It is remarkably common to hear statements like “she wears the Hijab, she can pray for us” or “he prays five times a day, his duaa will surely be accepted.” On the surface, there is nothing wrong with asking another person to pray on one’s behalf. The concern, however, lies in the premise that observing the Hijab or the five daily prayers somehow elevates one’s standing before Allah in a way that makes their supplications more worthy of acceptance. These are obligations. No one is doing anything extraordinary by fulfilling them; they are, at best, the bare minimum of what has been asked of us.

More troubling still is the flip side of this thinking: the belief that one is too sinful to ask of Allah at all. This reflects a profound misunderstanding of the Lord we claim to know and love. The Creator does not place conditions on His door before allowing His servants to knock. On the contrary, He has told us there is no limit to His capacity to give, and that His mercy inclines Him to give beyond what is even asked. He is shy to turn His slave away empty-handed, despite the endless ways in which we fall short before Him.

If this same Lord has mandated daily prayers, annual fasting, zakah, and a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage to His blessed House, what then prevents us from striving toward even this foundational level of devotion? Love compels us to go above and beyond, to give more than what is required, to bend over backwards willingly. Why then, do so many of us not even attempt to incorporate the daily supplications that Allah, in His generosity, has already taught us through the Seerah?

We live in a world where much feels uncertain and beyond our control. Instability has become the norm, and safety can no longer be taken for granted. It is precisely for this reality that Allah has provided us with specific adhkaar, among them, the supplications prescribed after Fajr and after Asr as a means of protection. And yet one still hears the argument: “Allah knows what is in our hearts, so why do we need to formally invoke Him? Why these specific duaas? He can protect us regardless.”

This is true but it is not the point. Consider the analogy of a hypertensive patient who refuses to take their medication consistently. The consequence is not a reflection of the doctor’s inability to treat them; it is the law of the physical world at work. We accept this without question because we have witnessed it. The spiritual realm operates by a similar principle: the cure does not arrive without the medicine, and in matters of the soul, that medicine is duaa and dhikr.

As Muslims, we affirm the existence of an unseen world, one that Allah created and governs, one whose laws and mechanics are beyond the reach of our perception. We do not know how many angels surround a person who recites their morning adhkaar. We do not know how many calamities are diverted at the last moment by an act of sadaqah given quietly that same day. So much of our own visible world remains a mystery to us; to expect full comprehension of a realm beyond our physical capacity is, frankly, unrealistic.

But this is precisely where belief becomes liberating. Accepting that we cannot understand everything frees us to trust. It is what allows us to give in charity, to make duaa, to recite our adhkaar—not because we have mapped out the metaphysics behind it, but because we trust the One who prescribed it. And that trust, in itself, is an act of worship.