Understanding Salat — Page 156
Understanding S al A t 156 wants to fly toward its beauty and explore all those places we feel we will never be able to go to. The mystery and curiosity are in how impossibly distant it is. Hadrat Maulawī ‘Abdul Karīm ra narrates, I happened to wake up once in the middle of the night to hear Mahmūd crying and the Promised Messiah as talking to him gently to divert his mind. The Promised Messiah as seemed to be carrying him in his arms, and pacing about to soothe him, but the child continued to cry. After some time the Promised Messiah as said: ‘Look how brightly that star shines Mahmūd!’ This arrested the child’s atten- tion evidently, for he quietened down for a moment but started crying again with a new basis for his pet- ulance. ‘I wish to go to that star!’ he now wailed over and over again. ( Fazl-e-Umar, pp. 17-18) This is the same childlike curiosity that we should have. The attribute of ‘the Most High’ ( َعْلَى اَلْأ ) shows us the stars, and the attribute of ‘the Merciful’ ( ُ ۡم ي حِ َّ اَلر ) takes us towards them. In Sajdah , when we were told of the inconceivable power of Allah Almighty that exists beyond our compre- hension, then we naturally wanted to see it. We want to see exactly that beauty of Allah Almighty which is beyond our reach. Its mystery is in how impossibly distant it is. However, despite how distant ‘the Most High’ ( َعْلَى اَلْأ ) is,