“Salaah and Zakat are always the first two pillars to be sent to the people.” - Sh. Omar Suleiman - Marked for Greatness | Surah Maryam Part 2
It’s kind of crazy the importance people will give to secondary things. Hijab is very important, but it isn’t as important as Salaah.
I am in no way promoting that you should fix your salaah first before observing hijab - that’s actually how shaytaan gets you to take away your own good deeds, by telling you to do things in an arbitrary chronological order.
I am stating that you cannot simply be a good Muslim and think it’s sufficient. You cannot wear abaya and think you’re good. You cannot give up haraam entertainment and think you’ll get to Jannah. You cannot just memorize Quran and feel like Allah will give you those robes.
The first thing you’re asked about isn’t going to be - did you wear hijab properly or did you tend to your parents or did you tell the truth or did you recite Quran regularly or did you fast. These are all important things, these are all responsibilities, but these aren’t the things you are questioned about first.
The first thing is salaah. You fix salaah - five times a day - ON TIME - because not doing it on time is basically handing in a half done assignment late to the professor without even apologizing but still expecting an A.
No one has perfected this. None of us have this pillar down. You can pray all five prayers, include all portions of the sunnah and nafl and use the longest of surahs - and it still might not be accepted, it still might not be enough because you lacked concentration.
You want to be better? You want to change? Reading and listening to lectures and going the next step and wearing hijab and niqaab is great - but if you don’t have the first thing Allah asked for - what do you have?
Are you ready to go empty handed? Or do you have some scraps of torn paper of some random prayers. Late assignments. Crumpled paper with gum on them. Papers with half sentences and sentence fragments. Papers with coffee stains and burnt edges. A nice piece of stock paper with glitter on it from that one laylatul qadr. Another strong neatly typed single space paper from the time you needed something desperately.
Imagine if all the thoughts you had during your salaah were written down - the lyrics you accidentally thought of, the outfits you planned, the homework you finally understand, the to-do list that crept into your mind, the text message you just read, the email you haven’t sent, the instagram post you haven’t posted, the dinner you craved - the most erratic thoughts all written down - and every few thoughts later you said “Allahu Akbar - Allah is Greater” and didn’t actually mean it because if you thought He was, you would only be thinking of Him.
*
Copied facebook/drops of knowledge*
May Allah perfect our salah and accept it and may Allah grant us khushoo in our salah Allahuma Ameen
