and proclaiming His oneness. Every lowering and rising is accompanied by a takbīr, and every bowing, prostration, standing, and sitting carries its own remembrance. Thus the worshipper is wholly absorbed in the varied invocations of Allah. The one who is truly aided is he who keeps watch over his heart, brings it to attention so that he may grasp these fundamentals and reflect upon these words and states; while the one deprived is he who performs the prayer with a heedless heart, hollow utterances, and merely outward motions emptied of their meanings and lofty stations.

7 – The excellence of the Prophet’s instruction and the beauty of his call and guidance. Muʿāwiyah ibn al-Ḥakam did not speak in prayer out of knowledge but out of ignorance; therefore the Prophet ﷺ neither reproached nor scolded him. Instead, with wisdom and gentleness, he taught and guided him, making it clear that the prayer is an intimate discourse with Allah and that none of people’s conversation is fitting within it. The Prophet did likewise with the Bedouin who urinated in the mosque, and he remained silent toward the remorseful penitent who had committed intercourse during the day in Ramadan, doing no more than issuing him a ruling. Harshness and severity are reserved for the one who deliberately commits a forbidden act and persists in it; every situation has its appropriate word and response.