RITUAL MUST ARISE FROM THE SPIRIT
Meaningful Devotion
ALL religions, through rituals and ceremonies, give a definite form to the act of worship. Islam too has specific rites but emphasizes the spirit in which these are carried out. It does not conceive of divine worship as a dichotomous proposition of two equal parts, form and spirit. Form is an external manifestation of the spirit—the vital and indispensable element of every sincere religious act, the former being a mere ancillary.
A Hadith on fasting shows how this act must be illumined by spirit: “One who did not forsake telling lies while on a fast, God has no need of such a person forsaking food and water.” Numerous statements in the Quran and Hadith make it clear that ritual practices and spirit are not equal constituents of worship. One is crucial and the other, a subordinate element. Each act of worship may or may not—depending upon its nature and circumstances—have an external form, ritualised or otherwise. What is truly important is the zeal which inspires it.
The true value of an act in Islam depends entirely upon the spirit in which it is carried out, and not the trappings of outward form.
While rituals serve partly as palpable identifiers of religious acts or of worship, and partly as physical reinforcements or prompters to religious ardour, the essence of Islam is the inner spirit, eternal and unassailable, unlike its outer forms. When this reality is lodged in the recesses of the individual psyche, its effects are outwardly reflected. Sincerely performed ceremonial acts are but material expressions of the incontrovertible inner truth. Towards the end of his life, Prophet Muhammad went on his pilgrimage and laid down specific ways of performing Hajj. More than 100,000 of his Companions went with him. The Prophet seated himself in the courtyard of the Kabah while his Companions queried him on the procedures of this important part of worship, especially concerning rites and their proper forms. (Hajj involves the performance of a series of rites, and since this was the first proper Hajj, there was uncertainty about their correct order.) The Prophet allayed their fears, saying: “There is no harm. There is no harm. Real harm lies in the dishonouring of a person.” This saying throws light on how form relates to spirit in Islam: the spirit is the essential factor, while the form or ritual is a matter of externals.
If the believer is not lacking in spirit, any deficiency in the form of his worship is tolerable.
The converse of this is illustrated by a tradition set down in the books of Hadith. Once the Prophet was seated in the mosque in Madinah when a worshipper came to meet him after performing his ablutions and saying his prayer with full observance of their ritual. The Prophet sent him back to say his prayers again as he said, he had not said his prayers. Here, a distinction was made between form and spirit. The Prophet sensed that this worshipper’s performance of the rituals of prayer had been mechanical and not imbued with religious fervour. Indeed, the true spirit of salath (prayer) is modesty. But this individual’s behaviour showed that while he was praying, modesty was far from his mind. However punctilious the worship in form, without the true spirit, the performance of the ritual is worthless. The mere observance of form does not make worship, and is unacceptable in the eyes of God.
The essence of Islam is the inner spirit, eternal and unassailable unlike its outer forms.
The word “ritual” has the same connotation as “form”. The difference is that “form” is a generic term, and “ritual” has become a religious term.
One Hadith tells us that the value of an act depends upon the doer’s intention. A practice must be evaluated on the basis of motivation; for example, the Prophet’s migration from Makkah to Madinah, known as the Hijrah. This emigration to uphold Islam, when people abandoned hearth and home for the sake of God was an act of great religious significance.
However, one of the emigrants was not pure in intent. He left Makkah for Madinah with the ulterior motive of marrying a Madinan girl who had agreed to marry him on the condition that he migrated to Madinah. The Prophet told his Companions that since this individual had migrated for his own private benefit, the migration would not be considered as migration for the sake of God.
This makes it clear that rituals are of relative value in Islam. The true value of an act in Islam depends entirely upon the spirit in which it is carried out, and not the trappings of outward form.