prayermajor pollution. Since the place of prayer must also remain clean, wor-
shippers must leave their shoes outside of the mosque.
Muslim prayer is not merely recited but also performed by a series of
rak’ah (bowings), which culminates in kneeling on the floor and touching
one’s forehead to the floor. The performance of prayer involves seven
basic movements: standing and reciting “Allah akbar” (God is great);
reciting the opening chapter of the Qur’an, followed by another verse,
while standing upright with hands placed before the body; bowing from
the hips while placing the hands on the knees; straightening up; prostrat-
ing by gliding to the knees, putting the nose and forehead on the ground;
sitting back on the haunches and reciting “God is great”; and prostrating
once again. Muslim performance of prayer is a sign of submission and
an act of homage to God, a taking refuge in God that is expressed verbally
by a believer. By performing prayer in a communal setting, a believer
comes to recognize that he/she is part of the community of God.
In Islam this prayer of several bowings represents institutional prayer
(salāt, an Aramaic term meaning bowing) that is an obligation and thus
a fulfillment of a duty to God. Its legal basis implies that it is a perfor-
mance of what God has established in the past. To neglect or abandon it
results in the forfeiture of Islamic status. The second type of prayer in
formative Islam is spontaneous (du’ā), which a believer can recite at any
time of the day. The institutional form of prayer is ideally performed five
times a day: daybreak, noon, mid-afternoon, after sunset, and early eve-
ning. In addition to the two major forms of Islamic prayer, giving thanks
for life, praise of God, penitence, and supplication, there is also remem-
brance (dhikr) of God, which plays an important role in Sufism, a Muslim
form of mysticism. Overall, Muslim prayer can be construed as a witness
to the fundamental truth of the faith: there is no God but Allah.
Besides the Muslim distinction between prayers, there are many dif-
ferent types of prayer in Christianity. Christian prayers are identified as
petition, intercessory, thanksgiving, theurgical, liturgical, and thaumatur-
gical. Among Christians, the best known prayer is the Our Father, which
is adopted from Jewish religion via the ministry of John the Baptist.
Although he might not be mentioned in a prayer, it is accepted that the
name of Jesus makes the prayer effective. In fact, Jesus is the archetypi-
cal model of the performer of prayer for Christians, which implies that
by performing prayer an individual models their behavior on that of
Jesus. Christian prayer is, moreover, scriptural in the sense that it is con-
nected to biblical texts and contexts. The success of prayers depends on
faith and God’s will. As Christian prayer loses its thaumaturgical and
theurgical settings, it becomes liturgical, or a part of the regular ritual
observances without the expectation that miracles or angels would appear.