Prayer In Islam

The Sahifa has been called a `prayer manual', but this description may be misleading to Western readers not familiar with the different varieties of prayer in Islam. The best introduction to these - as well as to the contents of the Sahifa - is provided by Padwick's Muslim Devotions which also analyzes the major themes common to all supplications and explains many of the important Arabic terms employed. Given the existence of Padwick's study, we can be excused for providing only a few comments to situate supplication in the larger context of Muslim prayer and to suggest the importance of the Sahifa for gaining an understanding of Islam as a religion.
`Prayer' in Islam can be divided into obligatory and voluntary. The obligatory prayer includes the daily ritual or canonical prayer (salat) which the Prophet called the `pillar of Islam', and various occasional prayers such as the Friday congregational prayer (according to most opinions), which need not concern us here. Nothing is more basic than the daily prayers to Muslim practice except the testimony of faith or shahada: "There is no god but God and Muhammad is His Messenger.'
Every Muslim must perform the salat five times a day, exceptions being made only for children and for women during periods when they cannot fulfill the requirements of ritual purity. Even the bedridden must pray the salat if they are conscious and coherent, though they are excused from the physical movements which normally accompany it. `Perform the salat!' is one of the most common injunctions in the Qur'an.
Most of the many forms of recommended prayer can be classified either as salat, dhikr or du'a'. The recommended salat involves the same movements and recitations that are contained in the obligatory salat while the Prophet's sunna sets down various times during the day or occasions when various specific salats may be performed. In addition, the worshiper is free to perform salat as he desires, and thus it is related that Imam Zayn al-'Abidin used to perform one thousand supererogatory cycles of salat every night, in imitation of his grandfather 'Ali.
Dhikr - which means literally `remembrance' or `mention' and which is frequently translated as `invocation' - is the mention of a name or names of God, often in the form of the repetition of a Qur'anic formula such as There is no god but God, Praise belongs to God, Glory be to God, or God is great. Most Muslims recite such formulas a set number of times after completing an obligatory ritual prayer.
Fifteen Qur'anic verses command dhikr of Allah or the `name of Allah', emphasizing the fact that this practice involves a verbal mention of a divine name. If the Shari'a does not make dhikr an incumbent act, this has to do with the fact that the Qur'anic command to remember God was not given a single, specific form by the Prophet's sunna, in contrast to the command to perform the salat. In other words, everyone agrees that it is important to perform dhikr and that the Prophet practiced it constantly.
But the Prophet never made any specific form of dhikr mandatory for the faithful; on the contrary, he practiced many different forms and seems to have suggested a great variety of forms to his Companions in keeping with their needs.
From earliest times the sources confirm the power of dhikr to provide for human psychological and spiritual needs and to influence activity. It is not difficult to understand that reciting ya rahman ya rahim (`O All-merciful, O All-compassionate') will have a different effect upon the believer than reciting, la hawla wa-la quwwata illa bi-llah al- `ali al-`azim (`There is no power and no strength save in God, the All-high, the All-mighty'). Spiritual teachers eventually developed a science of different adhkar (plural of dhikr) appropriate for all the states of the soul.
Du'a' or `supplication' is closely connected to dhikr, such that it is often difficult to make a distinction between the two. The term means literally `to call upon' and it is commanded by the Qur'an in several suggestive verses, including the following:
Supplicate your Lord humbly and secretly; He loves not transgressors. (7:55)
Supplicate Allah or supplicate the All-merciful. Whichever you supplicate - to Him belong the most beautiful names. (17:110)
Supplicate God, making your religion His sincerely, though the unbelievers be averse. (40:14)
Your Lord has said: `Supplicate Me and I will respond to you. Surely those who wax too proud to worship Me shall enter Gehenna utterly abject.' (40:60)
And when My servants question thee concerning Me - I am near to respond to the supplication of the supplicator when he supplicates Me. (2:186)
Collections of hadith, both Sunni and Shi'ite, devote chapters to the benefits of supplication; the following sayings of the Prophet from Sunni sources are typical:
Supplication is the pith of worship. (TIRMIDHI)
When one of you supplicates, he should not say, `O God, forgive me if Thou wilt', but he should be firm in his asking and make his desire great, for what God gives is nothing great for him. (MUSLIM)
God will respond to the servant as long as he does not supplicate for anything sinful or for breaking the ties of the womb, and as long as he does not ask for an immediate response. (MUSLIM)
Each of you should ask your Lord for all your needs; he should even ask Him for the thong of his sandal when it breaks. (TIRMIDHI)
Shi'ite sources provide some of the same sayings while adding many more. For example:
The Prophet related that God says: `O My servants, all of you are misguided except him whom I guide, so ask Me for guidance, and I will guide you. All of you are poor except him whom I enrich, so ask Me for riches, and I will provide for you. All of you are sinners except him whom I release, so ask Me to forgive you, and I will forgive you.'
The Prophet said: `Supplication is the weapon of the man of faith, the centrepole of religion, and the light of the heavens and the earth.'
`Ali was asked: `Which speech is best in God's eyes?' He replied: `A great amount of dhikr, pleading (tadarru'), and supplication.'
`Ali said: `Four things work to a man's benefit and not against him: faith and thanksgiving, for God says:
What would God do with chastising you, if you are thankful and have faith? (4:147);
asking forgiveness, for He says:
God would never chastise them with thee among them; God would never chastise them while they prayed forgiveness (8:33);
and supplication, for He says:
My Lord esteems you not at all were it not for your supplication (25:77).
Husayn said: `The Prophet used to raise his hands when he implored and supplicated, like a man in misery begging for food.'
Imam Muhammad al-Baqir said: `God loves nothing better than that His servants ask from Him.'
In short, supplicating or calling upon God is to address Him with one's praise, thanksgiving, hopes, and needs. It is `prayer' in the personal sense commonly understood from the term by contemporary Christians. It forms a basic part of the religious life, but like dhikr, though commanded by the Qur'an in general terms, it does not take a specific form in the injunctions of the Shari'a because of its personal and inward nature.
Everyone must remember God and supplicate Him, but this can hardly be legislated, since it pertains to the secret relationship between a human being and his or her Lord. The salat, however, is the absolute minimum which God will accept from the faithful as the mark of their faith and their membership in the community.
Its public side is emphasized by the physical movements which accompany it and the fact that its form and contents are basically the same for all worshipers, even if its private side is shown by the fact that it can be performed wherever a person happens to find himself. In contrast dhikr and supplication are totally personal.
But the private devotional lives of the great exemplars of religion often become public, since they act as models for other human beings. The `sunna' of the Prophet is precisely the practices of the highest exemplification of human goodness made into an ideal which everyone should emulate, and the supplications which the Prophet used to make are part of his sunna. When he recited them aloud, his Companions would remember and memorize them. They also used to come to him and ask him for supplications which they could recite on various occasions and for different purposes.
To the Prophet's supplications, the Shi'ites add the supplications of the Imams, beginning with `Ali. Nowadays the most widely employed of the comprehensive prayer manuals, which contain a wide variety of supplications from all the Imams and for every occasion, is probably Mafatih al-jinan (`Keys to the Gardens of Paradise') by `Abbas Qumi

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