The word dhikr in Arabic means to remember and within muslim understanding it means to remember God. Why should this be remembered? Surely whether they accept or reject it; few people forget the idea of God.
Dhikr is the practice of remembering God and attempting to do so whenever and wherever possible with the aim of doing so in every instance, moment, occasion and event.
The best known litany or formulaic dhikr prescribed by the Prophet himself and which forms the theoretical and practical basis of muslim faith is la ilaha ila ‘llah. A direct translation of this is difficult as in one sense it means ‘No god but the God’ but has something closer to an essential meaning of ‘There is Nothing but God’.
This is frequently misunderstood by both muslim and non muslim as a message specific to Islam, the muslim people and historically delivered solely by the Prophet Muhammad. Whereas from the classical muslim view it is a statement which transcends such descriptions and is simply a statement of Reality which beyond the limitations of the world and all that is in it. La ilaha ila ‘llah can be claimed by no one but the Divine.
Human beings are instinctively aware of this Reality and yet are equally capable of disregarding it. Along with this intuition of Reality; part of the human condition is to also forget and accordingly the word for human in Arabic is insan which has a direct relation to the verb ‘to forget’ (nisyan). Humans are easily diverted by the world around them and frequently find Reality difficult to keep at the forefront of the mind. In a manner of speaking we can say they are not truly Present as they are not in touch with Reality.
The essential occupation of all Prophets and spiritual teachers has been twofold; to bring Reality, which exists above and beyond the world into the here and now. When asked about the character of the Prophet after his death, his wife Aisha described him as ‘the Quran walking’.
Thus the job of the Prophets and Spiritual teachers has been to move this Reality from the eternal to the everyday, from atemporal to the temporal, from hidden to manifest, from intuition to consciousness, from latent to actual, from language to practice.