Salaah and Zakaah (A non-scholarly interpretation) REVISED
Man needs salaah, as time and society changed Allah made salaah incumbent due to the nature of our society and to help us reflect and maintain a balance.
We all wish we could reach out far back into prehistoric times with the civilisations and tribes that recieved Islam, and see which practices were recommended by Allah upon them.
We take a simple modern day example of remote peoples living in remote areas of the world such as the south american amazon, african and indonesia "jungles". I quote the word jungle since it is at many times used in a derogatory manner and by no means to we wish to portray this upon these peoples. It seems salaah helps us maintain certain levels of faith and also rise to other levels of faith in Allah.
Just so the "Bushmen" and "Aborigines" and the remote peoples mentioned above have their rituals which provide similar effects as salaah.
Prayer and charity plays a major role in the lives of muslims. It is mentioned numerous times in the Holy Quraan and clear guidelines are defined for how it should be practised within the Sunnah. The simple truth though is that many muslims that declare the Kalimah shahaadah including myself do not even come close to aquiring the fruits of the benefits of these aspects of the Shariah.
It is wise to cover salaah first. In a technical sense, salaah is much more than just meditation. With the instructions relayed to us by Rasullulah (SAW) within the sunnah we need to be in a certain state before we enter the mode of salaah, recite surah Fatigha and other thikrs and salawaat. We also need to perform certain movements and actions during the course of salaah.
In essense salaah allows us to focus our thoughts completely on Allah for a specific time, and from many peoples experiences allows one to reflect more easily (im still discovering and learning salaah everyday though).
The shariah (islamic code of life) instructs us to perform salaah 5 times a day at specific times of the day. We should analyse each of these times and reflect upon the knowledge and wisdom of Allah for selecting these times of day later.
Let us look at what we need to cover:
- intention
- actions
- spiritual states of mind
- times of day
- states of mind
Let us all share in this discussion to be continued soon inshallah...
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