بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
The importance of Salah – Sh Tawfique Chaudhry
The Shaykh opened up the talk with the famous hadith:
The Prophet (sallalahu alayhi wa sallam) said: “The first
thing for which a person will be brought to account on the Day of
Resurrection will be his prayer. If it is sound, he will be successful, and if
it is lacking in any way, he will be doomed. If his obligatory prayers are
lacking, the Lord will say: “Look and see whether My slave has any voluntary
prayers which may be used to make up what is lacking in his obligatory
prayers.” Then all his deeds will be examined and dealt with in the same way.’”
[Sunan al-Tirmidhi no. 413; see also Saheeh
al-Jaami’, 2020]
Ammar bin Yasir RadiyAllahu `anhu narrates
that he heard the Prophet (sallalahu alayhi wa sallam) saying:
"When a person finishes his salat, he gets 1/10th, 1/9th,
1/8th, 1/7th, 1/6th, 1/5th, 1/4th,
1/3rd or ½ of the maximum reward (according to the quality of
salat performed by him)."(Abu Dawud, Nasai)
The Shaykh then used this as a starting point. If only a
1/10th, if that, is accepted and as a result only a 1/10th
of all your deeds are accepted, it clearly shows the importance of salah in our
lives.
The Shaykh said that we have got to make our salah our best
ibadah and we need to think as to whether our salah is our best deed or our ‘other’
deeds are our best deeds. We could do all the good deeds in the world, for the
sake of Allah, like fasting, charity but if our salah is lacking then how do we
accept Allah, the Great, to accept our deeds? Our deeds will be decreased to
our salah.
‘Our life is destroyed if we destroy our salah’. What a
statement SubhanAllah! Anyone who has an atom’s weight of imaan in their hearts
will fast in Ramadan but then the reality is that they don’t pray; how do they
expect the fasting to be accepted?
Ibn Al Qayyim said: The scholars of Islam are in complete
agreement that the one who does not pray, is worse than the one who drinks and
commits zina, all at the same time. SubhanAllah!
Salah is a very serious matter. The Prophet, sallalahu
alayhi wa sallam ordered us to pray because Allah tied all our actions to our
salah. What do we do? We give far more importance to everything when salah
judges the validity/invalidity of the rest of our actions.
The Prophets were sent for three reasons:
1.
Imaan
2.
Salah
3.
Zakat
The believers are only
those who, when Allah is mentioned, their hearts become fearful, and when His
verses are recited to them, it increases them in faith; and upon their Lord
they rely -The ones who establish prayer, and from what We have provided them,
they spend. [Anfal:2-3]
Allah didn’t intend anything but
salah in our lives. The first obligation on anyone who takes leadership of the
ummah is to establish salah.
Salah is not just a means of
guidance, it’s a means of sanctity and tranquillity.
The Prophet, sallalahu alayhi wa
sallam said, “Made beloved to me from your world are women and perfume, and the
coolness of my eyes is in the prayer.” (Ahmad and An-Nasa ‘i)
Everything else follows after
salalh. The Prophet sallalahu alayhi wa sallam did more ijtihad in salah to a level
that was known that he did ijtihad in any other way.
The Prophet sallalahu alayhi wa sallam
said, "Jibril (Gabriel) descended and led me in prayer, then I prayed with
him, then I prayed with him, then I prayed with him, then I prayed with him, -
counting on his fingers five prayers. [Muslim]
This is proof that salah existed
beforehand. There was no Prophet of God except that they prayed 5 daily
prayersd.
A beautiful statement that we
should all ponder on
Allah loved this ummah so He wanted us to pray 50 salat but out of His
Mercy, He reduced it
WE HAVE TO STOP SEEING OUR SALAH
AS A BURDEN ON US!!!
Salah is a cure to madness to the
world we see today. When we think of our salah, we should think about the
excitement of meeting Allah in our salah. Nothing is more pleasurable than
meeting Allah
The Prophet, sallalahu alayhi wa
sallam said, “Whoever loves to meet Allah, Allah loves to meet him.
Whoever is averse to meeting Allah, Allah is averse to meeting him.” [Tirmidhi]
The Shaykh then went on to
explains ways in which we can attain this love to meet Allah. He explained a
few differences between obligator and non obligatory prayers so we can attempt
the non obligatory ones without over thinking the requirements for it.
Obligatory vs. Non Obligatory
1.
In obligatory prayers, you need to face qiblah
and for non obligatory ones, you don’t.
2.
In obligatory prayers, you can’t hold a child
but in non obligatory prayers, you can (this is for people who can’t keep their
kids away from them)
3.
In the obligatory prayer, you can’t hold a
mushaf when reciting but in the non obligatory prayers, you can hold a mushaf
4.
It is better to stand in the obligatory prayers,
if you are able whereas in the non obligatory prayers, even if you are able,
you can sit down (the reward is halved though)
The Shaykh then told us to think about what we ‘dislike’
about the night prayer and verbalise our issues and also verbalise everything
that is on our minds before salah and he gave us sincere advice to learn about
the Qur’an.
With that I end this post. All good is from Allah and any
mistakes are from myself
