The Qur’an defines piety as concrete charity rather than mere prayer direction.

Evidence

To pour out prayers to the east or the west by no means makes men faithful and true; but to believe in God and to bear faith in the coming of the next world, and in the angels and the Books, and the prophets; and to bestow their money in kindness on their relations, on orphans, on the poor and on beggars who ask in requital, and on prisoners; to pay debts to God, to have faith and constancy in words; in an unpleasant time to put up with evil and dispute: all these things, I say, make perfect those who fear and are faithful to God. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1237