Muslims come to salah in a state of physical cleanliness. They perform the wudu (ablution), which involves the washing of hands, mouth, face and feet. If no water is available, they cleanse themselves symbolically by pressing their open hands against a wall or clean ground, dusting them off and using them to wipe their face and arms up to the elbows. Muslims wear clean clothes when praying. “Cleanliness is half the faith,” said the Prophet. Emulating him further, they may wear perfume and avoid eating garlic or onions before going to a mosque.

Muslims may pray individually or, preferably, in a congregation, which is easier in Muslim nations with many neighborhood mosques, or masajid (plural of masjid, a place of prostration).

Every congregational prayer in the mosque is preceded by the adan (the call to prayers), delivered aloud from the mosque minaret or through a loudspeaker. But in nations where the noise bylaws do not permit it (even while allowing church bells to toll) the adan is recited inside the mosque. The words are always the same, sung melodiously by those trained in Arabic incantations and voice projection:

Allah is the greatest, Allah is the greatest

Allah is the greatest, Allah is the greatest

I declare that there’s no God except Allah, I declare that there’s no God except Allah

I declare that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah, I declare that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah

Come for the salah, Come for the salah

Come for success, Come for success

Allah is the greatest, Allah is the greatest

There is no God but Allah.

For the pre-dawn adan, another line is added and announced twice: Salah is better than sleep, Salah is better than sleep.

Where there’s no mosque in the neighborhood, or there is but it cannot broadcast the adan, Muslims keep track of the prayer timings themselves. The noon, afternoon and late-night prayers are easy enough to discern, but the morning and dusk prayers must coincide with the changing times of the rising and setting of the sun. (The Toronto Star, Canada’s largest newspaper, gets complaints from Muslim readers if it inadvertently omits the sunrise and sunset times from the daily weather report.) Observant Muslim homes have prayer calendars and alarm clocks or preprogrammed computers that announce the prayer times, usually with recorded adan.