and Imam al-Nawawi said regarding this narrator that there is unanimous agreement on his eminence, reliability, uprightness, and meticulousness.

Moreover, our later scholars—such as Shaykh ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Bāz (d. 1420 AH), may Allah have mercy on him—have explicitly ruled that the one who abandons the prayer is a disbeliever whose unbelief expels him from the religion, rendering him an apostate from Islam. Regrettably, many people today treat this matter lightly. We ask Allah, exalted is He, to guide us to that which leads to goodness and rectitude.

On the authority of Abū Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him): the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “The first deed for which a servant will be taken to account on the Day of Resurrection is his prayer. If it is sound, he will indeed have prospered and succeeded; but if it is unsound, he will have failed and lost. If something is lacking in his obligatory prayers, the Lord—glorified and exalted is He—will say, ‘Look and see whether My servant has any supererogatory prayers’; what is missing from the obligatory prayers will then be completed by them. The rest of his deeds will be judged in the same manner.” Related by al-Tirmidhī, who said, “This is a حسن (sound) ḥadīth.”

Explanation
This is the last ḥadīth in the chapter on the virtue of the prayer, the threat pronounced against those who abandon it, and the emphatic prohibition of doing so. It shows that, with respect to Allah’s rights, the very first of a servant’s deeds to be examined on the Day of Resurrection is the prayer: if it is in good order, he will prosper and triumph; if not—Allah’s refuge is sought—he will fail and lose. As for the rights of human beings, the first matter to be adjudicated among people will concern bloodshed, for taking life is the gravest of their mutual rights; only after that will the rest of the reckoning proceed.