Let me teach you what you will do to appreciate Allah...here's how you appreciate Allah. Make rukuh, make sajda, what is both of these things referring to? Salaat. First he complained about humanity, you're not doing your job appreciating me, you believers, it's your turn, you need to appreciate me. The first step in appreciating me will be...Salaat.
Where is your Salaat? How much we appreciate Salaat is a good indication of how much we appreciate Allah. How active, how vigilant we are in getting up out bed, how lazy we feel in making it to the masjid, how bored we are when the recitation is not entertaining enough. All of those are good indicators of where we stand before Allah (azw).
You know somebody who doesn't know about prayer, doesn't know about the Muslim prayer, a non-Muslim guy walks by and he sees people making Salaat...he's gonna notice these people are standing with their heads down, they're humble before somebody...then they put their heads like this, half way, wow they got even more humble, and when they got up, what happened next? Face on the ground, they got really humbled. In other words, he's noticing that there's a progression in their humility to Allah, to whoever they're worshipping. They're getting even more and more and more subservient. It seems like they're appreciating their master, than they appreciated him more and they appreciated him even more. The progression of Salaat itself teaches us that we're supposed to evolve, grow in our humility to Allah.
So this idea, as the more we serve, the more we're going to become humble. The most, the extreme of humility, is sujood...then from there, because these 2 things still in the end in essence refer to Salaat, they refer to Salaat. What about in between the Salawaat? 'And enslave yourself and worship your master.' In other words, now that rukuh and sajda is done, that's not the only ibadah, you understand ibadah is more than that, ibadah is an attitude, I'm a slave, I'm here to serve, ibadah is how I walk, how I talk, how I think about myself, how I think about others, your entire attitude gets transformed because of prayer....prayer is actually a very big part of a Muslims personality. Not just our behavior.
You know, prayer we think of it as a behavior, but prayer actually, the daily Salawaat, they're supposed to have a really direct effect on how we think. Our attitudes, our thought process, our mentality between dhuhur and asr, my thoughts are gonna be impacted by the dhuhur prayer, between asr and maghrib my thoughts, my priorities are gonna be impacted by the asr prayer. It's the way a Muslim carries himself as a abd (slave), that's shaped, that's what the Salawaat do. You know how pillars hold a building together? The Salawaat hold our day together, they hold our day together and the between hours are dictated by what quality of Salaat we had. Now if the Salaat itself becomes empty, if the Salaat becomes just cardiovascular exercise, it becomes a review session for suratul ikhlas and suratul kauthar (shortest surahs), cause you don't have time for anything more...if it's just becomes that, you're not gonna see any change in your personality.
- Ustadh Nouman Ali Khan
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