Some symbols of prayer in Islam
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Prayer in Islam was revealed to the Prophet, may God’s peace and blessings be upon him, by the archangel Gabriel. It constitutes a divine ritual: a set of symbols of transcendent origin, to be enacted and performed with rigour. Performing it is meant to transform the inwardness of the person who accomplishes it.
The gestures of prayer represent and synthesise the main stages of the spiritual path, of the great inner combat: the struggle against the soul’s negative tendencies.
A sacralised space and time
The prayer mat is a sacred space that one enters after performing one’s ablutions, one’s ritual purifications, and after removing one’s shoes. This recalls the episode of the prophet Moses, peace be upon him, who was asked to remove his two sandals before continuing his walk towards Mount Sinai. Some Sufis have said that removing one’s two sandals symbolises detaching oneself from the concerns of this world and of the other world, to attach oneself exclusively to God.
The first takbir, “Allahu Akbar”, together with the gesture that accompanies it, also symbolises this exclusive orientation towards God, the straight path (as-sirat al-mustaqim), figured by the gesture of the two hands tracing that way. The straight path points towards the symbolic centre of the world, but also of our inner being: Mecca.
Some worshippers, before pronouncing the first takbir, perform the reverse gesture, their two hands pushing back behind them every concern and every intention other than God.
Praying with open eyes
Prayer is performed with open eyes, which has several meanings. As René Guénon indicated in one of his letters: “The fact of praying with open eyes in Islam seems to me to be explained very naturally if one considers that it is not a rite in which one must isolate oneself, quite the contrary: the very necessity of orientation towards a common centre indicates this sufficiently.”
The eyes must in principle remain fixed on the spot where the worshipper is going to prostrate himself: we must try to remain always focused on this aim of inner prostration, which corresponds to an essential stage of the path.
From standing to prostration: the journey of the ego
At the beginning of prayer, the servant stands upright, facing his Lord. It is a duality: the Lord, and the servant setting out on his spiritual path.
As the path unfolds, the ego’s grip begins to lessen, through grace and through the fruits of the great combat against the ego: the servant becomes aware of divine Almightiness and of his own weakness. This realisation is symbolised by the gesture of bowing, ruku’: the ego bends willingly before God.
Then comes prostration: the ego is entirely effaced in God; this is the symbol of extinction, fana’. There is only ONE left, la ilaha illa Llah: there is no Reality but God. Al-Junayd, the great Sufi master, used to say that “Sufism is when God makes you die to yourself in order to raise you up in Him”. In the same way, certain authenticated hadiths clearly mention this initiatic death and inner rebirth: “Die before you die”. “Men are asleep; when they die, they wake up”. “If you want to see a dead man walking, then look at Abu Bakr”: what is meant is the death of the illusion that things exist separately from God. One then perceives divine unicity in everything; one sees nothing else. Note well that, in this prostration, the soles of both feet are oriented towards the direction of that divine unicity.
Straightening up: subsistence after extinction
After prostration comes the straightening up: this is the symbol of subsistence, baqa’. The heart remains inwardly in prostration, but the body straightens. It is the simultaneous perception of the One and of His action in the multiplicity of His creation. Shaykh al-’Alawi explains that it is recommended to let one’s hands trail on the ground when rising from prostration to straighten up: indeed, the heart does not abandon the vision of divine unicity in everything, but goes beyond it. One sees both God and His action in His creatures, unity and multiplicity. This explains why, in this upright position, one foot remains oriented towards unity while the other turns towards multiplicity.
To illustrate these notions more clearly, one can take the image of various objects made of clay: first one sees the diversity of objects, bowls, plates, spoons. That is our habitual vision, which sees creation in all its diversity. One can then perceive that all these objects have in reality only one constituent, one single matter: clay. Finally, one can see simultaneously the diversity of the objects and their unique constituent, clay, which can take every possible form.
The Fatiha and recitations aloud or in a low voice
The Fatiha, the first surah of the Qur’an, must obligatorily be recited at each ritual prayer. On this subject one may recall the hadith which explains that: “All that is in the revealed books is in the Qur’an. All that is in the Qur’an is in the Fatiha. All that is in the Fatiha is in ‘Bismi Llahi-r-Rahmani-r-Rahim’, in the name of God the Clement the Merciful, the first verse of the Fatiha. All that is in ‘Bismi Llahi-r-Rahmani-r-Rahim’ is in the letter Ba’, itself contained in the point beneath it”.
Certain prayers are recited in a low voice, others aloud. Here one may refer to the emir ’Abd al-Qadir, who enlightens us on the meaning of this rule: “The total Reality is shared between non-manifestation, which is proper to the divine Essence, and Manifestation, which is the prerogative of the divine Names”. “Recitation aloud is Manifestation. It has therefore been prescribed for the one who prays at night, so that the darkness of the non-manifested should not entirely take hold of him”.
“Recitation in a low voice being non-manifestation, it was prescribed for the one who prays by day, so that he keeps a link with the degree of non-manifestation of the divine Essence”.
“Thus to the day, which is Manifestation, was assigned recitation in a low voice, which is non-manifestation. Whereas to the night, which is non-manifested, was assigned recitation aloud, which is manifestation. As for the two ritual prayers of sunset and evening, they lie between night and day. It is therefore prescribed in these two prayers to join recitation aloud and recitation in a low voice. If, in these two prayers, recitation aloud must precede recitation in a low voice, it is because the worshipper is preparing to welcome the night, the symbol of the non-manifested Essence.”
One may note that the same correspondence applies during the month of Ramadan, in which fasting, corresponding to non-manifestation, is performed by day, between sunrise and sunset. The breaking of the fast takes place when night falls, until sunrise.
Celestial prototypes
As Faouzi Skali writes: “In Islam, all rites have celestial, cosmic prototypes, linking each gesture to a celebration proper to the spiritual world. These rituals symbolise a vision according to which every being is integrated into a universal order, into a cosmic praise”.
In this regard one may note that the different positions of prayer reproduce the Arabic letters of the name “Ahmad”, the prototype of the name of the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings upon him, in the celestial world: the standing position for the “alif”, the bowing for the “ha’”, the prostration for the “mim” and the straightening up for the “dal”.
One may finally observe that the times of prayer unfold in ever closer periods as the day advances. Likewise, the Qur’an begins with the longest surahs and ends with the shortest: one might see in this a symbol of the acceleration of time which grows endlessly during our cyclical period, an allusion to the progressive contraction of time and space that certain hadiths mention.
These are only a few suggested symbolic explanations, a few rapid allusions: as with every symbol of divine origin, a quantity of other interpretations could be drawn from this ritual of prayer. It is for each of us to open our hearts to all these meanings.
And God knows best.
