Understanding Salat — Page 42
Understanding S al A t 42 Examine how you see God as compared to the things that you love in this world, lest your view of God be the same as the people of Bhopal, or similar to it. Remember well that God is entirely free and pure of all ugliness, vice, and disfigurement. ( Anw a rul ‘Ul u m, vol. 2, pp. 236-237, Barak a te Khilafat ) If our prayers are not being accepted, then the uncomforta- ble truth is that we are doing something wrong. The difficult path is to change ourselves so that we become worthy of the acceptance of prayers. However, it is much easier to change our concept of Allah rather than changing ourselves. It is eas- ier to attribute imperfection to Allah and believe that He no longer accepts prayers. With this excuse, we can say that we tried our best but it’s not our fault that our worship pro- duced no results. This creates a vicious cycle because when we convince ourselves that Allah does not accept prayers, then we have little reason to pray, and we gradually cease to pray at all. If we don’t practically believe that Allah can accept our prayers, then we start to disbelieve in the attribute of The Responder ( ُ اَلْمُجِيب ). That attribute ceases to exist for us and we cease to seek blessings from that attribute. If we believe in practice that Allah Almighty does not hear, or see, or speak, then we will slowly stop praying to Him and obeying Him and expecting a response from Him. The lack of correct doc- trines will result in a lack of action on our part. The lack of action will result in a lack of response from Allah Almighty.