Islam - Its Meaning for Modern Man — Page 172
172 servants like you. Then call on them and let them answer, if you are justified in your claim” (7:195). Then who can be more astray than those who instead of praying to God, the All-Knowing, the All- Hearing, the All-Aware, the Almighty, pray unto such as cannot answer them till the Day of Judgement. Indeed, they are not even conscious that any prayers are being addressed to them (46:6). God accepts prayer as a manifestation of His Existence and His attributes. He has an individual relationship with each of His servants, and the acceptance of prayer is largely affected by the degree and the quality of each person’s relationship to God, which means the degree to which the person responds to the guidance provided by God (42:27). The concept of prayer in Islam finds expression in many ways. The most important is the one known as Salat , sometimes described as one of the pillars of the faith, which is obligatory. It comprises five daily services, which consist of congregational Prayer, all of them except one being preceded or followed by individual worship in the same form as the congregational Prayer. The times of the five services are dawn, noon, afternoon, after sunset, and nightfall (11:115; 17:79). The only service during which a sermon is delivered is the Friday noon service. The length of time for each of these services varies from fifteen minutes to a half hour. The Friday noon