Muslim Woman

A simple conventional answer may be that we pray because our forefathers have been praying and told us to pray, this is exactly as we tell our children to pray. Traditionaly we pray because God has asked us to pray. But for many people who are sincerely searching for a more meaningful answer this may not be satisfactory. First of all God has given us freedom of choice for everything including prayers, so we do not have to pray if we do not want to. Usually we donot pray when we are enjoying the good times, but majority do this when some tragedy strikes or when we reach old age that many of us start praying regularly. For example an airplane full of people is going to crash and in this situation every one will be praying for life and survival.This instinct of self-survival is inherent in every living being including humans. But humans find themselves helpless and defenseless against many living beings and natural catastrophes. Therefore prmitive human prayed to various natural objects that threatened or benefited his survival. When human beings developed tools for self-defense and gradually advanced in science they tended to drift away from religion.They found security in science rather than prayer because science gave them control over the forces of nature. Priesthood considered this attitude as an attack on religion itself. This led to a continuous battle of religion with science. History bears ample testimony to this continuous struggle. Thus we see that there seems to be no single reason as to why people pray. Everyone can come up with his or her own answer and feel satisfied. In fact this is what we normally do. But as we mentioned before, the right answer that transcends space, time circumatance and human emotions can only come from God through his book..The Quran.

Why do we pray?

Nawaz
Religion Islam
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