SEPTEMBER 2

Rituals in Islam

All religions, by dint of ritual and ceremony, give a definite form to these acts of worship. Islam likewise has its specific rites, but lays special emphasis on the spirit in which these are carried out. Moreover, it does not conceive of divine worship as a dichotomous proposition, divided into two equal parts under the headings of form and spirit. Form, in one sense, is only an external manifestation of the spirit. That is to say that spirit dominates in being the vital and indispensable element of every sincere religious act—to which form is a mere ancillary.

A hadith pertaining to fasting shows how this act must be illumined by spirit: “One who did not forsake telling lies while on a fast, God has no need of such a person forsaking food and water.” Numerous statements of this kind, enshrined in the Quran and Hadith make it clear that, in Islam, ritual practices and spirit are not equal constituents of worship. As elements of religion, they stand in relation to each other as the crucial and the subordinate. Each religious act of worship may, or may not—depending upon its nature and circumstances—have an external form. But whatever the case, ritualized or formless, what is of overarching importance is the zeal which inspires it.

While, from the Islamic standpoint, rituals serve partly as palpable identifiers of religious acts or of worship, and partly as physical reinforcements of or prompters to religious ardour, the essence of Islam is its inner spirit. This is something eternal and unassailable, unlike its outer forms which have no lasting significance in being purely external signals of the spiritual inner core. Whenever this reality becomes lodged in the innermost recesses of the individual psyche, its effects are outwardly reflected. Ceremonial acts, sincerely performed are but the material expressions of the incontrovertible inner truth.

When, towards the end of his life, the Prophet Muhammad went on his pilgrimage, he laid down specific ways of performing Hajj. More than one lakh of his Companions went alongwith him on this occasion. Subsequently, the Prophet seated himself in the courtyard of the Kabah, where his Companions came with their queries about the procedures to be followed in this very important part of Islamic worship. Most of these questions concerned the rites and their forms. One would say that he had carried out such and such a rite beforehand, while another would say that he had done so at a later stage, thus reversing the order of the proceedings. (Hajj involves the performance of a series of rites, and since this was the first proper Hajj, there was some uncertainty about their correct order.) The Prophet allayed their fears by saying: “There is no harm. There is no harm. Real harm lies in the dishonouring of a person.” This saying of the Prophet throws light on how form relates to spirit in Islam. That is, the spirit is the essential factor, while the form, or ritual, is purely a matter of externals. If the believer is in no way found to be lacking in spirit, any deficiency in the form of his worship will be considered tolerable.

The converse of this is illustrated by a tradition set down in the books of Hadith. Once the Prophet of Islam was seated in the mosque in Madinah, when a Muslim worshipper came to meet him after duly performing his ablutions and saying his prayers with full observance of their ritual. The Prophet sent him back to say his prayers again, as he said that he had not said his prayers.

Here, a clear distinction had been made between form and spirit. In his divine wisdom, the Prophet sensed that this worshipper’s performance of the rituals of prayer had been empty and mechanical, and in no sense imbued with any religious fervour. Indeed, the true spirit of namaz is modesty. But this individual’s behaviour showed that while he was praying modesty was very far from his mind. And if the Prophet told him to go back and say his prayers, it was so that he should concern himself with the inner kernel of prayer and not its outer shell. However punctilious worship may appear in its form, if the true spirit is absent, the performance of the ritual must be held invalid. The mere observance of form does not make worship acceptable in the eyes of God.

The word ‘ritual’, in fact, has the same connotation as ‘form’. The only difference is that ‘form’ is a term of general application, whereas ‘ritual’ in respect of its usage, has in the main became a religious term.

There is a hadith which tells us that the value of an action depends upon the intention of the doer. That is, a practice must be evaluated on the basis of its motivation, for example, the Prophet’s migration from Makkah to Madinah, which in Islamic history is called the Hijrah. This emigration for the sake of Islam was an act of great religious significance. It meant people abandoning their hearths and homes for the sake of God. However, one of these emigrants was not so pure in intention. He had left Makkah for Madinah with the ulterior motive of marrying a Madinan resident who had agreed to marry him only if he came to Madinah, as she could not come to Makkah. This was his true reason for coming to Madinah alongwith the other emigrants. The Prophet told his companions that since that individual had migrated, not for the sake of God, but for his own private benefit, he would not be rewarded for having migrated.

This makes it clear that rituals are of relative value in Islam. The true value of an act in Islam depends entirely upon the spirit in which it is carried out, and not upon the trappings of outward form.