The timing of the prayers and today's life
Question:
Salaam,
I am trying to deepen my understanding of Shari'a and Form of Shari'a and in this process analyzing all the apparent conflicts which I think may exist.
My question is regarding the 5 prayers. It seems to me the timings of the prayers are more suited to the time and culture before the advent of electricity where the normal day started with dawn and ended with dusk. Now with technology, we have control over when we want to start and end the day. My friends who work in IT in India start their working day at 11:00 am and end their day at around 1-2 am. I have seemed a similar pattern in many subcultures like for example, first immigrants in the US.
With this reality, it seems odd to me to follow the general timing of 5 prayers, especially the Dawn and Dusk prayer when people may not start their day or end it at these timings? I feel most of the times many people either give up completely on prayer itself, or they become very guilty that they are missing their prayers, which is unhealthy.
Based on the above can we say that the 5 prayer timings as followed now were part of the Form of Shari'a and it can be changed based on one's own schedule? There seems to be some hadith hinting something similar, but I am not sure about its veracity.
Answer:
Salam,
Let me first discuss the easier point, that is, the hadith that you referred to:
The hadith that you are referring to is about Safwan bin Mu'attal. According to the hadith he used to read his morning prayer after sunrise and when his wife brings this to the attention of the prophet (pbuh) he explains that he belongs to a tribe that wakes up only after sunrise. According to the hadith the prophet then advises him to read his morning prayer when he wakes up (AbuDawud, 2459).
Now as for your main inquiry:
Since you wrote that you would like to deepen your understanding of shari’ah and the form of the shari’ah, I will first try to explain this generally, before looking at the specific question that you raised about the timing of the prayers.
You referred to Shari’ah and the form of the Shari’ah. I think you are adopting the terminology that I have used in my other writings. For the benefit of the other readers I explain these first:
I believe with the natural evolvement of societies, some of those parts of the form of the shari’ah that are based on social conditions may also need to evolve, otherwise they may not work towards the goal of the shari’ah and may even work against it. I find it an insult to religion that we should think that God expects us to run a 21st century modern society in accordance to the rules that were sent for a 6th century primitive society. As you perhaps know I also have written that this evolvement mostly applies to those aspects of the form of the shari’ah that are about social/economical spheres and is less applicable to the rules of worshiping. This is because the worship aspects of the form of the shari’ah are in principle not subjected to much external factors as they are mostly simply between an individual and the Almighty.
Please note, my argument about evolvement applies to the form of the shari’ah not the shari’ah as a whole. It is a fact that the form of the shari’ah fitted and matched the social structure, conditions and the norms and the practices of the Arabs at the time. These are all elements that can evolve in time and may differ in different places. The rest of the items of the shari'ah (that is matters of faith, our understanding of divine and divine practices and the emphasised aspects of morality) are not subjected to any evolvement themselves. Only our understanding of these items may evolve as our thinking gets deeper and more informed. I can explain this further in a separate writing if needed.
Another important point to consider is the sanctity of religion. This sanctity is very important. It is indeed due to this sanctity that we may need to change some of the forms of the shari’ah and it is also due to this sanctity that we need to make sure we do not take this lightly and that we have strong and valid reasons to believe a change is needed. When it comes to the social aspects of the form of the shari’ah (in particular family issues and penal law) many non-traditional scholars see strong and valid reasons and I agree with them. At this time I do not see strong and valid reasons to argue for evolvement of the worship form of the shari’ah.
With the above in mind, I now proceed to answer your question:
I do appreciate the point that you are making about the time of the prayers. It can be understood from the body of hadiths and from historical documents that in general, people in Arabia at the time used to sleep earlier at nights and wake up earlier at the morning. We also know that even at that time not all people used to follow this discipline. This is why we also see that according to some reports the prophet (pbuh) used to discourage gatherings after the isha prayer and sleeping after the fajr prayer, implying that even at that time there were people who used to sleep late and wake up later than sunset.
Let us leave the example of those who work mostly during the evening. You hopefully agree that these are not majority and that their working pattern is considered as unusual in our era. The normal working pattern that I would say majority follow is pretty much around eight/nine in the morning to four/five in the afternoon. I argue that this normal pattern does not necessarily stop us from sleeping early at the evening and waking up before sunrise. In fact if you do a simple search on internet you will see that there are many articles encouraging this. I think for many of us, sleeping late at night is simply due to following a family habit involving eating, watching TV, chitchatting and gatherings.
