Answered by Shaykh Musa Furber
I’d like to know what the hanbali position is on missedprayers. I know that the hanafis, shafi’is and malikis say one has to makeup all missed prayers. I HEARD that the hanbalis say one doesn’t have toas long as tawba was done. Is that true? In either case, can you pleaseoffer daleel as to the how or why the madhab came to it’s position?
Do hanbalis take rulings from Ibn Taymiyyah? What about Ibn Qayyim? WasIbn Qayyim as controversial as his teacher, Ibn Taymiyyah? Why do “salafies”use Ibn Qayyim as an example for not following a madhab when he was hanbali?
wa `alaykum al-salam
In sha Allah I will give a few quick notes here, and within a few days will write something longer concerning the issue of making up missed prayers. It is an issue that keeps coming up, so it is only fair that someone does a proper job at it.
The official position of great scholars such as Al-Khirqi, Ibn Al-Jawzi, Ibn Qudamah, `Ali Al-Mardawi, Al-Hijjawi, Al-Buhuti, Mar`i bin Yusuf, Al-Ba`li, and others (Allah have mercy upon them all) is that missed prayers must be made up, and that they must be made up in order unless it has been forgotten or the present prayer’s time becomes constricted.
Ibn Taymiyyah and a few early scholars (Allah have mercy upon them all) were of the opinion that missed prayers do not need to be made up, since the person has become an apostate by intentionally missing the prayer and just as a kafir is not required to make up prayers when he enters Islam, neither is an apostate. I have yet to see something convincing that shows that this was ever used as the official position in the madhhab at any time, rather it seems to be a personal opinion that some scholars held.
We can see that the vast majority of Hanbali scholars, both pre-Ibn Taymiyyah and post-Ibn Taymiyyah, rejected this position. How, then, can someone follow it and claim to be following the Hanbali madhhab? The people after Ibn Taymiyyah who rejected it (Allah have mercy upon him and them) were not against Ibn Taymiyyah, rather they had a great deal of respect for him. But they were first and foremost Hanbalis, and so when they weighed his opinion against the principles of the school they rejected it.
In sha Allah I will look into this issue in depth.
And Allah knows best.
The Hanbalis in the next few generations after Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawzziah (Allah have mercy upon them all) took the opinions of these two scholars and they reconciled them (for want of a better term) with the madhhab, weighing which opinion was strongest with respect to the foundations and principles of the school. Sometimes the position they took was taken, and sometimes it was not. Ibn Qayyim (Allah have mercy upon him) is just as controversial as his teacher, if not more so since he was the one who recorded and systematized Ibn Taymiyyah’s ideas. And whether or not people want to admit it, these two controversial figures did have an influence on Islam that will always be with us; some of the influences were good, and some of them bad.
And Allah knows best.
As for why the Salafis like Ibn Qayyim (Allah have mercy upon him), it is probably because he is a scholar that the people they do not like (the vast majority of the scholars of Ahl Al-Sunnah) have virtually left these two scholars alone and have said many negative things about them–some justified, some perhaps not. But you should be aware that what the Salafis relate from these two people is not always complete. Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn Qayyim (Allah have mercy upon them both) were two of the great supporters of taswwuf, something that very few Salafis seem comfortable with.
Also, Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn Qayyim (Allah have mercy upon them both) saw themselves as reformers, which is something the Salafis like to position themselves as.
And Allah knows best.
wa al-salamu `alaykum
–musa