Prayer carpet is a special kind of smaller carpet that is used only for offering prayers but sometimes people will have some weird questions in their mind related to the use of prayer mat and they may get mislead by the answers of the people who do not know anything about that and they just guess about or tell you what they think about that. To know about the more relevant answers that are authentic you have to look here below:
What should it be called?
In different countries people are calling the prayer mat by different names and you are good to call it by any of them unless you are not using any disrespectful names for that. You can even simply call it a prayer mat or prayer rug. There is no specific name for that in Islam so you can use any of the names that you know or can recall easily.
How to differentiate it?
In most of the prayers mat you will see an arch shaped design at one end of the prayer mat which is a rectangular piece of cloth or you can see the Mehrab on it. This design will not only tell you that it is a prayer mat but it also tells you where you have to stand or take your feet and where you can bow down on your head.
It is necessary to have prayer mat for offering prayer?
Many people have this question in their mind because they see everyone around them praying specifically on the prayer mat so they think it is mandatory but in Islam it is not mandatory. If the floor is free of any kind of impurity then you can even pray on the bare floor and if you have any doubts about the floor then any kind of cloth which is clean and have no impurities on that, you can use that as your prayer mat at any place.
Can it be used as décor piece?
Some people have a very smaller kind of prayer mat which is actually for the décor purpose as they are too small to stand on that and pray so you can surely use that as a décor piece but make sure that you are not disrespecting that in any form or damage that while using as decoration.
