Notes and suggestions (II): The Salat

The horizon, they say, is that illusory line where heaven and earth meet, as many of us were taught when we were children.
The horizon is, however, as I understand it today, a real line where the earthly and the divine meet.
We can continue to think that all that exists is only what we are able to perceive through our senses (science itself has already shown us ad nauseam how erroneous this approach is), and that there is only one mode of existence/reality.

We can also, although it is not always easy, undertake the task of overcoming the neopositivist heritage we carry on our shoulders and stop interpreting the world under the parallel dichotomies of real/unreal – quantifiable/unquantifiable.

The real is, however, much more extensive than the perceptible.

Salat, therefore, is not an action, it is not the action of prostrating in the direction of Mecca to perform a prayer; salat is not prayer.
Salat is the metaphysical space where the longing of the Muslim and the welcoming of Allah come together, it is the space of surrender and reverence, of the disappearance of the self.
Salat is the heart of the practice of worship, the way of submission to Allah and a rope that guides in the darkness.

We should not fall into the error of thinking that the salat is a meeting point for the servant and his master.
In salat there is no duality since it does not belong to the human being, but belongs only to Allah.
It is more a matter of forgetting oneself, of letting those strict rules that govern the external in salat take you by the hand in their fulfillment and, in such a way forgetting them, and abandoning oneself in the immensity of Allah.

The salat is performed in Arabic.
The various movements and prostrations are accompanied by the recitation of fragments of the noble Qur’an.
This, contrary to what one might think, is a great advantage for non-Arabic speakers since one will find it easier to empty oneself, reciting in oblivion of one’s own language and taking as a way the language that Allah chose to bring down the seal of revelation.

Sometimes there is a perception from the non-Muslim world(Kufr) of salat as something too strict in its realization, cold or distant due to the Koranic language used and that does not motivate a relationship of closeness with the creator.
This perception is born, in the great majority of occasions, from the lack of knowledge and the consequent identification of salat with prayer.
As it has been expressed above, salat is not prayer, it should not be adapted to the particular conditions of each one since it is not something that belongs to the human being; salat has another rank, which is far above prayer.
The place of prayer is occupied in Islam by the Dûa, through it petitions are made to Allah and a closer relationship is established.
The Dûa does not have a specific form other than turning the palms to the sky by placing them in front of the chest or on the lap, and each one performs it in his own language, in a more personal way always following a proper courtesy(Adab) and respect.
The Dûa does belong to the human being and that is why it contemplates the particular.

Salat is unconditional surrender to Allah, dissolution in his immensity, and a recognition of the reality of being creation and cornering of the ego (Nafs).

There is no path without salat, since in itself it contains the direction and the sense at the same time that it exerts a basic vertebral function of the Muslim’s life.
The five obligatory salats not only divide the day according to the vital cycles inherent to the human being, but, associated to the ritual ablutions necessary for their realization, they create a habit, a routine I would say of cleanliness, recollection and adoration that produces a deep transformation in the human being.

The salat, for all this and for its intrinsic condition of Dikr (remembrance, bringing to the present) of Allah, is like a rope, visible also as the horizon, that keeps us on the path and safe from straying.
Without dogmatism or puritanism, Islam is a wide path and, as Aristotle expounded in his Nicomachean Ethics when dealing with the subject of virtue, it is a matter of keeping as close as possible to the middle, each one in his circumstance and possibilities, in order not to get off the path.

But of all this Allah knows best.

Truly salat is a guide in the forest when the sunset approaches, the light that keeps you on course when the lighthouses sink; cling then to your salat when the trees begin to warp their shadows in the leaf litter, cling to it when the sea becomes rough.

Author: Nizzar Vizcaino