should not hold him back from carrying it out. Let us take an example: straightening the rows in congregational prayer. Most ordinary worshippers object when the imam says, “Straighten your rows,” begins to look along them, and tells one person, “Step forward,” another, “Move back,” or when he delays entering the prayer until the rows are perfectly aligned. They resent this and become angry. On one occasion a man was told, “Brother, move back—you are standing ahead of the line,” and in his anger he retorted, “If you wish, I will leave the whole mosque and hand it over to you!” We seek Allah’s protection.

In such cases the imam must not fear the blame of any critic for the sake of Allah; rather, he should persevere and train the people upon the sunnah. Once they become accustomed to it, it will seem easy to them. However, if he finds that the congregation is extremely unrefined, he should first teach them, so that their hearts become settled and they grow familiar with the sunnah when it is applied; by doing so, goodness will be achieved.

Another illustration: many laypeople object to performing the prostration of forgetfulness after the taslīm. Yet the sunnah prescribes that when the lapse involves an addition, or a doubt in which one side is more probable, the prostration is to be done after the taslīm, not before it. This is the established sunnah—indeed, Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 728 AH) ruled that one must prostrate after the taslīm in such cases, and before the taslīm when the circumstances call for it beforehand; he regarded this as obligatory, not merely preferable.

Once, an imam prostrated after the taslīm because he had slipped in his prayer—either by adding something or by a doubt whose stronger side he adopted—so he prostrated after the taslīm. The moment he did so, the congregation erupted against him: “What new religion is this? This is wrong!” one of them cried out: