My understanding of prayer in Islam is that you pray to change yourself - your outlook, reaction, resilience to difficulties etc. There is nothing stopping you praying for intervention as well as that could help strengthen your perception of connection to something spiritual / supernatural or deepen your faith, but my understanding is that Islam is about submission to god's will as opposed to a god submitting to your prayers and intervening because you prayed really, really hard.
Though praying really, really hard is one way of passing time - it's something to do when you feel helpless when youagree have done all you can do and you could view it as having tried everything, including the supernatural. And praying maybe helps you work through your emotions, get things off your chest by having a conversation in your head, or it could help you let go of some of the stress of trying to think you can control outcomes by placing your trust and hope in something other than yourself that is supernatural/ all-knowing etc
I agree completely. As a life-long atheist, I have often prayed when there was nothing else I could do. When my daughter was on life-support and the doctors told me to bring my family up because she wasn't going to last the night, I prayed my heart out.
I have been called a hypocrite and ungrateful to God, because although she survived and is now a wife and mother 20 years later, I didn't become one of the Faithful. It's because I realise it was nothing to do with the praying, it was the work of the medical staff at the hospital. The praying was my way of coping with the trauma.
When a plane is crashing, diving towards the sea, I'll guarantee everyone on board, whether atheist or believer, knowing there is no way of doing anything about it, is praying just as hard as I did that night.
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