– Among the heedless: the heedless person is one who is oblivious to whatever benefits and profits him; accordingly, he is counted among the company of the heedless, against whom heedlessness and wretchedness are testified.
Lessons derived from the ḥadith
1 – There is a severe prohibition against abandoning the Friday prayer and an unequivocal warning to anyone who does so, namely that Allah will set a seal upon his heart as a punishment of heedlessness and a retribution for forgetting his own soul. He then becomes heedless of what would secure his happiness until the calamity of death overtakes him, whereupon he forfeits the bliss of everlasting life— and that is the manifest loss.
2 – Allah has commanded every accountable believing man to attend the Friday prayer once its call is made. He, the Exalted, says: “O you who believe! When the call is proclaimed for the prayer on Friday, hasten to the remembrance of Allah” (62:9). “Hasten” here means to give it due concern and to prepare quickly by cleansing and readying the body. Authentic, explicit hadiths affirm that attending it is an individual obligation upon every legally responsible person, that performing the ritual bath (ghusl) for it is obligatory upon every adult male, and that the home of one who stays away may be burnt down. All this leaves no room for doubt that the Friday prayer is a personal duty, not a collective one.
3 – Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ said: One of two things must occur—either people stop neglecting the Friday prayers, or Allah will seal the hearts of those who stay away. Sealing the heart means that He withholds from them His grace and favor, or that He creates unbelief and hypocrisy in their breasts, so they become part of the heedless whose hearts are sealed with heedlessness and misery.
4 – It is stated in Sharḥ al-Iqnaʿ: Whoever is obliged to attend Jumuʿah yet prays the noon (Ẓuhr) prayer before the imam begins, or before he finishes the Friday prayer, his Ẓuhr is invalid, for he has prayed something he was not charged with and has neglected what he was charged with; therefore it is not valid.
5 – The ḥadith shows that sins—whether by committing what is forbidden or by omitting what is obligatory—cause