The Right Of The Prayer
The right of your ritual prayer (salat) is that you know that it is an arrival before God and that through it you are standing before Him. When you know that, then you will stand in the station of him who is lowly, vile, beseeching, trembling, hopeful, fearful, and abased, and you will magnify Him who is before you through stillness and dignity. You will approach the prayer with your heart and you will perform it according to its bounds and its rights.
The Right Of The Hajj
The right of the hajj is that you know it is an arrival before your Lord and a flight to Him from your sins; through it your repentance is accepted and you perform an obligation made incumbent upon you by God.
The Right Of The Fast
The right of fasting is that you know it is a veil which God has set up over your tongue, your hearing, your sight, your stomach, and your private part to protect you from the Fire. If you abandon the fast, you will have torn God’s protective covering away from yourself.
The Right Of Charity
The right of charity (sadaqa) is that you know it is a storing away with your Lord and a deposit for which you will have no need for witnesses. If you deposit it in secret, you will be more confident of it than if you deposit it in public.[1] You should know that it repels afflictions and illnesses from you in this world and it will repel the Fire from you in the next world.
The Right Of The Offering
The right of the offering (hady)[2] is that through it you desire God and you not desire His creation; through it you desire only the exposure of your soul to God’s mercy and the deliverance of your spirit on the day you encounter Him.
[1] It is related in most of the sources concerning Zayn al-‘Abidin that people considered him stingy during his lifetime. But at his death, provisions which used to be delivered at the doorsteps of many of the poor of Medina by a man with a covered face suddenly stopped appearing, and people realized that he had been giving alms in secret. Cf. Madelung, ‘`Ali ebn al-Hosayn`, p. 850.
[2] i.e. the animal sacrificed during the hajj.