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NUMBER OF DAILY SALAT

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This page analyses the Quranic input with regrads to the number of daliy prayers. The traditional number of prayers observed by the majority of Muslims today is 5 daily prayers. However, when we study the Quran, we find only 3 prayers prescribed by God.

Those who observe 5 daily prayers can be grouped in one of the following groups:

1-   The First Group of Muslims are the hadith followers.  They observe 5 daily prayers because they derive their religion from their books of hadith.  The hadith books they follow authorise 5 daily prayers.

2-   The Second Group also observe 5 daily prayers and claim that they follow the Quran alone. However they do a U-Turn when it comes to the subject of authorisation of rituals and claim that the Quran cannot be relied on alone as the only source for Islam! They claim that Islam is derived from two sources, the Quran is one source and the inherited rituals are the second source.  So on one hand they say that they follow the Quran alone and that the Quran is fully detailed, but on the other hand they say that the Quran is not the only source of Islam and that the details of our practices are not in the Quran!  With some unexplicable logic they declare that 'Quran alone' does not mean 'Quran alone'!

3-   The Third Group are those who state that they follow the Quran alone and they observe five daily prayers because in their view the Quran authorises five daily prayers.

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With regards to the First Group, the reader will note that the Quranic command to follow the Quran alone and reject all forms of hadith is a subject that has already been dealt with extensively on this site.  For more details on this matter please check the following pages:

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A Dozen Reasons to follow the Quran Alone

The Quran is All We Need

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When we come to the Second Group who claim that the Quran is not the only source of Islam, we can see that they too have faltered from God's clear Quranic words that cofirm that God's authorisation (Quran) is the only authority for ALL our religion (42:21), that the Quran is fully detailed (6:114), that NOTHING has been left out of the book (16:89) and that even though Islam is as old as Abraham, yet we should only follow the rules, rites and practices authorised for US in the Quran (5:48) and not what was decreed to those before us.   We read in 5:48 that God has decreed different rules and rites to different people and that the test of each people lies in following what is revealed to them (in our case the Quran) and not what was revelead to those before .

" ....... For each of you, We have decreed laws and different rites. Had God willed, He could have made you one congregation. But He thus puts you to the test through the revelations He has given each of you."  5:48

Needless to say, there is no verse anywhere in the Quran where God authorises us to accept the inherited rituals that came to us through our predecessors as a second source of religion besides the Quran.

Those who make such claims base their claims on the mis-interpretation of the Quranic phrase 'Milat Ibraheem' (The Creed of Abraham), also on the mis-interpretation of the command in 16:123 to follow 'Milat Ibraheem'.

For more details on this issue please check the following page:

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'Milat Ibraheem'

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Finally, with regards to the Third Group who observe 5 daily prayers because they genuinely believe that the Quran authorises 5 prayers.  

For all the details about the three salat authorised in the Quran please check the following page:

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Three Salat authorised in the Quran

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