Benefits of Salah & Inhumanity of Modern Wage Slavery
The other day, I had an aggressive work timeline, something with a few hours’ turnaround. The way I work, especially if I’m doing design work or coding, it’s easy to just get "into the zone." I’ll sit down and blaze through a week’s worth of work pretty easily. In the past, it was nothing for me to be at my desk for 10-12 hours straight, no breaks. Obviously this isn’t healthy.
Taking my religious commitment more seriously has really gone a long ways in helping me reframe and reprioritize my life. Although I was under the gun, Dhuhr time was running out so I stopped to pray. I was able to stretch my legs, get my circulation going, detach from the rat race, and focus on what’s more important for a few minutes. I was able to thank Allah and ask Him to bless my efforts and increase me in halal rizq. Alhamdulillah, the work still got done in time (to glowing reviews). Now that I think about it, I even had another project land on my desk at that time. Alhamdulillah.
This incident caused me to reflect on my past and the general nature of work culture in the United States. The rat race is real. Even for practicing Muslims, it’s very easy to put religion on the back burner. Praying can be difficult under ideal circumstances, let alone with a packed calendar of meetings (many of which should have been emails), conference calls, lunch engagements, deadlines, forced team building excursions, etc. Add in the fact that many of us are praying covertly in stairwells and empty conference rooms, with split concentrations because someone might come in, and the situation becomes more dire. On top of this, many of us feel guilty for taking the time out in the first place. Bad employee! Meanwhile, smokers leave their desks every 30 minutes to light up, might spend 10 minutes at a time, and come back smelling offensively of tobacco.
Many Muslims also feel shy to request (let alone demand) religious exceptions, exemptions, or concessions. Refusing to go on happy hours at bars and upscale restaurants (all of whom serve alcohol, which all your coworkers will indulge in) is seen as not being a team player. Wanting to clock in, do your work, and clock out is seen as being antisocial. So not only are you working 8-10 hours a day, you’re also expected to put in more time on social gatherings (mixed gender, of course).
If you’re at an advanced level (VP, C-suite) the situation is even worse, because the after work obligations are almost daily, you frequently have to have dinners with your opposite gender coworkers, superiors or business partners—and these can often run very late into the night. It also quickly becomes clear that most of these people are barely functioning alcoholics.
When is a good Muslim supposed to take the time out to remember their Lord? What time do they have left to gain beneficial knowledge? For young people, especially in the startup and Silicon Valley culture, when are they supposed to get married and think about starting a family? Those if you who haven’t been steeped in this kind of work culture may think I’m exaggerating but it honestly and truly does invade your whole life.
Coming from the privileged perspective down to the less fortunate one: minimum wage employment is designed to squeeze out as much work as possible from every individual. Even lunch breaks are maybe 20 minutes—good luck if you need to order your food. People are worked like dogs for the elite few who couldn’t care less if you dropped dead on the clock.
By contrast, Islam honors the human being and says the CEO and the factory worker have the right to stand shoulder to shoulder in the same row. That this one is the brother of that. It lets us hold our head high because we understand that provision is from Allah alone, we don’t need to crawl to any human master for our livelihood. How many wonderful stories do we hear of brothers and sisters who stepped away from work which was displeasing to Allah and were rewarded with opportunities they never imagined they’d have?
Abu Qatadah reported: The Prophet (ﷺ) said, “Verily, you will never leave anything for the sake of Allah Almighty but that Allah will replace it with something better.”
—Musnad Ahmad 22565