The Key to Heaven

Overview

The Key to Heaven (also titled Our Final Destination) is a practical handbook on salah — the Muslim prayer — written for children and young people growing up outside Bangladesh who cannot easily read Islamic material in Bangla. It gathers in one place everything a young believer needs to pray correctly: the meaning of the covenant with Allah, the conditions that make prayer valid, the full method of prayer step by step, and the supplications recited in every posture, each given with its English meaning.

What’s inside

• Our deal with Allah — the covenant taken in the world of souls, the kalima, iman, and Islam as a complete code of life.
• Why prayer can go to waste — six causes: incorrect iman, unlawful income, praying to be seen, lack of knowledge, and lack of purification.
• The reward of prayer, and the warning for neglecting it — the hadith of five honours for the one who prays and fourteen punishments for the one who abandons it.
• Focus on the kalima — its four stages: correct pronunciation, understanding, realisation, and implementation.
• The body, soul and life of prayer — how the limbs, the eyes, and above all the mind are engaged in each movement.
• The full method of prayer — takbir, thana, Surah al-Fatiha (with the hadith of Allah’s reply to each verse), ruku, sajdah, the tashahhud (with the account of the Mi’raj), durud, and dua-e-masura — every recitation with its meaning.
• Postures in detail — standing, ruku, sajdah, sitting between the sajdahs, and straightening the rows in congregation.
• Key terms — halal, haram, fard, wajib, sunnah, nafl, and bid’ah.
• Purification — the fard acts of wudu, ghusl and tayammum, and the seven things that break wudu.
• The fards and wajibs of prayer — the seven fards before prayer and seven within it, the fourteen wajibs, and how to perform sujud al-sahw.
• Types of prayer — witr, janazah, the two Eids, tasbih, awwabin, qasr, hajat, istisqa, istikhara, tahajjud, qada, tarawih, nafl, salat al-khawf, and Jumu’ah.
• What prayer teaches — organisation, equality, following the leader, and discipline.

About the author

H M Mushfique is Chief Executive of Hilful Fujool Academy, Buffalo, New York, and taught in an Islamic school for many years. He wrote this book from that classroom experience, after seeing how few accessible resources existed for children who could not read Bangla.

Publication details

• Reviewed by: Professor Jobaidur Rahman Khan, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Department, University at Buffalo, New York
• First published: February 2014, Shafi-uddin Book Company, Bangla Bazar, Dhaka
• Language: English
• Cover price: US $2