WHY DO MUSLIMS PRAY FIVE TIMES A DAY?

The Catholic Christian Prime Minister of the island-State of St. Vincent in the Caribbean is reported (Trinidad Guardian, May 8th) to have entered into the Mt. St. Benedict Monastery in Trinidad for a spiritual retreat during which he will join the monks in praying "five times a day".

Even while a wicked godless white world-order is waging unjust war on Islam and Muslims, there are many people in the Caribbean who have defied the warmongers and have chosen to become Muslims, and their numbers are constantly increasing. When they become Muslims by proclaiming that there is no God but Allah, and that Muhammad is His Servant and Messenger, they are taught, first of all, to pray 'five times a day'.

In this essay we enquire into the origin of 'five times' daily prayer and, in so doing, ponder over the implications of its abandonment, or its substitution with something else. We also describe those 'five times' of daily prayer. We feel certain that the monks in that monastery will find this subject quite interesting.

Prophet Muhammad, sallalahu 'alaihi wa sallam, was forty years of age when Angel Gabriel appeared before him and informed him that he was a Prophet of the One God. He was himself unaware, prior to that event, of this status of his. And even though we know that he never worshipped the idols of Arabia that even his wife worshipped, we do not know if, or how, he prayed daily.

There were other Arabs, known as Hunafa, who also refused to worship idols. They worshipped One God, made the annual pilgrimage (Hajj) to His Holy Temple in Makkah that Abraham, 'alaihi al-Salaam, had built, and sacrificed animals every year on the occasion of that pilgrimage in commemoration of Abraham's trial of sacrifice of his only son, Ishmael, 'alaihima al-Salaam.

Sometime after that first visit the Angel came one day and taught Muhammad, sallalahu 'alaihi wa sallam, how to perform ablution before prayer. The hands were to be washed, then the mouth, nostrils and entire face, then the arms up to the elbows, then the wet hand was to be passed over the head, and finally the feet were to be washed.

Some eleven years later, after the Prophet had been summoned in a miraculous celestial journey by night from Makkah to Jerusalem and then into the heavens to the special Divine presence, and had received the Divine gift of 'five times daily prayer', Angel Gabriel came to him one day and led him in prayer five times during that day,

- once in the early morning (after dawn but before sunrise),

- once in the early afternoon (after the sun had crossed the zenith but before mid-afternoon),

- once in the later afternoon (but before the setting of the sun),

- once after the sun had set,

- and finally in the early hours of the night (after twilight had ended).

On each occasion that day he led the prayer at the earliest time possible. He then returned another day and again led the Prophet in the same five times prayer, but this time he chose the latest possible time for each prayer. The Angel then announced that these were the five times of compulsory prayer, and that each prayer was to be performed within the timeframe just established.
In addition to these compulsory prayers there are voluntary prayers that could be performed at any time, but best of all in the early hours of the morning before dawn.

Since there is but One God, and hence but one Truth, and only one true religion (i.e., the religion of 'Abraham' from whose name the name 'Brahma' appears to have originated) the implication is that whoever worships the One true God must pray these five times compulsory prayers every day. Anyone who does not perform the five times daily prayers lives an essentially pagan life since the compulsory prayer is the very foundation of the religious way of life.

When Jesus, the true Messiah, 'alaihi al-salaam, returns, he, also, will pray five times a day in the same way that Angel Gabriel taught Prophet Muhammad to pray, and in the same way that Muslims pray to this day (without chairs, benches, pews, etc.)

They stand barefooted before Allah Most High in prayer, then bow down, sit flat, and prostrate themselves with their faces on the earth. They do so 'five times a day', and will continue to do so Insha Allah in defiance of the godless world, and regardless of the price they already pay for that defiance.

And they do so with the absolute conviction that Truth must eventually triumph over its wicked godless enemies.

They also recite in every prayer the opening Surah of the Qur'an in which they ask to be guided on "the straight path - the path of those whom Thou hast blessed, not the path of those who earn Thine anger, nor of those who go astray."

Those who are today waging unjust war on Islam and Muslims most certainly earn Allah's anger, and those who support such people, for whatever foolish reason, are certainly a people who have gone astray.

- Islamic Scholar ~ Imran Nazar Hosein