Comments/Rebuttal to article by Wakas: An Understanding of Salat from Al Quran
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Peace Nerspi,
I think you are misunderstanding what brother Ayman is saying. Every thing has mental and physical aspects. Brother Ayman can correct me if I am wrong but he is not denying the physical aspects of salaat; instead he is saying that the mental aspects are more important, thus salaat is PRIMARILY mental.
For example, I don't think he is denying a physical "sujud" to the chin during salaat, but he is saying that the mental aspect of "sujud" i.e. obedience to The God after learning from His signs during salaat is the more important aspect. Therefore, a physical "sujud" to the chin is not a "sujud" if it is not accompanied by obedience to The God. Furthermore, even though a physical sujud is not of primary importance, when it is performed it should be to the chin per al-qur'aan, and not upon the forehead as the sectarians do.
He is telling us that the PURPOSE and the EFFECT of salaat is of primary importance, and the physical aspects are of secondary importance. Hence one of the important things in salaat is remembrance of The God; the exact anatomical position in which The God is remembered does not matter, as long as the purpose of remembrance of The God is accomplished with the desired effect.
Another important thing is reading The God's signs with understanding for the purpose of learning from them and implementing The God's message in our life. The exact physical position in which one performs that reading is not as important, as long as we learn from The God's signs and then implement His message in our lives with the effect of making us pure, humble, and obedient to The God.
If one does not learn anything from one's salaat and does not become humble and obedient to The God and does not purify oneself as a result of salaat, then it will not be salaat even if all the physical aspects/rituals are performed with surgical accuracy. That is why The God does not describe the exact anatomical positions during salaat with precision, because they are not as important as the mental aspects.
Taking the analogy of one's wife that you provided, if one says that he loves his wife and then physically kisses her but does not really mean the words and that kiss fails to bring forth or bolster a loving relationship between them, then the kiss is not really a kiss, and he does not really love her !
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Peace Nerspi,
They disagree on some things.
For example
Brother Ayman translates "salaat" as "learning connection", whereas brother IQO translates it as "The Prayer", for which the actual arabic should be "ad-dua".
Brother Ayman does not consider salaat to be a "ritual", because rituals are primarily mechanical and imply a primarily physical aspect rather than a primarily mental aspect, whereas brother IQO considers salaat to be a ritual, thus implying that salaat has a primarily physical aspect.
Looking at them actually performing the salaat, however, you might find that their salaat "appears" identical !
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Peace ayman,
I find your arguments disingenious and misleading for those who don't know. To spend endless hours going in circles with you over minute points would be pointless, as I can see from the many times this has been done with people who take superiority positions like yourself. If you think rituals don't perserve any knowledge or have a purpose as per Allah, then how many people do you think are reading the Quran daily, studying it, and still confused? You can't make physical rituals mindless and useless just because everyone is not completely enlightened by them during the time frame that you think is reasonable. Life is a process of growth and everyone in it has their own time table, if they are to grow. Your supposed mental only method of As-Salaat with no physical aspect loses the fact that we are physical human beings in a physical world. The people I have met with thinking like yours love to live in the spiritual clouds, but what does it benefit you? To have a full life on this earth, you will need to engage the physical, mental, spiritual and emotional aspects of being a human being. If you leave out the physical aspect, as you would prefer to do with As Salaat, then how will you be a benefit to mankind? Do you even care to be? Of course we will return to Allah alone, but we also have a purpose for this existence.
The points you make below I could rebute on an individual basis. I hope that you don't think that by my not doing so, you have made the better points. I just see to rebute them with you as pointless at this point, because you discredit many important points that I see clearly that Allah has put in Al Quran. Many of my points you ignored or didn't bother to answer properly, or diverted attention by focusing in on what you felt you had a stronger point in. This type of discussion is fruitless because there will be no agreement on any issues. You fell that "ayman's" thinking and understanding and only those who agree with him are correct; and no one else has anything to teach ayman because they have not elevated their thinking enough. Well good for your brother. May Allah protect those who don't know from being misguided. That's not my job. When and if ever you decide to come to the table in discussion and not your superiority complex of infallibility, then maybe we can pick this up again.
