The Morning Recitation of the Quran

The Quran says that the recitation of the Quran at the dawn prayer “is indeed witnessed.” (17:78) “Witnessed” here means validated by the angels.

We learn from a tradition that the early morning is a time especially favourable to God-realization, when in peace and solitude the angels in great numbers become witnesses to the recitation of the believer. There is nothing mysterious about this. It is the special task of the angels to engender spiritual feelings within a person and the peaceful time of the morning is propitious for this angelic action.

There is another dimension to this. For instance, you say your dawn (fajr) prayer at the prayer time and hear the long recitation of the Quran from the lips of the Imam. Afterwards, moved by the recitation of the Quran, you leave the mosque and go to some open place where in the environment of nature, with all its greenery, you reflect upon nature, then you feel that your Quranic thinking and the external environment have become one. In silent language the scenes of nature bear witness to your Quranic thinking being indeed a universal reality, and that the universe is also functioning on the same pattern.

          When, in the morning, a person reflects upon the messages of God in the peaceful environment of nature, he starts feeling the presence of God. Then he has that state induced in him which has been thus expressed in an injunction in a hadith: “Worship God as if you are seeing Him.” (Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith No. 50) This state cannot be arrived at on one’s own. It is produced undoubtedly with the help of the angels. This is to testify to inner thinking of the believer. This is a superior form of worship. And such an experience is not possible without the support of the angels.