Salaam friends!

If salah means to connect, does it mean we also need to disconnect from something? 

FYI: salah: root letters

 ص ل و / ص ل ي

Across classical lexicons, the root carries several ideas, one being: ṣilah (صلة). This means connection, bond, relationship. 

Team Minara is in the process of creating something fun [in sha Allah] and this is one of the questions featured in said fun thing! 🎉

We love, love this question.

It's beautiful to pause and think about salah beyond its form - to peel back its philosophical layers. We often speak about the physicality of salah, the rulings, the rewards, and of course, all of that is important.

But when we muse over salah philosophically - you know, sit with it as an idea or a language - we uncover dimensions that instructions alone can't give us. 

Hey, we don't need any more convincing - do you?!

Let's talk philosophy folks! 🔍

If salah means to connect, does it mean we also need to disconnect from something? 

What is this question really asking us to think about? 

We suppose this question is really inviting us to think about the nature of connection itself. What we’re actually connecting to in our lives, and how so many of those connections aren’t necessarily nourishing, holistic, or even good for us. In that sense, salah opens up a different kind of avenue, one that reorients us toward something more meaningful.

And it makes us wonder about the layers within this question too: how are we nurturing that connection beyond the moments of prayer? Is salah meant to benefit us only in the act itself, or is there an expectation - or perhaps a hope - that its impact continues, that we somehow carry its longevity beyond our prayer mats?

When we say salah means “connection,” the word itself implies its opposite: to connect to one thing is, by necessity, to disconnect from another. A lamp can only give light if it is plugged into the right source; if it remains plugged into the wrong circuit, or too many circuits, its glow flickers. 

Human beings are no different agreed?

So let’s break it down. 

We have to think about this - the disconnection before we mull over what we’re connecting to because after all, you can’t tune into something without silencing all the figurative noise in the back.

Most of our daily connections are attachments: to pace, to productivity, to being perceived, to desire, to validation, to fear, to devices, to the self’s constant commentary. These connections drain and keep us responsive, but not receptive; stimulated, but not centred.

Salah interrupts this.

It unhooks us from what steals our wholeness. The mind is invited to rest and the heart is invited to dwell.

Honestly? This question alone leaves us thinking this:

Salah - a thing of beauty!

Ṣalah is also a type of re-plugging. It reconnects us to:

Coffee addicts out there - salah is your spiritual coffee break!

Salah is both an act and a training ground.

And that’s why we like to refer to salah as our salah practice as it serves as a practice for a certain kind of presence.

If its effects remain only during those minutes, then it has not fully done its work on us yet. Just as exercise strengthens muscles long after you leave the gym, salah is meant to cultivate a state that outlives the prayer mat.

It is meant to:

Is longevity the consequence of how consciously we enter? 

It certainly seems so! We should enter salah as we mean to go on - for it’s effects to be long-lived rather than short.

Oh which brings us to this: you know the argument that commonly surfaces - the one that seeks to measure a “good Muslim” not by the regularity of their salah, but by the sum of their actions, their interactions and their ethical footprint in the world?

Well, of course faith is more than a single act. Islam encompasses the way we treat people, the integrity of our transactions, the ethics of our speech, the lived truth of our lives.

Yet what if we allowed salah to be the the instrument through which a coherent moral and spiritual life becomes possible?

Prayer alone does not make anyone a “good Muslim” but salah can be the mechanism through which goodness is cultivated.

Train our minds, discipline our hearts, align our attentions and expand our moral imaginations through salah.

Now this feels like a much-needed revolution to us!

We do the inner work, planting roots so deep that all the little but important branches of our faith grow strong and unstoppable.

Aameen Ya Rabb 💜

No connection survives without maintenance.

Think of how we nurture a relationship: by listening, communicating, making small gestures, trusting … 

Similarly, the connection of salah is extended through:

🟣 micro-remembrances [dhikr] that keep the heart awake

🟣 ethical choices that keep the soul aligned

🟣 boundaries around what we consume, so the heart remains porous to light

🟣 slowing down so attention is not perpetually fractured

🟣 intention-setting so the world doesn’t choose our direction for us

🟣 acts of service that reflect the humility cultivated in sujood

If salah means to connect, does it mean we also need to disconnect from something? 

Bottom line is…

To exit salah is not to confine it to the prayer mat; it is to carry our experience of it back into the world.

And these are the thoughts we’re leaving you with this week. Brief but enough to keep you mulling! May they inspire you 💛.

Seeing as we’ve hit you with all the philosophy today, we thought it’d be great to close off with a little philosophical challenge too.

Take 5 minutes to write [or think!] about this:

What am I most connected to in life, and does it nourish me, or drain me? What might it mean to disconnect in order to reconnect?

Oh and before you go - we’d love it if you could quickly engage with our poll below. Our mission is to create not just content but produce thoughtful work that actually means something to us all.

As always , we appreciate you all for being here 💙.

Wishing you a mindfully present week ahead 🩵.

Love and du’as,

The Minara Team