{"id":2889,"date":"2022-09-09T23:13:47","date_gmt":"2022-09-09T22:13:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.salahadeenmosque.org.uk\/?p=2889"},"modified":"2022-09-09T23:13:47","modified_gmt":"2022-09-09T22:13:47","slug":"prayer-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salahadeenmosque.org.uk\/index.php\/2022\/09\/09\/prayer-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Prayer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>It is obvious to everyone that prayer has a greater rank in\nIslam than any other act of worship, and it is the second pillar of Islam after\nbearing witness to the Oneness of Allah and the Prophethood of the Prophet\n(peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Prayer is the foundation of religion. A person&#8217;s share in\nhis religion depends on his attachment to his prayers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was the foundation of all religions before Islam. Allah\nrequired all the Prophets (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon them) to\nproclaim it to their Ummahs and to pay attention to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are many virtues and greatness of prayer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>First, prayer should be regarded as an obligation and an\nimportant act of worship, not a daily habit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you are doing it as a habit, be careful and examine\nyourself because the prayer must be reflected in your actions and behaviour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Secondly: Prayer is the foundation of religion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be\nupon him) said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe head of all commandments is Islam, and its pillar is\nprayer, and its pillar is expedition.\u201d That is, it is the sustainer of all\nother good deeds and worships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Also, the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon\nhim) said<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cGood news for those who go to\nthe mosque in congregation in darkness, for them there is light.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Therefore, my brothers and sisters, prayer is the greatest\nact of worship that supports all other acts of worship. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thirdly, Prayer raises the rank of the believer<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThere is no believing servant\nwho prostrates himself to Allah except that Allah will write down for him good\nand erase his evil and exalt him in rank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dear brothers and sisters, we need to appreciate that the purpose\nof our life is to worship Allah SWT and that the eternal abode we will go to\nwill be judged on how well we do this. Our rank for eternity is determined by\nacts of worship such as salat and therefore the day ought to pivot around this\nfact of life and not the other way around where life determines whether or not\nwe make it for prayer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Next the Prayer calms the heart and mind<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Messenger of Allaah (peace\nand blessings of Allaah be upon him) used to say: \u201cO Bilaal, get up and call to\nprayer and calm our hearts and minds with the call.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dear brothers and sisters, who doesn\u2019t want to have peace of\nmind in times of hardship or difficulty. We need to understand that the power\nof prayer isn\u2019t just limited to what we can achieve in the life after death but\nthat the power of prayer is also in the life we are currently living. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Prayer holds that power in that it can bring you peace and tranquility\nin this life and it can also benefit you in this life as well as bring you\nsuccess when you return to Allah SWT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally, the imam mentioned the following hadith which is translated\nto say:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Prophet (peace and blessings\nof Allaah be upon him) said: The first question that will be asked of the\nservants on the Day of Resurrection is their deeds of prayer If he has a\ndefect, then Allah will say to the angels: Look and see if he has a Sunnah\nprayer to perform for him in addition to the obligatory prayers. Saheeh\nal-Jaami&#8217; (2020).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This reminder concludes with 4 practical tips we can all\ntake away to help us in prayer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Preparation. Give yourself 60-90 seconds before\nthe start of each prayer to flush all your thoughts out of your head. Whether\nthis is about work, wife, kids or something else, your brain is one of those\nthings which betrays you in prayer so get into the habit of leaving no thought\noutstanding before prayer begins.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Visualisation. Always try to remind yourself\nthat you are standing in front of Allah SWT. Another way to look at this is, if\nyou are standing in front of your boss or your teacher then you don\u2019t fidget,\nyawn or mindlessly think of anything else but the meeting you are having. You\ngive that person the respect because they are a position of authority over you.\nThe same applies here. You are stood in front of your Creator, the Creator of\neverything you know and He can see you at that very moment and is aware of your\nSalah. Use that knowledge to maintain etiquette and focus as you recite in\nfront of Him.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Persistence. During the salat, you are in a\nconstant battle with your mind to remain focused on what you are doing. It is\nthe role of Shaitaan to distract you away from this focus so counteract this by\ndoing things that keep your focus. One example is staring on the ground in the\nsame square inch roughly where your head touches when you are in sujood. Don\u2019t\nclose the eyes or let them wander onto what coloured socks the brother next to\nyou is wearing. Another is learning the word-for-word meaning of Sura Fatihah\nand at a minimum the couple of ayats you read after Sura Fatihah so that when\nyou read each and every word, you can hear it\u2019s meaning in your head and again\nvisualise what you are saying to your Lord.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>And lastly, you should pace your recitation,\nit\u2019s not a race to the finish and by the way the difference between the fastest\nrecitation of salat and the normal-paced, pleasant and focused recitation is\nonly a minute or two, surely your time isn\u2019t that precious outside of your\nmeeting with Allah SWT that you can\u2019t spare that extra minute to recite with a\ngood pace and focus?<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is obvious to everyone that prayer has a greater rank in Islam than any other act of worship, and it is the second pillar of Islam after bearing witness to the Oneness of Allah and the Prophethood of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him). Prayer is the foundation of religion. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_regular_price":[],"currency_symbol":[],"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermon"],"blocksy_meta":[],"post_slider_layout_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","post_slider_layout_landscape_large":"","post_slider_layout_portrait_large":"","post_slider_layout_square_large":"","post_slider_layout_landscape":"","post_slider_layout_portrait":"","post_slider_layout_square":"","full":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/salahadeenmosque.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/salahadeenmosque.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/salahadeenmosque.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salahadeenmosque.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salahadeenmosque.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/salahadeenmosque.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2889\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/salahadeenmosque.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salahadeenmosque.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/salahadeenmosque.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}