Benefiting From Your Prayer

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
In the Name of Allah, Most Merciful, Most Compassionate
Assalaamu alaykum

Dear Friends

I pray that you are well.

Prayer is an important pillar in Islam, i.e. if this pillar is weak, your Islam is wobbly and will eventually collapse, because it is so easy for Shaytan to steal your Faith (Iman). Losing one's Iman is one's ultimate loss because if he remains in this state until he dies, there is no more hope for Paradise for him and he will abide in the Hellfire forever.

We should put the time to learn how to pray properly, both outwardly and inwardly, including understand what we are saying and reciting in prayer.

If you don't know what you are saying in your prayer, how much benefit can you expect from doing your prayer? You can pray 5 times a day, year after year, but you (and people around you) won't see any change because you didn't do it correctly. Prayer is supposed to transform you to become a better human being--a better parent, child, spouse, brother/sister, neighbor, friend, student/teacher, leader, and so on.

Each day we should strive to better our prayer and this can only be done through having the right knowledge and implementation of that knowledge. No matter how long/how much we have prayed, there is always a better prayer. Strive to make the current prayer better than the one before. If you are praying the same way as you have been for the past 20 years, or if you don't rush to prayer, or if you still find prayer more of a burden than a comfort to you, or if you are rushing to finish your prayer, you are not truly appreciating the gift of prayer and therefore you won't feel the benefit of your prayer.

If you pray in any masjid, you are bound to see so many people make so many mistakes in their prayer. For the most part it is because they don't know any better -- these people either learn how to pray from their parents/grandparents who didn't learn it from qualified teachers, or they learned it through imitating others who did not properly learn how to pray. If you haven't sat down with a qualified teacher to learn how to pray, chances are you are not praying correctly.

Gross mistakes in prayer is such a common occurrence, all masjid should remedy this issue by providing a regular program to teach people how to pray properly. Don't leave it to the individuals to figure out for themselves. If people come to the masjid and they do clear mistakes time and time again but the Iman and the masjid's leaders are not actively doing something to correct this, who do you think will carry the blame in the Day of Judgment?

We pray how the Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him peace, has taught his Companions how to pray...and that knowledge has come to us through an unbroken chain of teachers, and it is incumbent on us to find these teachers to teach us how to pray as the Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him peace, prayed.

May Allah help us establish prayer in the way pleasing to Him and make us steadfast in prayers and worship. Ameen.

Please don't forget us in your night prayers. Jazakallahu khairan.

And Allah knows best.
Wassalaam