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How to Get Quality in Our Prayers[/h]There are lots of things we can do. Books are written by the scholars which list dozens of things we can do to bring greater quality and implement
khushū' in our prayers. To keep the conversation flowing and brief and concise, I would like to group the things that we can implement into three areas of improvement.
1. A change of lifestyle.
What that refers to is really very simple. We can't expect to live our lives however we want (lying, cheating, backbiting, cussing) and then expect that when we stand up to pray and say “
Allāhu akbar”, magically we have
khushū'. There is no instant
khushū'. The way I live my life outside of the prayer and the way I conduct myself normally throughout the day will affect and impact the quality of my prayers. If I want more quality in your
ṣalawāt, then I have to lead a better life, a more honest and truthful life. I have to cut some of the sins out of my life in order to improve the quality of my prayers.
2. Make ṣalāh an event.
Treat
ṣalāh like an important part of your day. Let me give you an example.
You have to be at work or school at 8 am, and you live about 10 minutes away from work, so you try to leave your house at 7:45 am so that you can drive there, park your car, and be at your desk at 7:59 ready to roll. If you leave your house at 7:45 am, do you wake up at 7:40 and roll out of bed and get ready? No – don't do that! Typically, if you have to leave your home at 7:45 am, how much earlier would you wake up? The average answer is 45 minutes. Some people take a little bit less and others a little bit longer. Why do you wake up 45 minutes before? You would say it is your job and is important. You have to wake up and brush, shower, clean and comb, eat something, pack your stuff and dress nicely. You have to take it seriously. That is why you invest the time and give it importance and treat it as something important.
How you prepare for it shows the importance. It is an event and you prepare for it. Compare this to
ṣalāt'l-fajr. I realize that is the most drastic comparison. Let me explain to you the proceedings of
ṣalāt'l-fajr. First, before you sleep you have the route from your bed to the sink completely mapped out so that you can get do it with your eyes closed. Why? When you wake up for
fajr,you don't like to turn on all of the lights because it takes the sleepiness away and you want to pray
fajr and go to sleep. You make it to the sink and have perfected the art of the 15 second
wuḍū' – it is like a magic trick. You make your way back over to your bed, and you pray next to your bed and then engage in a procedure I like to call: stop, drop and roll over. You would pray on your bed if possible.
How sad is that? That is the condition of our prayers. I'll give another example from sports. When we watch a game, what is the quality of our prayer? First of all, it's a blessing if somebody actually prays during the game. Even if they do pray during the game, what is the quality of that prayer? We wait for a time-out or a commercial and then hurry. We leave the volume a little bit on so that we can hear if something big happens during the game. That is how we pray, unfortunately.
I joke just to keep it light, but we have to realize what a tragedy it is we pray like this, especially compared to how we seriously we take everything else. The second area of improvement to gain quality in the
ṣalāh is to treat
ṣalāh as something important. Make
ṣalāh an important part of your day.
What that involves is to prepare and get ready. Make
wuḍū' properly – it is an act of worship that leads you into the prayer and puts you in the right mindset. Pray when it is the time of the prayer. Don't keep putting it off. Dress appropriately. Don't pray in your pajamas. Like we have work clothes, the Prophet
had clothes for the
masjid. When he would come home, he would take them off and hang them up nicely. When it was time for the prayer, he would put them on.
There is a chapter in the
Sunan of Abu Dāwūd which describes the preparation of the Prophet
for prayer: The Chapter of the Diligence the Prophet
in regards to Prayer. The Prophet
was very casual and friendly and loving at home. It describes how when the time for prayer would come and the
adhān would be called, the Prophet
would become a stranger to his family.
