5 Pillars Made Plain
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Pillar 2: Why do we pray?
Reflection. Redemption. Renewal.
This is why we pray. Sh. Abdullah Oduro expands on each of these actions and how prayer impacts the process of forgiveness. In this video, we learn from the story of Prophet Musa in our approach to prayer and understand the reason we are asked to pray 5 times a day.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Assalamualaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon you all. I'm Abdullah Oduro and welcome back. Why do we pray or why pray? Well, we're gonna sum it up into three things for reflection, redemption and renewal. In actuality, it's in that sequence. Reflection, you reflect over what has happened and reflect over things that may happen. But you're pondering over the current situation, the past situation, you're thinking. Redemption is an action that emerges from that reflection. Once you think about something, you're going to act on it. And particularly, redemption is one of the things, amongst many, thankfulness, awe, fear. Redemption is one of those seeking forgiveness. You felt bad about doing something, so you seek forgiveness because you thought about it. And renewal is the conclusion of that. Once you sought forgiveness for something, you renewed yourself and you've had some type of spiritual rejuvenation. You sought forgiveness and you asked for God to forgive you to where the next time you're encountered with that particular thing, you won't fall into it by the permission of Allah. This is actually mentioned throughout the Quran in numerous verses, but what I want to talk about in particular is that which happened with Prophet Moses, peace and blessings be upon him. In the 20th chapter, verse number 11 through 14, Allah talks about when Moses was on his way back to Egypt and he was with his family in the cold, blazing blizzard. And he saw a fire from a distance. He told his family, stay here, I will go to this fire and perhaps use it with my staff and take a portion of that fire as a guide for us on our way back to Egypt. But Allah says, when he came to that blazing fire, he was called out, oh Moses, indeed, I am your Lord, take your sandals off
for you are in the valley of what is called Tuwa, which is Mount Sinai. And I have chosen you. So listen to what is about to be revealed. Verily, I am Allah, there is no God except me. Worship me by establishing the prayer for my remembrance. So here we see that Allah firstly revealed himself to Moses, establishing who he is and giving him a responsibility. So upon Moses knowing that he has been chosen as a prophet now, what is the first thing that Allah tells him? Allah tells him, fa'budani, worship me, the first pillar of Islam. Wa aqeem as salata, and establish the prayer, second pillar of Islam. Why? Li dhikri, for my remembrance. And that is the 14th verse here. So that's what we want to highlight on, that when Allah chose him as a prophet, what's the first thing that he told him? He told him about himself, who he was, gave him knowledge, and then gave him an action plan, gave him a responsibility. So we see the first pillar of Islam is the knowledge. It's the knowledge of Allah and the acknowledgement of that. And then the action plan, which is initially establishment of the prayer, to establish the prayer, to pray. So what's the reason for that is reflection, for my remembrance. So we say, reflection is recalling based on knowledge that you have, knowledge of Allah. You reflect on his greatness, and the best time to do that is when you have detached yourself, you've tuned out when you pray. So you remember God's greatness upon you, what you've done earlier in that day, and you thank him for that. You remember God's greatness upon you, how he is the partner, how he is the all-forgiving, he forgives us for any shortcomings that we may have. And you remember that and you ask him for his forgiveness
with your undivided attention, praying to him. And that's the redemption. When you're done and you conclude with the prayer, because of your hope, your fear, your trust, your love, all of these actions of the heart seeking redemption, you have a spiritual renewal. You feel a little clean, you feel a little ease. It brings you a form of salam, peace. And that's the goal. And that's why we say Islam is submission and surrender to the creator for means of peace and salvation. You obtain this peace through submission. You obtain this peace through prayer. That is why we pray. So when we look at this, consider this. The prayers in Islam are five. As we see the second pillar of Islam is praying five times a day, throughout the span of a day. So throughout 24 hours, we have five legislated prayers. Let's compare these five prayers to the amount of sins we commit. More than five on a 24 hour basis. So look at the ratio of sins compared to the prayer. And look at the wisdom of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala, the exalted. The wisdom, how he appropriates the knowledge of our sins, of our nature, that we embraced our humanity, of our deficiency, and of the complete perfection of God. And through that, we pray five times a day throughout the span of a day. Sunrise, you wake up, you perform prayer. You're reflecting on yesterday. You're reflecting on what you've done yesterday. Then you ask for forgiveness of what you've done. You ask Allah to make you strong on maybe something you felt weak upon, or to make you strong on what you're about to embark on on that day. And when you're done, because you've had that type of serenity, you've obtained peace and you're ready to start your day.
The middle of the day, you may have performed some mistakes. You may have looked at something that you shouldn't have looked at. You may have said something you shouldn't have said. You've done something that you shouldn't have done. That's why the prayer relinquishes and does away with wrongful, immoral deeds. Allah says in the chapter number 29, verse 45, and establish the prayer, or establish, recite the book that has been revealed to you and establish the prayer. For verily, prayer relinquishes wrongful and immoral actions and the remembrance of Allah is the greatest thing. And Allah is well aware of what you do. So prayer relinquishes and takes away, and maybe even by the permission of Allah, erases those bad deeds on our record when we have to stand in front of Him for every single thing that we have done, good and bad. So again, we pray for means of reflection, redemption, for spiritual renewal, to reflect on what we've done, which will bring actions of the heart, and which will, in conclusion, by the permission of Allah, make us people that have salaam and peace within their hearts and their actions, Muslims. May Allah bless you all and make you of those that understand why we pray, to increase us in our togetherness with each other and establish that strength of a relationship with our Creator. As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Thank you.
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