Prayer (1/2)

Prayer is the keystone of Islam. It is said of prayer, "The first matter that the slave will be brought to account for on the Day of Judgment is the prayer. If it is sound, the rest of his deeds will be sound.  If it is bad, then of his deeds will be bad." (Reported by Al-Tabarani)

Anyone who has  been through the  experience  of being  a  "new" Muslim knows the joy of prayer - of  not being able to wait for the next prayer time to come, of having all of the hairs stand up on the back of your neck while your eyes fill with tears as the Adhan echoes through the mosque. So, too, anyone who has been in the throes of real despair also knows the strong, urgent, and comforting connection to God that prayer provides during a time of personal tragedy.

When going through a low point in faith, however, a change in prayer can be one of the first indications of a problem.

I have been through that initial high point of faith and practice. I have also been through the low. I know from talking to other Muslims that I am not alone.

One  frank and  honest  sister  recently  mentioned  to  me,  "God,  I remember when I couldn't  wait to pray. Now, I do pray ... but I don't look forward to it anymore."

The  truth  is,  being  at  a  low  point  in  the  practice  of  prayer  is not uncommon. Nor do I believe it is a harbinger of bad character or morality. In fact, I would wager that almost everyone goes through a period of "not really feeling like it," at least inside, even if they are not willing to admit to it.

The symptoms are many - In my case, I would often forget to pray until either the last minute, or would miss the time altogether and have to "make it up."  My mind would wander uncontrollably to the point that I would forget which raka' I was on. Fajr was always missed, and I would actually look forward to getting my period and its accompanying respite from what had become for me, yet another chore.

During this time, guilt was a constant partner in my life.  I felt bad, sacrilegious, and like a fake - but I dared not "let on" about the way I was feeling.

All around me, then still an "active" member of the Islamic community, I would see and hear about other people's relationship to prayer and would feel increasingly guilty and inadequate by comparison. I grew hopeless, feeling almost as if I had a secret that no one else shared. I remember one sister in particular, saying how peaceful prayer made her feel-and   how it was like "an island of peace" that was her private time between herself and God. At the time, I just looked at her, feeling a mixture of awe and jealousy.  She was obviously much "deeper" than me, I thought.  In fact, during many prayers, as I once again forgot my place, I would bring her words to mind, and wonder just what had happened to me that had brought me so far away from the ideal.

Another statement that greatly affected me was made during a halaqa at a local mosque, where the subject was prayer and the mercy of God. The halaqa had recently been taken over by a new group leader, an imposing woman given to voluminous black veils and armfuls of beautiful gold jewelry.  She seemed very knowledgeable, and was, to be frank, a bit intimidating.

Surveying the room, she asked, "Do you think Allah will answer your prayers if you don't pray Fajr? Do you think Allah will be merciful to you?"

Looking around, I noticed several women shaking their heads in the negative.

The group leader went on, "That's right, no!" "Allah will not answer your prayers if you don't pray Fajr." "Do you expect Allah to be merciful if you don't offer your prayers correctly?"

I remember looking around at all of those glowing faces, secure in the knowledge that they were praying at the appropriate level of perfection, while I, sitting there properly "hijabed and jilbabed," the very picture of Islamic goodness, was really a terrible fraud, and a failure as a Muslim.

In addition to having guilt as a constant companion, I now added fear. Fully believing what this halaqa leader said about the mercy of God, I became extremely afraid. I already knew my prayers were horribly lacking, but I was in a slump that I simply could not pull myself out of.

Now that I knew God would not help me, I felt hopeless. Filled with this guilt, fear, and a sense of disconnection with God (after all, he was "angry" with me wasn't he?), I began to approach prayer with  a  sense  of  inevitable  doom  and judgment  that  only  served  to magnify my alienation to an even higher degree.

As  it  often  happens  in  life,  bad  turned  to  worse.  I began to experience a string of personal tragedies.  In a short amount of time, my family and I suffered from a miscarriage, the imprisonment of my sister, the possibility that my son might be suffering from Autism, and the death of my husband's brother.

My worst fears began to be realized as I felt God's wrath upon me. Worse yet,  I  worried  that,  although  I  constantly  beseeched  God  for help and relief, he would not answer my call because my prayers, as well as myself, were not perfect.

In the midst of despair, I turned to some members of the Islamic community for emotional support, only to have my faults magnified back to me a hundred fold.  One woman even said, "It is no wonder you had a miscarriage," meaning it had been a sign and punishment from God. I finally completely broke down.

I, the former example of" excellent Islamic womanhood," one always called on to  introduce  and  acquaint new  people  with  Islam  and the community, dropped out of everything, went on tranquilizers, and ran home to my family.

It was there, with my non-Muslim family, and surrounded by non­believers in a very small country town, that I began my first return to solitude.

I would go for long walks, oblivious to the startled stares of passers ­ by. I was in such emotional pain that other people's reactions to me no longer mattered.  I  also began  to  read  again - not    books  on  "the punishments of hell," or the merits of hijab, but my old,  battered Qur'an, one of the few things I took with me.

There, in the midst of my lowest point, I began to notice the "non­ gloom and doom" portions of the Qur'an-a  side of Islam  and God that I, and I realized, many other Muslims around me in our well-meaning zeal, had forgotten.

The realization gradually dawned on me that, while it was good to focus on the wrath of God and ideal practice, the focus had become oddly skewed  toward  those themes  to the exclusion  of all else. In isolation  I was able  to  step  back  and  see  what  had,  in  the  beginning,   been   so  clear (a period  when  I also had  time  to myself),   that  God  really was literally Most Gracious, Most Merciful. It was no one's right to assail or limit that fact.

I began to realize that the books I read, the company I kept, and the beliefs I let into my heart during the years of my declining faith had been geared less toward my relationship with God than my need to seek validation in the path I had chosen.

Although no one can argue with the assertion that a focus on the right practice of religion in all of its aspects-from prayer, to behavior, and even dress is an important and indispensable part of Islam, there comes a point, where practices can become both exclusive and exclusionary rather than worship. Instead, they become a mark of belonging, and the realm of appearances can begin to take on a dangerously significant importance.

If I had only been honest enough, like the woman who shared her feelings with me, to admit to how I was feeling about prayer, I might have realized that I wasn't the first or the last Muslim to feel that way. I may have even found someone who had gone through it themselves, and found a way to recover from the same slump. Maybe they could have told me, before I had to learn it the hard way, that in trying so hard to keep up appearances, and in trying to belong, I had forgotten the role of the self of the importance of bringing the "me" to prayer. The conviction that prayer  was  between  myself  and God  was  honestly  missing-and    no amount of belonging or acceptance in a group--no  matter how "Islamic" it appeared or even was could ever replace that fact.

(Continued)