Losing Passion for Worship
Salah and other acts of worship are the perfect sustenance for the human soul. However, once a person loses their desire for these vital practices, the pull of the beckoning they feel upon their heart fades, and their readiness dissolves. They find it challenging to go beyond a perfunctory performance of these acts of worship. They perform the salah, but the reality of their actions is lost to their distracted mind and heart.
Almost all of us complain about not being able to enjoy worship. “I try to perform my salah in accordance with its manners, but I cannot keep my mind off of stray thoughts about daily life,” most of us often say. We can easily recall our resolution, “I intend to cut myself off from the rest of the world completely, even if only until the end of the first rakah. I will not bring anything worldly to my mind.” However, before we go into ruku, all kinds of worldly distractions descend upon our thoughts. Debts that need payment, our children’s problems at school, and various other problems begin to roll like a film reel before our eyes. We are physically in salah, but spiritually our hearts wander off to sort out our personal affairs. Sometimes, it just so happens that we have no recollection of what we recited in the first rakah by the time we are in the second rakah.
In short, being detached from salah while within it is an all too common dilemma for us. In the course of such an instance of detachment, we automate our every movement and simply go through the motions. We prostrate ourselves and get up, fulfill the conditions of salah aptly as far as appearances are concerned, and do not mess up the proper sequence or the routines in our qiyam, ruku, and sujud. We do not make mistakes in the number of rak'ahs, in tashahhud, or anywhere else in salah. We perform all the physical work as we are meant to.
But this defect is not a mistake, for mistakes in salah are for those who truly fulfill salah to the utmost degree. If a person falls into distraction for a moment while praying with khushu, they will be shocked by what they are doing and falter before regaining their composure. However, such a momentary lapse of mind followed immediately by recovery of concentration is out of the question for a person whose heart is always wandering in other places, as said concentration doesn’t exist in the first place for them. However, even such a person sometimes strays so far away from salah mentally that they are confused as to whether they maintained the correct form of salah at all during the absence of conscious execution.
Without Having the Heart at Peace
Of course, this tragic situation is not unique to salah. A person refrains from consuming food and drink and fasts all day to obey Allah's command. But what they accomplish by doing this is only keeping nutrients from going down their throats if they fail to avoid backbiting others, quarrel with other people, or cannot keep haram things well out of their lives. They go to hajj yet cannot tolerate their fellow believers from all over the world; with their thoughts fixated on everyone else’s shortcomings, they poke and prod at other people’s mistakes and difficult moments with their judgmental gaze. They seemingly perform the pilgrimage but return without putting much in their bag of good deeds, with all their griping and complaining bringing their situation down.
There is a striking resemblance between such a person and someone who’s completely lost their sense of taste and appetite: They might have absolutely irresistible delicacies served to them, but without an appetite, no matter how good the food is, they cannot enjoy it. Even if they eat it forcibly, it is just to fill their stomach. Salah and other acts of worship are the perfect sustenance for the human soul. However, once a person loses their desire for these vital practices, the beckoning they feel upon their heart fades, and their readiness dissolves. They find it challenging to go beyond a perfunctory performance of these acts of worship. They perform the salah, but the reality of their actions is lost to their distracted mind and heart.
While enumerating the characteristics of the good believers in the Qur'an, Allah especially emphasizes that they fulfill their worship. The Muslim He mentions in the holy book is a person whose life is intertwined with worship, especially salah. Therefore, in the sight of Allah, there can be no good Muslim without worship. It is mentioned that those who abandon ibadahs follow their nafs, deviate from the right path, and will be punished for it in the future. (Maryam, 59)
Fulfilling worship properly
In addition to attaching great importance to the fulfillment of worship, the Qur’an emphasizes the performance of worship the way Allah desires. According to the relevant verses, it is, of course, important to fulfill the duties of worship in the correct form. However, what is more important is that the heart should connect with Allah during worship. For this reason, it is stated that salahs performed lazily or half-heartedly are the worship of hypocrites. (An-Nisa, 142)
The servant is expected to fulfill their worship with an active awareness of what they are doing and in whose presence they are standing. As a matter of fact, in the second verse of Surah Al-Mu'minun, which speaks of believers who have achieved salvation, it is said, as a characteristic of the Muslims in question, “They are in khushu in prayer.” In the following verses, it is stated that these Muslims stay away from idle and useless words, give zakat, and guard their chastity against illicit affairs.
