Q483 :There is a mosque in the netpound where we
live, but some people prefer to offer their obligatory prayer in their
rooms. Is their prayer valid? On the other hand, there are three
mosques near our working site. Nevertheless, employees gather to have
their congregational prayer on site, rather than go to one of those
three mosques. Is this acceptable?
A483 : Congregational prayer is one of the duties of
the Muslim netmunity. Mosques provide such congregation and they must
be used. Moreover, congregational prayer is rewarded 27 times more than
the same prayer when offered individually. To show how important
offering the prayer with the congregation in the mosque is, I will
refer to the time when Amr ibn Umm Maktoom, a blind netpanion of the
Prophet, asked him whether he could offer prayer at home, because
sometimes he did not feel up to walking to the mosque, particularly
with roads being uneven and having some pitfalls. The Prophet asked him
whether he could hear the athan, i.e. the call. When Amr said that he
could, the Prophet told him that he could not find any justification
for him to stay at home. However, the prayer of those people at home
remains valid and discharges their duty of offering prayer, although
they miss out on the greater reward. They should however, nete to the
mosque from time to time in order to discharge the other obligation of
offering congregational prayer. Forming a congregation for the
employees at the working site is perfectly acceptable. Because if
everyone was to go to the mosque, the time taken for prayer would be
longer. A Muslim employee should always take care not to take out of
his working hours more than absolutely necessary for prayer and other
matters that are unavoidable.
Our Dialogue ( Source : Arab News – Jeddah )