Here is how I see our differences. You believe that As Salaat is a "learning connection" in which one learns from and connects with Allah to better their life. I agree with the principal in general, maybe your approach doesn't allow you to acknowledge that. But I also believe that Allah has given us ample instruction in Al Quran on how to perform the physical ritual of As-Salaat in order to preserve the wisdom behind it, that many dont understand. It is not my desire to impose a physical As-Salaat, I simply hear and do my best to obey. Everyone performing a physical As Salaat doesn't benefit me or hurt me. My information gathering and presentation on the subject is simply my contribution to those who don't have the time or all the resources to gather this information from in depth study on their own. I don't bother myself with who follows it or who doesn't. I just present it as I am inspired to do so.
If it frustrates you for people to continue to work to understand the method of how Allah has described the physical performance of As-Salaat in Al Quran, then don't worry about it; no one is forcing you to do so. You can continue to make the call to As-Salaat mentally as you do and then read or study, whatever you do that suits you. But insulting others and making disingenious arguments to try and discredit credible evidence from Al Quran only, does not appear to be the behavior of a "mu'min" to me. If you truly feel you have the best evidence from Al Quran to support your view, then use your "As-Salaat" to practise 16125.
As-Salaamu Alaikum, peace
Peace IQO,
What is there to accept or reject about "salat"? Is there any passage in the great reading that says that the god doesn't accept "salat"? The learning connection/"salat" is for our own benefit it is not somekind of ritual to get bonus points. You can sometimes learn a little or learn a lot. The key is to persist in learning and not be satisfied with mechnically following mindless rituals.
A ritual makes something mechanical. By making it mechanical, the physical part becomes the most important part.
A ritual has a systematic mechnical method. If "salat" was a ritual for which there is a tremendous amount of evidence then you wouldn't have had to write a book trying to figure out the steps and put them as Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, Step 4, Step 5. Do you think that the god is not as organized as you and can't list such supposed ritual steps in an orderly fashion like you? I think that you need to make a clean start with a more humble attitude. Do not think for even one second that you can clarify the god's book.
If there was a tremendous amount of evidence for somekind of tritual then people wouldn't be struggling with this issue. On the other hand, the reason why people have been struggling with this issue is that they have a preconception that it is a ritual and therefore they are working backwards to find the method in order to justify their preconception.
If there was a tremendous amount of evidence then why are you basing your entire thesis on the false rule that you invented which claims that the definite article "al" completely changes the meaning of a word?
If you are satisfied with mechanical rituals then good for you, you can just mechanically do those things a thousand times. There are many people who do those things five times or more per day and yet they are misguided and those mechnical acts do not help them one bit.
What other way is there?
Washing first thing in the morning when you wake up and when you end your day is important and it does help clear the mind. I don't know about you, but when I wake up in the morning and come back from work in the evening, unless I wash, I cannot function, let alone learn.
This is why washing in the morning when they wake up and in the evening when they get back home is what most people naturally do.
Mechnical rituals are inherently mindless. They are certainly not reminders because the ritual inevitably becomes an end in itself and people are not focused on the purpose. They are focused on repeating things however many times their method tells them.
Then you have to use a different English word to denote "salat". Adding "The" and capitalizing the "P" doesn't accomplish anything other than demonstrate that you don't know the meaning of "salat" and thus are unable to translate it properly.
But the "prayer" in "the prayer" is exactly the same as "prayer". Adding the "the" makes it definite but doesn't change the meaning one bit. So you are basing your entire thesis on a false linguistic argument.
If you think that "The Ritual" fits better then use that. If you don't understand "salat" enough to be able to translate it and express it in English then you should refrain from making a conclusion until you can.
