Five Pillars of Islam (3)

Ritual Prayer (1)
“Prayer,” says the Koran, “is a duty incumbent on the faithful, to be conducted at the appointed hours” (4:103). It is the second of the five pillars of the faith. Those prayerful hours are not specified in the Holy Book, but in practice they are recognized as occurring five times daily: at dawn, midday, afternoon, evening, and night. The exact times vary from country to country and even, in large countries, from town to town according to the time of sunrise and sunset. In many countries newspapers print daily charts showing prayer times in the major cities, all different by several minutes.
Tradition holds that the five-a-day schedule is a compromise between the twice-daily prayer suggested in an early chapter of the Koran and the forty times a day said to have been demanded of Muhammad by God. While only five are required. Muslims are urged to pray at all times and on any occasion.
The believers may say his prayer wherever he is, alone or in a group, so long as he faces Mecca and the Kaaba. Congregational prayer in a mosque is required only on Friday at midday and on two major religious holidays—and then only men are required to attend—but group prayer is always considered more meritorious than individual devotion. In some countries, especially Saudi Arabia, offices and shops generally close during prayer time, but in most they do not. The individual, if he wishes to pray, simply does so, on the spot or at the mosque, while the activities of those who do not pray continue about him.
This creates situations that may strike newcomers to the Islamic countries as incongruous but that are taken for granted by the participants. In Cairo, the policeman who stands guard at the rear door of the Central Bank droops to the grimy sidewalk to worship at the appointed hour, leaving the door unwatched. The place of prayer should be clean, so he uses a battered piece of cardboard as a mat over the pavement. (Other Muslims use small rugs, the source of the term “prayer rug.”) In the composing room at the newspaper Al-Ahram, it is not unusual for some printers to walk away from their typesetting machines to pray, leaving their work to be resumed after their devotions, while their colleagues who are less devout continue to work as if nothing was happening.
When President Jimmy Carter visited Saudi Arabia in January, 1978, the call to prayer went up while preparations for his arrival were still being made at Riyadh airport. All the members of the military band on duty laid down their instruments and dropped to their knees right on the tarmac for their devotions. It made a bizarre photograph in American newspapers the next morning, men and trombones prostate together, but it did not strike the Saudis as odd in any way. It was prayer time, so they prayed, as God commands. The scene was characteristic of the prevailing lack of self-consciousness about prayer among Muslims. It insulates the faithful from cynicism. Those who do not pray may be embarrassed and apologetic not those who do.
The believers knows when the hour of prayer is at hand because the call to prayer is sounded from the minaret, or tower, on every mosque. The call is chanted, always in Arabic, by a muezzin; this word is a corruption of mu’adhdhin, “he who recites the adhan (call).” Usually there is nobody actually up in the minaret. Nowadays the call to prayer is commonly tape-recorded and amplified through speakers mounted on the minarets. What is lost in charm is gained in range and volume.
The call always includes the shahada in a declaration such as this: “God is great, God is great. I testify that there is no god but God. I testify that Muhammad is the Messenger of God. Come to prayer, come to prayer. Come to prosperity, come to prosperity. God is great, God is great. There is no god but God.” At dawn, the call also reminds Muslims that “Prayer is better than sleep.” The opening phrase of the chanted Arabic—“Allahu Akbar” (al-LAhu AKbar), “God is great”—is the dominant cultural chord of Islam, the declaration that punctuates all life, the reason to believe, the motive for action, inspiration for soldier and revolutionary, consolation for the oppressed.
Whether the individual is praying alone or in a group, the format and context of his prayer are the same. It is not an individual appeal to or communication with God, improvised by the believer to address his own needs, but a ritual, communal recognition of Allah’s power.
The worshiper offers rakatin, “bendings,” so called because each part of the prayer ritual is marked by a change of position: standing, bending to put hands on knees, kneeling with palms in thighs, kneeling with forehead on floor. Each rakah comprises a certain number of prescribed acts and words, which make up a unit of prayer: each prayer period consists of two, three, or four rakatin, depending on the time of day. In the traditional prayer ritual, the positions of the hands are prescribed as well as those of the body: right over left at the chest, touching the earlobes, at the sides.
At the mosque, the worshipers align themselves in rows, spaced so that they may kneel and bow without touching those in front of them. The positions assumed in the ritual would be awkward for women if they prayed among the men, but they generally do not. In some countries, they worship in specially designated areas of the mosque and in others they are excluded from public prayer by tradition if not by law, and they perform their devotions at home.