Concerning congregational prayer
His words: “Performing the prayer in congregation is a confirmed sunnah.”

I say: The author has treated this ruling far too lightly. Among the jurists, a “confirmed sunnah” is an act whose doer is rewarded but whose neglecter is not punished. How can that description possibly fit those who stay away from the congregational prayer when the Prophet ﷺ was on the verge of burning their houses over them, as occurs in Hadith 4 of this book? Ibn al-Qayyim remarked, “He would never have threatened to burn the house of someone guilty of a minor offence; therefore, abandoning the congregational prayer is one of the major sins.”

How can it be anything but obligatory when, despite the man’s blindness—and the fact that he had no guide to lead him to the mosque, as related in Hadith 3, and that his way was strewn with trees and stones according to some sound narrations—the Prophet ﷺ nonetheless told him, “Respond!”? Has any ruling ever been bolstered by so many unmistakable indicators of obligation, yet people still claim it is not mandatory?

Likewise, the Prophet’s ﷺ statement in Hadith 6, “…rather, Satan has gained complete mastery over them…,” is proof of the obligation. A person who merely leaves a sunnah—or even all the sunnahs—while still observing the obligatory acts would never be described as “one over whom Satan has gained mastery,” as the hadith of the Bedouin, “He will enter Paradise if he speaks the truth,” clearly shows.

I strongly suspect that when the author wrote on this issue he was influenced by what he had read in Nayl al-Awtār by al-Shawkānī. May Allah pardon him and me. In that work he responded to the prophetic reports indicating obligation with arguments that, in his estimation, reduce them to mere recommendation. Yet anyone who examines those arguments closely will see their weakness and artificiality—especially since al-Shawkānī did not even attempt to answer all the proofs for obligation, among them Hadith 6 and the report that begins, “Whoever…”