Islam has many kinds of ritual prayers called salat. Some of these prayers are obligatory, and some of them are recommended. In addition to this, Islam also has supplications (duʿa). In some other religions, prayers and supplications are often the same thing. In Islam, although both are performed together, they are theoretically distinct.  

Prayers are the ritual movements that a person must do. They require special conditions and ablutions before one can perform them. We’ve spoken about these conditions before so we’re not going to go into them now.  

Duʿas are a bit different. Duʿas don’t have ritual actions that accompany them, they are simply supplications that one utters to God, either during salāt or outside of it. When done outside of ritual prayers, there is no obligation to do wudu or ghusl, or be in a special place. One can make them at any time.  

Duʿas don’t have to be formal either, whereas prayers have to. If you don’t do your salāt the right way, you have to correct yourself somehow, either by making up for some missed units, or repeating the entire salāt again. In duʿas, there is no such thing.  

As long as one maintains proper respect to Allah, they are fine. So you can say them in a language other than Arabic, and you can say them in a state of ritual impurity. You can simply pour your heart out to God and you can do it anywhere at anytime. 

We do, however, have standard duʿas that are present in the Qur’an as well as in the hadiths of the Prophet Muhammad (s) and his Ahl al-Bayt (as). These are important not only for their majestic beauty, but they are also important because they teach us the proper ethics of how to supplicate to God. 

To learn more, please tune into the full version of this lesson.