayer.

Remember Him as Allah has taught you when you did not know. That is, we did not know how to pray. But our Lord made it known to us. So from now on let us remember Him that way. Pray. When prayer was given as a gift, we did not know how to perform it.

Allah, with the event of the Mi'raj, taught the Prophet (peace be upon him) how prayer is performed. Yes. And the Prophet (peace be upon him), teaching his companions, thus how prayer is performed in the religion of Islam came to be understood. In this respect Allah, both the majesty of His being and also, to people, on journeys, in danger, in normal times, how prayers are to be performed according to their rites, has taught. The greatest teacher is Allah Almighty. Our greatest teacher. Hodja, how can you say this? Is He being a teacher to us? He sent us the Quran as a law; He created our reason incomplete; if we follow that law, is He who sent it to us not a teacher?

Is He not the teacher of teachers? Yes, the teacher of teachers. Who lights our way, shines a light, makes us safe from difficulties, protects; yes, the obligatory prayers are, for people, at their times, to be performed as obligatory with their manners and rites. What are the manners and rites? You make a good ablution, the prayer ablution. How do you make the prayer ablution? Well, first we will say the basmala; your hands and so on, after washing them nicely like this, up to the wrists. If you know the ablution prayer, if you don't, reciting Amentü billahi, you take water into your mouth three times.

Three times you draw water into your nose. Three times you wash your face nicely, forehead, and like this the edges of your ears, under your chin, nicely. Then three times you wash this right hand up to the elbows. And you recite (?). And three times the left side too, after washing up to the wrist, so as to wipe at least a quarter of your head, well, you wipe with your hand. After (?) your hand again, with the backs of your hands, your ear, this nape of yours you wipe. You wash your ears nicely with these little fingers. You clean them. Then your right foot up to the ankle, nicely, between the toes, washing it, you wash; then your left foot too, nicely, again between the toes, up to the heel, you wash, and you have taken your ablution.

Then in your nice clean clothes, the noble sunnah: a cap, socks on your feet, nicely covered; what is a man's private area? Between the waist and the knees; but still, Allah Almighty in His verse says, when you stand for prayer, wear your clean clothes. Yes. You wear your nice clothes. O Lord, I intend to perform the prayer of today's time, you say. So, like that. Second, second. Evening, evening. Let him say the takbir. You say Allahu Akbar. This right hand, with the thumb and little finger, clasps the wrist of the left hand. Let him lay these three fingers on top of it. If a man, he ties his hands over his navel.

If our women, they tie them over the chest. When saying the takbir, men bring these thumbs so they touch the earlobes, and the fingers close together. He doesn't keep them open like this when saying the takbir. Someone was saying the takbir like this. They said, how many Allahs are you pointing to? Yes. Like this. Manners. That is, I have surrendered, my Allah, to You, like this; women say the takbir like this, up to the level of the chin. After tying the hands, he first recites the Subhanaka. Then he recites the Fatiha. Then he recites the additional surah, while standing. He says Allahu Akbar and goes into ruku.

After the movement stops, three times Sübhâne Rabbiye'l- azîm he says. Semiallahu limen hamideh he says. Then Rabbenâ leke'l-hamd, as he straightens up like this, there he stays for a while too. For a while. (?) they stood very long. So long that birds would land on their heads, they say. Well, then with Allahu Akbar he goes into sajda. And how is sajda done? On seven limbs. On seven limbs. The toes, one. The knees, two. The hands, three. What did we do? Six. That is, two sets of toes, two knees, four. Two hands, six. The forehead and the nose. (?) so that it makes seven. (?) six. These, after the movement there stops, you say three times Subhane Rabbiyel Ala.

At least three times; you can say it five, seven, nine. Then he says Allahu Akbar. You sit for a while in the tahiyyat. You sit there for as long as it takes to say one Subhane Rabbiyel Azim or Allahu Akbar.

Again for the second sajda he says Allahu Akbar. You go. There again, three times, or five, seven, nine times Subhane Rabbiyel-Ala, after saying it, again he says Allahu Akbar and you rise to qiyam. One rakat is (?). And these are the manners and rites of this prayer. You perform your prayer in this way. And while praying, standing is also very important in prayer. Standing: no leaning on one foot like this or bending the knee like this and so on. Exactly even; the two sides of the body are symmetrical anyway, like this, symmetrical. A person's right or left (?), equal. He created it so that in man one side of the figure is not different from the other.

