Al-Salat : The Reality of Prayer in Islam
by Molana Shah Maghsoud Sadegh Angha
You gotta have heart - lots and lots and lots of heart
November 4, 2001
You really have to be into Islam to be able to get off on this book. It starts off with a
nice Table of Contents giving it structure but the problem you get into is that the author Mr.
Angha is writing in the Persian language attempting to spell out Classical Arabic concepts but
then he turned it over for English translation to someone who was not a native speaker.
Because "the Persian language has no distinct gender denominations", you get to a point
where you don't know if he is talking boy, girl, it, or anything on either side. If you do what
this book says, you will find "reality of prayer", but otherwise, this is the WAY of prayer
according to a Persian trained in Classical Arabic. There are too many Classical Arabic
concepts thrown into too few pages. This was my first encounter with Sufi - I was used to
Nation of Islam and the Moorish Science Temple so the numbers games and alphabet games
linked with body positions in the back of the book reminded me of numerology. The body
positions are supposed to mimic Classical Arabic letters like alif. The letters have their own
significance like pictographs in Chinese. There are editorial comments made, too, like you
are not supposed to I guess he was talking about the intentional spread of biologic diseases.
Also, he points out, in agreement with Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam): "Islam is submission", but
he adds in clumsy English, "submission to certainty, certainty in cognition, cognition in
confession, confession in obedience, and obedience in actions." I'm the only person yet I
know that speaks English that knows how the word cognition is different from higher-order
thought or just plain thinking or daydreaming. This is not a meditation manual and the
poetry has been polluted. However, Mr. Angha, who comes from Iran, gave it a good college
try and you can get a lift out of it if you read among the lines.