Salah is the Key to Jannah
Azhar Aziz
Program Coordinator al-mufti online || Co-Founder and CEO at Learn Quran Online From Home || Co-Founder & Marketing Head Global Farming ||
When we pray Salah, we are communicating directly with our Lord.
Our beloved Prophet Muhammad (SAW) said:
“When any one of you stands to pray, he is communicating with his Lord, so let him pay attention to how he speaks to Him.” (Bukhari)
When we think about this deeply, we realise how significant Salah really is. It is true that we must pray Salah consistently and without delay, but it is also important to understand what we are actually doing. We should ask ourselves about whether we are as focused as we should be in Salah.
Have we performed our Salah with the right mindset, acknowledging that we are communicating directly with our Creator ? Or have we allowed ourselves to become distracted, with our thoughts wondering about aspects of our daily lives ? Our beloved Prophet Muhammad (SAW) said that we should be paying close attention to how we speak to our Lord.
Are we taking advantage of the blessing that Allah has granted us that is Salah? Are we speaking to Him with full focus and humility, or have we just rushed through our Salah?
We should think about how careful we are when we speak to anyone in this world who is in a position of authority. We should think about the amount of preparation we put it in order to ensure that what we say and the way we speak is with the utmost respect.
In Salah, we are speaking directly to our Lord. So, is Salah not then the communication in which we should be the most focused and the communication that we should be the most concerned about, in comparison to any other conversation which have in our daily lives?
We may not realise this, but Salah is something that we need in order to keep us on the straight path. As Muslims, we should be trying our hardest to avoid sinning, as our aim is to please our Lord. We strive towards goodness and avoid anything He has forbidden. Salah is something that helps us to avoid wrong, as our Lord says in the Holy Qur’an:
“Verily, the prayer keeps one from the great sins and evil deeds” (Qur’an 29:45).
We pray to our Creator to grant us Jannah (paradise), so we should be trying to do everything we can in order to achieve this. When we learn that something will help us achieve Jannah, we should put our minds to implementing it. Our beloved Prophet Muhammad (SAW) told us that Salah is the key to Paradise. He said:
“The key to Paradise is prayer; the key to prayer is wudu (ablution).” (Musnad Ahmad)
We should also be aware that Salah is what makes us believers, so we should be very careful to pray all our Salah. Our beloved Prophet Muhammad (SAW) said:
“Between faith and unbelief is abandoning the prayer.” (Muslim)