You Muslims, you pray five times everyday, that is a lot of prayer, five times everyday. But you are doing it like robots, when the clock strikes four, you are up in the morning, and the clock strikes mid-day, you are up again, afternoon, there, sunset, there, night, there. You are like a robot, everyday. Isn’t it better to pray to God when your heart feels God, you feel that connection, so you raise your hand, you are calling to God, it is not an automatic thing, is that better?

It sounds like better, really. But the point is that if we are only going to pray when our heart feels that, and you do not feel that in your heart today, it means what? No prayer today. If we did not feel it all week, it means no prayer this week, all month, no prayer, six months, a year, years can go by and you never feel it, so you do not pray. When you are going to pray, when your heart feels it? When you have troubles, when calamity strikes, then you find everybody raise their hands and saying Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar. When calamity strikes. What kind of prayer is that? Is that real prayer? Because you know, even the person who disbelieves in God, he said there is no God, you will find him on an Airbus flying 60 thousand feet above the earth, he looks out the window, he sees the engine fall off, the plane starts to dive, what does he do? Does he sit there and say, “my bad luck.” Or does he say, “O God! O God! O God! O God!” He will do it. He, before he said there is no God, but at that time when he knows that nothing is going to save him, he puts up his hands and screams a lot louder than the believer who sits next to him. So you say that kind of prayer, you know, anybody can do that.

The real prayer is that prayer which is a commitment to prayer, where we organize our day around the prayer. If that is the most important thing in our lives, then that should be reflected in our daily lives. So rather than organizing our days around … what are we organizing our day around? Food. We remember to get up for the breakfast, we break in the mid day for lunch, evening for dinner. So our day is organized around our bellies. Or other people, their days are organized around what? Work. We have work at such a time, we have a break after the shift.

So our days are organized around what? We organize our day around the most important thing in our lives, which is prayer. So that is why it is five times a day. It forms the framework, the skeleton on which the flesh is placed, of the body of life, Salah, formal daily prayers. And those formal daily prayers are geared to keep us in a state of consciousness of God: Allah. That is why Allah said in the Qur'an, this is not a philosophical point for debate or discussion. Allah said in the Qur'an,

“… establish the prayer for My remembrance.” [1]

Establish the prayer, He did not say pray. For if He said pray, then we could do once a day, once a week or every Ramadan. But He said establish the prayer. Establish the prayer means five times a day. In order that we would remember God throughout our day, those are the times we start things, we take a break and remember, so that in between the time that we are doing other things, we are with the family or at work or at school or wherever we are, in the park or whatever, that consciousness of God would be there to guide us. It is called Taqwa. It is called Taqwa, the consciousness of God. So that is the purpose of prayer. To develop a consciousness because we are dedicating time, we are saying words which God has prescribed for us, we are remembering God throughout the prayer, so that helps to heighten our consciousness, so that outside of the prayer, whatever we are doing should be done in a way which is pleasing to God. That is the purpose. That is the goal. So that is the starting point.

Reference:

[1] [Qur’an 20:14]