Points derived from the ḥadith:
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The ḥadith is a powerful proof for those who maintain that offering the prayer in congregation is an individual obligation and that it must be performed in the mosque.
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The Prophet’s words, “Whoever hears the call,” indicate that a person who does not hear the adhān because he lives beyond its audible range is not required to attend; but anyone who is within earshot is obliged to be present.
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Hearing the call from a far-off place—one that would be difficult to reach—by means of loudspeakers does not carry the ruling of obligatory attendance. What matters, in this and the previous point, is the meaning intended, and the Lawgiver’s purpose in the command is well understood.
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Concerning the phrase “his prayer is invalid”: in Arabic, a negation originally denies the very existence of the thing; if that is impossible, it denies its legal reality (that is, its validity); and if that, too, is impossible, it denies its perfection. In this ḥadith, denying the existence of the prayer is impossible because its outward form remains. Denying its validity would be conceivable were it not for other aḥādīth that contradict such a reading and affirm the validity of a solitary prayer even without an excuse, among them the forthcoming report of Yazīd ibn al-Aswad. Hence, reconciling this ḥadith with those aḥādīth requires that the negation be understood as a negation of completeness: the prayer of one who prays alone without an excuse is deficient and earns little reward, yet it still fulfils the obligation while the absentee bears sin for abandoning the congregation without a valid reason.
Al-Ṭayyibī said, “The scholars agree that no one is permitted to leave the congregation unless he has an excuse,” citing the ḥadith of Ibn ʿAbbās and the ḥadith of the blind man.
ʿAṭāʾ said, “No one has a concession to abandon the congregation when he hears the call, neither in…"