Tricks Suited to Every Trade

Someone who takes pride in his own looks is approached through vanity: a glance in the mirror is enough to plant the thought that he is exceptionally handsome, a match for anyone. Someone given beauty by Allah is worked on through that same beauty — she has been given a beauty beyond most, the suggestion runs, the most gorgeous there is, and it is worked upon accordingly. Someone given a fine voice is drawn toward using it for its own sake rather than for Allah: called to raise the adhān, he hears the suggestion afterward — did anyone hear that, did anyone listen, very well done, this is mastery, how beautiful the voice truly is, everyone loves it now — and the nafs delights in every word of it. Then, once the moment has passed, the same enemy who supplied the temptation turns on him from within, working now from the outside as well: he is shown that he has lost his sincerity, his ikhlāṣ, that he gains nothing at all from that call to prayer, because it was made to be seen and heard rather than for Allah — a pitiable state for a believer to find himself in, robbed of the reward by his own vanity.

If the attempt to stop the prayer outright does not succeed, Shayṭān shifts to delaying it. If that fails, he tries to make it rushed, hurried through without care. And if even that fails, he turns to inserting whispers, waswasah, into the mind during the prayer itself — depriving it of khushūʿ by filling it with irrelevant thoughts, sometimes ugly and unwelcome images from the past intruding uninvited.