Mandatory prayer

In all three prophetic religions, prayer, both personal and ritual, plays a central role. It is typical of Judaism, Christianity and Islam that in order to find God human beings do not primarily go ‘inwards’ in meditation as in most religions of Indian origin, but stand ‘before God’, before God’s ‘face’, and that they speak to God and listen to him. Not the externals but the orientation of the heart are the most important. What are the specific features of Islamic prayer?

Daily ritual prayer—the essential symbol of Islam

Pious Jews entrust themselves to their creator in silence, when they lie down and when they get up. Apart from the Sabbath and the great festivals, for Jews per- sonal prayer or family prayer stand in the foreground. Believing Christians, too, apart from church worship, above all practise personal and family prayer: the ‘Our Father’ can and should also be prayed in a ‘quiet room’—but no regula- tions are made about it.

However, the Muslim is under an obligation (fard) to perform the ritual prayer that is announced publicly every day at particular times. This is the sec- ond main duty of Muslims after the confession of faith. At the important hours of the day the call to prayer rings out over Muslim towns and villages, as it has done for centuries. Mandatory prayer takes place five times a day: salat—which can be translated ‘prayer’ and also ‘worship’—is beyond doubt the most impor- tant religious action in Islam and the specifically Islamic type of prayer. What in Christianity is a binding practice only in monasteries and communities as the ‘canonical hours’, in Islam affects every belief. However, for the daily mandatory prayers Muslims are not tied to a particular place: the prayers can be offered at home, in the mosque or on the way.

If we follow the Qur’an, mandatory prayer evidently developed only gradually during the life of Muhammad as the basic ritual of the Muslim community.4_{Mandatory prayer is not mentioned in the earliest parts of the}

Qur’an and occurs first in the middle Meccan surahs. Especially after the battle of Badr, it must have taken on greater significance, and then in the middle of the Medinan period it became a fixed institution and an obligation for all Muslims. According to the Qur’an, Muhammad originally ordained prayer only three times daily, twice during the day and once at night.5_{Later, a}

third prayer in the middle of the day was introduced; the night vigil was voluntary.6

‘When, where and how the number of prescribed salat increased from the three clearly mentioned in the Qur’an to the five of Islamic law has yet to be sat- isfactorily explained.’7_{However, the great Muslim law schools agree that there}

are five mandatory times of salat, for which quite precise instructions are given: dawn, midday, afternoon, sunset, evening.

The premise, the ‘key’, for prayer is purification (tahur) from any form of rit- ual impurity (relieving oneself, sexual intercourse, menstruation or even sleep), which every Muslim performs for himself or herself. This is not primar- ily a hygienic regulation but a symbolic purification of the person who comes before God. And this is achieved by ritual washing (wudu): hands, mouth, nose, face, arms to the elbow, head and feet (where there is no water, sand suffices).8_It

has sometimes been compared with Christian baptism, but wrongly, for neither self-baptism nor repeated baptism is possible in Christianity. Conversely, Islam does not know any divine mediation of grace in the sacrament. Islam has no sacraments. The washing of the body is simply a symbol of the cleansing of the soul from sins: in Islamic understanding every man or woman needs it, but without any special sacrament—whether baptism or confession. Cleansed by washing, the Muslim may come before God without dramatizing the guilt of his sins by an explicit confession of guilt. However, in later tradition this ritual washing turned into a highly complicated system which I shall be dis- cussing later.

Characteristics of Islamic prayer and worship: no priesthood

Any Jew or Christian who is interested in deriving everything in Islam from Judaism or Christianity need only look at Islamic worship: nothing could be more different. Of course, Islam has public prayer, prostrations, forms of address to God, praises, thanksgiving and intercessions, as in the other prophetic religions. However, because of its theocentricity and its largely egali- tarian character, Islamic worship displays distinctive characteristics which set it apart from Judaism and especially from Christianity. They are of the utmost importance for the whole of Islamic piety. For example, in Islam there is:

- no priesthood, no priestly ordination and no altar: only someone who leads the worship, the imam, who can be a respected layman;

- no special dress for religious dignitaries and no place in the mosque for a clerical caste but only a platform for the muezzin, who calls the people to prayer; a pulpit and a separate place for the local ruler;

- no distinction between ‘celebrant’ and ‘congregation’, the active and passive in worship;

- no solemn music, no singing, no candles, no processions, no sacral drama. All Muslims are active in this community of prayer in precisely the same way: with their lips and their whole bodies, praying with exactly the same gestures and words. All are included in the closed ranks of the praying community

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(though women and men are separated): each individual becomes absorbed in the powerful rhythm of this great simple and direct rite of personal and com- munal worship of God. The following characteristics of everyday prayer are striking:

– Prayer is disciplined: not only are ritual washing and dress regulated in detail (for women the whole body except face and hands must be covered and for men at least everything between the navel and the knee), but also the individual parts and movements (each of which has its own designation). The media picture those at prayer in their ordered ranks, first always standing, then bowing with palms on knees, then again upright: seventeen bows in all, then two prostrations in which those who pray touch the ground with their foreheads, knees, both palms and the tips of their fingers.

