In the name of Allah, al-Rahman al-Raheem, and all praise is due to him for guiding us to the fastest way of drawing near to Him, that being al-Salaat, the Muslim prayer, whose name derives from the root word s-l-t, meaning: connection. And all praise is due to him for creating around His messenger great men who would preserve His Messenger’s practices and teachings. And may He whelm His Messenger- who taught us this Salaat and told us to pray as he did- and whelm likewise his family and companions with peace, blessings, and ridwan.

Recently I wrote down some of my thoughts on the Prophetic hadith that the Salaat is the Mu’min’s Mi’raj, or Ascension. Today insha’Allah I wish to write down my thoughts about the saying of his companion, sayyidna Abu Hurayra, ridwan Allah alayh: assalatu qurban.

The word qurban comes from the root word q-r-b, meaning proximity or nearness. The literal meaning of the word is “something with which you come closer to” (Allah Most High). But the word qurban actually refers to an offering to God, usually in the form of animal sacrifice. Now we know that the Qur’an criticized the pre-Islamic Arabs for thinking that their offerings at the Kaaba reaches God, saying that it is not the blood that reaches God but the act of sacrifice. Thus Islam accepted the practice of qurban and encouraged it, but made its purpose the feeding of the poor, and rewarded man’s sacrifice of his animals, and thus of his property and wealth, for the sake of feeding the poor. This was the Islamic qurban, not the jahili qurban of leaving food for the Gods to eat, exalted is Allah above such a thought.

But how is our salaat a qurban? There are many possible meanings of this. The first meaning is the one provided by Abu Hurayra himself in the same hadith, explaining that “Salaat is like when a man needs something from a leader (imam), and so offers him a gift.” Thus we offer the Salaat to Allah (swt), as a gift, in order to be allowed to come nearer to Him, or to be given what we desire.

This “gift” can simply be seen as a qurban in the sense that it is something that you offer to Allah, to draw nearer to Him. However, I see in it the other meaning of qurban, the meaning of a sacrificial offering. This is because in order to do the Salaat you have to sacrifice your time in order to obey the command of Allah. You have to plan your day about the 5 salaat prayers, which become like the axis of your day. In this is a great sacrificial offering.

But I see another deeper level in which the Salaat is a sacrifical offering, and before I come to this I must first keep Abu Hurayra’s hadith on the side and explain the second verse of surat al-Kawthar, the 108th, and shortest, sura of the Holy Qur’an.

“Wa Sallee li-Rabbika w’anhar” (108:2)

This verse says two things: The first part commands the Prophet, and also the believers, to do the Salaat prayer to our Lord. The second says “and inhar“. The word inhar is the imperative form of the word nahr, so what does nahr mean? As a noun, nahr simply means “neck”. However, nahr is also a verb, signifying the act of cutting an animal’s neck.

So what then does this verse mean? According to Ibn Kathir, it means to do the Salaat prayer only to Allah, and then to sacrifice animals only to Allah, not to any other gods. However he and most other Quran commentators present all the different interpretations of the word inhar, many of whom see the act of nahr here not as a sacrifice of an animal, but as one of the movements of the Salaat. Thus, Ibn Kathir reports that Muhammad al-Baqir explained nahr as the act of raising one’s hands at the beginning of the Salaat, because they come near the neck. Another interpretation, attributed to the Prophet’s cousin Ibn Abbas (r.a.) and others, says that the nahr is the act of pointing one’s neck toward the Qibla, as happens during the Rukoo’.

This brings me to what I think is one of the levels of meaning of this verse, and of the teaching of Abu Hurayra (r.a.).

Sometimes when I’m praying, I don’t think of the Rukoo’ movement as a bowing before Allah, as one bows before a King, for example, as I used to always do. While I do think of it this way a lot, I mostly see myself in the Rukoo’ as doing something different, may Allah guide me to the correct path if I am wrong. But I see in the word nahr in that verse, beside its primary meaning of giving sacrificial offerings only to Allah, a command to sacrifice one’s self to Allah. Thus in prayer, one is sacrificing not just his time but his own will and his own ego, for the sake of Allah. We are essentially submitting and saying, “I bow down before you, my Lord”, despite the ego’s pride which does not want to bow down before anyone, and does not want to sacrifice its time for the sake of prayer. I see an expression of this in the Rukoo’ movement, in which we bow down until our back is so straight that you could put water on it and it does not spill, for that is how our Prophet (pbuh) did it. And this conjures up in my mind two images: First, I see the Prophet Isma’eel (Ishmael), who obeyed his father and stretched out his neck in order to be cut as per the dream. And second, the straight back of the sheep who are to be sacrificed as qurban. Thus whenever I bow down in Rukoo’, I think of the verse 108:2, and of “assalatu qurban“, and I stretch out my neck toward the Kaaba, as if to say, “Here is my neck, oh Allah, stretched out, as I sacrifice myself, my nafs, to You.”

And it is this act of submission, of islam, which made me add the word Muslim in the title, making Salaat the Mu’min’s Mi’raj and the Muslim’s qurban. May Allah make this submission and this sacrifice real, because I don’t think that for me they go beyond the realm of imaginings and wishes.

May Allah accept from me my prayers, and may He guide us all to His proper worship, and correct our interpretations of His commands.

Wassalam.