as sunan of guidance, and they are indeed among those sunan of guidance. If you were to pray in your houses the way this absentee prays in his, you would be abandoning the Sunna of your Prophet; and were you to abandon the Sunna of your Prophet you would surely go astray. In the Prophet’s time I saw that no one stayed away from the congregational prayer except a hypocrite whose hypocrisy was openly known; a man would be brought, supported between two others, until he was set in the row.” Muslim narrates it. In another wording he said, “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ taught us the sunan of guidance, and one of the sunan of guidance is to pray in the mosque in which the adhān (call to prayer) is given.”

[Explanation]
The author—may Allah have mercy on him—cites in the chapter on the virtue of the congregational prayer this report from ʿAbd Allah ibn Masʿūd, may Allah be pleased with him. The wording of this narration seems to shine from the very lamp of Prophethood, so smooth, beautiful, and well-ordered that it could almost be taken for the words of the Messenger ﷺ himself. He says, may Allah be pleased with him, “Whoever would like to meet Allah tomorrow as a Muslim should safeguard these prayers wherever their call is heard.” Each of us longs to meet Allah, majestic and exalted, as a Muslim who believes in Him; whoever desires that must keep up these five prayers wherever their call is raised—that is, in the place from which the call is made, namely the mosque. This is because performing the prayer in congregation in the mosque is obligatory: no one who is able to pray in the mosque is permitted to stay away; rather, attendance is binding upon him if he is among the people of