Islamic Salat – Physical and Spiritual Connection

One unique characteristic of salat, the obligatory form of prayer in Islam, is that it incorporates “spiritual” (faith, mindfulness) with physical elements – the body language of bowing and prostration + the time/space elements of astronomical prayer times and a very specific geophysical direction of prayer. This prayer form grounds the believer’s worship, making a connection between this temporary earthly life and Allah’s Divine eternal presence. This key connection in our lives is in that sense like the Quran: a timeless message sent down in time. So our salat connects our time/space “world” – in this case the “world” of our lives – to the timeless and unbounded “NOW” of Allah. Below is an aya referring to time, 55:26, followed by an aya referring to eternity or timelessness, 55:27.

55:26 All that lives on earth or in the heavens is bound to pass away

55:27 but forever will abide the Face of your Lord, full of majesty and glory

Amazing Quran Connection Re Solar/Lunar Calendar

There’s a reference in Sura 18 Al-Kahf (“The Cave”) to the number of years the “people of the cave” remained asleep in the cave, where they, along with their dog, escaped religious persecution, after which Allah the Exalted put them in a state of deep sleep for a specified number of years. But the numbers used to describe those years are not merely to tell us how many years they slept as a “factoid” but something more enlightening. Note the unusual wording.

And they remained in their cave for three hundred years and exceeded by nine. (Al-Kahf 18:25)

Quranic Architecture as a Calendar

Quranic Architecture as a Calendar with one surah in each chamber.

the-calendar-q-nautilusDownload

Above is an image of the spiral Quranic architecture discussed on this site, where each surah is shown by number in its chamber. Due to size consideration, there’s insufficient room for the surah names; however the first 12 surahs are named, and on the outer edge of the circle are the Hijri calendar names as well as the names of the zodiac constellations.

A full explanation of the calendar design and meaning is above in a downloadable PDF. It shows the exact match between the Quran’s size of 114 Surahs and arrangement here as 9.5 “years” (12-month/ chamber “cycles”) with Noah’s time as prophet of “a thousand years minus fifty years” or 950 years, making this symbolic “calendar” architecture of the Quran an “ark” protecting those who “embark” the Quran’s ark by reading it from the cataclysm of the Day when time as we know it, and therefore the universe as we know it, ceases to exist, that is, the Day of Resurrection or Judgment Day.

Timekeeping is all about changing quite literally “what is between our hands,” the Quran’s expression for the “present”, by increasing its size from a “moment” to “the present day” as it were, and beyond. And the Quran uses this meaning of time in its text and message, so it makes sense that its very architecture would also be a calendar, showing us how to spend our lifetime’s limited term wisely, leading to success outside that lifetime, when this world of time ceases to be.

The Quran’s Architecture as a Calendar, by S. Karami

A Summary of Quranic Architecture

Unlike most studies of the Quran including studies of its form and structure, this is a vision for the whole Quran in one image, developed using the Quran as a guide, fitting the 114 Surahs in a spiral shell shape like that of the chambered nautilus, in which each surah (the word surah meaning “enclosure”) is envisioned as a separate “chamber,” with 12 surahs per completed “turn” or circle of the spiral, making 9 complete circles and one half-circle. This spiral shape forms a symbolic calendar where each chamber/ surah is one “month”, for a total of 9.5 years. This corresponds to the symbolism of Noah’s ark as his message or Divine revelation whose construction was guided by Allah’s revelations in the same way sacred books were sent. The ark’s being a vessel that protected those who boarded it from the cataclysmic flood symbolically correlates to the Quran as our “ark” protecting those who “board” it—that is, read and be guided by it—from the greatest cataclysm of them all, Judgment Day. The Quran describes Noah as having lived among his people “a thousand years minus fifty years,” or 950 years. Move the decimal point 2 spaces to the left, and you have a match between the time period Noah spent with his people, a kind of “testing” period, and the time period embodied in the Quran’s Architecture as envisioned here, a nautilus-shaped “ark” carrying within it a complete guidance system to safely bring those it “carries” through this life and the coming cataclysm to gardens of unimaginable delight.

Time Meets Timelessness: How the Quran Was Sent Down

(Page from the Blue Quran)

One could say the Quran is a book from the timeless perspective sent down in time. Indeed, it was sent down on a specific night, Laylat Al-Qadr, the “Night of Decree/ Meting Out,” a single night in Ramadan described as being “better than a thousand months” (Surat Al-Qadr 97:3) in which “descended the angels and the Spirit …with the permission of their Lord to carry out every matter.” (Surat Al-Qadr 97:4) The sheer power of that night indicates the weight and importance, from the Divine perspective, of the event of a timeless message being “sent down” (one envisions here a physical event, not merely “inspiration”) in time.

Ramadan: Purification and Emptying Out

As this most sacred of months, Ramadan, continues, we think about what its true meaning is. It’s about more than fasting from food and drink, because one must also abstain from bad behaviors, such as lying, slander or profanity, and obviously from committing any crimes, or from acting with cruelty to others such as bullying or mocking others, in person or online, openly or in secret. Not only must one abstain from sexual activity of any kind (and one considers that for Muslims this will be marital, lawful), but refrain oneself from any sexual thoughts or innuendos or behaviors that approach this area, including viewing sexually explicit materials online or elsewhere. Even excess anger is prohibited. One strives, in other words, to be a truly good person, thinking about it, being aware of Allah. So it is a kind of emptying out of those things of this world that lead us away from thikr Allah, actively remembering Allah and calling upon Him and invoking His name while alert. It is a kind of purification of the heart. We also strive to be compassionate and kind and thoughtful to others. So it is an emptying out of the selfish part, our tendency to be driven and moved by our selfish desires.

Quranic Architecture in Islam, Nature, and Ourselves

One need only to see an aerial view of the Ka’aba in Makkah with Muslim pilgrims circling the central shrine in tawaf to recall how central the circle is in Islam. This is in effect the center of the Islamic world, and in a form of worship, the pilgrims or Hojjaj must circle it, thus also participating in the making of a circle. Now we recall that the architecture of the Quran is also circle-based, one could even say in three dimensions as in the shell of a chambered nautilus. But the scope of this discussion is so far reaching, the symbolism contained in Quranic architecture so profound, it may be more enlightening to include more graphics to do justice to the idea of dynamic symmetry in relationship to cycles, returning (to our Creator Allah), the creation, the divine Message itself, and last but not least (as you shall see in the Quran), us.  

The Circle of Time

One of the most important and yet illusory elements of human life is time. It begins for us when we are born and when time as we know it ends, this is signified by our death. So our concept of time is completely tied up, for us, with birth and death. But for Allah, who is neither born nor dies, time cannot be as we know it. For Allah, time has no boundaries. Many thinkers have thought of this as a circle.