So I see a major difference between the two spheres. Our social conditions are changed in time due to the factors that are beyond our control. Much of this change was simply a natural evolvement of the society. We cannot undo many of these changes and it is extremely difficult if not impossible for an individual to live without adopting these changes. In comparison, our sleeping pattern is very much influenced by our own individual habits and preferences and it is very much under our control. Changing these habits may be challenging at start but it is not extremely difficult or impossible. I personally know many people who have successfully changed their sleeping habits.
In particular about the fajr prayer, what I understand from hadith like the one you referred to, which to me is also very much inline with the general spirit of rulings in Islam, is as follows:
We sleep with every intention to wake up for fajr prayer. However if we unintentionally miss it then we should not feel guilty because God does not expect something beyond our capability from us. We should then read it as soon as we wake up. While one may use tools like alarm clock to wake up for fajr prayer, I do not see it a religious obligation to use such tools and do not see any problems with not using it and leaving it to the nature.
There are some scholars (not many) who argue that the idea of the fajr prayer was to start the day with praying, not to interrupt our sleep, reading a prayer while sleepy, and then go to bed again. They argue that at the time of the prophet people used to sleep very early and wake up very early as well, and that this pattern is not practical with the current working conditions of the majority of people. They then suggest that the time of Fajr prayer at our time needs to be adjusted so that it takes place at the start of a typical start of a day for people today (e.g around 7:00 AM). At this time all I can say about this is that they have a point worthy of consideration and further discussion.
I am more than happy to continue this discussion.
--------
Farhad Shafti
October 2018
Revised: October 2022
Salaam,
I am trying to deepen my understanding of Shari'a and Form of Shari'a and in this process analyzing all the apparent conflicts which I think may exist.
My question is regarding the 5 prayers. It seems to me the timings of the prayers are more suited to the time and culture before the advent of electricity where the normal day started with dawn and ended with dusk. Now with technology, we have control over when we want to start and end the day. My friends who work in IT in India start their working day at 11:00 am and end their day at around 1-2 am. I have seemed a similar pattern in many subcultures like for example, first immigrants in the US.
With this reality, it seems odd to me to follow the general timing of 5 prayers, especially the Dawn and Dusk prayer when people may not start their day or end it at these timings? I feel most of the times many people either give up completely on prayer itself, or they become very guilty that they are missing their prayers, which is unhealthy.
Based on the above can we say that the 5 prayer timings as followed now were part of the Form of Shari'a and it can be changed based on one's own schedule? There seems to be some hadith hinting something similar, but I am not sure about its veracity.
Answer:
Salam,
Let me first discuss the easier point, that is, the hadith that you referred to:
The hadith that you are referring to is about Safwan bin Mu'attal. According to the hadith he used to read his morning prayer after sunrise and when his wife brings this to the attention of the prophet (pbuh) he explains that he belongs to a tribe that wakes up only after sunrise. According to the hadith the prophet then advises him to read his morning prayer when he wakes up (AbuDawud, 2459).
Now as for your main inquiry:
Since you wrote that you would like to deepen your understanding of shari’ah and the form of the shari’ah, I will first try to explain this generally, before looking at the specific question that you raised about the timing of the prayers.
You referred to Shari’ah and the form of the Shari’ah. I think you are adopting the terminology that I have used in my other writings. For the benefit of the other readers I explain these first:
- Shari’ah: This is what the Qur’an refers to (45:18, 5:48, 42:13). In my understanding the Qur’an refers to this word and its derivatives in a meaning that is beyond religious law. It means the whole religious path, the whole corpus of religion. This includes matters of faith, our understanding of divine and divine practices, the emphasised aspects of morality, religious rituals and the religious law.
- Form of the Shari’ah. I used this phrase to refer to the latter two categories in the shari’ah, that is religious rituals and religious law. In fact I could just refer to this category as ritual and legal shari’ah. I simply used the word ‘form’ to summarise this. We may say that these are more ‘tangible’ manifestations of shari’ah. In our daily conversation we normally refer to these as shar’ah but as I wrote above I don’t consider this to be inline with the terminology of the Qur’an and therefore would like to differentiate them by refer to them as Form of the Shari’ah. The legal part of the form of the shari’ah is also referred to as al-Kitab in the Qur’an.
