The Prayer That Is Never Dropped

One important lesson from this story is the importance of ṣalāh. The thing that concerned ʿAbdullāh ibn Unays as he was walking towards Khālid ibn Sufyān was Ṣalāt al-ʿAṣr. And the thing that concerned the Companions when the Messenger of Allah was talking to them about the signs of the end of time — when he was talking about al-Dajjāl, and that one day of al-Dajjāl will be like a year — what did the Companions say? How is that explained physically? Can you give us the astronomy, the explanation of how that is possible? What did they say? They said: will the prayers of one day be enough for us on that day? The five daily prayers — the prayers of one day. They were thinking about ṣalāh (Muslim 2937). And ʿAbdullāh ibn Unays, in this life-and-death situation, this confusing situation — a person in that situation would be perplexed, and as was just said, his body shivered when he saw this man — but ṣalāh, ṣalāh, ṣalāh: he prayed walking towards him.

There is no excuse for leaving ṣalāh. If you do not have money, you are excused from paying zakāh. If you are ill, you are excused from fasting, and you can pay a fidyah instead. If you do not have the financial ability, or the road to ḥajj is not safe, you do not have to make ḥajj. But there is no situation in which a Muslim is excused from ṣalāh. Even on the battlefield we have to pray, and we are given the fiqh of it in ṣalāt al-khawf.

In fact, the Companions considered ṣalāh to be so important that ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb used to say that if a Muslim leaves one ṣalāh intentionally, he has disbelieved. We know that after that the ʿulamāʾ discussed the issue of the kufr of the one who leaves ṣalāh, whether the one who leaves ṣalāh is a kāfir or not, and one can go back to the books of fiqh to see what they said about that. It is the opinion of Imām Aḥmad that if a person leaves it out of laziness, he is a kāfir, while the other ʿulamāʾ said that a Muslim is a kāfir only if he leaves it intentionally.^** Anyway, this is not the place to discuss this issue. But it is very important: it is the most important act of ʿibādah.

So we should never dismiss our ṣalāh. And to those Muslims who, because of their employment, leave, for example, ṣalāt al-jamāʿah, or leave some of the prayers, we say: fear Allah (swt). ʿAbdullāh ibn Unays was in a situation more important than your employment, more dangerous than your situation, and he did not leave ṣalāh; so we should never leave ṣalāh.