The
Exercise
Yard

Muslims nowadays learn to make the Sala

when they are still little more than infants.

They are taught the movements and the words,

and are encouraged if not forced to make the Sala

with at least as much diligence as their parents.

But clearly this childish relationship with the Sala

is barely adequate to sustain the interest of many children,

let alone survive the time pressures, attractions and constraints of more adult years.

But when the Messenger first heard the Revelation

he was over forty years old.

Those who learned the Sala alongside him were all ages,

but in general it was not adults teaching children how to pray,

but adults teaching adults.

The Companions learned the form of surrender to God as grown-ups,

and their relationship to it had all the depth and subtlety of understanding of adulthood,

and their commitment to it was deliberate, voluntary and personal.

Of course that personal commitment was shared publicly

with others in group prayers,

along with the other expressions of the muslim way of life,

but it was recognised that there can be no compulsion in that way of life.

You can force someone to be a hypocrite

to pretend to be muslim,

but you cannot force someone to believe first,

and then because of that belief surrender

with no need for any threat.

This understanding applies all across the muslim way of life.

Sharia lawyers will argue about matters of fiqh,

or the rules of public behaviour,

but at the heart of all muslim practice

is a person's individual relationship with their Creator.

On the Day of Judgement, salvation is not handed out to groups.

We are judged as individuals.

What matters is what we have done in our lives,

ourselves,

not what was done by those around us.

Which is why we need to understand what we are doing in our way of life,

in a way that stays relevant to us,

a way that will sustain us,

intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually,

and that will grow with us

as we live through adulthood,

through the age of forty, and beyond.

But that means

remaining ever open to growth and change in our ideas,

allowing our faith to grow with us

and leaving childhood simplicities behind.