I believe with the natural evolvement of societies, some of those parts of the form of the shari’ah that are based on social conditions may also need to evolve, otherwise they may not work towards the goal of the shari’ah and may even work against it. I find it an insult to religion that we should think that God expects us to run a 21st century modern society in accordance to the rules that were sent for a 6th century primitive society. As you perhaps know I also have written that this evolvement mostly applies to those aspects of the form of the shari’ah that are about social/economical spheres and is less applicable to the rules of worshiping. This is because the worship aspects of the form of the shari’ah are in principle not subjected to much external factors as they are mostly simply between an individual and the Almighty.
Please note, my argument about evolvement applies to the form of the shari’ah not the shari’ah as a whole. It is a fact that the form of the shari’ah fitted and matched the social structure, conditions and the norms and the practices of the Arabs at the time. These are all elements that can evolve in time and may differ in different places. The rest of the items of the shari'ah (that is matters of faith, our understanding of divine and divine practices and the emphasised aspects of morality) are not subjected to any evolvement themselves. Only our understanding of these items may evolve as our thinking gets deeper and more informed. I can explain this further in a separate writing if needed.
Another important point to consider is the sanctity of religion. This sanctity is very important. It is indeed due to this sanctity that we may need to change some of the forms of the shari’ah and it is also due to this sanctity that we need to make sure we do not take this lightly and that we have strong and valid reasons to believe a change is needed. When it comes to the social aspects of the form of the shari’ah (in particular family issues and penal law) many non-traditional scholars see strong and valid reasons and I agree with them. At this time I do not see strong and valid reasons to argue for evolvement of the worship form of the shari’ah.
With the above in mind, I now proceed to answer your question:
I do appreciate the point that you are making about the time of the prayers. It can be understood from the body of hadiths and from historical documents that in general, people in Arabia at the time used to sleep earlier at nights and wake up earlier at the morning. We also know that even at that time not all people used to follow this discipline. This is why we also see that according to some reports the prophet (pbuh) used to discourage gatherings after the isha prayer and sleeping after the fajr prayer, implying that even at that time there were people who used to sleep late and wake up later than sunset.
Let us leave the example of those who work mostly during the evening. You hopefully agree that these are not majority and that their working pattern is considered as unusual in our era. The normal working pattern that I would say majority follow is pretty much around eight/nine in the morning to four/five in the afternoon. I argue that this normal pattern does not necessarily stop us from sleeping early at the evening and waking up before sunrise. In fact if you do a simple search on internet you will see that there are many articles encouraging this. I think for many of us, sleeping late at night is simply due to following a family habit involving eating, watching TV, chitchatting and gatherings.
So I see a major difference between the two spheres. Our social conditions are changed in time due to the factors that are beyond our control. Much of this change was simply a natural evolvement of the society. We cannot undo many of these changes and it is extremely difficult if not impossible for an individual to live without adopting these changes. In comparison, our sleeping pattern is very much influenced by our own individual habits and preferences and it is very much under our control. Changing these habits may be challenging at start but it is not extremely difficult or impossible. I personally know many people who have successfully changed their sleeping habits.
In particular about the fajr prayer, what I understand from hadith like the one you referred to, which to me is also very much inline with the general spirit of rulings in Islam, is as follows:
We sleep with every intention to wake up for fajr prayer. However if we unintentionally miss it then we should not feel guilty because God does not expect something beyond our capability from us. We should then read it as soon as we wake up. While one may use tools like alarm clock to wake up for fajr prayer, I do not see it a religious obligation to use such tools and do not see any problems with not using it and leaving it to the nature.
There are some scholars (not many) who argue that the idea of the fajr prayer was to start the day with praying, not to interrupt our sleep, reading a prayer while sleepy, and then go to bed again. They argue that at the time of the prophet people used to sleep very early and wake up very early as well, and that this pattern is not practical with the current working conditions of the majority of people. They then suggest that the time of Fajr prayer at our time needs to be adjusted so that it takes place at the start of a typical start of a day for people today (e.g around 7:00 AM). At this time all I can say about this is that they have a point worthy of consideration and further discussion.
I am more than happy to continue this discussion.
--------
Farhad Shafti
October 2018
Revised: October 2022