Disrupting the Prayer

Let me tell you, O Muḥammad, about my friends who abandon prayer or delay it. When its time comes I make them imagine there is still time left, so that they finish whatever they are doing first, enjoying it, telling themselves they can always pray later — this is tasweef, putting off. I hope they die before their next prayer, and indeed some of them do die before performing it. Even those who pray late find their devotion thrown back in their faces. If I cannot succeed on my own, I send a human devil to prevent their worship. If that too fails, I enter into the prayer itself: look to the right, look to the left, play with the beard, play with the clothes. Some pray as though they were not in Allah's presence at all, watching everything around them; an imam turning at times to look may find some still catching up on the last few rakʿāt, watching him rather than their own prayer. The moment the eye leaves the place of prostration, that prayer is lost — Allah, it is said, is not interested in one who is not interested in Him. This is how he achieves it: look to the right, look to the left, think of the past, plan the future — that, within the prayer itself, is waswasah. And when a person gives way to it, he said, I kiss their cheeks and their foreheads, and take the peace out of their hearts, so that they remain constantly troubled.

You know, O Muḥammad, Shayṭān said, that the prayer of one whose attention wanders, who imagines things that have no place before Allah, is likewise thrown back at him. If that still does not succeed, I make them rush their prayer, pecking at it as hens peck at grain. If even that fails, I follow them into the congregational prayer and put bridles, so to speak, on their heads, pulling them up out of prostration before the imam, so that they rise before he does or prostrate ahead of him, their heads down before his own head has touched the ground — and I rejoice to remember that Allah will turn such hasty heads into the heads of donkeys on the Day of Resurrection. Failing even that, I try at least to make them crack their fingers during the prayer, so that they join those who keep my tasbīḥ instead of Allah's; or I blow gently on their noses to make them yawn, and if the mouth opens, a small one of mine slips in and turns somersaults of laughter inside it. Once a person is heedless in prayer in this way, I place in his heart love of this world and ambition for it — and whoever loves and is ambitious for this world becomes my soldier, obeying every command I give. I have not told you a single lie, O Muḥammad — if I have, may the scorpions bite me, and may Allah turn me to ashes. Do not be too sure of your people: I have already turned a sixth of them away from their religion.