The frequency and timings of the Prayers never let the object and
mission of life be lost sight of in the maze of worldly activities.
`Ibadah (act of worship) is an Arabic word derived from `abd
(a slave) and it means submission. It portrays that Allah is your
master and you are His slave and whatever a slave does in obedience to
and for the pleasure of his master is worship.
The Islamic concept of worship is very wide. If you free your speech
from filth, falsehood, malice, and abuse and speak the truth and talk
goodly things and do all these only because Allah has so ordained to do,
they constitute `ibadah, however secular they may look in semblance.
If you obey the law of Allah in letter and spirit in your commercial
and economic affairs and abide by it in your dealings with your parents,
relatives, friends, and all those who come in contact with you, then
all these activities of yours are worship.
If you help the poor and the destitute, give food to the hungry, and
serve the ailing and the afflicted persons, and do all this not for any
personal gain of yours but only to seek the pleasure of Allah, they are
nothing short of worship. Even your economic activities, the activities
you undertake to earn your living and to feed your dependants, are
worship if you remain honest and truthful in them and observe the law of
Allah.
In short, all your activities and your entire life are worship if
they are in accordance with the law of Allah, and your heart is filled
with His fear, and your ultimate objective in undertaking all these
activities is to seek the pleasure of Allah.
Thus, whenever you do good or avoid evil for fear of Allah, in
whatever sphere of life and field of activity, you are discharging your
Islamic obligations.
This is the true significance of worship, namely total submission to
the pleasure of Allah; the molding into the patterns of Islam your
entire life, leaving out not even the most insignificant part thereof.
To help achieve this aim, a set of formal `ibadat (acts of
worship) has been constituted, which serves as a course of training.
These acts are thus the pillars on which the edifice of Islam rests.
Prayer (salah) is the most primary and the most important of these obligations. And what is salah?
It is the prescribed daily Prayers which consist in repeating and
refreshing five times a day the belief in which you repose your faith.
You get up early in the morning, cleanse yourself and present yourself
before your Lord for Prayer.
The various poses that you assume during your Prayers are the very
embodiment of the spirit of submission; the various recitals remind you
of your commitments to your Allah. You seek His guidance and ask Him
again and again to enable you to avoid His wrath and follow His chosen
path.
You read out from the Qur’an (Book of the Lord) and express witness
to the truth of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and also
refresh your belief in the Day of Judgment and enliven in your memory
the fact that you have to appear before your Lord and give an account of
your entire life. This is how your day starts.
In the Prayers you recite many things quietly and if you do not
recite them or make any deviation from them, there is no one to check
you.
Then, after a few hours you hear the call for Prayer, and you again
submit to your Allah and renew your covenant with Him. You dissociate
yourself from your worldly engagements for a few moments and seek
audience with Allah. This once again brings to the fore of your mind
your real role in life. After this rededication you revert to your
occupations and again present yourself to the Lord after a few hours.
This again acts as a reminder to you, and you once more refocus your
attention on the stipulations of your faith.
When the sun sets and the darkness of the night begins to shroud you,
you again, submit yourself to Allah in Prayer so that you may not
forget your duties and obligations in the midst of the approaching
shadows of the night. And then after a few hours you again appear before
your Lord, and this is your last Prayer of the day.
Thus before going to bed you once again renew your faith and
prostrate before your Allah. And this is how you complete your day. The
frequency and timings of the Prayers never let the object and mission of
life be lost sight of in the maze of worldly activities.
It is but easy to understand how the daily Prayers strengthen the
foundations of your faith, prepare you for the observance of a life of
virtue and obedience to Allah, and refresh that belief from which spring
courage, sincerity, purposefulness, purity of heart, advancement of the
soul, and enrichment of morals.
You seek His guidance and ask Him again and again to enable you to avoid His wrath and follow His chosen path.
Now see how this is achieved: You perform ablution in the way
prescribed by the Prophet. You also say your Prayers according to the
instructions of the Prophet. Why do you do so?
It is simply because you believe in the prophet-hood of Muhammad and deem it your bounden duty to follow him ungrudgingly.
Why do you not intentionally misrecite the Qur’an? Isn’t it so
because you regard the Book as the word of Allah and deem it a sin to
deviate from its letter?
In the Prayers you recite many things quietly and if you do not
recite them or make any deviation from them, there is no one to check
you. But you never do so intentionally. Why? Because you believe that
Allah is ever watchful and that He listens to all that you recite and is
aware of things open and hidden.
Prayers are also a symbol of equality, for the poor and the rich, the low and the high, the rulers and the ruled…
What makes you say your Prayers at places where there is no one to
ask you to offer them or even to see you offering them? Isn’t it so
because of your belief that Allah is ever looking at you? What makes you
leave your important business and other occupations and rush towards
the mosque for Prayers? What makes you terminate your sweet sleep in the
early hours of the morning, to go to the mosque in the heat of the
noon, and to leave your evening entertainments for the sake of Prayers?
Is it anything other than sense of duty – your realization that you
must fulfill your responsibility to the Lord, come what may? And why are
you afraid of any mistake in Prayer? Because your heart is filled with
the fear of Allah and you know that you have to appear before Him on the
Day of Judgment and give an account of your entire life.
Now look! Can there be a better course of moral and spiritual
training than Prayer? It is this training which makes a man a perfect
Muslim. It reminds him of his covenant with Allah, refreshes his faith
in Him, and keeps the belief in the Day of Judgment alive and ever
present before his mind’s eye. It makes him follow the Prophet and
trains him in the observance of his duties.
This is indeed a strict training for conforming one’s practice to
one’s ideals. Obviously if a man’s consciousness of his duties towards
his Creator is so acute that he prizes it above all worldly gains and
keeps refreshing it through Prayers, he would certainly not be inviting
the displeasure of Allah that he all along has striven to avoid. He will
abide by the law of Allah in the entire gamut of life in the same way
as he follows it in the five Prayers every day.
This man can be relied upon in other fields of activity as well, for
if the shadows of sin or deceit approach him, he will try to avoid them
for fear of the Lord that would be ever present in his heart. And if
even after such a vital training a man misbehaves himself in other
fields of life and disobeys the law of Allah, it can only be because of
some intrinsic depravity of his self.
Then again you must say your Prayers in congregation and especially
so the Friday Prayer. This creates among the Muslims a bond of love and
mutual understanding. This arouses in them the sense of their collective
unity and fosters among them national fraternity. All of them say their
Prayers in one congregation and this inculcates in them a deep feeling
of brotherhood.
Prayers are also a symbol of equality, for the poor and the rich, the
low and the high, the rulers and the ruled, the educated and the
unlettered, the black and the white all stand in one row and prostrate
before their Lord.
Prayers also inculcate in Muslims a strong sense of discipline and
obedience to the elected leader. In short, Prayers train them in all
those virtues that make possible the development of a rich individual
and collective life.
These are a few of the myriad of benefits we can derive from the daily Prayers.
Post a Comment