For this and other reasons, prayer and zakat are so frequently paired in Allah’s Book.

We have already mentioned that prayer, in its general sense, encompasses everything that constitutes remembrance of Allah or supplication to Him. As ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd said:

“As long as you remember Allah, you are in prayer, even if you are in the marketplace.”

This meaning—supplicating to Allah, that is, seeking Him and turning toward Him, which entails remembering Him with reverent humility and submission—is the essence of prayer present in every instance to which the term applies. This includes the prayer of someone standing, sitting, or lying down; of a reciter or an unlettered person; and of someone able to speak or someone mute. Although its movements and utterances vary, the term “prayer” applies univocally to all these instances, excluding homonymy and metaphor. This has been discussed at length elsewhere. Some have claimed that the term is homonymous, while others have claimed that its use is metaphorical, on the grounds that it has been transferred from its linguistic meaning, that its meaning has been expanded, or on some other basis. But this is not the case.

Rather, when a general, unrestricted generic term with a univocal meaning denotes a particular kind or individual—as when you say, “this human being” or “this animal,” or, “Bring the livestock you have,” when that livestock consists of sheep—the expression indicates two things: the shared meaning present in all its instances, and what is distinctive about this particular kind or individual. The word common to all these forms of usage denotes the shared element, while whatever accompanies it, such as the definite article or something else, indicates specificity and identifies the particular referent. And just as an unrestricted universal meaning has no existence in