Encyclopedia of Islam

prayer

  

557  J

---

imam

 (prayer leader). Although all prayer times 

are considered obligatory, attending the Friday 

(jumaa) noon prayer time is considered especially 

meritorious; men are particularly encouraged 

to participate collectively in this prayer at the 

mosque. Although the Prophet’s hadith encour-

ages Muslim women to pray in the home, women 

are not forbidden from praying at the mosque. 

When they join men in the mosque, prayer is 

traditionally sexually segregated, women praying 

behind the men, or to one side, in a balcony or 

other separate space. The reason given is to pre-

vent inappropriate sexual distraction from prayer. 

Some mosques in the West or in more liberal 

Islamic communities no longer practice sexual 

segregation in prayer.

The second form of prayer is personal prayer 

(duaa), which is voluntary and additional to the 

five times daily salat prayers. Personal prayer 

allows believers to be creative and spontaneous in 

their own native language instead of the Arabic of 

formal prayer (only about 10 percent of Muslims 

around the world are native Arabic speakers). The 

believer can ask for specific needs or wants from 

God on their own behalf or on behalf of family 

and community. Believers have often used prayers 

from collections authored by devout believers and 

scholars and handed down from generation to 

generation as prayer manuals. Although Islam has 

no formal system of 

intercession

—no priesthood 

or formal hierarchy to mediate between believers 

and God—it does have a strong popular tradition 

of informal intercession (wasila, Q 5:34, 17:57) 

via holy persons, places, and objects. There are 

prayers for blessings on Muhammad and his 

immediate family, the Sufi 

saint

s, and Shii Imams; 

local pilgrimage (

ziyara

) and prayers offered at the 

birth and 

death

 places and tombs of holy persons; 

and objects that convey divine blessing (

baraka

) 

such as quranic prayers written, embroidered, and 

carved functioning as 

amUlets

 

and

 

talismans

.

See also 

adhan

; 

basmala

;  i

d

 

al

-a

dha

; 

pbUh

; 

prayer

 

beads

.

Kathleen M. O’Connor