It is not enough for a Muslim to perform salah or any other form of worship for salvation. They must give themselves fully to their Rabb in worship in addition to following the initial requirements of maintaining the correct form and method.
In another ayah, those who shirk the most despite performing salah are heavily reprimanded: “those who are heedless of their prayers, those who make show (of their deeds)” (Al-Maun, 4-5). When we look at these verses, we understand that Allah is not pleased with a servant's complacency with only fulfilling their worship in its physical form. He wants the salah to be fulfilled properly, both physically and spiritually, because worship performed in khushu will help the servant square away their duties in this area just the way Allah wants them to.
Indeed, in another verse, it is mentioned that salah will protect people from indecency, immorality, and evil (Al-Ankabut, 45). There is no doubt that the salah referred to here is one that isperformed with khushu. Otherwise, if there is no reformative change in a person's life despite praying five times a day, it means there are issues to be resolved and impurities to be filtered out in their salah. This shows that, although Allah commanded the servant to stand before Him and offer salah with khushu, the servant failed to stand in his presence with their body, mind, and soul fully committed to worshipping Him. (Al-Baqarah, 238)
It is because of this grave deficiency that the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) had some people who performed the salah superficially and did not devote themselves to it repeat their salah (Bukhari, 715). Regarding the person who plays with his beard in prayer, Rasulullah (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) said, “If his heart was in khushu, his limbs would be in khushu as well” (Kanzu'l-Ummal, VIII/197).
In another hadith, he stated that a person's thawab would vary according to their khushu: “A man establishes prayer. One-tenth, one-ninth, one-eighth, and one-seventh of his prayer is written as thawab. Finally, all of it is recorded as a reward/thawab.” (Bayhaqi, 2/281)
With all things considered, there remains hardly any room for debate on the stark reality that many people are unable to fulfill their prayers properly. That Allah and His Messenger underlined the same issue establishes this as a fact. Indeed, one of the Noble Companions, Ubada bin Samit, also said that the first thing to be removed from people would be khushu and that when a person entered a mosque, he would be hard pressed to find a person praying in khushu. (Tirmidhi, Ilm, 5)
Being in a state of taqwa
Here, the following questions may come to mind: “Is it extremely challenging for a person to perform his acts of worship with great pleasure, especially salah, without breaking contact with the Creator? Does Allah want something from us that we will find difficult to endure, achieve, or overcome?”
The answer to both questions is no. However, beyond the performance of the apparent aspects of worship, there is an effort that must be made that will saturate the outer shell of our worship with essence. This is an element most of us neglect. Since the effort in question is not regularly made, Allah Almighty addresses it with particular emphasis, draws attention to the laxity in its execution, and praises those who do it properly.
As for what the effort in question is: The answer is in the Qur’an and the hadiths of the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam). Both draw attention to two crucial points as the infrastructure of worship:
The most immediate tasks that deserve higher priority and attention in this regard are to comply with moral principles in our relationships with other people in our lives, to strive to lead a decent life, not to break anyone’s heart, and to exert an honest, reformative effort to become a morally upright person. Therefore, while a person spends their life in society, including their time with their family, they should try to make the exemplary morals of the Messenger of Allah the beacon of guidance that shines its light on their own life. However, while doing this, they should never neglect another crucial consideration: The all-important task of keeping their bond with Allah alive.
A servant’s connection with Allah helps to direct all their thoughts and actions to a sound path. The focal point of their entire life shifts towards what is good and just until the good that Allah commands becomes an integral, central part of who they are. Since their heart is full of love for Allah, they seek His rida in everything. They strive to live their life the way Allah wants, not because they are afraid, but because they love their Creator and because it has to be done this way to please Him. While eating, drinking, putting on and taking off their clothes, walking on the road, taking the bus, shopping, when they are sick, when they are cheerful, in short, in every moment of their life, Allah is always present in their heart and on their tongue. They always feel Allah with them and never forget Him.
It is unthinkable for a person who exhibits morally sound human behavior and does not break their ties with Allah in their daily lives, to turn away from Him in salah. This is because they have made the love of Allah and bond with Him in their heart dominate every moment of their life. Is it possible for such a person’s heart to be disconnected from Allah in salah? If a person is so deeply attached to Allah in their daily life, the action of which is not directly an act of worship, how can they then distance themselves from Allah in salah, when it is the most direct and essential form of worship?
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