should an unforeseen circumstance befall him; nevertheless, this provides no excuse for someone who appoints himself the mosque’s imam and then abandons the post to a deputy while still pocketing part of the salaries and stipends allotted to it.

Disagreement among the scholars:
The Muslims are unanimously agreed on the legitimacy of the congregational prayer and that it ranks among the noblest acts of devotion; they differed only over its legal ruling. As noted earlier, the three imams—Abū Ḥanīfah, Mālik, and al-Shāfiʿī—consider attendance at the congregation an emphatically recommended sunnah, not an obligation.

The Ẓāhirīs hold it to be a prerequisite for the validity of the prayer, a view also adopted by Ibn ʿAqīl and Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyyah.

Imām Aḥmad maintained that it is individually obligatory, even if it is not performed in a mosque.

Ibn al-Qayyim said: “Whoever reflects on the Sunnah will realize that performing it in the mosques is a personal obligation, for the Prophet ﷺ said to the blind man: ‘Do you hear the call to prayer?’ He replied, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Then respond.’ Were it not for the women inside the houses of those who neglect the congregation, he would have burned their houses with fire. If the prayer of one who stands alone behind the row is invalid, then how about the one who prays alone in his own house?!”

Ibn Masʿūd said: “Whoever would like to meet Allah as a Muslim should guard these five prayers where the call to them is made; none neglects them except a hypocrite whose hypocrisy is well known.”

Ibn ʿAbbās, speaking about a man who does not attend the congregation, said: “He is in the Fire.”

Shaykh al-Islām stated: “Its being individually obligatory is the consensus of the Companions and the imams of the early generations, and that is what the Quran and the Sunnah indicate.”