RITUAL MUST ARISE FROM THE SPIRIT

If the believer is not lacking in spirit, any deficiency in the form of his worship is tolerable. The converse of this is illustrated by a tradition set down in the books of Hadith. Once the Prophet was seated in the mosque in Madinah when a worshipper came to meet him after performing his ablutions and saying his prayer with full observance of their ritual. The Prophet sent him back to say his prayers again as he said, he had not said his prayers. Here, a distinction was made between form and spirit. The Prophet sensed that this worshipper’s performance of the rituals of prayer had been mechanical and not imbued with religious fervour. Indeed, the true spirit of salath (prayer) is modesty. But this individual’s behaviour showed that while he was praying, modesty was far from his mind. However punctilious the worship in form, without the true spirit, the performance of the ritual is worthless. The mere observance of form does not make worship, and is unacceptable in the eyes of God. The word “ritual” has the same connotation as “form”. The difference is that “form” is a generic term, and “ritual” has become a religious term. One Hadith tells us that the value of an act depends upon the doer’s intention. A practice must be evaluated on the basis of motivation; for example, the Prophet’s migration from Makkah to Madinah, known as the Hijrah. This emigration to uphold Islam, when people abandoned hearth and home for the sake of God was an act of great religious significance. However, one of the emigrants was not pure in intent. He left Makkah for Madinah with the ulterior motive of marrying a Madinan girl who had agreed to marry him on the condition that he migrated to Madinah. The Prophet told his Companions that since this individual had migrated for his own private benefit, the migration would not be considered as migration for the sake of God. 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 the trappings of outward form. o The essence of Islam is the inner spirit, eternal and unassailable unlike its outer forms.