Voluntary Prayers: The Believer's Provision

Occasion: A transcription of a weekly fiqh lesson delivered before its recording was uploaded on October 20, 2021Source: A transcription of a video lecture by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — Watch the original video on YouTube

Our talk in the weekly fiqh lesson is still about voluntary worship (taṭawwuʿ). We told you last week that when Allah, Blessed and Exalted, commanded us, through the tongue of His Prophet ﷺ, to perform acts of worship beyond what is obligatory upon us, we have the voluntary acts (nawāfil).

Every Obligation Has a Voluntary Counterpart

Take the five prayers as an example: they have their voluntary prayers, which are two rakʿahs before the Fajr, a number of rakʿahs before and after the Ẓuhr, two rakʿahs after the Maghrib, two rakʿahs after the ʿIshāʾ, then the Witr prayer. And beyond that we have what is additional, the unrestricted voluntary prayer, so you pray whatever Allah wills for you to pray, except in the times in which prayer is forbidden.

And voluntary worship is not in prayer alone; it is in everything. That is why our jurists say: every obligation has a voluntary counterpart. The obligation of tawḥīd is that we pronounce the testimony of faith to Allah, Blessed and Exalted, and its voluntary counterpart is remembrance (dhikr). And the voluntary counterpart of prayer is the voluntary prayers among the prescribed prayers, among them a confirmed Sunnah and a non-confirmed Sunnah. And the voluntary counterpart of the obligatory fasting in Ramadan is the scattered fasting the Prophet ﷺ prescribed throughout the whole year. And the voluntary counterpart of Ḥajj is ʿUmrah. Then he mentioned the voluntary counterpart of zakat, and what he said about it was not established in the transcript.^[1] And today we will speak about the matter of voluntary prayer.

"Be Upright, and You Will Never Be Able to Count"

We saw a ḥadīth of the Prophet ﷺ in which he says:

«استقيموا ولن تُحصوا، واعلموا أن خير أعمالكم الصلاة، ولن يحافظ على الوضوء إلا مؤمن» (Be upright, and you will never be able to count; and know that the best of your deeds is prayer, and none will preserve his ablution except a believer).^[2]

How many items are in this ḥadīth? Three items in this one unit. The first item: "Be upright, and you will never be able to count." The second item: "And know that the best of your deeds is prayer." The third item: "And none will preserve his ablution except a believer."

As for the first, the question is: what is it that we will not be able to count? You will not be able to take it all in, so what cannot be counted? The doors of obedience. Be upright in your homes, and you will not reach the degree of perfection in uprightness, for every servant has a slip.^[3] Be upright in prayer, and you will not reach perfect uprightness. Be upright in fulfilling the rights of people, in work and dealings, and you will not be able to count. Why? Because we are, at root, human beings; right comes from us and error comes from us, so we strive as much as we are able to strive and we will not be able to count.

And why did Allah, Blessed and Exalted, establish this matter, that we will not be able to count and no human being can count? Because the servant must feel Allah's favor upon him. For no blessing we have is the fruit of our deeds,^[4] nor a response to our obedience, nor something we deserve from Allah the Exalted in any way. And however much we strive in acts of worship we will not be able to perform them in the required manner, and we will not be able to give Allah, Blessed and Exalted, His due; so that humility remains with the servant before Allah the Exalted, asking Him for more success in more worship, and more blessings that worship cannot repay, for generosity is from Allah, Blessed and Exalted, alone, Mighty and Majestic. So the Prophet ﷺ says: "Be upright, and you will never be able to count."

Then he gives us an example from the kinds of uprightness which, when the servant keeps to it, he reaches a certain stage or a certain rank, and it is prayer. Why prayer? As we have mentioned often: it is the connection of the servant with his Lord, the affirmation of presence before Allah, Blessed and Exalted, and the humbling of the self by placing the forehead on the ground before the King, High above all. The Prophet ﷺ says: "the best of your deeds is prayer"; by it the pillars of religion stand, by it life is set upright, by it the members of society are united, and by it rights between people are fulfilled for those who are careful about it.

Then the Prophet ﷺ tells us: "And none will preserve his ablution except a believer." He is the person who is careful to be in a state of ablution, pure in his outward self, and it is understood from his words that purity includes his self and his heart as well.^[5] And from here comes the importance of voluntary worship. For ablution is obligatory only at the obligatory prayers, or when beginning the acts of worship that require ablution, so if the servant is careful to be in a state of ablution always, that is voluntary worship.

Why Do We Volunteer?

And we mentioned at the last meeting why voluntary worship.

The first benefit is that it is a test of Allah's expectation of you. For we agreed that there are deeds literally required of you, but we, by way of illustration, have employed you in this place and we expect good of you, that you will perform; so if you perform only what is required of you, you were not at our expectation, but if you perform what is additional, you were at our expectation. So the Lord of Glory, when He asked of us the Sunnah and the voluntary and the supererogatory, wanted to test how you will answer the expectation of Allah, Blessed and Exalted, of you.

Then comes the other benefit, which is making up for what was missed of the obligatory acts of worship, as we explained before.

And the other matter is raising the level of performing the obligations. I repeat it: raising the level of performing the obligations. Look at the long word that you write for the first time, you are learning to write it, so you write it this way or that way, and the handwriting comes out irregular. So you write it again, then a third and a fifth and a tenth, then the twentieth, and you write it with your eyes closed, as we say, or write it without being conscious of it, naturally. Mastery of deeds comes from repeating them. So whoever wants to master the obligatory prayer with true mastery must have a share of the voluntary prayer, for whoever performs the voluntary prayer performs the obligatory worship better.

