Salah.

Asaalam,
I hope Ramadan is going well for all of you! It is extremely hot at the moment, but usually you get used to fasts after 2-3 days. Firstly, I'd like to apologise I didn't put the source (website) that I used in yesterdays blog, as soon as I find it I'll add it in. As I said I would start talking about different topics when Ramadan has started, but I'll try to make sure a write a lot about Ramadan itself. Recently I have started reading a book about salaah. It's a beautiful book and even though I've just started it, I can't put it down. So today, Id like to talk about the topic of the book, salaah.

To start of, I'm just going to quickly ask a question. How many times a day do you pray your namaaz? Do you pray all of them. Do you pray some, or hardly any?
Do you know the story of salah?
I think it goes a little bit like this:
Allah gave the Prophet (P.B.U.H) the gift of salah, however, the numbers were quite large and after a while they were decreased to 5 prayers a day.
I am little bit unsure about the story because I have heard different versions.

There was a beautiful chapter of the book which I passed.
This chapter is about incidents in history that have shown how special salah is, one of the examples was as following:
"Imam Bukhari was once stung by a wasp 17 times while standing in prayer. When he finished, he felt some discomfort and asked if anyone was aware of what caused it".
I find the so inspiring, as sometimes we miss namaaz, but here Imam Bukhari carried on. In fact, perhaps it even means he never felt the wasp sting him, or he felt the wasp and did not care, because he was reading namaaz.

I'd like to show one last example:
"It was said that when Ali washed in preparation for prayer, he always went pale and trembled with anxiety as he thought of himself about to stand before his Lord."
Again, just motivating. Why is it that we act like salaah is just a simple thing which you can choose to do or not, why do we rush into finishing at and even at times avoid it? It's not exact;y nice to see a person who does no harm to us, in-fact will do us good by becoming our friend or teaching us something,  ignore them, rush quickly whilst talking to them to go away, or even treat them like dirt?
Then we do we act the same way towards namaaz?

For this weeks blog, my source was the book I have been reading, which is called "Love of Allah. Experience the beauty of salaah". I think there is actually a series, and this is part one.

Remember- the next time you read namaaz, spend some time on it, and see how you feel compared to a quick rush.