Question
I have been told that salah doesn’t mean so called “namaz” and namaz is not made obligatory on Muslims. Furthermore, he says that, the takbeer with which we start the prayer saying “Allahu Akbar” is grammatically wrong. The word “Akbar” is not used by Allah for Himself in the Qur’an. In Arabic, word Akbar is used as comparative degree therefore, it cannot be used with Allah. Could you please answer this with Qur’anic proofs?
Answer
The holy Qur’an does not describe in detail everything it mentions. It has referred to salah hundreds of times and did not need to describe it fully only because it was established even before the revelation of the Qur’an. The Prophet (sws) only modified and changed it a bit and corrected the innovations and instituted the practice as part of the religion. To this practice the Qur’an refers to as salah. No book intended for humans can give description of everything it mentions. The Qru’an for example uses the word Ummul Qura for Makka and also named it. It did not tell us the geographical and political boundries of the territory. When it refers to Room it again only names the country and did not explain where it lay and left demarcating the borders and capital of the country. Thousands of such examples can be presented to prove that the Qru’an does not define everything it mentions. Now how the Makkans and Madinan did understand where did the Qru’an refer to while mentioning the names Bakkah and Yasrib? I leave this question to you.
Answered by: Tariq Mahmood Hashmi
Date: 2015-02-07