– Prayer is concentrated: it always begins with the declaration of purpose (niyah) that this prayer is for God alone, and the words Allahu akbar, God is the greatest. Then Muslims pray the opening surah of the Qur’an, including the words ‘Thee alone do we worship; and unto thee alone do we turn for aid.’9_Praise

follows, usually with another surah of the Qur’an. An utterly theocentric under- standing of prayer is evident, based on God’s sovereignty, greatness and unity, undisturbed by any association, deviation or division. Eating, walking or speak- ing makes the prayer invalid. Only if the prescribed bodily postures are observed precisely is the prayer right (sahih); otherwise it is void (batil) and therefore has to be repeated.

– Prayer is universal: it is performed everywhere in precisely the same way, learned by heart in Arabic—whether or not that is understood (like Latin prayers earlier in the Roman Catholic Church)—and thus binds together Muslims all over the world. Wherever people go, they can feel at home in this prayer. There is a sense of community in the horizontal that is grounded in a consciousness of God in the vertical. The only petition expressed in manda- tory prayer is the petition for ‘right guidance’:‘Guide us the straight way!’10_This

is about the great worldwide ‘community’ (ummah) of Muslims who go the ‘right way’: ‘the way of those upon whom Thou hast bestowed Thy blessings, not of those who have been condemned [by Thee], nor of those who go astray!’11

– Prayer is authentically human: if performed rightly, it can express the human condition. In the series of humble postures alternating with standing, those who pray express the sense that human beings owe their existence wholly and utterly to God, that in their destiny they are constantly dependent on a higher power but are also responsible to their God. How could Muslims better express their islam, their submission, indeed their humility and ‘surrender’ to God, than with this prayer? Thus mandatory prayer expresses quite tangibly the

innermost essence of Islam: submission to the will of God. It can therefore be called the essential symbol of Islam.

The mandatory salat for all adult male Muslims includes weekly Friday prayer (at the time of the mandatory midday prayer). It was first introduced by the Prophet who, as imam, usually led prayer, in Medina, neither in imitation of the Jewish Sabbath nor in polemic against it. Friday, the ‘day of assembly’, was not originally associated with the assembly for worship but with the assembly for the weekly market,12_{the day of the week when it was easiest for the Prophet}

to gather the people for prayer and instruction (preaching).

That also explains why worship was fixed at noon (the market was finished and those attending it could still get home before dark), why work was to stop only for the time of worship (before and after this mid-day reflection people could get on with their business), and why Friday prayer must take place only in a town, in a single mosque (the great or Friday mosque) and not in the villages (villagers had to come to the towns).13

Thus originally Friday was not a Muslim solemn day, even if today in some countries, under Western influence, it has been declared the official rest day, with schools, business and offices closed. But everywhere this Friday worship is a typical characteristic of Islamic life. It is the only Muslim form of worship at which there is preaching: an ‘admonitory sermon’ and then a ‘descriptive ser- mon’ which takes the form of praise; although both are highly ritualized, at any time they can assume explosive political significance: on Fridays, mosques can easily become places of agitation.

Finally, salat includes not only the five mandatory daily prayers with the weekly Friday prayer but also prayers which are not mandatory (fard) but only customary (sunnah) or ‘supernumerary’ (nafl), such as festival prayers, the burial ritual, prayers for rain, prayer at solar and lunar eclipses and prayer on setting out on a journey and returning. There is also prayer (du‘a’= ‘call’, ‘invo- cation’) on every possible occasion on which Muslims turn to God whenever, wherever and however it meets their needs, to worship him, to thank him and above all to ask him for forgiveness of their sins and the fulfilment of their wishes. Prayer is a spontaneous expression of praise, thanksgiving and interces- sion. Islam has prayer books, but the prayers in them are not mandatory.

