 respected brothers and sisters in Islam, I have often presented a framework by which we should look at our devotional acts of worship. And I mean namely the Salah, the Zakah, Siyam, and the pilgrimage, the Hajj, and the Ziyarah, for example, to the Prophet ﷺ. Our devotional acts of worship, those that we do on a frequent basis daily, frequently and often. And that framework that I have presented in the past, I hope that is of benefit today as a reminder, is that we have various reasons for which or why we do our devotional acts of worship, why we perform them. The first and foremost reason if you will is an ontological reason, as we say, or theological reason. That is to say that we worship and we perform these devotional acts of worship because Allah SWT commands us to do so. There's no other reason. We do so because Allah SWT God Almighty has commanded us to perform these acts of worship. There's no escaping that. And then as the mercy of Allah SWT is that in spite of the fact or despite the fact or because of the fact that Allah SWT has commanded us to do these things, commanded us to perform these acts of Ibadat, that we find and we accrue benefit. We accrue benefit by performing these acts of worship. This is by the fuddle and the mercy of Allah. Allah doesn't have to do that. He simply commands us to do so and we do so, regardless of whether we understand the benefits, whether or not we accrue the benefits or not. That's secondary. But by the mercy of Allah, in the commands of Allah, in the commands of the performative actions that we do, the performative acts of worship that we do, there is benefit in there. And the benefit is of two kinds, primarily. And that is benefit in this life, what I like to call the utilitarian benefits of worship. Benefits that you will see right in your own lifetimes, right in our day-to-day lives. There is utilitarian benefit for performing the salah. There is utilitarian benefit for paying the zakat, for fasting in the month of Ramadan, for going on the pilgrimage. These are benefits that we can attain that will have implications and impact on our lives, right now, right now. Or through the occurrence or frequency by which we perform our Ibadat, you will begin to see benefits, changes in your lives, inshallah. But the second and more important benefit is that there will be a reward in the life hereafter. There will be a reward in the life hereafter that only Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala knows. That reward is known and kept only to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. We may be performed, we may be given x number of virtue or benefit or hasanat by performing the acts of worship. Or that is infinite. We can be performed, we can be rewarded exponentially in the life hereafter. It is all based on what Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala decides, and we beg and we ask for the mercy and the love of Allah that He exponentially increases our reward in the life hereafter for the actions that we perform. Amin. So that is the sort of frame with which we look at where I want us to look at our devotional acts of worship. One in particular that I want to focus on today is perhaps the most important of those devotional acts, and that is the act of prayer of salah. We know that on the day of judgment that the first action that we will be held accountable for is our prayers. And as the hadith says that the Prophet ﷺ reminded us that if that is sound, if that is sound and intact, then the rest of our accountability, the rest of our accounting will be based upon that. Meaning that if our prayers are in order, then inshallah, God willing, the rest of our accountability will flow seamlessly and smoothly. That is what the Prophet ﷺ reminds us. So there is something very particular about the salah. Now I want us to remember that frame that I talked about earlier, right? The way with which we look at our devotional acts of worship. And I want you to find or imply that here as we begin to look at the prayer itself. Allah ﷻ tells us about the prayer in many, many, many, many verses of the Qur'an. One in particular that I want to focus on is Surat al-Ankabut, the 29th chapter of the Qur'an. Spider, right? Surat al-Ankabut verse 45. Allah ﷻ says This is often a verse that is actually recited in the khutbah, in the Friday sermon. That established the prayer, indeed the prayer will prevent you from lewdness and indecency. From lewd conduct and indecent conduct. And the remembrance of Allah is the greatest of all things. And elsewhere in the Qur'an, Allah ﷻ says Establish the prayer to remember me. So the act of prayer itself is the greatest act of the remembrance of Allah ﷻ. We perform our adhqaad, but the best adhqaad is the Salah itself. The best remembrance of Allah is that which we do through our devotional act of worship, our devotional act of the Salah. Now we use this word devotional act, but what's interesting about the Salah is that again in sort of using religious studies language, Salah is both performative, devotional, but it is also confessional. We recite, we engage in fact in a conversation with Allah ﷻ. Our prayer is our communion. Our prayer is our communication with Allah ﷻ. Five times a day at minimum, we are given and afforded the opportunity to engage in a confessional conversation with Allah ﷻ. This is the prayer. But when we look at this particular verse of Surat An-Ankabut, establish the prayer, indeed the prayer will prevent you from lewdness and indecency, lewd, indecent conduct. Now our rational minds, if we apply our rational intellect or reason to this particular part of the verse, indeed the prayer will prevent you from lewdness and indecency. How? Again, rational mind only. How? How does that happen? Because there either has to be correlation or there has to be causation, right? What is it that if I perform this Salah that will prevent me from lewdness and indecency? Again our rational minds may not fully understand that. And that is because there is something deeper. What we're looking at or what we're only examining when we think about or look at Salah with that rational lens, our reason, our aqa only, is that we look for causation and correlation and we may not always find that. Because there is a greater and more profound, a metaphysical reality to all our ibadat, to all of our prayer, all of our acts of worship, devotional, professional, confessional. All of our acts of worship have a metaphysical, that which beyond, that which escapes the rational, that which escapes the reason or the aqa that we apply exclusively. To use a fancy word, it is supra-rational. It is beyond intellect. That is what the metaphysical is. We may not see all of those causation. We may not see all of that correlation, but there is one. Because Allah says there is one. Inna Salata Tanha Anil Fa'isha