The Verses of Prostration

Allah (swt) then gives a verse of prostration, and this is the place to note something not pointed out earlier: in chapter 9,^* before Sūrat al-Anfāl, at the end of that sūrah, there was a verse of sajdah. There are fourteen sajdahs in the Qur'an — verses at which a sajdah is performed. Here is this one:

To Allah prostrate all those in the heavens and the earth, willingly or unwillingly. Wherever — not everywhere, but in most places — there is mention of prostration, whether that they prostrated, or that they refused to prostrate, or that the heavens prostrate, or that those in the heavens prostrate, the ḥukm for us is that it becomes obligatory and binding to perform a sujūd. If the verse is recited in ṣalāh, the prostration is made in ṣalāh; if outside ṣalāh, then outside ṣalāh. In most muṣḥafs they are marked, and they are not to be forgotten.

Anyone who has not been performing them should begin. The point is that we are among the prostrators: if we do not do it, we are merely passing the verse by, ignoring it, and failing to prostrate. It is our declaration that we are prostrators, and so we should perform them and not miss them. They can, of course, all be made up later — one who has missed five, ten, fifteen or twenty can make them all up afterwards, and they are not cancelled as such. But one should try to perform them.