But superficial semantics is exactly what you have based your entire argument on. You have imagined a semantic difference between the "prayer" in "the prayer" and the "prayer" in "prayer" and have then proceeded to build your thesis on you invented semantic rules.
Your message is not unclear. It is quite clear that you are saying that there is a difference in meaning between the word prayer when used in the definite and when it is used in the indefinite. This is clearly a fallacious argument in any language.
No one here can go in your head, we can only judge the soundness of your argument by your words. If you really understood what it means, then you would have been able to translate it properly and not have had to rely on false linguistic arguments about the definite article.
As I said all along, you and sectarians and everyone who is focused on the method will not reach any better understanding on the subject. The only way to reach a better understanding is to start from the purpose and the effect.
The form of "salat" in 3343 and 3356 is not a different "form" as you claim. If you know Arabic then you should know that is has the same weight ("wazn" and same exact form in 3343 as in 339 fo example. Are you implying that in 339 it doesn't mean "pray"? By trying to use the false argument of the defnite article again, you are demonstrating your ignorance of the fact that in this case we are talking about verbs and not nouns and the definite article doesn't apply to verbs. So how do you differentiate in the case of verbs? Of course you can't answer.
This sounds nice and fuzzy but has no substance.
What are you talking about? If you don't know you should simply learn and research the subject before making such false statements with such proud tone. We are not talking about different forms. The same exact form and in fact the same exact word is used in 3343 and 339. Also, the same exact word (and of course same exact form) is used in 9103, 984 and 1082. Also, the present tense form of a past tense keep the same meaning. You can see this in 3356 and 4102 where the only difference is that in 4102 the verb is in the present tense.
No I am not wrong. You agreed above that "al-salat" doesn't equal "the prayer" in 3343 and 3356. Everyone agrees on that. You agree despite your best efforts to get out of the implication of such agreement by claiming that "they are different forms". Of course, in your haste, you forgot to check the other occurences of the same exact forms in the great reading. I advise you to use patience and the learning connection.
Can anyone who believes that "al-salat" means "the prayer" according to 3343, 3356 and 9103 please speak up?
People prostrate and disobey the god and they bow but are arrogant. The physical prostration doesn't magically change them into obedient servants of the god no more than physical bowing makes anyone truly humble.
If you think that it is physical then you should obey the god and prostrate according to what you believe is the physical prostration he told us about in 17107. You should physically prostrate to the chin and not to the forehead.
I have no problem with physical prostration if you understand it this way. But then you have to obey the god as best as you can and prostrate to the chin and not to the forehead as per 17107. There is not a single passage in the great reading that tells us to prostrate to the forehead. Prostrating to the chin is not difficult. The difficulty is in doing it in a way that is different from preconceptions.
Peace,
Ayman
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As Salaamu Alaika Tanveer,
I hope you are doing well today, insha Allah. I disagree with you and ayman in your not seeing As-Salaat, the ritual as a "prayer". Ad-Dua is only one form of prayer. Prayer in english is a general term that means many different things to different peoples and religious groups. There is no one definition of prayer, it is according to how it is used within each "religious" group. There are many types of "prayer" in Al Quran. As-Salaat is the specific one that is given a ritual to preserve something for us that Allah wants preserved.
When you say "whereas brother IQO considers salaat to be a ritual, thus implying that salaat has a primarily physical aspect." you are assuming and assuming incorrectly what I am implying or what my belief is. I firmly believe the primary aspect of As-Salaat is the mental and spiritual growth that Allah intends for the individual that performs it properly. But to ignore the physical instructions given directly by Allah in Al Quran regarding it, would also be the opposite of performing the rituals without understanding. Both are needed for the complete benefits that are to be gained from As-Salaat. Balance is the path of Al-Islam. One extreme of only performing a physical ritual, or the other extreme of only practing a mental study or "learning connection"; neither complete the function of As-Salaat alone; both are needed.