Ibn Munkah. That the prayer will prevent you from lewdness and indecency. And so although we may not see or we may not be able to rationally explain or see the causal and the correlative relationship between praying and lewdness and indecent conduct, it happens. It occurs. Allah is saying that it will happen. And this is the realm of the metaphysical. This is the realm that is beyond our rational understanding. And so in the brief time that we have remaining, if we look at the prayer, those acts, body movements, postures, that which we recite, there are profound meanings in our act of worship, in our act of prayer. And we are only going to look at but a few of those. They are because again, they're unlimited. They are, this is the realm of the metaphysical. This is the realm that is beyond our rational understanding. We may not even know. We may not even begin to know all of the profound and hidden secrets and meaning that lies within the prayer. But we have to first and foremost, I want to note here, the first and foremost, we have to recognize that that is possible. We have to recognize that that is a reality, that there are hidden mysteries and secrets in our prayer that even throughout a lifetime of devotional act, we may never fully grasp or understand those meanings. They are beyond our understanding, but we do so because Allah has commanded us to do so and we know that there are beautiful and hidden and profound meanings and secrets in our prayers that escaped the rational. So let us look at but a few. When we engage in the prayer, actually, in fact, there are prerequisites to the prayer itself. We have to be in a state of ritual purification, wudu. We have to be pure and that purity is beyond the physical, right? Because it's not like we wash every or there are parts or there are aspects or there are conditions by which we have to perform rossal. But nonetheless, by and large, the vast majority of times, we perform the wudu in order to prepare as a prerequisite for the salah. I don't know which mic has turned off, but these are the requisites that the necessary pre-steps to performing the prayer and that is the purification. And as I said, that purification escapes beyond just the physical because even if we look at the wudu, we're just washing certain parts of our bodies, not necessarily all of the parts that may be dirty, for example. But that is, again, hidden and beautiful meanings of the wudu itself. And we know that the Prophet SAW told us that as we wash our hands, for example, all the sins that we commit with our hands, they wash off all the sins that we commit with our mouth, with our eyes, with our ears, because this is what we wash all of the actions that we walk towards. The evil deeds that we walk towards will be washed away by the performing of the wudu. These are profound meanings. Another prerequisite for the prayer is that we have to be facing the qiblah, facing makkah, facing the qabah to the best of our abilities. And again, this teaches us and this informs us of the meaning or the profound implication of having direction, of having focus. We don't just haphazardly perform the prayer. Similarly, our lives should not be haphazard. Our lives should have a qiblah, should have a direction, to have a focus, live lives of intentionality. Intention, niyah is another prerequisite for the prayer. According to majority of the schools, we have to have a niyah in some of the schools, a verbal intention to perform the salah. You have to verbalize the intention. Again, living a life of direction, of qiblah, living a life of intentionality. That's what this is teaching us. First thing that we do when we engage in the prayer is the lifting and the raising of our hands and in the motion that we are literally and figuratively putting the world and everything else behind us. We raise our hands and we put everything else behind us. All of the dunya and the worldly concerns that we have when we engage in the prayer, we're putting all of that behind us and we're focusing and we're turning only to Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala, only to God Almighty. This is the prayer. These are the acts of the prayer, profound, beautiful implications. It is said that the servant of Allah is the nearest to Allah in what position? In the sajda. In the sajda. This simple act of prostration. What do we do when we perform the sajda? We are literally placing our forehead on the ground, kneeling and an act of utmost subjugation to Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala, humility before Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala. Our brains, that the rational, the place where we find the ego. I am someone. I am somebody. I'm somebody because I have knowledge or I have experience or I have skills or I have a bank account. Whatever that is, the ego, the nefs, that which gives us that sense of accomplishment and feeling of superiority. We put that in the dirt five times a day at minimum, multiple times a day because they're more than five sujud in the prayer right throughout the day. We put that part of our lives, that ego, that sense of accomplishment, that sense that you are somebody into the dirt where it belongs before Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala. That is the closest we are to Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala. The poet from the subcontinent Iqbal, he said, this is a sajda which you think is meaningless. That this one prayer that you take for granted or you think that it's meaningless. That this one sajda, it prevents you from a thousand sujud because once you've subjugated to Allah to the greatest of all of realities, once you have submitted to Allah, you cannot and you will not fully submit to anything else. It prevents you from a thousand prostrations. That one prostration that you perform to Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala, that you perform before your Lord and Creator. It prevents you from a thousand sujud because once you have turned to the greatest of reality, everything else it is inconsequential. Everything else is meaningless. Everything else is less than that. So again, we don't have time to go into all of the profound implications but I want us to begin at least to think about these acts of worship that we do where but a few weeks, months away from the month of Ramadan, another act, another opportunity for us to reflect on the hidden and the profound meanings of these acts of worship that we do. And so let us hope and let us pray to Allah Subhanahu wa Ta'ala that He gives us the ability, the understanding in our hearts and in our minds to understand the profound and beauty of our acts of worship and let us never leave those acts of worship because they are meaningful. They are profound and they have deep insight and meaning in our lives. Wa Aqeem Al-Salaali Dikri