Faith and Prayer, Never Separated

The fifth virtue of ṣalāh: Allah (swt) refers to ṣalāh as the highest; He gives it the highest status after īmān. After being a Muslim, the best thing to do is to perform one's ṣalāh. After being a Muslim. Can a person be a Muslim merely academically, without having to perform ṣalāh? No. Allah never separated those two from each other in the Qur'an. Never. Just as Allah never separated ṣalāh and zakāh from one another: they come in pairs. Allah (swt) says in Sūrat al-Baqarah, in an āyah that most Muslims know:

Allah describes the muʾminūn, the believers. Who are they? They believe in the unseen. What does that mean — a belief in ghosts? No. It is belief in what Allah and His Messenger have promised us: about Allah; about the hereafter; about the angels; about the Mīzān, the scales; about Jannah; about Jahannam; about the ʿiqāb, the punishment; about the reward; about everything that is called eschatology in the proper sense of the word. We believe in the unseen. The ghayb is known only to Allah (swt). Nobody else knows it; only Allah (swt) knows the ghayb. Anybody who claims to know the ghayb is a kāhin, a soothsayer, and he is — naʿūdhu billāh — outside Islam. Nobody knows it. Whoever goes to a soothsayer, to a kāhin, and asks about his fortune, his future, has disbelieved in what was revealed to Muhammad (peace be upon him), as the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) says. Merely out of curiosity? Can one go and find out? In some cultures they look at bones; some look at calculations; some look at the stars — the positioning of such-and-such a lunar moon with the solar moon, whatever they may be — and announce that this is the most prosperous year, that one is going to get married, that one may go and do this or that. All utter nonsense. The ghayb is known to whom? To Allah (swt). If Allah (swt) informs a servant of His, then yes, that servant will know about a particular incident; but in totality, only Allah (swt) knows. Only Allah (swt) knows.