saying, “We bear witness that you are indeed the Messenger of Allah.” Yet Allah declares: “Allah knows that you are His Messenger, and Allah bears witness that the hypocrites are surely lying” (Q 63:1). In other words, they spoke no truth; with their tongues they uttered what was never in their hearts.

He went on to say, “No one stays away from the congregational prayer except a hypocrite.” Why does the hypocrite stay away? Because he neither hopes for reward nor believes in the final reckoning, so he sees no reason to attend. For that reason the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “The heaviest prayers upon the hypocrites are the ʿIshāʾ (night) and Fajr (dawn) prayers.” In the Prophet’s time there was no electricity, no lamps, so whoever absented himself from the night prayer could not be seen; and both ʿIshāʾ and Fajr come at a time of rest and sleep. They are therefore burdensome to the hypocrites, who do not come—yet had they known the good contained in them, they would have come even if they had to crawl.

He also mentioned that a Muslim man would be brought, supported by two others, until he was made to stand in the row. The man was ill, unable to walk on his own; they would guide him, step by step, until he stood in the middle of the line and prayed with the congregation.

By such deeds, and others like them, they came to rule the eastern and western reaches of the earth. But when the Muslim community fell back and their hearts divided, they became what you see today: a humiliated nation. Though they number a billion souls, they remain among the most abased of peoples.