Physical manifestations: mosque—muezzin—minaret

Mandatory prayer must be performed as soon as possible after the call to prayer. This can happen anywhere, not just in the mosque. Muslim faith does not need a holy house to express itself. Wherever Muslims prostrate themselves and pray (at home, at work, in school, in the open air), the place becomes a

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mosque for them: they enter a holy time and a holy place. The Prophet is said to have remarked that the whole world is given to Muslims as a mosque. The place must not be made unclean; bringing along a small carpet can help here. The ele- mentary, natural, character of this ritual prayer undoubtedly contributed to the spread of Islam.

Why then was there need for a mosque, as an Islamic house of God? The English ‘mosque’, like the German Moschee, is a loanword from the French: however, mosque goes back via the Italian moschea and the Spanish mezquita to the Arabic masjid.14 _{This word, which occurs almost thirty times in the}

Medinan surahs of the Qur’an, there means simply ‘place of worship’ and refers to various sanctuaries. If the word does not come from Aramaic, like the Ethiopian meshgad (‘church’, ‘temple’), it can certainly be derived from the Arabic sajada,‘prostrate oneself ’, and therefore means the ‘place of casting one- self down’, the ‘place of worship’.15_{In Mecca, where ritual prayer was evidently}

not mandatory before the emigration, the Muslims did not even have their own place of worship.

The original model for all mosques is the house that Muhammad had built for himself in Medina: a rectangular courtyard surrounded by clay walls, and in it a hall (later two) with canopies supported by palm branches. After the Prophet’s death, in his place of prayer was a sign indicating the orientation of prayer towards Mecca (mihrab) and a simple pulpit; attached to the east wall there were huts made of palm branches for the Prophet and his wives.

Here already we can see the multifunctional character of the mosque—very different from a Christian church—that in principle has still been maintained. A mosque, which is primarily a place and not a building, serves at the same time as:

- a place for worship;

- a place for political meetings, negotiations and judgement; - a place for personal prayer;

- a place for theological instruction and study.

After the Prophet’s death, his house became his burial place, the place for bestowing the office of caliph, the seat of government and a meeting place, until these functions were given their own rooms. Soon people were building mosques on the model of Muhammad’s mosque in all the towns, great and small. These mosques had both religious and administrative functions; their architecture could differ greatly from region to region. At least the larger ones consisted of a courtyard and one or more covered halls with one side turned towards Mecca. To the present day the furnishings of a mosque include:

- the prayer niche (mihrab, possibly taken over from church architecture), which shows the direction (qiblah) of Mecca;

- the pulpit (minbar), originally probably an elevated seat from which Muhammad gave his speeches and then a place for the leader of Friday wor- ship;

- a stand for the Qur’an, lampstands and lamps, and finally also mats and car- pets, since the floor had to be kept cultically clean for prayers (that is why worshippers remove their shoes);

- only calligraphy as decoration (verses of the Qur’an or dedicatory sayings) and non-figurative ornaments;

- in the courtyard or in front of the mosque an ablution fount with a pool or merely taps for ritual washing: mosque and water belong together.

Every mosque has one or more muezzins (mu’addin). The muezzin is the one who ‘announces’ or ‘calls’, the person who makes the public ‘call’ (adhan) to mandatory prayer. Muhammad is said to have preferred such a caller to instru- ments such as trumpets, gongs or bells. Presumably at the time of the Prophet, in accordance with old Arab custom, the man who made the call to prayer (women were not admitted to this post) simply went through the streets or called from the flat roof of a house to remind believers of their duty with a brief ‘Come to prayer’. Today, there are usually seven short phrases that are announced as loudly and as widely as possible:

‘God is the greatest (Allahu akbar).

I bear witness that there is no God but God. I bear witness that Muhammad is God’s messenger. To prayer!

To salvation! God is the greatest.

There is no God but God.’16

Today the announcement is very often made by tapes through loudspeakers and sometimes there is loud competition between several mosques, despite what the Qur’an itself gives as an instruction for prayer: ‘By whichever name you invoke Him, His are all the attributes of perfection. And be not too loud in thy prayer nor speak it in too low a voice, but follow a way in-between.’17

To begin with, the mosque did not have a tower: only from the time of the Umayyads (usually in formerly Christian territories) did this become an essen- tial element. Minaret comes from the French minaret, which in turn comes via the Turkish minaret(t) from the Arabic manara (lighthouse).18_{This means ‘the}

place where fire (light) is’, so a lighthouse like the famous Pharos of Alexandria

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is the model. The minaret is the tower of the mosque (it can be rectangular, round or polygonal) from which the muezzin calls the time of prayer, from a gallery which is usually richly decorated and is important for the form and pro- portions of the minaret.19_{Like the church tower, the minaret has less a practical}

purpose than a symbolic character: it epitomizes the presence of Islam.