A friend at the mosque pulled me aside recently and asked for my thoughts about a couple of young converts who took shahada earlier this year, shortly before Ramadan. They are both around twenty, and since Ramadan ended they have not been around the mosque very much.
The obvious question is, “What happened?” But I am beginning to think that may not be the best place to start, because we do not actually know why they embraced Islam in the first place.
What Brought Them to Islam?
Was it because they became convinced Islam was the true religion? Did something in the Qur’an strike them as unmistakably true? Were they impressed by a Muslim friend? Did the life of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ speak to them? Did tawḥīd suddenly make sense in a way that Christianity or secular life no longer did? Were they searching for structure, community, discipline, or simply a way back to God? Those are very different conversion stories. Before asking why someone has stopped showing up, perhaps we should first ask what brought him through the door.
That matters because mosques can sometimes be very good at receiving the shahada and much less prepared for everything that follows it. A person embraces Islam, everyone says Allāhu Akbar, there are hugs, congratulations, books, prayer rugs, perhaps a Qur’an, and suddenly an entire religious civilization lands on his shoulders. He has to learn wuḍūʾ, ṣalāt, unfamiliar Arabic phrases, what is halal and haram, how to wake up for Fajr, how to structure five prayers around an ordinary day, what to do in a mosque, what to say after prayer, and how to pronounce words he may never have seen before. While all this is happening, he is also hearing about dozens of additional practices and the rewards attached to doing them.
For someone who has never had a prayer rule or spiritual discipline of any kind, that can become overwhelming very quickly.
When Ramadan Ends, the Scaffolding Disappears
Ramadan can actually disguise the problem for a while. During Ramadan there is structure everywhere. People are fasting together, the mosque is full, and there are iftars, nightly prayers, conversations, reminders, activity, and a sense that everyone is moving in the same direction. Then Ramadan ends and much of that scaffolding disappears. Now the new Muslim is sitting alone at home trying to figure out how this entire way of life fits into school, work, relationships, sleep, family expectations, and whatever habits he had before Islam.
That is also when shame can enter. He knows he has not been praying enough. He has not been to the mosque. Everyone else seems to know what they are doing, and now he begins wondering what people will think when he returns after being gone for months. He tells himself that he should probably get himself together before he goes back, which means he stays away even longer. Someone needs to break that cycle by helping him understand that he does not have to get himself together before coming back. Coming back is part of how we learn to get ourselves together.
The Obligation Is Five Prayers, but Formation Takes Time
I also wonder whether we sometimes introduce the five daily prayers in a way that unintentionally turns them into a test the convert is already failing. The five prayers are not optional, and I am not suggesting otherwise. But there is a difference between the obligation itself and the pastoral process of helping someone grow into a life that can carry it.
Islam itself unfolded gradually in the life of the first Muslim community. The earliest Muslims did not receive the entire religious life of Medina on the first day of revelation. Prayer developed, community developed, discipline developed, and revelation formed people over time. There are early reports about Muslims praying in more limited ways before the five daily prayers were prescribed. I would be cautious about turning that history into a legal argument that new Muslims should simply pray twice a day. That is not the point. The point is that formation takes time.
If a new Muslim was previously praying nothing, perhaps the first pastoral goal is not to make him feel guilty for failing at five. Maybe the goal is to help him establish two consistent moments of turning toward God and then build from there. The destination remains five prayers. The question is how we help someone actually reach it.
The Immediate Reward of Surrender
And I think one thing we often miss is explaining what prayer is doing to us now.
We talk constantly about rewards. Pray this and receive this reward. Recite this and receive that reward. Fast and receive reward. Give charity and receive reward. There is nothing wrong with that language. It belongs to Islam. But for someone coming out of certain forms of Christianity, it can sound remarkably close to the old anxiety about works righteousness. Am I doing enough? Have I accumulated enough good deeds? Is God pleased with me yet? Have I failed again? Religious practice can easily begin feeling like another performance system.
But Islam offers an immediate reward that we may not talk about nearly enough: it begins freeing us from the tyranny of the ego.
People often say, “Islam means peace,” and someone inevitably jumps in to correct them by saying, “No, Islam means submission.” Submission or surrender is linguistically the more precise description, but spiritually the two ideas belong together. Islam is surrender to God, and one of the fruits of that surrender is peace from the constant demands of the egoic self.
