Salat in the Quran
ṣalāt – duty
Introductory comments
The Traditionalist’s position, in summary, is that his non-Qur’anic literature tells him that the value for ṣalāt is equal to x (a certain number of daily rituals, at least five but sometimes more) and that since he does not find x in the Qur’an, he (and we) should understand that the Qur’an requires his non-Qur’anic literature to be understood or implemented.
One might assume, given the Traditionalist’s high dudgeon and energetic presentation, that there exists a single statement in his supposedly reliable non-Qur’anic literature where the form and content of the complete ritual he calls ṣalāt is clearly set out. But one would be mistaken. He has constructed a ritual out of little pieces carved out of the corpus of the ḥadīth literature and claimed the result to be of divine origin. Nowhere does any single ḥadīth which he claims to be reliable contain a full explanation of the ritual he claims to be the central – if not the defining – characteristic of his religion.
This is problematic for the Traditionalist. His theology is predicated on the idea that the supposed sources for his stories had superlative memories and were the best Muslims that ever existed. Yet not one of the stories attributed to any one of his sources provides a single instance where one of the best Muslims who ever existed proved capable of doing what any child of only average intelligence and perhaps less-than-average piety brought up in a Traditionalist Muslim household can today do with ease, namely: list the received daily prayers and summarise their exact format.
Again, the Qur’an itself nowhere says that the value for ṣalāt is equal to x. The Traditionalist assumes a value of x and then attacks those who are sceptical of his claims for not finding his claimed value for x in the Qur’an – a value he himself cannot find within it nor yet cut of whole cloth within that vast library of external sources which he claims to be canonical.
We are men and not children. We are called to use reason and to seek knowledge, not to satisfy ourselves with assumptions – no matter how widespread such assumptions have become, how long they have persisted, or how useful they might be to ruling elites and their religion-touting quislings. Perhaps we can do better than the Traditionalist if we ignore him and answer the Qur’anic imperatives to consider the Qur’an with care and to use reason.
[I]https://www.quranite.com/salat-in-the-quran/
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