Second: This scenario splits up the first, legislated congregation. If people know they will miss the only congregation, they hurry and the numbers swell; but if they know another congregation will be held, they delay and the numbers shrink—and reducing the congregation is disliked. None of these problems exists in the situation the Messenger of Allah ﷺ approved, so the difference between the two cases is established. The hadith, therefore, cannot be cited to overturn what is firmly settled in his Sunnah.

To conclude: this topic really deserves a fuller exposition than fits into the present marginal note. I intend, God willing, to gather the material into a separate treatise, and I hope to be granted success in completing it.

His statement, “Raising one’s voice with prayers of blessing and peace upon the Messenger ﷺ … is a reprehensible innovation.”

I say: The implied meaning is that saying it quietly is Sunnah—but where is the proof? If it is said that the proof is his ﷺ words, “When you hear the mu’adhdhin, say as he says, then invoke blessings upon me…,” already cited in the section on remembrance at the adhan, the answer is that the address there is to the hearers who are commanded to respond to the call; it does not include the mu’adhdhin himself. Otherwise one would have to say that he responds to himself, and no scholar has ever held such a view. To maintain it would itself be an innovation.

If it is asked, “Is the mu’adhdhin forbidden to invoke blessings upon him ﷺ silently?” I reply: He is not forbidden in an absolute sense. What is disallowed is for him to make it an established practice immediately after the adhan, lest it become an addition to the adhan, introduce something that does not belong to it, and place on equal footing the one explicitly addressed by the Prophet ﷺ—the listener—and the one not addressed—the mu’adhdhin. All of this is impermissible; let it be carefully considered.