What Is Thikr Allah and Why Is It Greater than Salat?

When non-Muslims pray or use the word “prayer,” usually what they mean is du’a or supplication. This is different from Salat or salah (both transliterations are used), the Islamic prayer which involves the body language of bowing and prostration and the physical perimeters of time (daily prayer times) and space (direction to pray towards Mecca), required of all Muslims. Thikr Allah — translated “remembering” or “mentioning” Allah and sometimes transliterated dhikr — is not specified as obligatory, although the Quran emphasizes it. But salat is required to be established on a daily basis. So why then do we read in Surat Al-Ankabut 29:45 (below) that thikr Allah is greater than salat?

اتْلُ مَا أُوحِيَ إِلَيْكَ مِنَ الْكِتَابِ وَأَقِمِ الصَّلَاةَ ۖ إِنَّ الصَّلَاةَ تَنْهَىٰ عَنِ الْفَحْشَاءِ وَالْمُنكَرِ ۗ وَلَذِكْرُ اللَّهِ أَكْبَرُ ۗ وَاللَّهُ يَعْلَمُ مَا تَصْنَعُونَ
Recite, [O Muhammad], what has been revealed to you of the Book and establish salat. Indeed, salat prohibits immorality and wrongdoing, and thikr Allah (the remembrance of Allah) is greater. And Allah knows that which you do.

Compassion and Justice: Their Essential Symbiosis in Islam

Compassion cannot coexist with Injustice. Justice is at the heart of compassion.

Several years ago, I posted this piece about compassion being the “overriding principle” of Islam. It was written in response to the destruction of Muslim societies by the hand of brutal dictatorships imposed on the citizens of majority-Muslim countries, as well as the Islamophobia Industry’s branding of Islam and the Quran as “promoting violence,” and more specifically, “terrorism,” a term which has strayed far from its original application, for acts of violence perpetrated by an aggrieved party against civilians in response to acts of oppression by a government or army. Now it has become a classification of crime outside the normal justice system of due process and protecting the rights of the accused. Instead, such rights are cancelled by then Patriot Act and other elements of the so-called Global War on Terror, allowing governments including the United States to avoid democratic norms of justice, legalizing torture, long prohibited in democracies, against people who had been accused but not duly convicted of “terror”-related crimes. In other words, the War on Terror had become a justification for subverting and thwarting justice itself. That in turn became a war on compassion and truth, into which the ascendancy of Trump became both emblematic and promotional.

And the number one suspect category for this exemption from justice and human rights? Muslims. Whose religion prioritizes justice, human rights, and compassion more than modern democracies or even religions do.

Eid Al-Fitr Mubarak! And How We Can Mark the Occasion in This Difficult Time

Eid Mubarak! This year in mosques around the world Muslims are praying for Palestinians and Palestine, for Al-Quds and Al-Aqsa to be free from oppression and being hijacked as pawns to a political agenda posing as a religious one: a “divinely-ordained right” to usurp land at will and displace entire communities of men, women, children, and the elderly, to invade their holy places to maim and blind peaceful worshipers while they are praying in a holy site.

Special Prayer for Ramadan & Laylat-ul-Qadr

Although Ramadan is almost finished, there is still the possibility of Laylat-ul-Qadr on the eve of the 27th of Ramadan, for which is a little-known but powerful voluntary (not required) salat called Salat Tasbeeh, also less-commonly known as Salat Sobhanallah. A description of how to perform the “full version” plus references from the Sunnah is here (yes, this prayer has its own Wikipedia page! with a few spelling discrepancies), but a shorter version is below, one my family has done during Ramadan for years, especially during the final last days.

What Is Reality? The Quran on Truth Vs. What You Want It To Be

These days, with the proliferation of fake news and online influencers who invent entire realities to erase people’s understanding of what is true and what is false, where often the greatest deceivers present themselves as the most sincere truth-tellers, we are as a society in great need of somehow finding our way, our lost sense of reality. From another perspective, 

وَلَا تَلْبِسُوا الْحَقَّ بِالْبَاطِلِ وَتَكْتُمُوا الْحَقَّ وَأَنتُمْ تَعْلَمُونَ

And do not mix the truth with falsehood or conceal the truth while you know [it].

Surat Al-Baqara 2:42

For Ramadan: the Huge Importance of Gratitude

The word Kafir, most frequently translated “disbeliever/ unbeliever,” also means “ungrateful” as specified here:

Quran Surat Al-Insan (The Human) 76:3

إِنَّا هَدَيْنَاهُ السَّبِيلَ إِمَّا شَاكِرًا وَإِمَّا كَفُورًا

Indeed, We guided him to the way, be he grateful or be he ungrateful.

The Arabic uses the word shakiran which exclusively means “thankful/ grateful” and juxtaposes it with kafura (derived from the same root as kafir and used the same way), thereby showing here the same word commonly understood as “disbelieving” clearly means “ungrateful.” This shows us that disbelief, more accurately translated “denial”, is at heart a lack of thankfulness. When we think of the original Arabic root word as kufr, which means “denial,” and comes from “to cover (up)” where you can hear the similarity between cover and kufr (like cof-er; Arabic has no “v” sound), then we can understand the relationship between ungratefulness and disbelief: both are forms of denial.