The Islam­ic Prayer and Its Impor­tance in the Mus­lim Reli­gious Consciousness

Prayer (salat) is the first duty imposed by God Almighty upon mankind after that of the belief in tawhid and con­sti­tutes a pil­lar of the Islam­ic faith.Bukhari, hadith #61 ; Mus­lim, hadith #13 The posi­tion of prayer is very impor­tant and unpar­al­leled by any act of oth­er wor­ship. Like the pole of a tent with­out which it can­not stand straight, Islam can­not stand with­out prayers. Prayers are also an act where­by it will be account­ed for on the Day of Judg­ment, of which the Prophet(P) said :

“The first thing of the slave to be reck­oned on the Day of Judg­ment will be his prayer. If it is good, the rest of his deeds will be (account­ed as) good, and if it is rot­ten, the rest of his deeds will be rot­ten.” Nar­rat­ed in Tabarani.

The Pur­pose of Prayer

Prayer in Islam is con­sid­ered to be the foun­da­tion of the reli­gion. Any Mus­lim who fails to do his prayers and have no rea­son­able excuse is com­mit­ting a grave offense and heinous sin. This offense is so grave because it is not only against God, which is bad enough, but also against the very nature of man to adore and love God. Hence to neglect prayer is to oppress the good qual­i­ties in human nature and unjus­ti­fi­ably deny it the right to adore and love Him, the right to aspire and ascend, the right to excel in good­ness and achieve noble aims. Pray­ing to the Cre­ator on a dai­ly basis is the best way to cul­ti­vate in mankind a sound per­son­al­i­ty and to actu­al­ize his aspi­ra­tion. It should be borne in mind that God does not need a man’s prayer because He is free of all needs. Here man is the cen­ter of grav­i­ty and his com­mon inter­est is the main con­cern.Toshi­hiko Izut­so, God and Man in the Qur’an, Islam­ic Book Trust, 2002

The Effec­tive­ness of Prayer

In salat, every mus­cle of the body joins the soul and the mind in the wor­ship and glo­ry of God. The Islam­ic prayer is hence is not only a super­fi­cial act of wor­ship as not­ed in oth­er reli­gions, but it is also a match­less and unprece­dent­ed for­mu­la of intel­lec­tu­al med­i­ta­tion and spir­i­tu­al devo­tion, of moral ele­va­tion and phys­i­cal exer­cise, and all these ele­ments are com­bined. The ben­e­fits that man can derive from the Islam­ic prayer are immea­sur­able and the bless­ings beyond his imag­i­na­tion.Sayyid Abu Al-‘Ala Maudu­di, Islam : Its Mean­ing and Mes­sage, in M. Tariq Quraishi (ed.), Amer­i­can Trust Pub­li­ca­tions, Indi­anapo­lis, Indi­ana, 1984

The effec­tive­ness of the Islam­ic prayer (salat) is :

— It strength­ens the belief in the exis­tence and good­ness of God and trans­mits this belief into the inner­most recess­es of man?s heart.
 — It enlivens this belief and makes it con­struc­tive in the prac­ti­cal course of life.
 — It helps man to real­ize his nat­ur­al and instinc­tive aspi­ra­tions to great­ness and high moral­i­ty, to excel­lence and vir­tu­ous growth.
 — It puri­fies the heart and devel­ops the mind, cul­ti­vates the con­science and com­forts the soul.

Hence it is clear that the Islam­ic prayer, encom­pass­ing the above, fos­ters the good and decent ele­ments in man, and sup­press­es the evil and inde­cent inclinations.

Break­down of the Islam­ic Prayer

Offer­ing of prayers is oblig­a­tory upon every Mus­lim male and female who is sane, mature and — in the case of women — free from men­stru­a­tion and con­fine­ment due to child­birth. Require­ments of prayer includes the per­form­ing of ablu­tion (wudu’), the purifi­ca­tion of the whole body, clothes and the ground used for observ­ing the Islam­ic prayer, dress­ing prop­er­ly and hav­ing the inten­tion and fac­ing the kiblah (the direc­tion of the Ka‘abah at Makkah).

The fol­low­ing is a sum­ma­rized break­down of both the oblig­a­tory and option­al prayers in the Mus­lim dai­ly life :

Oblig­a­tory prayers : Five dai­ly prayers, the Fri­day’s noon con­gre­ga­tion prayer and the funer­al prayer. Times of oblig­a­tory prayers :

1. Ear­ly morn­ing : After dawn and before sunrise.
2. Noon : After the sun begins to decline from its zenith until it is about mid­way on its course to set.

3. Mid-after­noon : After the expi­ra­tion of the noon prayer time until sunset.

4. Sun­set : Imme­di­ate­ly after sun­set until the red glow in the west­ern hori­zon disappears.

5. Evening : After the expi­ra­tion of the sun­set prayer until dawn. 

High­ly rec­om­mend­ed prayer : Those accom­pa­ny­ing the oblig­a­tory prayer and the two great fes­ti­val prayers.

Option­al prayer : Vol­un­tary prayer dur­ing the day and night.