congregational prayer. Once within the doors of the mosque, every Muslim finds himself in an atmosphere of equality and love. Before their Maker they all stand shoulder to shoulder, the king along with his poorest subject, the rich arrayed in gorgeous robes with the beggar child clad in rags, the white man with the black. Nay, the king or rich man standing in a back row will have to lay his head, prostrate himself before God, at the feet of a slave or a beggar standing in the front. There could be no more levelling influence in the world. Differences of rank, wealth and colour vanish within the mosque and quite a new atmosphere, an atmosphere of brotherhood, equality and love, totally differing from the outside world, prevails within the holy precincts. To be able to breathe, five times daily in an atmosphere of perfect peace within a world of strife and struggle, of equality where inequality is the order of the day and of love amid the petty jealousies and enmities of daily life, is indeed a blessing. But it is more than a blessing; for it is the great lesson of life. Man has to work amidst inequalities, amidst strife and struggle, amidst scenes of hatred and enmity, and yet he is drawn out of these five times a day and made to realize that equality, fraternity and love are the real sources of human happiness. The time spent on prayer is not, therefore, wasted even from the point of view of active humanitarianism; on the contrary, the best use of it is made in learning those great lessons which make life worth living. And these lessons of fraternity, equality and love, when put into practice in daily life, serve as foundations for the unification of the human race and of the lasting civilization of mankind. In fact, the five daily congregational prayers are meant, among other things, to carry into practice the theoretical lessons of equality and fraternity for which Islām stands; and however much Islām may have preached in words the equality of man and the fraternity of the community of Islām, all this would have remained a dead-letter, had it not been translated into the everyday life of man through the institution of five daily congregational prayers.
Prayer, in Islām, thus not only enables man to realize the Divine in him, not only makes him drink deep at the fountain of Divine morals,