The Meaning of Prayer (2)

There is nothing sweeter to a Muslim than prayer, it is a chance to meet his Beloved before the wedding
night. That is thought behind prayer you are meeting your God: the Truth, the Perfect, the All-Consuming,
the All-Loving. Last week we spoke about the preliminary part of prayer, and this time we will speak about
the first dialogue: the reading of Surah-Fatiha.
I do not want anyone to think that I speak from a Sufiyyah perspective alone. These were most certainly the
thoughts of our saints, but they were also the thoughts of all great scholars. Imam Idris bin Shafi once
commented on there is no scholar who is also not a sufi.
So after we have read our dua, we read the first surah of the Holy Quran. This opening chapter is special,
not least because it was the only surah to be revealed twice. It is called the Mother of the Book and also the
Summary of the faith. But most importantly, as I have said, it is a dialogue.
The Surah reads so:

We start by praising Allah; we say: all hamd is for Allah alone. You will recall that hamd is a special praise
that is reserved for Allah alone. So we begin by praising Allah. We have begun our dialogue with Allah with
the recognition that we need Him, and that He and He alone is the Eternal, the Absolute. We need
completeness, we need our refuge, our serenity and that lies with Him and Him alone. As part of the same
verse, we then say: the Lord of all worlds.
We began by using the formal Allah to address our God: we needed to understand the concept and prepare
ourselves. Now the tone has changed. We now refer to Allah with the more personal name: Rabb. The Lord
is the one who heads a family: who provides for it, who keeps it safe. We have praised Allah, and we have
recognized that He is the Creator and Sustainer of all creation.
And Allah replies (as per a Sahih hadith by authority of Abu Hurayrah): My servant has praised Me. You
see al-Fatiha is literally a dialogue, and Allah has said he has divided the surah into two halves: one for His
servant and the other for Himself. That is why we should read the Surah with breaks: so that Allah may
respond to us.
Allahs response here is His gracious acceptance of our praise. We have asked to be admitted into the court
of the King of kings and He has generously allowed us. So now in His presence we say: The Most Merciful,
the Especially Kind.
We discussed this part in the last piece as well, and so I shall move onto Allahs response: My servant has
glorified me. It is said that Allah is with you as you imagine Him to be. If you believe Allah is harsh, then
He shall be harsh, and if you believe He is merciful, then He shall be so.
Allah wishes to be seen as merciful, for that is how He has been to us. So recognizing Allah as kind and
compassionate is naming Him properly. How many favours of Allah will you deny? says Allah over and
over in the Quran. The goal of man is to become free from his own tyranny and cruelty, and it is through
Allah that we can accomplish this.

We must transcend and awaken, and we must do it through prayer. Every verse we read in prayer is a
movement closer to the Divine, to the Absolute, to Allah.
The next verse reads: Master of the Day of Judgement. The final day is when we shall stand before God
and all shall come to light. That one time we gave into our desires; that time we stole; that time we lied; that
time we missed prayer because we were tired.
The Prophet Muhammad and some companions would sleep only one third of the night and pray for the
rest. Later however Allah ordered the Prophet and his companions to rest. Allah knows how much they loved
Him, and so He did not want to put them in difficulty. Your faith has been made easy for you. And even
then we proclaim Allah as our final judge only to ask once more for His forgiveness and mercy.
The companion Ibn Abbas said that there is an unsaid qul at the beginning of this Surah, which means
say. Allah has asked us to speak thus. So easy has He made the way for us, so simply has he clarified the
falsehood from the truth.
So we proclaim Him the Master of the final day, just as we proclaim Him as Kind. As I have said before, we
only need to do our best, Allah has only asked that of us, the rest Allah forgives us. Verily, He is oft
Forgiving.
And in this way Allah responds to our supplication by saying: My servant has glorified me and my servant
has submitted to me. That is the key here: to recognize our own fallibility and our own weakness, and to
submit, heart and soul, to Allah. And if we so submit we enter the protection of Allah, and no one can harm
us.
The first analogy I gave was to the lover seeking their beloved. And Allah has asked us, only, to be true. As
for the favour of your Lord (Rabb) says Allah in the Quran, do announce (loudly proclaim) it.
The next verse we read is an oath, a promise. We say: You alone we worship, and to You alone we turn for
help. The thought that we have carried up till now condenses at this point. You only have a plan b, if you are
uncertain if plan a will work. We lie in our business because were afraid that we might go bankrupt. We
cheat; we gossip.
In short we have made idols and gods in our own little world. We are afraid of giving ourselves up to Truth,
so connected and conjoined are we to falsehood and money. Why is a martyr immortal? Because s/he
removes him/herself from the body that is the illusion. If you free yourself from the illusion, then death
cannot harm you.
Allah is the hearth we must return to after enduring the long winter days. And the only reason we experience
the long winter is so that we can appreciate the warmth of the hearth. So turn to Allah, and face Him. That is
the summary of Islamic belief.
And so Allah replies to this: This is between me and my servant, and my servant will have what he has
asked for. So we have removed all the middle-men. We have turned to Allah, we have given up everything
for Him and He has in return accepted us, and rewarded us far more. We cannot come near to loving and
fearing Allah as much as He deserves, and yet He loves us more than seventy mothers: far more than we
deserve.
And so Allah has made this only between us. We have established a direct contact with our Lord. We are in
front of Him. And He has promised us anything we desire. But who can play it well enough? If deaf and
dumb and blind with love Yeats wrote. Now that we have experience the Truth, what else can we ask for?
There is only one thing we can ask for. To become even closer to our Lord. We end our surah with asking
Allah to guide us to the straight path, the path of those who were blessed, and not the path of those who
went astray.

There is little I can say to explain this, for it is such an emotional statement that each person must experience
it for themselves. That constant desire to come closer to your Lord, to be free from all woes and troubles:
that is what we seek.
And Allah who is pure of all ill says to us in return: This is for my servant, and my servant will have what
he has asked for.
And we are left speechless at how someone, something so insignificant as ourselves can be loved by the
Lord, and so we can only say Ameen.

From this point on the prayer becomes more subjective as to which duas and surahs we read, and so I do not
want to infringe on their beauty by trying to explain them from my perspective. I hope that these two part,
however, have helped people understand some of the thought of our mystics and teachers. These are the
thoughts which shall lead us to the proper method of prayer, and shall save us from ourselves.
Next week I hope to outline how ahadith were recorded, and why and how we know if they are authentic
because this is a major issue for Muslims. Many dont know of the processes used, and this may help them
understand their history.
I hope that you are enjoying these pieces as much (if not more) than I am writing them. I apologize for any
grammatical errors or if theyre rough around the edges. I wrote these pieces in a bit of a hurry. And if you
want your name added to the list of people who are tagged each week, just message me on facebook or email
me at abulajab@outlook.com