A contrary consideration is the public interest: lest a child grow up accustomed to neglecting it and imagine that it ceases to be required when the number increases, just as it ceases to be required when the number falls below the threshold. For this reason, Aḥmad said that one should attend the Friday prayer behind both the righteous and the wicked, while still taking the imam’s uprightness into account in prayer.
It is also possible that he should not interfere by ordering them to perform it, because he has no right to compel people to adopt his view or to impose his own opinion on them in religious matters where independent legal reasoning is permitted. Aḥmad said, according to the report of al-Marwazī: “Do not compel people to follow your school of thought.”
As for ordering them to perform the Eid prayer, he may command them to do so. Commanding them to perform it is one of the binding obligations, since it is a communal obligation.
As for congregational prayer in the mosques and establishing the call to prayer therein for the five daily prayers, these are among the symbols of Islam and its distinguishing marks, by which the Messenger of Allah ﷺ distinguished the Abode of Islam from the Abode of War. If the inhabitants of a neighborhood or town collectively agree to suspend congregational prayers in their mosques and abandon the call to prayer at its appointed times, the muḥtasib must order them to establish the call and congregational prayer, on the basis that this is obligatory for them and that they incur sin by abandoning it, given the view that congregational prayer is obligatory.
As for an individual who abandons congregational prayer, the position reached by analogy within the school is that the muḥtasib should take him to task, because it is an individual obligation and is therefore like abandoning the Friday prayer. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “I was about to command my Companions to gather firewood, then command that the prayer be called and established, and then go to the homes of people who do not attend the prayer and burn them over them.”
The ruling regarding an individual’s failure to attend the congregation is therefore like that regarding one who delays the prayer until its time has expired: he is reminded of it and ordered to perform it, and his response is taken into consideration. If he says that he neglected it out of apathy and indifference, he is disciplined as a deterrent and compelled to perform it. No objection is to be raised against one who delays it while time remains, because the jurists differ over the merit of delaying it.
If the inhabitants of a town have agreed to delay their prayer until the end of its time, while the muḥtasib considers it preferable to perform it early, may he order them to hasten it? It is possible that he may order them to do so, because their collective agreement to delay it could lead a young person growing up among them to believe that this is the prayer time, to the exclusion of what precedes it. As for the call to prayer and the qunūt supplication in prayer, if the muḥtasib’s view differs from theirs, he has no say in the matter, whether by commanding or forbidding, even if he holds the contrary view.