at the moon on the night of the full moon and said:

‘You will surely see your Lord just as you see this moon, without any difficulty in seeing Him. So if you can avoid being prevented from offering prayer before sunrise and before sunset, then do so.’

Then he recited:

‘And glorify your Lord with praise before sunrise and before sunset.’”

Since Allah, Mighty and Majestic, has called prayer glorification, this indicates that glorification is obligatory. Similarly, when He called it standing in His words, Most High:

“Stand in prayer at night, except for a little,”

this indicated that standing is obligatory. Likewise, when He called it recitation in His words, Most High:

“and the recitation at dawn,”

this indicated that Quran recitation is obligatory within it. And when He called it bowing and prostration in various passages, this indicated that bowing and prostration are obligatory within it.

This is because naming prayer after these actions indicates that they are indispensable to it. Thus, when these actions occur, they constitute indispensable parts of it, just as people refer to a human being by indispensable parts of the body, calling a person a neck, a head, a face, and so forth. An example is the saying of the Most High:

“then the freeing of a slave.”

If prayer could exist without glorification, a command to glorify could not serve as a command to pray. For the expression would then indicate neither its own meaning nor anything that entails that meaning.

Furthermore, Allah, Mighty and Majestic, has censured humanity in general, while excepting those who pray and are constant in their prayers. He, Most High, says:

“Indeed, mankind was created anxious.”