As we fast, work, study, or perform any other duties all at the same time, it is often hard to taste the sweetness of prayer during Ramadan and truly acknowledge its importance and weight. Busy schedules can turn the month of spiritual purity and meditation into a month of complete exhaustion and depletion, yet this can change if we get into the depths of prayer, understand its meaning and purpose, and approach it with the right mindset. For me, prayer should represent a circle of emotions. It does not matter at which level of emotion you are at, but what matters is that you are able to rearrange and dive into these emotions completely and entirely until you get into the heart of the circle – almost like you are drowning or losing yourself inside the hole of your heart. To start with, prayer or ‘ibāda, implies humility or submissiveness, as theologian and spiritual writer Ibn Qayyim al-Jawzīyah explains that it is the highest level of love, wherein a person is powerless before their beloved. This is why prayer should be ultimately a feeling of powerlessness, as love is an emotion…
