I want to know how the Quran talks about Salah. I’ve been accustomed to speak of Salah exclusively as a ritualized memorized recitation of the Quran punctuated by cycles of bowing and prostrating. However, the language of the Quran – the Quranic idiolect – envisions Salah very differently than we do in our new post-Quranic vernacular. The ritualized Salah was not the genesis of Salah; the Quran did not coin the term, rather it recasts it and invites me to reimagine each phenomenon of Salah in the world around me differently than I’ve been accustomed.
But what and how is? Before it is ritualized, this entity of Salah must observable in the world, meanwhile the Quran asks me to witness it as something much more than a ritual: something cosmic and transcendent. Ubiquitous and innate.
Ritualization is ultimately the externalization of some unlearned and instinctive behavior. Born from habits to reinforce the stability of the habit, rituals are strangely enough an outsider perspective of a formal behavior. The performance of a rite is to look upon the self from the outside, focussed not on the self, but on the form. This is not how the Quran talks about Salah and its related concepts. Where it says “establish the Salah”, the Quran expects me to first understand its transcendent view of Salah.
The Quran describes Salah in the following ways:
24:41 – Don’t you see that God is glorified by whom is in the heavens and the earth and the birds flying in rows? Each already knows its Salah and its glorification of Him. But God is Ever-Knowing of what they do.
The rows of birds inline – Sāffāt is often misinterpreted as “wings outstretched” – is a clear allusion to the ritualized behavior of Salah in rows – (in Arabic, Sufūf. The active participle Sāff means to line up). The Quran intimates that all creatures in the world around me already know instinctively the behavior of Salah, and that God must have been the One to make them know it. Why are they in rows? I understand from this that they are in alignment with the order of the world in their unique dispositions and capacities of Salah. And that my observing the instinctive behavior to align and harmonize so effortlessly is something I not only want to see and reflect on, but that I want to imitate and learn from.
29:45 – Recite what is revealed (nonverbally) to you from the Book and perform Salah. Salah prevents immorality and wrongdoing. Certainly the remembrance of God is greater, but God knows what you produce.
Here the Quran tells me the behavioral effect of Salah, namely it prevents me from harming myself, my own soul. But this begs the question, why am I created with the capacity for immorality and wrongdoing? How is Salah the alleviation from the burden of these harmful and negative attributes? These questions remind me that the creation is unlike the Creator in every way; that I am created with these incapacities as a reminder of His Attributes of Exaltedness and Knowledge. He must be Aware of His creation’s feebleness and frailty just as He intends. Salah, therefore, must be from Him and not this imperfect world. My performance of Salah must be a rededication of my body and attention to His Manifested Attributes.
6:162 – Say “my Salah, my devotional exercises to purify myself, my lifetime, and my resting place belong to God the Lord of the worlds.”
Again, this ayah confirms my reasoning; that Salah is from God and not the creation, certainly not from me in my incapacities and proclivity to sin. Salah seems to be compared to my attempt to purify myself, the span of my life and my death.
62:10 – When the Salah has concluded, disperse in the world and seek some of the bounty of God, remember/mention God much, so that perhaps you will find success.
19:59 – Then after them came successors who wasted Salah and followed their desires. Thus they will meet doom
14:40 – My Lord, make me one who performs the Salah and my progeny. Our Lord, accept my plea.
to be continued…