So on the two weights of this symmetrical figure, putting your weight on both feet, and normally four fingers' width between your two feet keeping the gap. What if it is more? For example in Saudi Arabia they open their feet, they touch toe to toe, a very nice row is formed. Now, everyone has a way of standing according to his own madhhab, but the real stance is what? Standing upright on two feet. Standing upright. Except the disabled. They can pray sitting. They can pray on a chair. Except these. Yes. So we have explained the manners and rites this way. We continue.

Besides the obligatory prayers, the prayers that the Prophet (peace be upon him) performed are also given to us as the noble sunnah, as a gift. A gift. Actually I wrote it here as gift. The Messenger of Allah never sets anything down in vain.

We already said here that the prophets are Allah's messengers. They never do anything of their own accord. In what Allah commands, they make neither a reduction nor an addition. But the extra sunnahs you have performed, as well as increasing your rewards, take the place of the obligatory prayers not performed and owed by you, and from the debt of the times you owe they free you, we said. Yes.

As for the witr-i wajib, Allah Almighty did not make the night prayer obligatory for us. He did not make it obligatory. The witr-i wajib prayer is actually a night prayer. The Prophet (peace be upon him), thinking my ummah will be tired, fall asleep at night and miss the witr-i wajib, which is the night prayer, had the witr-i wajib performed after the isha prayer. This prayer performed by Muslims takes the place of the night prayer. In this respect there is wisdom in the sunnahs. In the sunnahs; but wajib is not sunnah. What is it? O Prophet who wraps himself in his garment and lies down, you, rise at a certain time of the night.

A little before, a little after the night, yes; since the address to the Messenger of Allah is also an address to his ummah, (?), it therefore becomes wajib.

Isn't the sacrifice the same? The same. What does it say? İnnâ a'taynâke'l-kevser. I have given you al-Kawthar. Fesalli li rabbike venhar. Pray, sacrifice. İnne şânieke hüve'l-ebter. (?) (?). Your ummah is yours, it says. Pray, sacrifice. So sacrifice for Him; but there, wajib, the Eids of Sacrifice; and night prayer, pray it; wajib for us too, we perform it. In this way, both with the sunnahs our past prayers, and in this way we fulfil the wajibs. In place of the night prayer we perform the witr, the wajib. Yes, our son Haluk asks a question. Peace be upon you, Hodja. An 18-hour walk and covering a 90-kilometre distance, meaning, now the 90 kilometres, the first distance, with vehicles very quickly we cover. But still, once we pass 90 kilometres, today we are also considered travellers.

This becomes very easy for us. Shouldn't we also have to travel an average of 18 hours, is the question that comes to my mind. May Allah be pleased with you. Yes, you have already covered the 18-hour walking distance.

You are covering the walking distance. A person at 5 kilometres an hour does 90 kilometres in 18 hours. Now, back then they travelled on horseback, they went on (?)'s back, or they walked. If you ask me, the journeys of that time seem even easier than today's to me. How so? Now, I walk; the only cost is, that is, my walking with my body. On the other side, the side you call easy, 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 lira, 70,000 lira, 100,000 lira I give for a car. I buy petrol for it. Until I get it 90 kilometres away, I (?) an expense. And to earn that money back I work more. To be able to buy it, to put it into something, to replace the petrol again.

In this case, on the other side one travels continuously without any cost. The effort, more or less, both are about the same. One cannot catch the time: the situation of the people of our time. Cannot catch the time; the other has caught ample time within time, and within that time makes his journey. Being on foot seems a little tiring to one, but the roads, and at the same time, accidents are deadly. You crash once, they hit you once, a plane falls, may Allah's safety be upon you. So our Lord has equalised the dangers in both. What does He say? (?). If you exceed 90 kilometres, if you go by 18 hours' walking, you are a traveller. In My hands you are a traveller.

By our reasoning, in this time, we cover the 18 hours, the 90 kilometres in half an hour. In 18 hours, in half hours or in an hour we cover it. In 18 hours, in one hour. Well now, is this equal to that? When we say that, the dangers on the (?), death and life, (?), the money spent there, or when a breakdown happens, the times you are left there, (?), and in your life there is only one journey. That is, if we look at the (?), more or less, perhaps the journeys of that time were even more enjoyable. Yes. Such a (?). In the laws our Lord has laid down, even if people, from their faith, in this time, compared with the past, in a more comfortable situation see themselves, actually, if a good thought is given to it, perhaps they live a far more toilsome life than those.