Model Prayers for the Week (Selected Prayers of Imam Zainul-Abidin)
by Al-Hajja Khurshid Khanum Qassim Ali Jairazbhoy
For Monday
Praise be to God, Who called none to witness when He originated the heavens and the earth, and took no assistant when He created the lives1.
Never had He any partner2 in His Divinity, nor was He ever helped in His Oneness.
Tongues3 fail to describe His attributes to the fullest extent, and reasons4 are incapable of knowing His essence in its entirety, and the mighty humble themselves before His Majesty, and faces are bent low out of fear for Him, and all the great submit to His Glory.
Therefore, unto Thee be all praise in increasing succession and unbroken continuance.
And may His favour be on His apostle eternally, and peace, perpetually, forever.
O Allah, let the first part of this my day consist in self-reformation, the middle of it in success, and the last of it in achievements.
And in Thee I seek refuge from a day which begins in fear, and the middle of which brings distress and which ends in pain.
O Allah, verily I seek Thy forgiveness for every vow I have taken and every promise and every covenant I have made with Thee and then have failed to redeem it5.
And I pray to Thee concerning wrongs done to Thy creatures; therefore, whichever servant of Thine or maid of Thine has suffered from me any wrong, which I may have done to his person6 or honour or property or family or children; or any slander which I may have uttered against him; or anything I may have inflicted on him on account of bias or passion, or dislike or zealotry or hypocrisy, or party-spirit, he being absent or present, alive or dead; and thereafter I became powerless and resourceless to make amends to him or obtain his absolution, (in that case) I beg Thee—O Thou Who art the Lord of affairs and they are obedient to Thy will and are quick to follow the same—to bless Muhammad and his Al, and reconcile him7 to me in whichever way Thou choosest; and bestow on me mercy from Thee; verily pardon causes Thee no loss, nor does bounty injure Thee, O Thou most Merciful of the merciful ones.
O Allah, grant me on every Monday two gifts from Thee, that is, the good luck of obeying Thee at the beginning of the day, and the blessing of Thy forgiveness at the end of it.
O Thou Who art the sole object of worship and except Whom none can forgive sins!