Is there a benefit to Praying Salah? | Mufti Abu Layth

a few people have asked me about salah and i think this is very important people have said that look um you know they're struggling with salah and some people i've had actually three people in the last just seven days um also express this um you know this this attitude of you know we're doing this because god's gonna punish us and he's going to oh you know and and then they're not comfortable with that and why do we have to do something only because god's going to punish us if we don't do it and and i would say that that is not a

healthy mindset at all look let's get one thing clear your salah does not benefit god in the slightest nothing we do benefits god nothing okay it is just your devotion that reaches god just that you know you standing doing ruku doing this doing that what does god benefit from that it is your devotion okay not once in the quran does god mention where does god say in the quran if you

don't do worship i'm going to punish you where does he say that look look in the quran where does he say that show me these verses the one the only one they try to find they don't read the complete verse what brought you to damnation they say oh we never used to pray and people stopped no but read on we would deny every form of truth that came before us read the verse

where does allah for any worship in the quran for fasting for salah for where does he mention punishing you he doesn't never this is not the spirit of the quran so let's process that okay now put that aside it is what we can understand is our devotion reaches god and secondly whatever we do has some benefit for us in this world then and i want you to just flip that perspective so salah think of it like this look the quran every time it mentions salah always says and

this word this verb from this this is about establishing like an edifice a structure a building this is how the word is used in arabic it's still used in arabic like that so it's interesting that choice of words allah could have just said says okay that's interesting now look you take your life and your life like i take mine and i would feel it's it's always more towards a state of entropy it's always more towards disorder than it is order and if left to our own devices we're always just lazy

we you know i'd rather i'll just sit here i might as well just watch this i'll watch another episode of this oh i don't want to get up i'd rather sleep more this is natural you see now you take salah now it's a ritual and it's a ritual which is a set of structures like there is and these structures have substructures each rakah has this and yes [Music] as this as the and you establish this ritual you become by establishing it you become a

manifestation of it because the salah you embody it because it is you praying it you become a manifestation of structures and you do it on your own as well which is on a side note as uh pascal had said that all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone and that's something actually which on a whole different or discussion we need to speak about because it generates inward directed thought something today people don't they they don't do you know there was an

experiment where they had um a group of people aged between 18 to 25 they had an opportunity to either wait between 6 minutes to 11 minutes or they could receive an electric shark a a certain knock life threatening but electric shock people would rather take the electric shock than just sit still but you see sitting quietly generates inward directive thoughts okay so you're on your own you're doing a ritual and the human psyche clings to rituals you know if we didn't have rituals we would have to invent them that's how important they are for

we can get into another discussion on another day psychologically why but they are for humans so you become this manifestation of structures now subconsciously you are projecting some structure onto your day you see you know many people jordan peterson speaks about this many people speak about this they say you know when you wake up make your bed and they say well what's so special about making a bed say oh well it makes the room look no it's bigger than that you see you wake up all you can see is your room you can't see outside the room you can just see your room and you see this

disorderliness you see this some chaos and what you do is you render some order to some chaos it's effective it's immediate thereby setting a frame of mind that is more productive and effective in rendering more order in the greater chaos similarly when you establish a set you establish the salah as a set of structures subconsciously you are projecting even a tad bit of structural

order onto your day see you may not notice it but your productivity may a tad bit as incrementally minimally maybe but increase you see in your salah is a blessing for your daily lives see you've been thinking all along that yes you know this is it is a devotion the devotion is there the ritual is there the inward directed thought is there being alone

with yourself is there a manifestation of structure thereby incrementally increasing productivity it's amazing isn't it i think about it that there's this hadith that a person who establishes his salah his risk increases now allah gives risk but tell me if your productivity even increases incrementally the risk increases because you're more productive

you see it's all about how you view this your perspective it is your salah only sure looks sometimes you're not going to do it some days you get distracted some days you oversleep some days you're too busy but whenever you do get a chance put some structure into your life with devotion you know with ritual i think honestly it's amazing it is all but just a perspective i hope that's of some help so sugar