I'll be honest with you because these types of discussions are meant for that type of honest talk and heart to hearts. When I first read that, I didn't know how to understand it. What does it mean that he became a stranger? It's kind of harsh. Then you realize when you are responsible for something what that means. When you have to go to work in the morning at 7:45 am and you have little kids when they aren't old enough to be at the age when they want you to go to work but at the same time are old enough to know you are going to work and don't want you to go. What do they do when you try to leave? They start to pick up on the signs – the picking up of the briefcase and the keys rattling – and they cut you off at the door. What happens when you try to leave? It's like a scene from an epic movie and the most epic cry of all time. “No, baba, don't leave!” They cry and scream like it's the most tragic moment in the history of humanity. I'm going to ask a very serious question now. What do you do? You put them aside and tell your wife to come and get him and then go out the door. Does that mean you don't love your child? You are doing this for the benefit of your child. He doesn't grasp and understand it, but you are doing it for his benefit.
Just like we take work that seriously because we understand the benefit in our jobs and work, the Messenger of Allāh
when it was time for the prayers, he became a stranger to his family. If I don't maintain this, then the same family for whom I would leave that prayer would eventually probably crumble and fall away. I have to take care of my
ṣalāh. It is for me and my family. The Prophet
would become a stranger to his family. Everything else was secondary. Work has to wait, the phone call has to wait. He
would make
wuḍū' properly and put on nice clothes and go to the
masjid early. To bring quality and
khushū' into our prayers, we have to treat
ṣalāh like an event and important part of our day. We have to learn to do this.
Ibn Kathīr (
raḥimahullāh) says, “
Khushū' will be achieved by the person who empties his heart for the prayer.” One tip and recommendation the scholars that scholars would give and would practice – which is especially important for our times, which is the age of distraction where your one phone has 18 different types of tones to it; a text message alert sounds different from a phone call and an e-mail, Twitter alert, and Facebook update – when you are getting ready to pray
ṣalāh, put away all of your distractions. Turn off the television and turn off your computer screen. Put your phone on silent and put it away. Put everything away for 60 seconds or even 30 seconds and sit down and be quiet. When you do this, you feel like your mind is clear and not as cluttered. Then say, “
Allāhu akbar” and then see the quality of your prayer. Put everything aside and free up your mind.
The third area of improvement, and this is the most important and most drastic in terms of change and effect is:
3. Understand the basic structure and technicalities of prayer (fiqh), which will give you the outline of the ṣalāh. The most important thing, which is actually the life and spirit of the prayer is when you understand what you are reading and saying in your ṣalāh.
Ṣalāh is about reflection and pondering. It is about comprehending and understanding. It is about feeling what you are saying and then delving into it and being absorbed by the experience of the
ṣalāh. This can only be done when you truly appreciate and understand what you are saying in the
ṣalāh.
I'm going to give you an example. I've been speaking for an hour. Most of you have been listening and paying attention. There's a very simple reason why you have been listening and paying attention and why I have been able to continue speaking with so much energy for an hour. I don't feel tired or exhausted, and you have been listening attentively for an hour. There's a simple explanation of that: I am enjoying talking about this because I understand, feel, and believe what I am saying. It's from my gut and I believe in it. You are listening to what I am saying for an hour because you understand every single word that is coming out of my mouth. You grasp it and understand it and know what I'm saying and are able to comprehend and digest it fully.
Imagine if instead of speaking in a language that I understand and you understand, I had been reading something off a piece of paper or reciting something I memorized in a foreign language, let's say Chinese. Imagine if I had been reciting Chinese poetry to you for an hour, how long before you would stop paying attention? 10, 20, 30, 60 seconds? Only a generous person would even listen for 60 seconds. You wouldn't be able to pay attention or focus, let alone conceptualizing and processing it and reflecting on it and pondering it. You wouldn't even be listening to what I was saying.
If I was the one reading it to you and had spent months memorizing 30 minutes of Chinese poetry, I would start reading it but if I don't understand it, in about 3-4 minutes I would think it's the most pointless thing I've done in my life.
I apologize if I offend anyone for what I am about to say. This is the part that stings. As silly and ridiculous and preposterous as that example was, how different is our
ṣalāh from that example? We stand up in
ṣalāh day after day and
ṣalāh after
ṣalāh and read through our prayers not understanding, not appreciating, not reflecting, and not pondering on a single word. How are we supposed to focus in that type of a
ṣalāh? Where is the focus magically going to come from? It won't.
