A question to my Islamic friends
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What do you do/make/think when you pray Allah?
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I'm not Muslim and never have been, but I come from a Muslim family. I'm not sure I understand the question, but I'll try:
Before praying, you make wudu, which is cleaning certain parts of your body with water. It's supposed to wash off impurities, both physical and spiritual.
Five times a day there's salaat, which is a ritualized form of prescribed prayer. There's similar traditions in Catholic or Orthodox Christian ritualized prayers, with motions and prostrations. (I think Catholics these days do kneeling instead of prostrations, and a lot of the Orthodox do a sort of bow-touching-the-floor thing instead of prostrations, but prostrations are native to both traditions). It also has to be made in Arabic, because it is supposed to be the language that God himself spoke to mankind in when he sent down the Qur'an.
The heartfelt and personal prayer is dua, where you send up petitions to God in your own language and your own words.
Then there is Qur'an recitation, which is akin in spirituality to taking communion in the Christian traditions.
