Islam's Response to Contemporary Issues — Page 209
Economic Peace 209 least a large section of Muslim society is responsible for abiding by this injunction. The percentage of those who regularly pray five times a day may be lower in some countries and higher in others, but it is a common experience shared to a greater or lesser degree by a majority of Muslims. The system of Prayer in itself is a grand message of the equality of man. The one who reaches the mosque first occupies the place of his choice and none, howsoever highly placed in society he may be, can ever think of displacing him. At the time of Prayer, all stand together—shoulder-to-shoulder—with no gap in between. The most impeccably dressed may have standing adjacent to him someone clad in tattered rags. The weak and pale and the healthy and robust all meet together daily on an equal platform where the message invariably repeated is: God is the Greatest. To see eye-to-eye the misery in which some members of a locality are living and to meet them daily, leaves a very powerful effect on the heart of a man living in comparative comfort. The message is loud and clear that you must do something to ameliorate their sufferings and lift their standards or be degraded yourself in the estimation of God as well as your own estimations. The area of this contact is broadened further on each Friday where Muslims gather at a central mosque so that people from richer neighbourhoods meet those from poorer areas. It is extended still further on each of the bi-annual festivals, which are preceded by Fi t r a na , a fund raised by voluntary contributions for the relief of the poor. 3) The Muslim month of fasting also sets on an equal plane the rich and poor. The rich endure thirst and hunger to remind