Establishing Regular Prayer

One of the most important obligations a Muslim has is to pray five times each day at prescribed times. A common concern for Muslims is how to get into the habit of praying, how to stick to it and even how to feel worthy of doing the prayer. Sometimes it is hard to get into the habit if you are not used to praying regularly, if you entered Islam later in life or if you left praying for some reason. It can also be difficult for someone who is just very busy in life. As Muslims, we should help one another to establish regular prayer, not just by talking about it but also by thinking about practical ways to implement prayer into our lives. The list that follows contains some ideas which can motivate one to fufill this important part of our faith:

1. Reading a lot about the benefits of prayer and how important it is in Islam. Reading about the early generations of Muslims, how they approached the prayer, how much efforts they put into it and what the purpose behind it is and the reward it carries.

2. Thinking about death. We all know it can come at any minute. Are we ready to meet Allah SWT right at this moment? Did we meet the basic requirements of our religion? Did we even perform the five basic prayers? Thinking about this very seriously is a big motivation.

3. Having the right friends who will remind us of the prayer: the ones who have prayer as their first priority - the ones who care if we prayed our own prayers and invite us to pray with them before relaxing and asking us to participate in other activities.

4. On the flip side, avoiding the people and activities which take one away from prayer.

5. Knowing the prayer times. Get a prayer schedule and post it in a conspicuous place.

6. Making sure to hear the adthan for each prayer. While this is not always possible in the non-Muslim countries, one way is to use special clocks which play the adthan or to install adthan-playing software on your computer.

7. Organizing life around the prayer, not organizing the prayer around life. When the time for prayer comes, it is important to drop other activities and pray. Don't most of us put extra efforts into things like exams and job interviews in order to benefit ourselves in this life? What are