Remembering God in Solitude

Remembering God in Solitude P rayer means calling upon God. Such prayer is a great form of worship. According to a hadith, prayer is worship. (Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Hadith No. 2969; Sunan Ibn Majah, Hadith No. 3828). According to another hadith, prayer is the kernel of worship (Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Hadith No. 3771) Prayer is an act of a very personal nature. Everyone has to pray for himself on his own, just as everyone performs his own worship. No one tells another person to pray in his stead. According to chapter 32 of the Quran, this is one of the virtues of believers: “They forsake their beds, calling upon their Lord in fear and in hope, and spend out of what We have provided them with.” (32:16) That is, they call upon their Lord in fear and hope. Calling upon God in this way is an extremely personal thing. Such prayer emerges from the deepest recesses of one’s heart. This kind of prayer has to be done by the individual himself. He cannot ask someone to fear God for him or to trust in God for him. Prayer is a criterion of a person’s servitude. One who believes in God must experience such moments in his life when his soul is moved greatly by the remembrance of God; when his heart and mind experience great convulsions