In the Name of Allah, the Gracious,
the Merciful
In Verse 2.238, the
Qur'aan directs the believers to stand in Salaat, completely in devotion
to Allah, and to Allah alone. It directs them therein, moreover, to
protect all their prayers (Salawaat) in like manner.
Do we, as Muslims, follow
those divine directions? The sad fact is: most of us do not! Many of us do go
through the ritual of Salaat, but our minds wander. They dwell on matters
pertaining to our businesses, workplaces, neighbours, relatives, families - in
short, to any sort of worldly affair. Our thoughts seldom remain devoted to
Allah.
And to make the matter worse, we
have come to believe that such straying of thoughts, while offering
Salaat, is a normal thing! But what does the Qur'aan say? It
forebodes sorrow, distress or trouble for those who are
negligent/inattentive in their prayers!! [107.4,5]
And if we do believe in the Qur'aan
- as we vehemently say we do - we are doomed to suffer in terms
of those Verses in Surah 107. And do we need any proof that we
are suffering, in this very worldly life? Hardly. Our position, as a
community, in the polity of nations is despicable, as any one can see. We
have become the favourite whipping boys for any Tom, Dick or Harry
everyshere in the world.
It is grievously wrong on our part
therefore to treat the straying of our thoughts as something normal. We've got
to do something about it. What do we do?
-
First and foremost, we stop
thinking that it is normal for our thoughts to wander while in a ritual
Salaat.
-
Second, we realise that our
thoughts wander because our Faith is superficial. The Faith has not gone
deep into our hearts. We're hardly interested in studying the Qur'aan,
the Creator's Manual for the right conduct of our worldly
lives. We've to shed our indifference to this most important Book that every
human being is duty-bound to read and study.
-
Third, we've to shorten our
Salaat, till at least the Faith really enters our hearts. Allah would look
to the quality, rather than to the quantity, of our prayers. The
longer the duration of the prayers, the greater would be the tendency of our
minds to wander. Our Wise Lord has therefore prescribed only short ritual
prayers after long intervals of day time.
Another thing, that has contributed
to our undoing, is our blatant disregard to the
divine edicts:
We have to ponder deeply on these
edicts. Aren't most of us violating them, in letter and in
spirit?
Mohammad Shafi
