Struggling to Sleep
“And He constrained the night and the day and the sun and the moon to be of service to you, and the stars are made subservient by His command. Surely in this are signs for those who reflect.” Qur’an 16:12
Recently, we asked a well-respected shaykh and professor of Islamic studies about waking up for fajr. Specifically, we wanted to know how our predecessors awoke for fajr/subh before the modern invention of reliable alarms. We wanted to know if there were any historical antidotes in the literature about the conundrum of waking up for fajr. He said no, not really. This wasn’t such a widespread problem, and it’s not just because of the piety of our predecessors. He said the reason it was not common to struggle with fajr had more to do with the fact that human beings in the pre-industrial age maintained wildly different sleep habits from us moderns. Turns out that even in America, many moons ago, people woke up for “tahajjud.” Well, not exactly. People generally woke up around what we as Muslims would consider tahajjud-time because it was common to sleep in two phases: first sleep and second sleep. This sounds like shire activity, but it makes sense considering people started winding down as the sun was setting and retired to bed not too long after darkness fell. Right now, the sun sets around 5 PM. Imagine what you would do without electricity, streetlights, a phone, television, or a computer. Imagine if, after sunset, all the light you had in your home was from candles. You would likely sleep earlier and wake earlier without great effort. The shaykh said people think the jihad (struggle) in our time is waking up for fajr when in all likelihood the modern jihad is going to sleep at a reasonable hour amidst so many distractions. If we could do that, waking up for fajr would feel natural. However, we’d still have to contend with our vices getting out of bed.
To sleep minds need to slip into inactivity. Trouble is, so much of what we visually consume in the form of digital images while awake linger in our minds long after we’ve ceased looking at it. We tend to think of technology as a means to an end, but that’s not the case in all facets. There’s a massive difference between using a GPS app on our phone to get from point A to point B and being on Instagram. Even our language illustrates the difference. We use the GPS like a tool, but we are on Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube—as if part of us exists on those platforms. It’s a strange case of that which you consume, consumes you. It’s no wonder that today so many of us find it a little challenging to fall soundly asleep. If part of us lives through technology, then sleep means parting from ourselves. And even when we bring ourselves to do that, we find our minds consumed by the flashing images we imbibed all day long.
As the shaykh said, the difficulty people face waking up to pray fajr is the byproduct of another problem: falling asleep at a reasonable hour. Something that we think of as solely a faith issue might also be (or be) a matter of lifestyle and, ultimately, environment.