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Neurotic Misgivings

Answered as per Shafi'i Fiqh by Qibla.com

Answered by Sidi Moustafa Elqabbany

A few days ago I asked a question about my neurotic misgivings during recitation in prayer and what to do. Now I’m on a level where I fear that I may stop to pray, so I decided to make wudu, ghusl and prayer according hanafi, and to recite in prayer only with lip movement, without making a sound. Is this correct? Or am I even allowed to pray like that (i.e. move only my lips in recitation) according to the shafi’i opinion?

Answer:
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful

The Legal Fiqh of the Issue

There is no blame in following any one of the four schools of thought. If you can pray validly in the Hanafi school and it relieves you of your misgivings, then so be it. However, it is rarely necessary to switch schools and it can cause confusion, even for advanced students of knowledge. Furthermore, your misgivings are from Satan. He wants you to give up on praying and he won’t leave you alone permanently just because you switched schools. You goal should be to eliminate the disease, not to cover up the symptoms.

There are five obligatory forms of dhikr in prayer:

1. The opening Allahu Akbar;

2. The Fatiha in every rak’ah;

3. The tashahhud at the end of prayer;

4. Praying for the Prophet (Allah bless him and grant him peace) after the final tashahhud; and

5. The prayer’s closing salam.

The minimal audibility requirement for these forms of dhikr is that a person with normal hearing should be able to hear himself in a silent room. Find a quiet room and recite the Fatiha so that you can just hear it. Use that as the measure of how loud your voice should be. When you pray in a room that has peripheral noise, you don’t need to raise your voice any louder than you did when your were alone in the quiet room. In particular, you don’t need to be able to hear yourself above the noise.

Also, just like you don’t have any problems speaking in normal conversations, you should have no problems reciting the Fatiha. Take it easy and recite the Fatiha normally, without exaggeration or neglect.

The Inner Fiqh of the Issue

The Prophet (Allah bless him and grant him peace) said that Allah (Mighty and Majestic) says, “I am as My servant thinks of me, and I am with him when he mentions Me.” It is thus imperative for the believer to have a good opinion of Allah. Why did you set out to learn the fiqh of prayer anyway? It is because Allah gave you concern about safeguarding your salvation. Allah revealed this religion and its rulings out of Mercy for us, not so we can all go to Hell on a technicality. Cheer up, relax, and realize that Allah will accept your actions out of His Infinite Generosity. Without doubt, your acts of worship, and those of everyone else, are not worthy of being accepted by Allah, Most High. However, Allah accepts our actions out of the goodness that is from Him to us, not because of what is from us to Him.

You are currently setting your foot onto the ladder to Paradise. Satan will do everything to convince you that you can’t ascend because it is too difficult. People with limited knowledge are easy prey for this tactic. Satan will open seventy doors of good for you so he can open a single door of evil. He will encourage strong spiritual aspiration to fanatically avoid every disliked act and compulsively perform every recommended act because he knows in the end that you will burn out and give up. The solution is to sit with people with sound knowledge and practice and ask them what they do in certain scenarios. You will often find that matters are easier than you imagined. Only heretics believe that Allah has a plan to send pious people to Hell. Satan wants to instill such heresy in you. Dismiss it with your good opinion of Allah.

Feel free to follow up with further questions.

Moustafa Mounir Elqabbany
Metro Vancouver, Canada

This answer was indexed from Qibla.com, which used to have a repository of Islamic Q&A answered by various scholars. The website is no longer in existence. It has now been transformed into a learning portal with paid Islamic course offering under the brand of Kiflayn.

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