Salah (Prayer): Conditions, Pillars, and Sunnahs

Salah is the second pillar of Islam and the most frequently performed act of worship. The Prophet, peace be upon him, said: "The first matter that the servant will be brought to account for on the Day of Judgment is the prayer. If it is sound, he will have succeeded. If it is incomplete, he will have failed" (Tirmidhi). Salah is obligatory five times daily: Fajr (dawn), Dhuhr (midday), Asr (afternoon), Maghrib (sunset), and Isha (night). These timings are established by Quran, Sunnah, and the consensus of the Muslim community across all centuries.

The conditions (shurut) for valid prayer must be met before beginning. These include: being Muslim, being of sound mind, reaching the age of discernment, being in a state of ritual purity (wudu or ghusl as applicable), the body and clothing being free of najasah (ritual impurity), covering the awrah (the body parts that must be covered), facing the qiblah (direction of the Kaabah in Makkah), that the prayer time has entered, and having the intention.

The pillars (arkan) of prayer are the acts whose omission — intentional or forgetful — invalidates the prayer. They include: the opening takbir (saying Allahu Akbar while raising the hands), standing upright for those able, reciting Surah al-Fatiha in every rakat, bowing (ruku') with the back parallel to the ground, rising fully from bowing, prostrating (sujud) on seven body parts (forehead and nose, both palms, both knees, and toes of both feet), sitting between the two prostrations, the final tashahhud, sitting for it, the taslim (salam), and maintaining the sequence of these acts.

The Sunnahs of prayer are the acts and sayings the Prophet performed consistently but whose omission does not invalidate the prayer, though it diminishes its reward. These include raising the hands at the opening takbir, placing the right hand over the left on the chest, reciting the opening supplication (dua al-istiftah), saying Ameen after al-Fatiha, reciting additional Quran after al-Fatiha in the first two rakats, the various dhikr in ruku' and sujud, the dua between the two prostrations, and the salawat (blessings on the Prophet) in the tashahhud.

The prayer is invalidated by speaking intentionally, laughing, eating or drinking, performing excessive movement unrelated to prayer, losing ritual purity, or turning the chest away from the qiblah without necessity.

Sayyid Sabiq addresses points of scholarly difference throughout, such as whether saying Bismillah aloud before al-Fatiha is recommended (the Shafi'i position) or should be said silently (the Hanafi and Maliki positions), and whether raising the hands is recommended only at the opening takbir (Maliki and Hanafi majority) or also at other transitions in the prayer (Shafi'i and Hanbali view, supported by the hadith of Ibn Umar in al-Bukhari). By citing the hadith evidence for each view, the author models the proper approach to scholarly disagreement in matters of worship.