Divine Daily Prayers and the Quest for Nearness to God: A Journey into Salat in Islamic Spiritual Literature from the Qur'an to Rumi, Bringing Traditional Light to Contemporary Understandings of Religion and Ritual

Abstract

Author: Elizabeth Rowe Lee-Hood Divine Daily Prayers and the Quest for Nearness to God: A Journey into Ṣalāt in Islamic Spiritual Literature from the Qur’ān to Rūmī, Bringing Traditional Light to Contemporary Understandings of Religion and Ritual Abstract This study brings light to ways in which traditional insider discourse on ṣalāt in early and classical Islam illumines our understanding of religion and ritual in general, in Islam and other religions of the world. It identifies and explores salient themes that are key to understanding the place of the divinely-prescribed daily ṣalāt prayers in the quest for nearness to God by examining Islamic spiritual discourse — the Qur’ān, Ḥadīth, and selected texts of early and classical spiritual literature, especially texts associated with the traditional Islamic religious science of sufism (taṣawwuf). The texts, in Arabic and Persian, date from the formative early and classical periods of Islam that span some 700 years, from the era of the Prophet Muḥammad (Sal.) in the 1st/7th century AH/CE to the 8th/14th century, shortly after the close of the ‘Abbāsid era. The texts have been selected for their influential character and to represent a wide array of literary genres, including Qur’ān exegesis; manuals and treatises; compiled sayings, sermons, and discourses; letters of advice; hagiographical biographies; biographical entries on women; autobiographical writings; dream and vision accounts; collections of devotions; and lyric and epic poetry and song. Recognizing the ongoing need in the Western academic study of religion for more in-depth “interpretive study of Muslim ritual on its own terms — namely those of Muslim interpretation and understanding” (1), this study takes a phenomenological, “emic” approach, striving to understand Islamic “insider” discourse on ṣalāt “on its own terms.” In addition to illumining the core Islamic devotional practice of ṣalāt, this study provides insights into Islamic teachings, spiritual ethics, and the role of sufism (taṣawwuf) within the Islamic tradition in the formative centuries. For the broader comparative and historical study of religion, this study finds that this traditional discourse, taken as insider theory, calls for important expansions of contemporary academic and public understandings of religion and ritual. (1) William A. Graham, “Islam in the Mirror of Ritual” (1983), repr. in Islamic and Comparative Religious Studies: Selected Writings, ed. John Hinnells (Farnham, Surrey; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), p. 92.