Benefit:
If merely speaking of permissible matters and innocent social chatter after the ‘Ishā’ prayer is discouraged, what, then, is to be said of those who pass the night listening to licentious songs, poring over seductive newspapers and immoral novels, infatuated with shameful scenes, sinful films, and frivolous games that distract them from the remembrance of Allah and from prayer? They stay awake until the break of dawn draws near—until the very hour when divine mercy descends—only to fall asleep. Nothing rouses them from their beds but the heat of the rising sun, the cries of street vendors, and the stir of daily life. They have missed Fajr in congregation, and perhaps even let its time slip away altogether.

How profound the sorrow and how crushing the grief for people whose lives have taken on this repulsive pattern! Satan has toyed with them, diverting them from what benefits them to what harms them. One fears that they belong to those who forgot Allah, so He caused them to forget themselves; a veil of heedlessness has been cast over them, and they will not remember until remembrance can no longer profit them.

Hadith Five
On the authority of ʿAlī (d. 40 AH): The Prophet ﷺ said on the Day of al-Khandaq, “May Allah fill their graves and their houses with fire, just as they kept us from the middle prayer until the sun had set.”

Muslim records another wording: “They kept us from the middle prayer—the ʿAṣr prayer—so he performed it between Maghrib and ʿIshā’.”

Muslim also transmits from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Masʿūd: “The idolaters detained the Messenger of Allah ﷺ from the ʿAṣr prayer until the sun had turned red or yellow. The Messenger of Allah then said, ‘They kept us from the middle prayer—the ʿAṣr prayer—may Allah fill their insides and their graves with fire,’ or, ‘may Allah stuff their insides and their graves with fire.’”

Unfamiliar Vocabulary
1- al-Khandaq: The trench that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and his Companions dug, surrounding the northern side of Madinah from the eastern lava field to the western lava field, when enemy forces besieged the city in the fifth year after the Hijrah.

al-wusṭā: the feminine form of awsaṭ; the awsaṭ of something is its best. Hence the verse, “Thus We have made you a middle nation” (Q 2:143), meaning the best nation.