- The report transmitted by Aḥmad, al-Nasāʾī, and Ibn Khuzaymah states that they did not raise their voices with the basmalah; rather, they recited it quietly.
Al-Ḥāfiẓ remarked: “This is the meaning of the negation found in Muslim’s wording, and it is a sound explanation.”
Sharḥ al-Iqnaʿ adds: “He then recites the basmalah silently, for it is not part of al-Fātiḥah”; the Qāḍī had previously related consensus on this point.
- ‘In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful’ contains the Majestic Name (Allah) along with the attributes of mercy, goodness, and blessing. These exalted words are recommended at the outset of every significant act—eating, drinking, marital relations, bathing, ablution, entering a mosque, a house, or a bathhouse—because they either bring blessing and benefit or repel harm and evil. According to our Ḥanbalī jurists, the basmalah falls into two categories: obligatory and recommended.
(a) It is obligatory in ablution, ritual bathing, dry ablution (tayammum), ritual slaughter, and hunting.
(b) It is recommended when beginning the recitation of the Quran, eating, drinking, marital relations, and upon entering the lavatory.
Scholarly disagreement:
The scholars unanimously agree that the basmalah constitutes part of a verse in Sūrah al-Naml. They differ, however, over its prescribed recitation in the prayer.
The three imams (Abū Ḥanīfah, al-Shāfiʿī, and Aḥmad) deemed it prescribed, whereas Mālik did not consider its recitation in the obligatory prayers—whether silently or aloud—to be legislated.
They then disagreed as to whether it is obligatory within the prayer itself. Abū Ḥanīfah and Aḥmad maintained that reciting it is a sunnah, not an obligation, because it is not, in their view, a verse of al-Fātiḥah. Al-Shāfiʿī, on the other hand, held it to be obligatory.
Ibn Rushd concluded: “The root of this disagreement lies in the conflicting narrations on the subject.”