Lesson 3 of 6 · Tahajjud is not owed from a night you do not have
The sentence you have probably heard
If you cannot wake for tahajjud, your heart is diseased. If you really loved Allah you would be up.
It gets said in reminders, in group chats and in your own head at four in the morning, and it does a specific kind of damage to someone who is not sleeping. It turns the sleep problem into a verdict about you. Then, because you now dread the night, the sleep gets worse, and the worse it gets the more the verdict seems to be confirmed.
That conclusion is not new and it is not yours. A group of Companions slept through Fajr on a journey and said to one another afterwards that they had been negligent about the prayer. They drew exactly the conclusion you draw about yourself. They were told they were wrong, and they were given a definition to go with it: there is no negligence in sleep, negligence is only while a person is awake. That wording is carried on four sound chains, and two of them are below.
What follows is what the Qur'an and the sound reports actually do with a night that did not happen. It is close to the opposite of that sentence.
Qur’an and Sunnah
A group of Companions drew exactly the conclusion you draw about yourself, and were told they were wrong. Here is the definition they were given with it. There is no negligence in sleep, negligence is only while a person is awake.
Abu Qatadah narrated:"They asked the Prophet about when they sIept past the Salat. He said: 'There is no negligence in sleep, negligence is only while one is awake. So when one of you forgets a Salat, or sleeps through it, then let him pray it when he remembers it
Jami' at-Tirmidhi 177graded sound, albanithe Arabic and its grading
The same correction on a second sound chain: there is no negligence in sleep, negligence is only while a person is awake. The wording is carried on four chains and two are shown, because a correction this size is worth checking in more than one.
Abu Qatadah reported:"The Prophet (ﷺ) was on a journey. The Prophet (ﷺ) took a turn and I also took a turn with him. He said: 'Look!' I said: 'This is a rider; these are two riders; and these are three' until we became seven. He then said: Guard for us our prayer, i.e. the Fajr prayer. But sleep dominated them and none could awaken them except the heat of the sun. They stood up and drove away a little. Then they got down (from their mounts) and performed ablution. Bilal called for prayer and they offered two rak'ahs of (Sunnah) of Fajr and then offered the Fajr prayer and mounted (their mounts). Some of them said to others: We showed negligence in prayer. The Prophet (ﷺ) said: There is no negligence in sleep. The negligence is in wakefulness. If any of you forget saying prayer, he should offer it when he remembers it and next day (he should say it) at its proper time
Sunan Abi Dawud 437graded sound, albanithe Arabic and its grading