Abandoning Salah For A Short Time In Islam
As a principle the answer is no , Salah is the most important expression of our relationship with God. As a conscious Muslim, Salah is the primary mode of worship to Allah, which is an inevitable requirement of expressing our feeling of ‘ Parastish ‘ to Allah. What usually happens is that being a born muslim, we fail to consciously understand the essence of our faith with a weak basis of our ‘ iman ‘ and hence Salah only seems to us like a useless repeated endeavour without any apparent benefit, spiritual or otherwise . To understand the importance of Salah and its benefits when performed consciously, please refer to the link below from 12:34 to 23:23 https://www.youtube.com/live/qtaHO86sPgw?feature=share&t=754 ___ Secondly , the requirements of Salah , it timings , its obligatory nature , its prerequisites and relaxation have been clearly given in Sharia. Please refer to the following thread for details: Discussion 71777 ___ Lastly , comes the exceptional cases where a person has not previously offered any Salah and has now consciously realized his mistake and is now trying to keep up with five daily Salah but fails at times or a person who has previously considered Salah as an empty ritual and used to pray at times and ignore at times but is now consciously trying to offer all the five regularly but fails at times. These are the instances where room is available because of their circumstances and their intentions ( which are pure ) that if they fail to pray at times, they may not be held accountable because of the reasons mentioned above. At the end, the matter of accountability with respect to worship rituals is between Allah and the person himself, we can only encourage them and emphasize on the importance of Salah in Islam. We can however issue no verdict against a person who does not offer Salah regularly. At the same time, we have no basis available in Quran or Sunnah to give a blanket exemption from Salah to anyone. Infact, such a blanket exemption goes against the very explicit teachings of Islam. ( Please also see : Discussion 35095 AND Discussion 39257 • Reply 39286 )