MUHAMMAD’S TEACHINGS TO MANKIND
“ [Anas Ibn-Mālik said] I heard the Messenger of God, peace and blessings of God be upon him, say, "That is the prayer of the hypocrite: he sits and waits for the sun to be between the two horns of Satan (1) to get up and peck [the ground] four times (i.e. performs quick prostrations in four units of prayer, resembling a bird pecking at the ground) hardly evoking God (2)." (3) Footnotes: (1) The time just before the sunset: the time in which the polytheists prostrate to the sun and therefore the reference "horns of Satan" represents a time when Satan has power over them. (2 Evoking God: A devotional practice that focuses on feeling God’s presence in the different facets of life. It includes several kinds like practical evoking (obeying God’s commandments), verbal evoking (supplications, praising, glorifying and exalting God), and evoking by the heart (meditation). (3) i.e. The hypocrite delays the afternoon prayer (the third prescribed prayer of the day) until the very last minutes, then performs it quickly, just before the time of the sunset. ”
