Saturday, February 23, 2013

What Is Salah?

Salah (or salat) is one of the Five Pillars of Islam.

While the Arabic term salah is often translated simply as “prayer,” it usually refers to Islam’s mandatory forms of ritual worship, consisting of prescribed recitations (in Arabic) along with specified bodily positions (standing, bowing, prostrating, and sitting). Before praying, a Muslim must perform ablution (ceremonial washing). Muslims are required to pray facing the Ka’ba in Mecca, and women must position themselves behind men (although it is recommended that women stay at home during prayer).

The Qur’an mentions only three daily prayers:

Qur’an 11:114—And keep up prayer in the two parts of the day and in the first hours of the night; surely good deeds take away evil deeds; this is a reminder to the mindful.

Qur’an 17:78-79—Establish regular prayers—at the sun’s decline till the darkness of the night, and the morning prayer and reading: for the prayer and reading in the morning carry their testimony. And pray in the small watches of the morning: (it would be) an additional prayer (or spiritual profit) for thee: soon will thy Lord raise thee to a Station of Praise and Glory!

Qur’an 24:58—O you who believe! let those whom your right hands possess and those of you who have not attained to puberty ask permission of you three times; before the morning prayer, and when you put off your clothes at midday in summer, and after the prayer of the nightfall; these are three times of privacy for you.

However, in the Hadith, Muhammad requires his followers to perform five daily prayers (suggesting, perhaps, that Muslim prayer practices were modified sometime between the compilation of the Qur’an and the compilation of various Hadith collections more than a century later):

Sahih al-Bukhari 528—Narrated Abu Hurairah: I heard Allah’s Messenger saying, “If there was a river at the door of anyone of you and he took a bath in it five times a day, would you notice any dirt on him?” They said, “Not a trace of dirt would be left.” The Prophet added, “That is the example of the five (daily compulsory) Salat (prayers) with which Allah blots out (annuls) evil deeds.”

The prescribed times of the five daily prayers are:

Fajr—near dawn.
Zuhr—just after midday.
Asr—late afternoon.
Maghrib—just after sunset.
Isha—after dark.

According to Muhammad, prayer is disrupted or annulled by the passing of a dog, a woman, or a donkey:

Jami At-Tirmidhi 338—Abu Dharr said that Allah’s Messenger said: “When a man performs Salat, and there is nothing in front of him like the post of a saddle, or a camel saddle, then his Salat is severed by (passing of) a black dog, a woman, and a donkey.” It was said to Abu Dharr: “What is the problem with the black dog rather than the red or white one?” He said: “O my nephew! I asked Allah’s Messenger just as you have asked me. He said: ‘The black dog is a Shaitan (devil).’”

Interestingly, the Qur’an declares that Allah prays and worships:

Qur’an 33:43—He [i.e., Allah] it is who prays for you and His angels too, to bring you forth out of the darkness into the light, for He is merciful to the believers.

Qur’an 33:56—Verily, God and His angels pray for the prophet. O ye who believe! pray for him and salute him with a salutation!

(Note: Muslim translators often mistranslate these verses in order to conceal the fact that Allah prays. However, both verses say that Allah performs salah. For more on Allah’s prayers, see Sam Shamoun’s “Islam and the Prayers of Allah.”)

The following video is a step by step guide to salah, produced by Muslims:

11 comments:

Tom ta tum Tom said...

WAIT! WAIT! The perfection of Salah is not to be found in the un-holy Qur'an? But the un-holy Qur'an was written in GOLD, in Heaven, on al-Juseph Smyyth's gold PLATES and is kept perpetually (and hermetically) sealed in a mayonnaise jar on Mrs. al-Hellman's back porch!!

OH, YOU WHO BELIEVE!! This redneck Buck Ahrri character must be brought (peacefully - of course) to Islamic JUSTICE!! He has DARED to add to the prescribed prescriptions of the great prescriber of inscriptions! ISSUE A FATWA!! BLASPHEMY! SHIRK! SALAD!! DESSERT!!

