Praying
Mon, 01/10/2007 - 19:25
again with the questions... 
I understand that if you are going to pray in the mosque, or the five daily prayers, you do wudu.
But if you praying throughout the day - I suppose spontaneously - off the cuff - is it ok if you are NOT in a state of wudu? are your prayers valid, heard?
say if I hear of someone who's going through a bad time, and I just want to say a little prayer for them there and then.... if I have not done wudu and am not in that state will God still hear my prayer?
Greetings sister
Questions are good. The good thing is, that when we ask questions here, others can read and share in the questions/answers. Perhaps in this way, unasked questions are answered for someone else. It also acts as a reminder to others who already know the answers, so keep 'em coming!
So, prayers.
Prayer, as you describe it, in Islam comes in two ways.
Firstly, we have the Salaat - the 5 times a day formalised prayers, which I'm guessing you may have heard around in the Central Mosque open day? These formal prayers are at specific times, based on the position of the sun during the day, and you do need to have wudhu to perform these prayers in the correct way, as a Muslim. As well as an act of worship, these prayers maintain the link between the person praying, and his creator, and we need to be appropriately clean for this, hence the need ofr Wudhu. I suppose if we go for a job interview, we tend to wear our best and be very clean indeed, so to stand before the creator himself, it makes sense to be clean in this way.
Anyway, apart from these formalised prayers, we have du'a.
Du'a are simple prayers which can be said in Arabic, or one's own language, as after all God almighty understands both.
I think this is probably more what you refer to?
These du'a can be as simple as "Oh Allah, please help me pass this exam" or "Please forgive me" and so on. In this way, we turn sincerely to our Lord and express ourselves, even if it is not a request, but informal worship, or praying for others etc.
There are also certain du'as that we learn, perhaps used by the Prophet in certain occasions or situations, that are very beautiful and an excellent example for us.
For this, you do not need wudhu, and Allah swt always hears the prayer, wudhu or not. It is possible however, that if you ask for something, God almighty, in his infinite wisdom and knowledge, know that ultimately it will not be good for you, and he may not grant you it accordingly. We tend to say to God almighty, along the lines of "Give me this, if it is good for me, but if it is not, keep it from me and make me happy with the good you give."
Sometimes, he gives you better than you asked for, and from my own perspective, Allah swt (glorified and exalted) gives so much to so many, often un-acknowledged.
I read a beautifully simple one-liner from someone on another website somehwere, which said "If you want to talk to Allah swt, make du'a. If you want Him to talk to you, read His Book!" which I thought sums up a lot in a few words.