The Body in Worship

There is an importance to the idea of being in the body when one prays, because the Muslims have always really avoided a type of Cartesian dualism of mind and body, and they believe in the bodily resurrection. They do see that the soul is connected to the body, and that the soul does disengage from the body; in fact the Muslims believe, according to the Qurʾān, that the soul even disengages during sleep — that there is a disengagement that takes place. But there is an idea that the body is also part of it: that we should not deny our bodies. In fact the body is part of our being, and it does represent a very important aspect of our nature. And so the prayer is a physical prayer as well as being a spiritual prayer. The body itself is being used as an act of worship.

So there is a standing, and then there is a bowing, and then a return, and then a prostration; and each of the limbs is participating in that — the seven limbs, as they are called. And then there is the idea of putting the forehead and the nose onto the ground, literally onto the ground. There is a symbolic act in this, which is elevating the heart over the intellect. There is an idea that in the act of worship the intellect is being submitted and the heart is being elevated, because the heart, according to the Muslims, is the organ of cognition; and what it was created to do was to come to know God. It was created to come to know God. This is just something that some of the scholars have mentioned; it is not really — it is just a symbolic type of thing.