Thus, the conditions for the validity of the Friday Prayer are those upon which its validity depends; that is, if even one of these conditions is lacking, the Friday Prayer is invalid.
His statement: “The ruler’s authorization is not among them.” When scholars say “imam,” they mean the person holding the highest authority in the land, whether he is called an imam, caliph, governor, president, shaykh, or something else.
That is, if people perform the prayer without the imam’s authorization, their prayer is valid.
If someone were to ask: Why did the author explicitly state that this condition is not required, when his silence concerning it would itself imply that it is not required?
The answer is that there is scholarly disagreement on the matter. The established position of the school is that the imam’s authorization is not a condition.
Some scholars, however, held that the Friday Prayer may not be established except with the imam’s authorization, since it is a congregational prayer for all the people of a town and therefore may not be established without his permission. If his permission is sought, the imam is obliged to grant it, and it is not lawful for him to prevent it. Thus, if it were assumed that he refused and prevented them from establishing the Friday Prayer despite its being obligatory, then seeking his permission would no longer be required.
However, a qualified position may be advanced: establishing the Friday Prayer in a town does not require the imam’s authorization; once its conditions are fulfilled, it must be established whether he grants permission or not. As for holding multiple Friday Prayers, this does require the imam’s authorization, lest people treat the multiplication of Friday congregations frivolously. This view has merit. The practice followed among us is that the Friday Prayer is not established until the Fatwa Office has been consulted. There is no doubt that this is a balanced position that regulates the people’s affairs. For if we were to say that anyone from any neighborhood may establish the Friday Prayer without consulting the imam or his representative, people would fall into disorder: every ten people in a neighborhood, even a small one, would establish a Friday Prayer.