Annoying Prayer Habits

Unless you got some extremely weird beliefs of this religion, you all probably pray a few times a day or at least make an effort to try. Prayer is cool… a time where we can actually have a one-on-one link with the Almighty Himself. We can either pray alone or pray in congregation.

Unfortunately praying in congregation has its downside. When one is trying to establish a link to God, there is always some moron that completely screws it up.

Aaaaaaaaameeeeeen

Depending on your school of thought, we should say Ameen aloud after Surah Fatiha is recited. I don’t mind this. What I do mind is people shouting Ameen on the top of their lungs. That’s not nice. Shouting Ameen doesn’t make your prayer better. It just makes everyone else annoyed. If you’re gonna say Ameen out loud, say it in a tolerable voice. Allah (SWT) can hear all Ameens, quiet or loud, so don’t worry about not being heard.

"OMG I know this sura!"

If there’s one thing to ruin your concentration, it would be those “karaoke imams” who are beside you and reciting the sura louder than the actual imam. Congratulations on knowing the sura that the Imam is reciting but please shut up so I can concentrate, thank you.

Foot to Foot

This is the one I hate more than anything. I’m trying to concentrate in prayer when all of a sudden the guy next to me starts playing footsies with me. What the crap? I try edging my self away from him but he keeps tangling with my pinky toe, making sure it doesn’t get any room to breathe. By the end of the prayer I felt as if my pinky toe was going to be amputated. He was practically doing the splits because his feet were so spread apart.

“Hey man what’s the deal? I don’t swing that way man.” “lol what are you talking about brother?” “I’m talking about your pinky toe and my pinky toe doing some tango.” “Brother… don’t you know the Hadith? Foot to foot, shoulder to shoulder” “You’re a moron.”

This alarmed me. I'm all about standing shoulder to shoulder and I think everyone should stand straight in a line. But I think this guy is taking the thing way too literally. I decided to experiment this literal interpretation of the Hadith. I got one of my tallest friends (Ali) and one of my smallest friends (Wasim) to come and pray behind me one day.

Before I started prayer, I told them “Close your gaps. Feet to feet, shoulder to shoulder”. This made them confused. How can they go shoulder to shoulder? Well being the engineers that they are, they decided to experiment.

OPTION A – PHONEBOOKS

Wasim decided that he wanted to come up to Ali’s height so his shoulder touched his and he could pray beside him. Unfortunately their feet were not touching at all. Also when Wasim would go down for sajdah he would fall to his doom, resulting in a serious injury or possibly death. This was not a good option.

OPTION B – BENDING DOWN

Ali decided that he wanted to lower himself to Wasim’s height. At the same time, Ali wanted to keep his feet side by side to Wasim’s. Unfortunately for Ali, if he stayed in this position his legs would get severely crippled and as you can see from the picture, his kneecaps have dissolved as a result of it.

Anyway, to let everyone know, the full Hadith actually says “Close the gaps. Shoulder to shoulder, foot to foot, neck to neck, knees to knees.”

Neck to neck? Knees to knees? Why not try that on for size literalists? Since we aren’t ostriches, the above could be quite painful if we took it literally.

It’s not gonna kill you if my pinky toe can breathe. So maybe it literally shouldn't be "foot to foot". Just stand shoulder to shoulder and make your neighbours have a comfortable prayer thank you. The Hadith is actually saying that we should stand in a straight line (by foot, shoulders, neck, knees etc.)... not to play footsies.

RING RING

I’m sure everyone can relate to this one.

I truly wish cell phones were around at the time of the Prophet (SAW) so they could have been officially banned during prayer time. Because today we have a bunch of mongooses who think they’re important getting called in the midst of prayers. It’s a bit alarming that in the middle of Sura Fatiha all you hear is 50 Cent’s "In Da Club", “Hello Moto” or some stupid Bollywood ring tone. What’s even more stupid is that no matter how many times I said “Subhanallah”, the Imam still wouldn’t turn off his cell phone during prayer.

Oh the horror.