The excellence of Salah
Abu Hurairah narrated that the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said: “Do you think that if there was a river by the gate of one of you, and he bathed in it five times each day that there would remain any filth on him?” They said: “No filth would stay on him.” He said: “That is the parable of the five prayers, Allah wipes out the sins with them.” [Tirmidhi]
Each of the five daily prayer acts as a bath in the river of purification which removes the sins from the believer, and also between each prayer there is expiation of minor sins.
What does Salah mean? The literal meaning of Salah (from Silah) is connection. The Salah is our means of being connected to Allah.
The obligation of Salah
Have you wondered to yourself or questioned: ‘Why did Allah make prayer obligatory for the Muslims?’
We know that Allah is not in need of our actions and our devotion, Allah says via the tongue of His beloved (ﷺ): “My servants, were the first of you and the last of you, the human of you and the Jinn of you to be as pious as the most pious heart of any one man of you, that would not increase My kingdom in anything” Muslim]. So if He is not in need of our worship, then why did He make the Salah obligatory.
We find the answer in another hadith: “My servant draws not near to Me with anything more loved by Me than the obligation I have enjoined upon him, and My servant continues to draw near to Me with optional extra works so that I shall love him.”[Bukhari]
Its everything to do with Qurb (drawing close). This closeness to Allah is not in terms of physical space, direction or place because Allah is the Creator of all space and place, for He existed before all space, place and time existed. The closeness here refers to the one whose heart is filled with light and with the knowledge of Allah and love of Allah. The servant start with the obligatory and then moves to doing the optional extra Salah and good deeds, until the love of Allah permeates through his very being. He is thereafter constantly seeking opportunities to be with Allah out of his loving desire to be close to Him and as a result he earns the love of Allah. And “when Allah loves a servant, He calls Jibreel and says: I love So‐and‐so, therefore love him. So Jibreel loves him. Then Jibreel calls out in heaven, saying: Allah loves So‐and‐so, therefore love him. And the inhabitants of heavens love him, and then acceptance is established for him on Earth”[Bukhari] .
So we can see why Allah has obliged prayer on us for He does not want us to be deprived of His closeness, His special love and the supplication of all the creation in this world. Ata’Allah said:
“He knew of the irresolution of servants in dealing with Him, so He made obedience [ta‘a] to Him obligatory for them. Thus, He drove them to obedience with the chains of obligation [bisalsili’l-ijab]. Your Lord is amazed at people who are driven to Paradise [al-janna] with chains!”[Hikam|195]
“He made the service [khidma] of Him obligatory upon you, which is as much to say that He made entry into His Paradise obligatory for you.” [Hikam|196]
The Uniqueness of the Salah
Allah revealed all the revelation (Qur’an) through the Ruhul Amin, the leader of the Angels, Jibreel. The obligation of Salah did not come through Jibreel. Allah raised His beloved (ﷺ) through the boundaries of space and time, through the earth and heavens, to the Lote tree and beyond. In the setting of intimacy between man and His Lord, a meeting between the lover and the beloved; the Majestic and the Light of the Heavens and Earth, the One, the First, the Last and the Eternal, there He whispered the command of Salah to the Messenger (ﷺ) to the whole world.
It came direct, without Hijab and the need of intermediaries. Salah is our one‐to‐one relationship, it is our link to Allah, Lord of the Heavens without any intermediary. Allah ascended the Prophet (ﷺ) to honour us with this means of communication. Can you imagine, the Lord and King of the entire universe allows an insignificant creation like you and I (in respect to the universal map) to have access and presence before the King. SubhanAllah – what an uplifting experience!
Salah is the gateway to the Unseen domain, our ascension to Him, our departure from leaving this Dunya behind. When we give the forbidding Takbeer, its as if we were placing the Dunya on the back of our hands and throwing it behind us. When we say ‘Allah is Greatest’; we disconnect ourselves from the creation and connect ourselves to the Creator. ‘AllahuAkbar’ – Allah is Greater than our work, our money, our debt, our business, our fears, our anxiety, our weaknesses, our problems, our challenges, our desires and all the Dunya has to offer us or distract us. With the Takbeer, we enter in the realm of the One True King.
Ask yourself this question, if someone were to truly realise the Glory and Sovereignty of the Creator over His creation, would he worry about the creation?
“He who has lost You- what has he found? He who has found You – what has he lost?” [Hikam|28]
The Rewards and Challenges of Performing Salah
There is vast reward to be had from Salah, the two units of Sunnah of Fajr is better than this world and all that is within it. The Shay’tan is well aware of the status of prayer; he knows that if he lets us “pray only two rakkah with total concentration, attentiveness and without the thought of the world therein, then it will be enough for us to gain admission to Paradise”[Bukhari]. So he will never leave us alone, he will try his hardest to prevent us from praying, and if he fails in that, he moves to making us delay it, if he fails at that, he does his best to distract us within the Salah, and this continues until the day we die.
Our life is then a struggle against him and our own whims, and in our struggle is our cause, and in the end, on the Day of Judgement our Wudu (ablution) and our Soojud (prostration) will become beacons of lights. Light on that day will be a scarcity except with the righteous. Light will be placed in front of us, behind us and on either side. The light which God willing will guide us towards Paradise.
Let us begin by regularly praying the five daily Salah on time without a miss. From performing the prayer, let us establish it with the desire to draw closer to Allah knowing that Allah is waiting to communicate with us in Salah. If we are able to establish the Salah in our lives, we would see tremendous blessing in our life; it will no doubt reform us, grant us tranquillity, calmness, support and be a source of delight in this world and the next. The more connected we become to Allah, the lighter Salah will become. It will no longer feel as an act of burden but an act of love and means of being in proximity with the One.
May Allah grace us with Taufiq and make Salah a joy and delight within our life. In the words of the beloved Messenger (ﷺ):“The delight and pleasure of my eyes is in Salah” [Ahmed].
