Why do Muslims Pray Five Times a Day?

 

Why do Muslims Pray Five Times a Day?

Understanding Islam

by

Sheik Imran Nazar Hosein

 

Wednesday, 01 Sha'ban 1428

 

The Catholic Prime Minister of the Caribbean island of St. T Vincent is reported (Trinidad Guardian, May 8th, 2004) to have entered into the Mt. St. Benedict (Catholic) Monastery in Trinidad for a spiritual retreat during which “ he would join the monks in praying five times a day”. There are many people in the Caribbean who have chosen to become Muslims by proclaiming that there is no God but Allah, and that Muhammad is His Servant and Messenger. When they do so they are taught, first of all, to pray ‘five times a day’. What is the origin of ‘five times’ daily prayers? We feel certain that there will be many, apart from the Prime Minister and the monks in the monastery, who will find this subject to be of compelling and abiding interesting.

 

Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, was forty years of age when Angel Gabriel appeared to inform him that he was a Prophet of the One God. Prior to that event he was, himself, unaware of this status of his, yet he never worshipped the idols of Arabia. There were others, known as Hunafa, who also refused to worship idols. They worshipped One God, made the annual pilgrimage (Hajj) to His Holy Temple in Makkah built by Abraham. And they sacrificed animals annually in commemoration of Abraham’s trial of sacrifice of his (then) only son, Ishmael, peace be upon him.

 

Sometime after that first visit, the Angel came one day and taught the Prophet how to perform ablution before prayer, i.e., wash hands, mouth, nostrils and entire face, then wash arms up to the elbows, then pass wet hands on the head, and, finally, wash the feet. The angel also taught him how to stand bare-footed in prayer, to bow down and to prostrate before the Lord-God. Some eleven years later, the Prophet was summoned in a miraculous celestial journey by night from Makkah to Jerusalem and then into the heavens to the special Divine presence. He then received the obligation of ‘five times daily prayers’ directly from the Lord-God Himself, and he returned to announce to all those who had faith in Allah Most High that the institution of (five times daily) prayers was the vehicle through which they, too, could journey to the divine presence.

 

Angel Gabriel subsequently came to him one day and led him in prayer five times - 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 he led the prayers at the earliest time possible. He then returned the next day and again led the Prophet in the same five times prayers, but this time he chose the latest possible time for each prayer. He 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, of course, 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 would eventually live an essentially pagan life since the compulsory five times daily prayers are the very foundation of the religious way of life.

 

When Jesus, the true Messiah, peace be upon him, returns, he, also, will pray to Allah Most High 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 blessed earth. They do so ‘five times a day’, and will continue to do so, In sha Allah, in defiance of that godless world-order that is waging war on them, and regardless of the price they 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 (chapter) 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.” It should be clear to our readers that those who are today waging unjust war on Islam in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Holy Land and elsewhere, most certainly earn Allah’s anger, and those misguided Muslims or non-Muslims who support such people, while worshipping at the alter of a US Visa, or for whatever other foolish reason, are most certainly a people who have gone astray.