Prayer in Islam is the essential link between God and Man. On the Day of A'last, we all made the promise with God that we will Love Him and no one else, we will Worship Him alone and no one else, and we will surrender to Him and no one else. Prayer is the first tangible effort in this direction. According to Quran, God created Man and Jinni for His Worship. Part of this worship is ritualized, canonized and institutionalized Worship, and the rest is when you establish God's Presence in your life through Constant Remembrance of His Name, His Message, and His work.

Ritualized Worship is performed 5 times a day preferably at mosques with other people. It is also a social occasion. You get together with people of all colors, castes, and socio-economic status and you become one in His Love and Worship. You stand shoulder to shoulder, feet-to-feet facing the Holy Sanctuary in the city of Mecca. This house was build by Adam, and renewed by Abraham and his son Ishmael. We are not worshipping the Holy Sanctuary (Ka'ba). It only acts as a reference point and a unifying axis. The whole purpose, is to create a Ritual Space which is a block of space and time which belongs to God Alone. We have to make sure that nothing of this world intrudes in this time. We must give our 100% attention to the prayer and focus all our devotion and love to Him and Him Alone. At least in this Ritual Space, He Alone Exists, He Alone Matters. For this 10-15 minutes, we leave all our worries and concerns behind, and come to our Beloved. To enter the Sanctuary of this Ritual Space, we must prepare. You can neither enter it abruptly nor end it abruptly. That's why the Prayer in Islam must be preceded by ritual ablution. The act of physically washing away our impurities is done with the intention of cleaning up all our emotional and spiritual impurities. We are washing away all our lustful thoughts and feelings, hypocritical thoughts and feelings, and avaricious thoughts and feelings. We wash our hands off this world for this period of time and space. Then we stand before Him. The ideal is to stand as if we are seeing Him standing right there in our presence. We must then become completely aware of what that entails. If the Lord of all, the Highest of the High is right there, we dare not do, think, or feel anything that is unholy. If the Creator of Love and Beauty is right there in front of us, we must let that love that has been created in all of us to flow uninhibited from our heart of Hearts to the Divine Beloved. God of all alone is beautiful. Every one else's beauty is borrowed and indeed a very pale imitation of this Splendor.

The act of prayer involves standing, kneeling and bowing in a certain pattern, but what goes into it is an individual choice. Prayer is different from meditation in one respect. You never close your eyes, because you never want to go in a trance. You want to stand before your Beloved with all of you, so trance isn't desirable.

This act of ritualized prayer is followed by silent prayer that is done in one's heart while sitting on mosque's floor. After this 4-5 minutes of silent prayer, you can go on doing other prayers or go back to your living.

The other kind of prayer is the nonritualized prayer. This is His Constant Remembrance. Your goal is to keep God as the Center of your life where He is your Sole Preoccupation, the Only Concern. One must avoid a life where God is secondary and on the periphery of life, so we invoke Him only when we need Him, and then go on our marry way doing our own thing. This is not encouraged. We are to Love Him as he ought to be loved. Once we have established His Constant Presence, everything we do is a worhsip.

The third kind of worship is to help and serve your fellow beings in love of Him. Every act done selflessly in love of Him is an act of Worship, and also helps us achieve intimacy with Him. If you have dependents, even your work is a worship, because you are using this to feed other creation of God in His Love. His Love is the key that makes an ordinary act, an act of worship. Prop4et Muhammad (Peace be upon him) said that even making love to your wife can be an act of worship.

This is just a very brief outline. Islam is a beautiful edifice, and it is hard to do it justice by only looking from outside because you are reduced to sketching it in broad brushes. Please feel free to ask any other questions you may have.