Title: A Further Exchange on the Spirit of Congregational Prayers Question/Comments: Dear Moiz, Thank you for your answers. I still want to know about my 3 rd Qs (Regarding congregational prayers). I do agree with you whatever you have said in your reply to Q3, but the thing which disturbs me is that today most of the people who go to mosque to offer prayers they only offer the prayer and come back home. There seem to be very little inter-relation developing among the " Namazis " [1] . Most of them don't even know each other. As far as my understanding is concerned, Islam's motive behind the collective prayers was not just collective worship of Allah, but a bit more than this. The collective worship part is being fulfilled but the other part is not. So in such a case is it still must to prayer with Jama`ah . Please give a detailed reply. Thank you Answer: Praying with a congregation is not a 'must' as you have implied in your question. On the other hand, it should be considered 'extremely important' and a person who misses such congregation should consider himself deprived of an extra-ordinary reward and blessing. Nevertheless, praying with a congregation can, in no case, be termed as a 'must', in the legal sense of the word. As far as the reason for prayer, whether congregational or individual is concerned, the Qur'an has given it to be ' Zikr Allah ' (that is 'remembrance of God, which is an integral part of God's worship). In case of individual prayers, it would be at individual's level, while in the case of congregational prayers, it would be a collective ' Zikr Allah '. In my opinion, therefore, the motive of Islam for prescribing congregational prayers is fulfilled, merely by our joining the congregation. This collective worship of God has certain by-products - i.e. something, which although is not the real motive of prescribing collective prayers, but is achieved as a corollary of adhering to it. These by-products may include good inter-personal relationships between the Muslims living in the community; a sense of equality - that is being the creation of one God and the sons of one man; empathy toward interpersonal differences and sympathy toward each others' problems. If congregational prayers are not producing these by-products, it does not mean that we should think the main objective of congregational prayers is not being met and then subsequently result in our discontinuance of attending the congregational prayers. On the contrary, it should mean that we should try to analyze the situation and figure out what is lacking in our collective prayers, which hinders producing the by-products, which should have naturally followed our attending the congregations. In my opinion, the right attitude would not be to discontinue something, which we know to be prescribed by God and His Prophet (pbuh), merely on the grounds that, in our opinion, it is not achieving the desired results; the right attitude would be to try and correct the situation and inject the elements lacking in our practices so that the desired results should naturally follow our efforts. Keeping the above explanation in perspective, it should be quite clear that even if you do not agree with my point of view regarding the real motive or reason for the prescription of congregational prayers and even if you still hold that the real motive is not that of 'collective worship', but to promote sound inter-personal relations, it would still follow that if, in your opinion, the real purpose/motive/reason is not being met, we should try to determine the shortcomings in our congregational prayers and then try to remove these shortcomings, rather than discontinue the practice prescribed by God and His messenger (pbuh). 6 th June 2000 [1] That is those who go to offer the congregational prayers.