Lessons from Surah Al-Mu’minoon 1-11

The ayah starts off with mentioning the glad tidings for believers and followed by four general descriptions of successful believers. The first characteristic mentioned is one who establish prayer with khushoo’. Prayer, as we all know, is the foundation of Islam as in one hadith where the Prophet SAW said “Verily between man and between polytheism and unbelief is the negligence of prayer” (Muslim). It is also important to note that our prayer will be the first thing to be accounted for on the Day of Judgement as mentioned in the following hadith: ” The first thing that the servant will be called to account for on the Day of Judgment will be Salah. If it is good, his deeds will have been good. If it is bad, his deeds will have been bad” (At-Tabarani). This shows that prayer is one of the most important thing that a muslim should safeguard and offer with full attention. The mention of khushoo’ indicates that prayer should not be done mechanically. It should be established with sincerity and submissiveness. And in order to attain khushoo’ in prayer, one should prepare before even coming to prayer. Prayer should not be treated like plug-and-play. You cannot expect to attain that level of consciousness in prayer if you are very involved in the matter of dunya just before going to prayer. We should be aware as well that during prayer, we are communicating directly with Allah. So treat it like a communication. How would we communicate with our superior? Our kings or presidents? Imagine now that we’re communicating with The King of Kings? How should we behave?

The next characteristic that was mentioned is those who stay away from al-Laghw. In the Qur’an, if we notice, al-Laghw is always used to refer to vain talk eventhough the meaning can be expanded to include useless/senseless actions. Our halaqa ‘instructor’ pointed out a really interesting relationship between the previous characteristic (prayer with khushoo’) and this characteristic. Good relationship with Allah should be reflected in our action. May Allah guide us to perform all ”ibadaah for the sake of Him only and perform them with ihsaan, ameen.