I dont' recall in any of my posts stating as tradionalists do that if a physical aspect is not performed properly according to Al Quran, that someone's performance of As-Salaat is not accepted by Allah. That would be importing the beliefs of others onto me without knowledge of the facts. Allah clearly does state in Al Quran that As-Salaat is not accepted from some, and why. Maybe you can advise ayman to look those up since he questioned their existence in Al-Quran.
As-Salaamu Alaikum, peace
Peace Nerspi,
They disagree on some things.
For example
Brother Ayman translates "salaat" as "learning connection", whereas brother IQO translates it as "The Prayer", for which the actual arabic should be "ad-dua".
Brother Ayman does not consider salaat to be a "ritual", because rituals are primarily mechanical and imply a primarily physical aspect rather than a primarily mental aspect, whereas brother IQO considers salaat to be a ritual, thus implying that salaat has a primarily physical aspect.
Looking at them actually performing the salaat, however, you might find that their salaat "appears" identical !
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As-Salaamu Alaika nerspi,
Thanks for your comments. I am not of the belief that only one of us can be guided. I don't believe that anyone is guided 100% to what is right and therefore they make no mistakes. Guidance is a two way street to me with the Haqq coming from Allah to guide us and with our requirement to be in a receptive mode to what that is. Therefore since none of us are perfect, none of us get it 100% correct, because of our imperfect reception. Most are guided in some things, and misguided in others. It is only the amount of either one that makes us different and/or acceptable to Allah.
Although I firmly believe that studying Al Quran only as our source of written scriptural guidance from Allah is the best and correct method, I believe that changing the meanings of words only to be in opposition to those who have corrupted it is disingenious. Just because one finds alternative definitions for words that one may believe is valid, one can not throw away definitions that are also well established and fit the context as well. One should not simply choose one definition over another because it is in oposition to those whom you dislike or disagree with on other issues. Sincere study of Al Quran doesn't involve a bias FOR or AGAINST traditional Islam, but only seeks the truth whether it confirms or disagrees with past understandings.
As-Salaamu Alaikum, peace
peace
you know what i find strange. that the both of you are muslim, both of you believe in one God, both of you ask for guidence, yet only one of you can be guided.
one of you can be right. so which one?
is imamquranonly guided and right or ayman?it's also strange that all other muslims, sunnis, wahabis... they also ask for guidence, yet they follow hadith or imams... more then qur'an and they don't do things according to qur'an, so did God guide them? because they did ask for guidence.
now, imamquranonly presented verses from quran how salat (prayer) is to be performed.
so, ayman, could you present verses from quran about how to perform salat that is different from the way iqo said?
since it doesn't mean prayer and if it's not something physical, what is it?
how to do it? -
Peace IQO,
I firmly believe the primary aspect of As-Salaat is the mental and spiritual growth that Allah intends for the individual that performs it properly.
That is all that needed to be acknowledged.
But to ignore the physical instructions given directly by Allah in Al Quran regarding it, would also be the opposite of performing the rituals without understanding.
If you understand "sujud" as physical do you obey the god's instructions in 17107 and do physical "sujud" to the chin?
Peace,
Ayman
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Salaamun alaika brother IQO,
Hope you are doing well.
you are assuming and assuming incorrectly what I am implying or what my belief is. I firmly believe the primary aspect of As-Salaat is the mental and spiritual growth that Allah intends for the individual that performs it properly. But to ignore the physical instructions given directly by Allah in Al Quran regarding it, would also be the opposite of performing the rituals without understanding. Both are needed for the complete benefits that are to be gained from As-Salaat. Balance is the path of Al-Islam. One extreme of only performing a physical ritual, or the other extreme of only practing a mental study or "learning connection"; neither complete the function of As-Salaat alone; both are needed.
I dont' recall in any of my posts stating as tradionalists do that if a physical aspect is not performed properly according to Al Quran, that someone's performance of As-Salaat is not accepted by Allah. That would be importing the beliefs of others onto me without knowledge of the facts.
