Note: I took this picture during Mawlid in Dublin, 2013

Prayer, both obligatory and spontaneous, is an immense spiritual treasure to be tapped. It inspires peace, purity and tranquility, and instills a continuous awareness of and feeling of closeness to God. It amazingly reduces the hustle and bustle of life to tame proportions…. [P]rayers tend to help worshippers maintain a therapeutic level of well-being, and practically leave no room in their consciousness for mischievous thought or deed.

– Hassan Hathout in Reading the Muslim Mind (1995)