🕌 From Du’a to Division

How Supplications Became Weapons in Islamic Liturgy

Subtitle: 

What begins as prayer ends as a curse — a ritualized hostility sanctified five times a day.

🧎 Introduction: When Worship Wounds

Prayer is supposed to elevate the soul, unify the people, and connect humanity to the divine.

But in the Islamic context, especially in formal communal worship, prayer often turns partisan — a blunt theological weapon wielded not for introspection but for aggression.

Behind the façade of peaceful supplication lies a disturbing truth:

Islam’s liturgical prayers — especially the oft-recited du’a al-qunūt — are less about seeking mercy and more about invoking curses.

These aren't fringe additions. They're routine in mosques worldwide — publicly recited, emotionally charged, and targeted.

📖 Qunūt: The Sacred Supplication That Became Sectarian

Du’a al-Qunūt is a special supplication included in certain daily prayers, especially during times of hardship, Ramadan, or Friday congregations. It is recited after the ruku' (bowing) position and is meant to be an earnest, communal appeal to Allah.

Yet here’s how it typically goes:

  • “O Allah, curse the disbelievers…”

  • “Destroy the enemies of Islam…”

  • “Humiliate the Jews and Christians…”

  • “Scatter their ranks, shake the ground beneath them…”

This isn’t a parody. These lines have echoed through loudspeakers in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, and even Western mosques.

These aren’t spontaneous outbursts — they are institutionalized invocations.

🔍 What Are These Supplications Actually Saying?

These prayers aren't merely for spiritual resilience or guidance.

They are targeted theological warfare dressed in piety. Common themes include:

  • Curses on non-Muslims as a category

  • Pleas for the destruction of specific groups (Jews, Christians, apostates, Shia)

  • Calls for Allah to not forgive entire peoples

  • Warnings that mercy is for Muslims — vengeance for the rest

And this isn’t a marginal interpretation. These themes are found in canonical books of hadith, classical du’a collections, and are recited to entire congregations.

📡 Modern Echoes: Broadcast Hatred in the Name of Worship

Saudi state-sponsored imams have famously recited such invocations during Ramadan Taraweeh prayers, with lines like:

“O Allah, count them one by one and do not spare a single one of them.”

This has been broadcast live on state television.

These prayers have targeted:

  • Jews and Zionists

  • Shia Muslims (often referred to with code words)

  • Western powers

  • “Innovators” — a catch-all for sects deemed heretical

Is this worship — or a weekly broadcast of religiously framed incitement?

🧠 Apologist Response: “Only Against Oppressors!”

Islamic apologists often claim:

“These prayers are only against aggressors — not all non-Muslims.”

But this rings hollow when:

  • No specific qualifiers are inserted in the prayer (i.e., “those who commit injustice”)

  • The historical use has targeted whole groups, not individuals

  • The rhetoric is so vague it can be applied to entire civilizations or religious groups

  • Jews and Christians are regularly included, regardless of political context

If the intent was to oppose oppression, why isn’t there a single line in qunūt prayers asking for mercy for enemies, conversion by kindness, or wisdom in peacemaking?

Because that was never the goal.

🧬 From Muhammad to the Minbar: The Origin of Cursing in Worship

The Prophet Muhammad himself, according to several authentic hadiths, invoked qunūt prayers to curse specific tribes (e.g., Banu Ri’l and Dhakwan) after ambushes.

This set the precedent: prayer as a battlefield.

Subsequent Islamic scholars expanded this. Classical jurists permitted cursing:

  • Apostates

  • “Innovators” (i.e., heterodox Muslims)

  • Non-Muslims who reject Islam

  • Entire populations deemed hostile

The pattern became permanent — and was woven into the architecture of Islamic worship itself.

💣 Ritualized Hostility: Normalized for the Pious

Let’s be blunt: In no other world religion is cursing outsiders a routine part of prayer.

Christianity’s “love your enemies” model may not always be practiced, but it is preached.

Judaism’s daily Amidah includes no curses on Gentiles. Buddhism and Hinduism, likewise, contain no ritualized invocations of divine wrath on non-believers.

But in Islamic praxis?

  • The daily opening Surah (Fatiha) implicitly condemns Jews and Christians

  • Qunut invocations overtly call down curses

  • Mosque after mosque incorporates these into public recitations

This isn’t fringe. It’s foundational.

⚖️ Final Verdict: Supplication or Subjugation?

Du’a is supposed to be a bridge to the divine — a sacred act of surrender, humility, and hope.

But in Islam’s orthodox tradition, it has become a codified system of religious othering, where cursing the "kuffar" isn’t a misuse — it’s the model.

Until mainstream Islam exorcises the theology of enmity from its most sacred rituals, claims of interfaith respect or "peaceful coexistence" are nothing more than public relations — not piety.

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