Bismillāh.
إِنَّ الصَّلَاةَ تَنْهَىٰ عَنِ الْفَحْشَاءِ وَالْمُنكَرِ
Indeed the prayer restrains from indecent and wrongful conduct.
Sūrat al-‘Ankabūt, No. 29, Āyat 45
In this final verse of the twentieth juz’ of the Qur’an, Allah says that prayer restrains believers from fahshā and munkar. The word fahshā means a repulsive and ugly act such as adultery, and similarly the word munkar refers to an act that people recognize to be wrong and ugly.
We know that prayer is an important action, and in fact the most important of all actions in religion! The Messenger of Allah sallallāhu ‘alayhi wa ālihi is quoted as having said:
Everything has a face, and the face of your religion is prayer. So let none of you disfigure the face of his religion.
However, what does Allah mean when He says that prayer restrains believers from committing indecent actions? How can this possibly be? What relationship is there between performing an act of ritual worship and controlling oneself in the face of desires and temptations to commit sin? Moreover, have we not all seen Muslims who pray yet they still commit sins? These are questions that may arise from the above verse.
In response: this verse is teaching us an aspect of the nature of prayer. There is a reality to prayer that one who performs it would naturally develop a deep-rooted trait in their soul that would restrain them from committing sins. The more importance that is given to prayer and the more of the etiquettes of prayer that are upheld, the stronger this trait would become. ‘Allamah Tabātabā’ī in Tafsīr al-Mizān says that such an effect would be particularly strong when believers pray together in congregation and thereby form a society and an Islamic environment.
If we ponder upon the nature of prayer and the content of what we say in prayer this profound effect is not surprising. When we pray, we are turning our attention to the Almighty and uttering praise of God, reciting verses of the Qur’ān, supplicating for forgiveness, etc. Such words and actions should naturally leave an impact on one’s soul. Moreover, a believer must do this repeatedly, five times a day, every day of their life. Before prayer they must purify themselves from both external impurities (khabath) and also in terms of performing ablution. They must ensure the land they are praying on and the clothes they wear are not usurped. They must face the house of God in Makkah.
It is no surprise that a believer who is repeatedly connecting himself to Allah in this way and imprinting such luminous words on his heart would naturally refrain from indecent sins. Yet at the same time, this is what should naturally happen. This is not to say that it will definitely and always happen. ‘Allamah Tabātabā’ī uses a philosophical term here of iqtidā (entailing) and not ‘illiyah (cause). Prayer entails this piety, but it is not a necessary cause. He also gives an example of a balance scale. Remembrance of Allah is like one side of a balance scale, while the opposite side represents indecent actions. When one side is pushed down the other side rises. Prayer adds weight to the side of Allah’s remembrance, but this does not eliminate the possibility that a person may still commit sins by giving weight to the other side.
We pray that Allah gives us the tawfīq to pray properly, abiding by all its legal and ethical conditions. More important we pray that we become people of purity and piety and benefit from our prayer to be saved from any kind of indecent action in our life.
Sources: ‘Allāmah Muhammad Husayn Tabātabā’ī, Tafsīr al-Mīzān.