Isn’t it so puzzling that one of the things we do so commonly in our prayers – our conversations with our Lord – is to say words that we either don’t understand or we don’t mean and fully intend when we say them?

We believe that we are standing before God, that we are addressing Him, that He hears and can respond to us. But the way we rattle through our words without them coming from our hearts would suggest that we’re in two minds about whether He’s there at all! 

After all, there is no other context in life in which we would recite words from memory to someone else in an unfamiliar language which we don’t understand. Even if we found ourselves in the odd position of doing so, we wouldn’t claim that it was a meaningful experience, that we conveyed anything to the other person from deep within ourselves. 

Our task is to infuse the prescribed statements in our prayers with substance and really make them our own. Please realise that there is a huge difference between knowing that Allahu Akbar means ‘God is greater’ and saying Allahu Akbar in our prayers as if we really believe and feel that God is greater! Just as with any other verbal communication, our tone and emphasis will give away the extent to which we are relating to the words that we say.