A Complete Program

This is a complete program. There is a program of learning and knowledge, and then a program of daʿwah, and a program of rituals of ʿibādah. And they all complement each other, and they all assist in building a complete Muslim personality.

The work of propagating and teaching could be draining on the heart, and without this element of ʿibādah — one standing up and praying to Allah (swt) in the middle of the night — the heart could harden and become rough. So this qiyām al-layl softens the heart, and it prepares the person for the rest of the day. Such a thing can also be said about dhikr.

Ibn al-Qayyim talks about Shaykh Ibn Taymiyyah: he said that every day after Ṣalāt al-Fajr, he would go out to the fields in the outskirts of Damascus, and he would just sit there mentioning the name of Allah, making duʿāʾ, until sunrise. So someone once told him, "Why do you do this on a daily basis?" Ibn Taymiyyah said, "This is my breakfast. If I don't have it, my body will fail me. This is food for my soul. It gives me energy for the rest of the day. If I don't have this meal in the morning, I'm going to be weak for the rest of my day."

So the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) was strengthened by this ʿibādah of qiyām al-layl, and it is also something that Allah made mandatory on the early Muslims because of the unique circumstances they went through. The difficulties they had to go through are more than anything else the ummah would face afterwards. That is why they had to go through this intensive training. Plus, they are the core group — they are the foundation of Islam.