His statement: “7 – Nothing breaks the prayer …” is based on the report in Abū Dāwūd, transmitted from Abū al-Waddāk, who said: “A young man from Quraysh passed in front of Abū Saʿīd while he was praying; Abū Saʿīd pushed him back. He returned, so he pushed him again; he came back once more, and he pushed him a third time. When Abū Saʿīd finished, he said, ‘The prayer is not cut off by anything. However, the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “Repel (whoever passes) as best you can, for he is a devil.”’”

I say: This ḥadith is weak and cannot be cited as proof, because it is narrated by Mujālid ibn Saʿīd from Abū al-Waddāk, and Mujālid is unreliable and suffered deterioration toward the end of his life, as al-Ḥāfiẓ states in al-Taqrīb. He was also inconsistent in transmitting this report: at times he stopped at the wording, “The prayer is not cut off by anything,” without attributing it to the Prophet, as in the version quoted here, and at other times he traced it back to him (peace and blessings be upon him), as in another narration of Abū Dāwūd. For that reason Ibn Ḥazm and al-Nawawī ruled the ḥadith weak.

Further evidence for the weakness of this sentence—whether transmitted as marfūʿ (traced to the Prophet) or mawqūf (halted at the Companion)—is that the story of Abū Saʿīd and the young man appears in the two Ṣaḥīḥs through another chain from Abū Saʿīd without this sentence at all, which shows it to be anomalous in this narration.

Yes, this wording has been reported through other chains from several Companions, but every one of them is weak, contrary to what some contemporary ḥadith scholars have asserted. I have clarified this in Ḍaʿīf Sunan Abī Dāwūd, nos. 116 and 117, and in al-Ḍaʿīfa 5661.

What is authentically established from him (peace and blessings be upon him) that contradicts these weak reports is his statement:

“A man’s prayer is cut off—when no barrier equal to the rear end of a saddle is in front of him—by a donkey, a black dog, and a woman.”

Muslim and others recorded it from Abū Dharr, and it is listed in my Ṣaḥīḥ Sunan Abī Dāwūd, no. 699. Had those other narrations been sound, it would have been possible to reconcile them with this ḥadith.