SALAT

Prayer has always been an integral part of Muslim faith and is accorded a central place in the religious executes. Salat is the riteized soma of petition laid out and codified in the Quran. Though Islam has formalized legion(predicate) pr cropices in detail, salah has not been codified in detail in the Quran. The practices of Prophet Muhammed served as worthy of emulation and has been carried over into the religious practice in the form of oral reports called hadiths.In the primordial stages Islam and its rites were in a state of constant change and hence scholars and jurists spent considerable private road in expounding the religious practices of Muslims. The Quran places great emphasis on prayer and the prayer finds expression in various forms bid supplication, remembrance, repentance, glorification, litany and ritual (p. 8054). Salat is the ritual part of the prayer and needs to be silent in this overall context. Keeping up with the schism in early Islam and subsequent formation of Sunni and Shia sects, salat has incorporated the influences of these sects.Prayer is of such a paramount importance to the faith, it is also included in the Islamic polity and salat is unmatchable of the Five Pillars of Islam as defined in Islamic law Shariah. Salat can either be obligatory or voluntary. It is voluntary when unrivalled has reached the age of reason and obligatory when one has reached puberty (p. 8055). There ar exact and stringent specifications for conducting salat and Islamic laws describe them in detail. Though men and women performed the prayers together in Muhammads time, the later hadiths have excluded or severely limited presence of women in the communal salat performed in the mosques.Islam stresses communal prayer and hence the mosque forms the central locus for salat. It is permitted to conduct salat on the street or elsewhere, if no mosque is available. In the early days of Islam salat was performed three times in a day, but later hadit hs took reference to Muhammads night go and increased the number of mandatory salats to flipper in a day. Muslims are called to prayer by muezzin fifteen minutes before the salat time and the muezzin calls out by glorifying God and his messenger Muhammad. onward the salat begins the followers of the faith should make themselves clean for the ritual by cleansing themselves with water. Shariah specifies both major impurities, which require a commit bath and minor impurities that require ablution at the mosque itself. Apart from the physical purity, one also has to purify himself mentally by declaring the intention to pray. Various schools of plan differ on this aspect i. e. some schools say that intention should be pronounced audibly and some say it should be silent.The very act of performing the salat is pretty simple and brief. According to Shariah each salat consists of two or four cycles of bowing, called rakah (p. 8057). It also specifies that at least(prenominal) seventeen cycles should be completed in a day during the five salats. Salat is performed by a series of steps accompanied by specified incantations. For example, salat begins with the incantation God is great followed by legitimate bodily movements. The Sunnis and Shias have different interpretations here as well.This is then followed by extolling the glory of God and finally the follower performs various other actions like asking for forgiveness or offers petitions to the God. Salat needs to be silent not only as a pure ritual form but also needs to be located in the historic context. Salat has played a fundamental role in hammer a Muslim identity. It has also been interpreted as a pathway to spiritual encounter with God or merely as ritual observance and submission to Gods law (p. 8058). For the followers barely salat denotes purification of mind and body and union with the God.