Understanding Salat — Page 193
Qa‘dah 193 here means that we have seen something from that time up until now. Than ā ’ brought us to the point of i h s ā n, where we worship Allah as if we are seeing Him. The testimony here is a culmination of what we have witnessed in that state of i h sān. When we say ‘I bear witness’, we can think of what we saw of Allah Almighty in the glorifications of Qiy ā m. We can think of the ‘A z mat [Greatness] of Allah Almighty that we saw in Ruk ū ‘. We can think of the heights of Al-A‘l ā [the Most High] that we saw in Sajdah. When we give testimony based on what we witnessed in S al ā t , that testimony carries weight. Similarly, we ‘bear witness that Muhammad is His wor- shipper and Messenger. ’ In S al ā t , we experience so many blessings of obedience of the Holy Prophet sas that when we reach Qa‘dah, we pray for him as if he sas is in front of us. Just before this Shah ā dah, we prayed for the Holy Prophet sas in the second person. When we bear witness to his sas truth, our testimony carries weight because it is based on what we have witnessed in front of us. When we say, ‘I bear witness that Muhammad is His worshipper and messenger,’ we declare that we have experienced such blessings in the words of wor- ship in S al ā t that they could only have been taught to us by a true worshipper of Allah. Hadrat Khalīfatul Masīh IV rta said that this testimony in Qa‘dah is not theoretical, it is based on experience. ( Dhauqe ‘Ib ā dat, pp. 512)