Somebody obviously has their Salat mixed-up with their salami.

May your prayers be NOT severed by donkeys, women, camels, black dogs of shaitan or the heartbreak of psoriasis.

ALLAHU OHYYNKKSMOOR! ALLAHU OHYYNKKSMOOR!

KAFIR AND PROUD!!

Anonymous said...

The following verse...

Qur’an 33:56—Verily, God and His angels pray for the prophet. O ye who believe! pray for him and salute him with a salutation!

...would seem to contradict the divine character of the Creator of the universe, and also point to the warning in 2John 11

For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker in his evil deeds. 2John 11

simple_truth said...

bob, you mean 2 john 1:11.

Atheist for life said...

Atheist
They waste @3.5 billion man hours a day in prayer and what has 1400 years gotten them? Allah sure has not been listening to them has he?

Anonymous said...

simple_truth,

'2John 11' (as per Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible) and '2John 1:11' are the same thing, since there is only one chapter in 2John

pakteh adam said...

33:43 "He it is Who sends blessings on you, as do His angels, that He may bring you out from the depths of Darkness into Light: and He is Full of Mercy to the Believers."

33:56 "Allah and His angels send blessings on the Prophet: O ye that believe! Send ye blessings on him, and salute him with all respect."

Unknown said...

YOUR INTERPRETATIONS ARE FULL OF LIES!
YOUR TRANSLATIONS ARE FULL OF LIES!

WHAT YOU'VE TRANSLATED AS 33:43 & 33:56 CAN BE VERIFIED THROUGH WHAT PAKTEH ADAM HAS SAID!

C'MON , BE A MAN! AND SPEAK THE TRUTH! YOUR BLOG IS A WHOLE BUNCH OF LIES!

Unknown said...

Why do people ridicule Islam and the Qur'an? Muslims, Jews and Christians worship the same God. They have the same prophets, including Jesus. Only Christianity believes that Jesus is the promised savior, Jews and Muslims believe he is a Prophet, but they do believe him. If you're all worshiping the same God, what's the problem? I am not including any extremist or radical groups in this, only those who attempt to follow the true religions. Ridiculing someone's religion is ignorant.

Thomas J. Hennigan said...

To Ruth Boyd:
There are fundamental differences between Allah and the God of the Bible, be it what is found in the Old Testament or the New. How can we know whether Allah is the same God as the God of the Bible? By examining his character and his behavior. Some qualities attributed to Allah do coincide with those of Yahveh in the Bible, such as creator, all-powerful, eternal etc. However,if you closely analyze much of what the Quran says about Allah, it is a kind of projection of the character of Muhammad, who is basically a gangster. Allah seems to have originally been the moon god of the pagan Arabs, with some aspects taken from the Bible. He is merciful tooward believers (muslims) and harsh to nonbelievers. He seems to delight in filling hell with all those who don't want to accept him and submit to him. He certainly doesn't know the 10 commandments, especially, the 4th, the 5th, the 6th, the 7th, the 8th,the 9th and the 10th. Now the content of the ten commandments can be deduced by human reason, something obviouly held by St. Paul in Romans ch. 1. He is totally arbitrary and "the best of schemers". I don't see how such a god who seems more a maniac than anything else could possibly be the same God as the one revealed in the Bible.

MooreSecrets said...

One thing I can tell you about the Quran, and I have been studying it for almost 30 years now, is that whatever you want to find in it you will find in it. As it says "...He (Allah) misleads many thereby and He guides many thereby. And He misleads not except the defiantly disobedient.."(2:26)

Unknown said...

Chapter (33) sūrat l-aḥzāb (The Combined Forces)


Sahih International: It is He who confers blessing upon you, and His angels [ask Him to do so] that He may bring you out from darknesses into the light. And ever is He, to the believers, Merciful.