I do not have to do everything I feel like doing simply because I feel like doing it. I do not have to obey every impulse, finish whatever I am doing because my mind has decided it cannot possibly be interrupted, chase every desire, satisfy every appetite, win every argument, or arrange the entire world around my preferences. Five times every day, ṣalāt eventually teaches the body that something is greater than what I happen to want right now. That is a kind of freedom, and perhaps a new Muslim can begin tasting that freedom before he has mastered all the mechanics.
A Five-Minute Practice of Remembrance
I would almost like to give a struggling convert an experiment. Set an alarm sometime in the morning and another sometime in the middle or latter part of the afternoon. When the alarm goes off, stop what you are doing for a few minutes. Put down the phone, turn away from the computer, and set the intention simply to remember God. Notice your breathing without trying to manipulate it, remembering that you did not manufacture this breath. It arrived as a gift, and the next one will too.
After sitting with that awareness for a minute or so, recite al-Fātiḥah. If you know it in Arabic, recite it in Arabic. If you are still learning it, read it in English and actually pay attention to what you are saying: praise, dependence, worship, and the request for guidance. Then recite the tashahhud if you know it, followed by ṣalawāt upon the Prophet ﷺ and a short duʿāʾ. Ask God for what you actually need that day, whether that is guidance, patience, mercy, courage, gratitude, or help carrying something that has become heavy.
The entire practice could be done sitting at a desk in less than five minutes. It is not a replacement for ṣalāt, nor is it an alternate version of the obligatory prayer. It is a bridge meant to help someone experience what interruption, remembrance, and surrender actually feel like.
That interruption is itself part of the lesson. The alarm sounds while I am absorbed in something, and everything in me says, “Not now. Finish this first.” Choosing instead to stop and remember God is a small act of rebellion against the assumption that my thoughts, desires, schedule, and sense of urgency deserve absolute obedience. “God is greater” begins to mean something more than a phrase memorized for prayer. It becomes something I have actually practiced with my body.
Over time, one of those periods of remembrance might become two rakʿahs. The morning period might gradually become Fajr, while the afternoon period becomes ʿAṣr. Another prayer can then find its place, and eventually all five become part of the architecture of the day. The destination has never changed. What has changed is that someone was given a road instead of simply being shown a destination and reminded repeatedly that he had not arrived yet.
What Looks Simple to a Cradle Muslim May Not Be Simple at All
This is also where cradle Muslims may not always realize how different the experience is for a convert. Someone raised Muslim may have watched his parents make wuḍūʾ before he could speak. Prayer movements were familiar before they were understood, Arabic formulas were heard thousands of times, and prayer times became part of the ordinary rhythm of life. For a new Muslim, none of that exists yet.
A single Maghrib prayer may involve a surprising amount of mental effort. The convert may be trying to remember where to stand, what to say, whether his wuḍūʾ was valid, how to pronounce the Arabic, which rakʿah he is on, what to do with his hands, whether he forgot something, and whether everyone around him can tell that he has no idea what he is doing. What looks effortless from the outside may require intense concentration from someone who is still building all of this from scratch.
That is why I would not begin a conversation with these young men by asking why they are not praying five times a day. I would want to know what first drew them to Islam, what felt true when they encountered it, what they loved about Ramadan, and what became difficult afterward. I would want to know whether prayer itself feels difficult because of the schedule, the Arabic, Fajr, remembering the sequence, or simply the growing feeling that they keep failing. I would especially want to know whether being gone for several months has made returning to the mosque feel awkward.
Those questions communicate something that a lecture about obligations cannot: we are interested in the person, not merely his compliance.
Walk the First Few Miles With Them
Helping new Muslims remain Muslim may therefore require more than giving them correct information. It may require helping them discover what Islam is actually doing inside a human being. Islam is not merely a set of obligations imposed upon life. It is a training in remembrance, surrender, and freedom from the assumption that every demand made by the ego deserves obedience.
The five daily prayers eventually become one of the great schools of that freedom. But when someone is standing at the very beginning, our job may not simply be to remind him how far he has left to go. Our job may be to walk the first few miles with him.
