The Islamic Prayer



Greetings of Peace, Blessings, and Guidance.

The Islamic prayer or "salaat" is very special ritual, which a practicing Muslim performs at least 5 times a day. There are additional optional times for prayers like before the start of work in the morning, i,e. the Duha or Chast prayer, the night prayer, i.e. Qiyaam Ul Lail, the supperogatory prayers (Nafl) made before deciding a matter i.e. Istikhara prayer, entering a mosque, i.e. Tahiyyat Ul Masjid, etc.

The salaat is a connection between humans and their Creator in which the worshipper directly converses with their Maker. It is a very comprehensive form of worship which has physical, verbal, social, mental, and spirtiual aspects, making it a holistic means for believers to "lift" their souls. Just like a snake goes into a trance led by the snake charmer, the salaat is an opportunity for a worshiper to go into spritual estascy at least 5 times a day, the timing of which is divinely ordained by our Creator to be such key phases of the day, when we need the spiritual energy the most, i.e. before daybreak, after the sun passes its zeinith, after the shadow becomes double in the late afternoon, at dusk, and when the night enters.

The Prophet of Islam (SWAS) was taught this prayer by Angel Gabriel (AS). At the beginning of the mission there were only two prayers daily, at the start and end of the day. The 5 daily prayers were ordained for the Prophet (SWAS) and his followers when he visited the heavens in the Acension (Miraaj) during the Makkan phase of his mission,

The Islamic science of Hadith (Prophetic sayings) and Sunnah (Prophetic practices) have preserved in detail how the Prophet (SWAS) performed his prayer. The veracity of this information we have today is backed by the foolproof meticulous criteria and grading of historical accounts that Islam introduced to humanity, i.e. the text of the historical account, the chain of narrators, their characters, location, their biographies, and volume of reporting of the same historical text based on different chains of narrators.

In this blog we intend to describe the Prophet's (SWAS) prayer based on these accounts, in terms of his actions and the words he said during the prayer, God willing, so that we may emulate it to get the best out of our daily prayers in terms of spiritual "lift".

The content is based on Shaykh Al Albani's book "Salaat, The Prophet's Prayer Described".

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