Khutbah #10 - 08/05/98

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim

Alhamdulillahi rabbil'alamin wa salaatu wa salaamu ala Rasulihi  

I spoke last week of the different Islamic understandings that we associate with the English word "prayer", distinguishing between Dzikr, Du'a and Salaat. But though non-muslims may remember God, or call upon God for help, only muslims make the Salaat. It was the form of worship given to the Prophet, and he clearly considered it an essential daily habit. Yet it is extraordinary how many muslims can be seriously severe in their injunctions as to as to people's behaviour in certain peripheral aspects of the muslim way of life, while at the same time coveniently overlooking the centrality of five times daily prayer in the Prophet's life.

But if it is not a Remembrance or a calling on God, what is it? Well, of course Salaat includes remembrance and calling, but it is really more like a recognition of the way things are in creation, and a greeting to our Creator. A direct link between mankind and his Maker. Indeed it is an extraordinary thing about our relationship to the Creator that we can address Allah as "You", as we do in every rakah in Fatiha.

The Salaat is special for more reasons than I have time to even touch on, as one might expect of a form of worship taught to the Prophet by Gabriel and ultimately defined in its requirements in the face of the Divine Presence during the Miraj. Other religions perform ceremonies that people have shaped in memory of God and their founders, but as muslims, we worship in a form that was shaped by God and given to the Prophet, and in the Salaat we have the original form of worship, as used by the Prophet himself.

It is five times a day, but that is not a man-made schedule - it is timed to the light of the sun, and "Surely the prayer is a timed prescription for the believer", says the Qur'an. Of course the Prophet spent much more time praying than any of us are likely to do, what with Sunnah prayers, and Witr and Tahajjud, and long prayers in the night (where he could recite Surat al-Baqara in one rakat, and then stand in Ruku for as long again). "Say: My Lord esteems you not at all were it not for your prayer" says the Qur'an.

Yet in the same way that Faith in the Qur'an is so often linked with Good Behaviour, so the practice of the Salaat is frequently associated with Zakat. Worship is inseparable from Life. As Qur'an says: "Woe to those who pray and are heedless of their prayers. To those who make display and refuse charity."

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So how do we begin this extraordinary form of worship we call the Salaat? Is it with the words or the actions? Neither - it is in the intention, and it is by our intentions that we are judged. And where does that intention start? Not with a Du'a before the prayer, because you need to be in a state of wudu to begin. So is it somewhere in the act of wudu - or the intention for the act of wudu? But the wudu itself is dependent on cleanliness requirements that begin at the toilet. The intention for the Salaat can be traced back to that point, and in this linkage contains within itself an extraordinary symbol of our human nature.

In this requirement for toilet hygiene to perform the Salaat, muslims are brought face to face with the animal nature of humanity in its most basic expression, an act which is noxious to other people, over which we endeavour to gain some control in our infant years, but our control is very limited. Locked in a room how long would you last, days or hours? Or facing some great fear, could you keep control of your bodily functions? We like to think we have self-control, but like our bloodflow and our breathing, digestion and excretion are mostly taken care of for us.

In the Salaat, the spiritual and inner nature of the prayer never loses sight of the external, and a firm grounding in reality. God willing, I will talk more of the inner and outer aspects of the prayer over the next couple of weeks.

Wudu deals very specifically with the body's points of exit and entry, the doors between the inner and outer, and draws a clear line of separation between what comes out and what goes in. In washing the relevant parts after using the toilet, muslims recognise the poisonous nature of such excreta, and learn to use water as a purifying agent. This knowledge is not born into humans, and needs to be learned. Small children don't recognize the poisonous nature of excreta, and many adults also show a remarkable disregard for the fact.

The principle of human hygiene extends into muslim civic life, with community sewage systems and clean water supplies. It can also be seen in the muslim approach to ecology, as well as food hygiene where the approach to food involves ridding it of impurities (as in halal slaughter, for example, when the beast is calmed, thus minimising the release of toxins into the bloodstream, and with the blood and its impurities being drained from the body as part of the process of slaughter).

The outer and the inner, the exoteric and the esoteric, the physical and spiritual are intertwined throughout Islam. The physical acts have a practical purpose, yet there is much more to them than the physical. My mouth, nose, eyes and ears, are an interface between me and the world that surrounds me, and as well as physical poisons I can choose to take in sights and sounds and situations that are equally dangerous.

Did you notice that as well as the obvious openings between the inner and outer world, wudu also includes the elbow, hard and strong enough to be used as a weapon, yet with the nerves so close to the surface that a slight tap will painfully paralyse your arm? Or the fact that we wash the patella, sealed now, but once open to leave the brain no more protection than a thin layer of skin?

Sometimes the esoteric and the exoteric have a different balance, as in Tayammum, which most would see as an esoteric ritual, though dust can be used to clean, not just in old-fashioned jewellers polish and tooth powders, or river mud used as a scouring powder to clean the fat off pots and pans, for we also use clean earth to purify our water.

And in a way, the Wudu is itself a symbol and re-establishing of the greater washing of the Ghusl, when we wash the largest organ in our bodies, the skin, with its complex system of opening and closing to the world around it. In those awesome moments that relate to procreation of our species, times of birth, sex and death, we wash not just the pores (excreting sweat), but that primal doorway between us and our species, the navel, sealed at birth, when the infant is washed clean of the traces of the greater human of which it was once a part. And as with birth, so we make Ghusl at times of rebirth, such as the first Shahada of the convert, or donning Ihram for the Hajj.

And then there is the washing for the Friday Prayer, but I don't have time to talk about that.

Jabir reported the Prophet as saying: "The key to paradise is prayer, and the key to prayer is purification."

O God, forgive us, and have mercy on us, and guide us, and grant us security, and grant us sustenance.