I think my biggest challenge is myself. My emotions, my rationale, my behaviour. Some people are tested in the form of situations. My last “situational” test of faith was what had gotten me here. That was when Allah gave me his hidayah, and I finally accepted it. Since then on, I’ve been much quicker in seeing the hikmah in every situation, both good and bad. However, at times my iman wavers. Sometimes, it may not show in my actions, but it would be clear in my salat. Like today, it was just so easy to get distracted while performing my salat. Astaghfiraullahhalazim! I feel very afraid and ashamed each time this happens. I fear that Allah would become angry and not accept my amalan. So after salat, I recited zikrallah to sought after Allah’s mercy and acceptance.

My mistake today was not to ensure that I was calm before performing my salat. I stressed on the word “ensure” because I knew I was not calm, but I didn’t go that extra mile to get rid of it completely. I did my usual rituals and recitations before my salat which often helped me achieve khusyu’, however today it just wasn’t enough. How could it be enough when my mind and heart was still wondering around? Shame on me for my complacency! Khinzab must’ve been really proud with himself. Khinzab is the syaitan who is always with us in our salat. He is one of the reasons why we would sometimes become distracted or doubt ourselves in our prayers. With this realisation, I hope that I will learn from this. I will have to keep reminding myself that I should be 100% calm before I face Allah in my daily prayers. Insya Allah.

Below are a few things that I usually do to ensure kusyu’ in my salat (it works..honest!):

1. When we are performing ablution, there is a syaitan named Al Hulahan who laughs at us. Thawus said that “he is a very evil syaitan. He is the first to arouse apprehension in us. So with that in mind (but was out of mind for me today), we should try extra hard to protect ourselves from the tiny whispers of these troublemakers while performing ablution. I find it very helpful to say it in my heart the different cleansing processes that also takes place with each stage. For instance, when I wash my mouth, I’d think to myself, “I cleanse myself from all the sinful things I have said”. Then, when I was my ears, I’d think to myself, “I cleanse myself from all the sinful things I have heard”…and so on (FYI, today this whole thing slipped from my mind. Sighs).

2.  Say, “audzubillah himina syaitonirojim” and spit 3 times over the left shoulder.

3.  Say “astaghfiraullah” and salawat as many as I can until I am calm.

4.  Recite surah An-Nas to seek Allah’s protection from all things evil.

5. Iqamah.

When I know that there’s too many things in my mind, I do a few things extra such as reciting an invocation specially to calm myself before standing and doing all the things mentioned above. Yes, this is something that conveniently slipped out of my mind today due to my own carelessness. Here’s one that I usually use:

Dua to extinguish the feeling of agitation

U’idzubekaleemaa teellahettammaati nub ghadobeehe waqoo beehewasharee e’baadih, wamin hamazaa tishhayaa teeni wa anyahdoruun.

“I seek protection by invoking Allah’s pen (kalam Allah) that’s perfect and far from His anger, His sufferings, the evil in His servants, from the disturbances of syaitan and when they come to me.” (This is the best I can do with the translation in English. Hee hee)

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