By the Forenoon

Cont'd from page 3

Things like charity, meditation, fasting, patience, steadfastness, and appreciation for all of God’s signs all around us.

And perhaps most important of all is our five daily Contact Prayers. It’s not only the actual doing of the prayer that helps us remember God; it’s all that leads up to it. We look at the time and wonder whether it’s time to pray. We plan our schedule around prayer times and places. As we wash for prayer, we remember God. Contact Prayers pull us away from the distractions of this world and put our focus back on God, our Creator. And God tells us that that is the most important aspect of the Contact Prayer.

[29:45] You shall recite what is revealed to you of the scripture, and observe the Contact Prayers (Salat), for the Contact Prayers prohibit evil and vice. But the remembrance of GOD (through Salat) is the most important objective. GOD knows everything you do.

So what does this have to do with Sura 93? Well, it came up in some discussions that the forenoon (the morning) and the night are two times without a Contact Prayer. After we pray the dawn prayer, we have many hours before noon prayer is due. It might not come in until 1:30pm, after praying dawn at perhaps 4:30am, in the summer. In the winter, we might pray night as early as 6:00pm and not have to pray dawn until 7:00am. Those are long stretches of time without any specific ritual calling on us to remember God. So He’s telling us in those verses that even if we don’t choose to remember Him, He has not abandoned nor forgotten us.

We should, of course, use those times for other ways to commemorate God—meditation, zikr, reading Quran, singing His praises, anything we can think of to keep God foremost in our lives. But even if we find ourselves totally oblivious, He is still always with us. We do not need to fear.

Sura 93: The Forenoon (Al-Duhaa)

In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.

1. By the forenoon.

2. By the night as it falls.

3. Your Lord never abandoned you, nor did He forget.

4. The Hereafter is far better for you than this first (life).

5. And your Lord will give you enough; you will be pleased.

6. Did He not find you orphaned and He gave you a home?

7. He found you astray, and guided you.

8. He found you poor, and made you rich.

9. Therefore, you shall not forsake the orphan.

10. Nor shall you reprimand the beggar.

11. You shall proclaim the blessing your Lord has bestowed upon you.

Lydia