service must be held in the language proper to each nation, and that a service held in any other language will not fulfil the purpose of worship. In the first place, the Islamic prayer does not consist of mere words of praise of the Divine glory and majesty, or the mere expression, in words, of the inner feelings of the heart. That no doubt is an important part of prayer but even more important than this is the attitude of mind, the inner feeling itself, of which the words are meant to be an expression. Now this attitude of mind is produced, in the first place, by the atmosphere about the worshipper and by the particular postures of reverence which he adopts. The mood, more than words, generates a true spirit of humility, and the first condition of a prayerful mind is humility, as the Holy Qur’ān itself lays down: “Successful indeed are the believers, who are humble in their prayers” (23:1, 2). Suppose there is a man who takes part in a public service without understanding a word of Arabic. It would be entirely wrong to say that prayer does not benefit him, for there are the movements of his body, the raising of the hands to the ears, the standing up with folded hands, the bowing down, the placing of the forehead on the ground, the sitting down in a particular attitude of reverence, which all go a long way towards producing in him humility and consciousness of the Divine presence. He may not understand the language used, but here he is himself giving expression to his inner feelings in the language of his bodily movements. In fact, his whole self is expressive of what the words convey. It will indeed be highly more beneficial if he understands the spoken language also, but it is absurd to say that the language of movements has no meaning for him.
Now let us come to the language of words. The most repeated expressions in the Islamic service are Allāhu Akbar, Subḥāna Rabbiy-al-‘Azīm, Subḥāna Rabbiy-al-A‘lā, and the opening chapter of the Holy Qur’ān, called al-Fātiḥah. As regards the first expression there is hardly a Muslim in the world, whatever language he may speak, and whether educated or uneducated, young or old, male or female, who does not understand the meaning of Allāhu Akbar. It is with this expression that a man enters into the Divine service and it is with it that he changes one posture of the body to another, so that with the very entrance in prayer, the mind receives an impression of the glory