The most important thing we have to do to grasp some quality in our prayers is to begin to understand what we read and say within our prayers. I don't just mean read translations but reflect and ponder. Fully grasp what we are reading, saying, and reciting in our prayers. When we do that, the entire experience of
ṣalāh changes. It's a different game altogether.
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Examples of Understanding Statements in Ṣalāh[/h]I'll end here by giving you at least one example of how that changes.
Allāhu akbar
“
Allāhu akbar” is typically translated as “Allāh is the Greatest.” We are going to tweak that just a little bit. The word '
akbar' is the comparative and not the superlative. Those are technical grammatical terms. Let me break it down simpler than that. For instance if you were to say, “Zayd is faster than Khalid, but Ahmed is the fastest,” 'faster' is comparative and 'fastest' is superlative.
Akbar is the comparative and not the superlative, so “
Allāhu akbar” doesn't translate to “Allāh is the greatest,” it translates to “Allāh is Greater.”
To fully understand this example: If I was to say, “Zayd is faster than…”, you are waiting for me to continue and finish it. When we say, “
Allāhu akbar,” we are saying, “Allāh is greater than ___.” The purpose of the blank is a rhetorical function and part of the
balāghah of classical Arabic. It is very commonly found in the Qur'ān where there is a statement that demands an object and that object is intentionally not provided and a blank is left for you. The purpose of that blank is that you are supposed to fill in the blank for yourself with whatever it is that is distracting you from your
ṣalāh at that moment.
Allāh is greater than everything and anything, but the reflection and thought process at that time is: Allāh is Greater and more important than whatever is distracting me from my prayer at this very moment. If my phone is ringing, Allāh is Greater than that phone call. If my friend is waiting for me outside in the car, Allāh is Greater and more important than my friend waiting for me in the car. If the restaurant is about to close in 20 minutes, Allāh is Greater and more important than the food in the restaurant. If the game is on the television, Allāh is Greater and more important than the game on the television. Anything and everything that could be distracting me from my prayer at that moment, Allāh is Greater and more important than that thing.
If you ask somebody what the reflection on “
Allāhu akbar” is, they may say it is how they start their prayer. We are realizing that even “
Allāhu akbar” has a reflection built into it. You are even supposed to think about something when you say “
Allāhu akbar”. There is a focus and
khushū' to “
Allāhu akbar.” The next time you stand up to pray and say “
Allāhu akbar” and go through the mental process of thinking that Allāh is Greater andmore important than those things distracting you, then see the quality of saying “
Allāhu akbar” and how long it takes you to just say “
Allāhu akbar”. It will change your life.
Because you guys have been so good to me, I'll share one quick little example for you.
Subḥāna Rabbi al-a'la
What position do we say this in?
Sujūd. How absolutely perfect is my Lord, my Master, who is
al-a'la.
Al-a'la is superlative because of the “
al”and means “the highest, the most exalted.” Reflect on this fact. Typically when we make
sujūd, we rush the words. What does it mean? How absolutely perfect is my Lord who is the highest and most exalted.
What is the reflection here? What position do you say this in?
Sujūd, when you are putting the most respected part of our body (the face) on the ground where somebody was standing with their feet. This is the lowest position possible for a human being. We put ourselves in the lowest position possible and say, “Allāh is the Highest and Most Exalted.” The next time you make
sujūd, reflect on this and see the quality of your
sajdah.
This is a small sample of what happens when we appreciate the meaning and understand what we are saying within our prayers.
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Closing Note[/h]As a closing note, I want to pose one question to everybody. The answer to this question will give you the answer on whether or not you have to make some type of an effort to improve the quality and focus of your prayers. Ask yourself:
When is the last time you experienced the ṣalāh? That when you prayed, you felt like it changed your life and solved your problem and gave you the answer to your question. When was the last time that happened? If the answer isn't something that's very good or something that you like, then don't you think it is about time we make some drastic improvement in our prayers?