Thank you for the clarifications. I stand corrected in reference to your viewpoint, and apologize for attributing a viewpoint to you that was not yours. It was not intentional but a misunderstanding.
I disagree with you and ayman in your not seeing As-Salaat, the ritual as a "prayer". Ad-Dua is only one form of prayer. Prayer in english is a general term that means many different things to different peoples and religious groups. There is no one definition of prayer, it is according to how it is used within each "religious" group. There are many types of "prayer" in Al Quran. As-Salaat is the specific one that is given a ritual to preserve something for us that Allah wants preserved.
I disagree with your translation of the word "salaat" but as long as we establish as-salaat the right way, I think our disagreement on the translation of "salaat" is trivial.
I firmly believe the primary aspect of As-Salaat is the mental and spiritual growth that Allah intends for the individual that performs it properly.
Agreed.
But to ignore the physical instructions given directly by Allah in Al Quran regarding it, would also be the opposite of performing the rituals without understanding.
Perhaps you meant to say "But to ignore the physical instructions given directly by Allah in Al Quran regarding it, would also be the same as performing the rituals without understanding.
Both are needed for the complete benefits that are to be gained from As-Salaat. Balance is the path of Al-Islam. One extreme of only performing a physical ritual, or the other extreme of only practing a mental study or "learning connection"; neither complete the function of As-Salaat alone; both are needed.
Agreed.
May The God guide us to the correct understanding of His signs.
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As Salaamu Alaikum Tanveer bro,
Im great, alhamdulilaah. Thanks for mentioning it. I think we are agreed and both corrected here. And thanks for pointing out the obvious misstatement on my part.
As Salaamu Alaikum, peace
Salaamun alaika brother IQO,
Hope you are doing well.
Quote from IQO
you are assuming and assuming incorrectly what I am implying or what my belief is. I firmly believe the primary aspect of As-Salaat is the mental and spiritual growth that Allah intends for the individual that performs it properly. But to ignore the physical instructions given directly by Allah in Al Quran regarding it, would also be the opposite of performing the rituals without understanding. Both are needed for the complete benefits that are to be gained from As-Salaat. Balance is the path of Al-Islam. One extreme of only performing a physical ritual, or the other extreme of only practing a mental study or "learning connection"; neither complete the function of As-Salaat alone; both are needed.I dont' recall in any of my posts stating as tradionalists do that if a physical aspect is not performed properly according to Al Quran, that someone's performance of As-Salaat is not accepted by Allah. That would be importing the beliefs of others onto me without knowledge of the facts.
Thank you for the clarifications. I stand corrected in reference to your viewpoint, and apologize for attributing a viewpoint to you that was not yours. It was not intentional but a misunderstanding.
Quote from IQO
I disagree with you and ayman in your not seeing As-Salaat, the ritual as a "prayer". Ad-Dua is only one form of prayer. Prayer in english is a general term that means many different things to different peoples and religious groups. There is no one definition of prayer, it is according to how it is used within each "religious" group. There are many types of "prayer" in Al Quran. As-Salaat is the specific one that is given a ritual to preserve something for us that Allah wants preserved.I disagree with your translation of the word "salaat" but as long as we establish as-salaat the right way, I think our disagreement on the translation of "salaat" is trivial.
Quote from IQO
I firmly believe the primary aspect of As-Salaat is the mental and spiritual growth that Allah intends for the individual that performs it properly.Agreed.
Quote
But to ignore the physical instructions given directly by Allah in Al Quran regarding it, would also be the opposite of performing the rituals without understanding.Perhaps you meant to say "But to ignore the physical instructions given directly by Allah in Al Quran regarding it, would also be the same as performing the rituals without understanding.
Quote
Both are needed for the complete benefits that are to be gained from As-Salaat. Balance is the path of Al-Islam. One extreme of only performing a physical ritual, or the other extreme of only practing a mental study or "learning connection"; neither complete the function of As-Salaat alone; both are needed.Agreed.
May The God guide us to the correct understanding of His signs.