Last night was a full lunar eclipse, and alhumdulillah, I was able to pray the two rakah from the tradition of our Prophet, sal Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, for it. It was an interesting night and turn of events.

It started with a post on MuslimMatters.org that reminded me of the eclipse and the prayer that goes along with it. Last year, the eclipse was on March 3rd, 2007, and I was unable to pray the prayer due to a dawath at my house during the time of the eclipse. So I remember making the intention one lunar year ago that I would do my best to catch the lunar eclipse and pray the two rakah from the Sunnah for it, bi’ithniAllah. Thanks to the MuslimMatters.org post, I was informed of the eclipse to be at 9:00pm and got myself hyped up to pray.

I Emailed the post to various family members and Email groups, and got feedback from a sister that Islamic Foundation was holding a congregation for the prayer at 9:00pm that night. Great news for me; not only was I aware of the eclipse and ready with an intention to pray during it, I could catch the prayer in congregation at the masjid, followed by a khutbah.

In the time of the Prophet (SAW), the Muslims would gather at the masjid during an eclipse and offer two units of prayer in which the Prophet (SAW) recited parts of the Quran for a very long time, “roughly the time that it takes to recite the chapter of the Quran entitled Surah Baqarah,” according to Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. Then the Prophet (SAW) would deliver a khutbah about the great sign from Allah that stood above them all, the eclipse.

My family got ready to hit up the masjid and left our house a bit late, so we had to hurry. I figured since the prayer was supposed to be late as it is, we would be okay in arriving five to ten minutes late. However, on the way I recevied a text from AbdelRahman informing me otherwise.

“Salaam, are you on your way to IFS? They prayed at 8:25pm :-/.”

At that point, we were just seconds from arrive at the masjid. Unfortunately, our family missed the congregation for the Salah and arrived at the khutbah.

Apparently a lot of people showed up for Isha at 8:00pm thinking the prayer was going to be offered right afterwards. They then proceeded to vote on whether they would like to pray right then or wait for half an hour until 9:00pm, and the vote went in favor of praying earlier.

My family was a bit down, but a last minute uninformed change of plans is nothing surprising for a family who’s lived in the IFS community for over twenty years.

AbdelRahman consoled me, saying, “yeah, I guess it’s one of those ‘you made the intention’ type things.” On the dot, Mr. Murphy. Alhumdulillah, we tried, and may Allah accept our efforts as having prayed in congregation.

That was the great lesson of the night. Islam is beautiful, it really is. It’s not just a set of heartless rules and regulations of do and do not, and at the same time it’s not overly spiritual in belief alone. It’s both. Faith in Islam is made of belief in the heart, statements of the tongue, and actions of the limbs. The three balance together, and in the end, you are checked by your original intent.

We all know that if you intend to do something good and are unable to do so, you get rewarded. But by missing the congregational prayer, the wisdom behind such a concept became much more evident to me than just knowing it; I was experiencing it. SubhanAllah, it’s just amazing how not only is Allah so Wise that he made things that way, he also knew that one day the Shafi family would miss the congregational prayer for Salat al-Khusuf at IFS, so in the end it’s still all good.

I was glad that things worked out the way they did. My family just listened to the rest of the khutbah and then proceeded to pray two rakah of the eclipse prayer invidiually on our own. Plus I got to meet two friends who I’d been wanting to meet for some time, Aamair and Pothi, and that made it all the more worth it.

As I was leaving, I caught up with Shaykh Abdool Rahman Khan and Tariq standing out in front of IFS. Shaykh was making adhkar while we gazed upon the beauty of the eclipse coming to and end. I tried to take a picture of it, but failed terribly at trying to capture any of its radiance.

“No camera can capture the beauty of it.” I commented to Shaykh. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said.

Photographs are nice, but only the best lens, the one created by the Creator can truly capture the beauty of that sight we saw last night.

May Allah (SWT) help us pray the eclipse prayer every year for the rest of our lives. Ameen.