The Second Ḥadīth
Muslim relates from ʿĀʾishah—may Allah be pleased with her—that she said: “I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ say, ‘No prayer is to be performed when food is present, nor while a person is holding back the two impurities.’”
General meaning
In the previous ḥadīth the Lawgiver’s emphatic wish for the heart to be fully present before its Lord in the prayer was mentioned, and such presence is only possible when every distraction that undermines calm and humility is removed.
Therefore the Lawgiver forbids the prayer when food that the worshipper longs for is laid out and his heart is attached to it.
Likewise, he forbids the prayer while suppressing the urge for the two impurities—urine and stool—because the prayer of someone pressed to urinate or defecate (1) is incomplete; his mind is occupied with warding off that discomfort.
Scholarly disagreement
The literalist school (al-Ẓāhiriyyah) and Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah adhered to the outward wording of the ḥadīth. They did not regard the prayer as valid in the presence of food or while resisting either of the two impurities, and therefore considered it invalid. Ibn Taymiyyah, however, restricted this invalidity to the case where there is an actual need for the food, whereas the Ẓāhiriyyah went further and ruled the prayer invalid in every circumstance.
The majority of scholars maintain that the prayer is valid, though disliked, in such a situation. They hold that the negation of “prayer” in this ḥadīth is a negation of its perfection, not of its validity.
Points derived from the ḥadīth
- It is disliked to pray when food that one needs is present, or while suppressing the urge to urinate or defecate, unless the time is so tight that delaying the prayer would cause it to be missed; in that case, the prayer takes absolute precedence.
- Presence of heart and humble submission are required in the prayer.
- The worshipper should remove every distraction that may occupy him during his prayer.
- Needing to eat, drink, urinate, or defecate is a valid excuse for missing the Friday and congregational prayers, provided that one does not habitually time such needs to coincide with the prayer times when one could have avoided it.
(1) A ḥāqin is one pressed to urinate; a ḥāqib is one pressed to defecate.