Overall meaning: Because the hypocrites seek only to be seen by others and remember God but little, the ‘Isha and Fajr prayers fall in hours of darkness when no one can observe them. Therefore they are habitually negligent about these two prayers, which coincide with rest and pleasant sleep; no one rouses himself to perform them in congregation except one driven by faith in God Almighty and hope for reward in the Hereafter.

Because of this, these two prayers are the hardest and heaviest upon the hypocrites. Had they known the reward awaiting those who perform them with the Muslim congregation in the mosque, they would have come even if crawling like a child.

The Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—swore that he had considered punishing those who lag behind and grow lazy about joining the congregation for these prayers: he would order that the prayer be established, appoint another man to lead it, then set out with a band of men carrying bundles of firewood to those absent and burn their houses over them, so grave was their abandonment of congregational prayer—were it not for the presence of women and innocent children in those homes, as one version of the ḥadith states.

Scholarly disagreement: The jurists have differed over the ruling of congregational prayer.
• A group of the Ḥanafīs, Mālikīs, and Shāfiʿīs hold that it is a confirmed sunnah.
• Another group among them maintain that it is a collective duty (farḍ kifāyah); if a sufficient number perform it, the obligation is lifted from the rest.
• Imām Aḥmad, his followers, and the people of ḥadith contend that it is an individual duty (farḍ ʿayn).
• The Ẓāhirīs went even further, declaring it a condition for the validity of the prayer. This last opinion was also adopted by Abū al-Wafāʾ Ibn ʿAqīl al-Ḥanbalī and Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah.

Proofs for these views: Those who consider it a sunnah cite the ḥadith, “Prayer in congregation is twenty-seven degrees superior to the prayer of one who prays alone.” Their argument is that both congregational and solitary prayer are described as possessing merit. They therefore interpret the present ḥadith with remote, strained explanations, mentioned in Fatḥ al-Bārī, Nayl al-Awtār, and other works.