And among the benefits in the matter of voluntary worship is something of utmost importance, which is filling the free time of those who have time on their hands. You sit at home, and the world around you: this is dirty and this is clean, move this and put that, and you are sitting with no work to do, so it is said to you: get up and pray two rakʿahs, man, have mercy on us.^[6] And the people of knowledge say that those with free time will have their time occupied either with obedience or with disobedience. And the Prophet ﷺ had his wife lying beside him while he prayed next to her ﷺ, and he was occupied away from her and occupied with her, meaning that he gave her from his time what satisfied her need, then gave himself and gave his Lord what filled the rest of his free time, though he ﷺ had no free time at all.

Praying the Voluntary Prayer at Home

Let us move to a heading that says: it is recommended for a person to pray in his home. Why at home? The Prophet ﷺ says:

«إذا صلّى أحدكم الصلاة في مسجده فليجعل لبيته نصيبًا من صلاته، فإن الله جاعلٌ في بيته من صلاته خيرًا» (When one of you prays the prayer in his mosque, let him make a share of his prayer for his home, for Allah will make in his home some good from his prayer).^[7]

The meaning of the words: if we have just finished the ʿIshāʾ prayer now, it is appropriate that I return to the house and pray some rakʿahs there. What do these rakʿahs benefit? Praying at home is a reminder to the wife if she has not yet prayed, and perhaps she may follow me in prayer, according to those who allowed the one praying an obligatory prayer to follow one praying a voluntary prayer.^[8] Then, it draws the attention of the children present in the house to the fact that a rite is being performed inside this home, so they are influenced by their father,^[9] or they gather around him, or they notice a prayer being performed. Then comes the matter of tranquility entering the home: for what is with Allah is not attained except by obeying Him, and the calm that settles on homes comes only through the remembrance of Allah the Exalted in these homes.

And we have seen, from the many cases presented to us, that in most of them, indeed nearly all of them, when disputes between spouses intensify, we say straight away: there is a decline in the level of performing acts of worship inside this home, or there is a misunderstanding occurring between the two sides. But at the general level: whenever worship increases, the voice of Satan lowers, and whenever tranquility descends on the people of the home, matters are set right and settle into their proper form.

The Prophet ﷺ says: «صلاة الرجل في بيته تطوّعًا نور، فمن شاء نوّر بيته» (A man's voluntary prayer in his home is light, so whoever wishes, let him light up his home).^[10] And the light that results from prayer is only the effect of the blessing of Allah, Blessed and Exalted, in these homes, and Allah's blessing descends upon hearts and calms their fright, settles minds, and soothes thoughts. This blessing descending from Allah is a provision that is never available except from the Lord of Glory, Glorified and Exalted.

And hence the Prophet's ﷺ counsel in the ḥadīth of ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿUmar:

«اجعلوا من صلاتكم في بيوتكم ولا تتخذوها قبورًا» (Make some of your prayer in your homes, and do not take them as graves).^[11]

It is as if the home in which Allah is not remembered, in which the servant does not pray, is a grave in which Satan plays and roams with no one to restrain him; nothing keeps Satan away from the home except the remembrance of Allah and the establishment of prayer in it.

And we mentioned that praying at home is a reminder to the woman who wants to pray that the time of prayer has come, for our women are often busy with the children and preparing food and other things that may make her forget. And in it also is compensation for the children in the homes for performing the prayers that Satan may have kept them busy from.

The Preference for Long Standing over Many Prostrations

And the second heading I say very briefly, and it is a very strange heading to me, where it says: the preference for long standing over many prostrations in voluntary prayer. We are speaking about prayer, so what is the meaning of the statement? Its meaning is that if you stand to pray and prolong the standing, reciting the Qur'an, that is better than many prostrations.

And we have learned that the Prophet ﷺ told us that the closest a servant is to his Lord is when he is prostrating, so how does standing come to have a reward better than the reward of prostration? The people of knowledge say: long standing means more recitation of the Qur'an, which benefits the mind and the heart together, and what happens to the servant in his prostration is only a reflection of what he read in the standing. So when you prostrate you do something like a "reflection" of what you read in your standing. You say: Allāhu akbar, and we have read the story of a prophet with his people,^[12] in which many events took place, so my prostration is affected by what I learned in the standing and read. And that is the way of the believer who interacts with what he hears and what he reads in prayer, and he is different from this one who reads in a stream not knowing where he began or where he ended or how many mistakes he made or what happened with him, then prostrates the prostration of one picking something up from the ground, and rises quickly, and does not express himself through his prayer.

And the one who said this tells us, narrating: the Group (al-Jamāʿah) except Abū Dāwūd narrated from al-Mughīrah ibn Shuʿbah that he said: «إن كان رسول الله ﷺ ليقوم ويصلّي حتى ترِمَ أو تتورّم قدماه ﷺ» (The Messenger of Allah ﷺ would stand and pray until his feet swelled or became swollen ﷺ).^[13] And when we speak about the swelling of the feet we are not speaking about someone prostrating, for the one prostrating does not have swollen feet, rather it is the one standing, who stood praying and reciting much of the Noble Qur'an, that is the one whose feet swell.

Someone may say: is this in the voluntary prayer or the obligatory one? So we say what we mentioned earlier when we spoke about the guidance of the Prophet ﷺ in recitation: in the obligatory prayer the imam must take into account the condition of those behind him. If behind him is someone sitting, or someone who cannot stand for long,^[14] or someone who is made to sit by a tightness of breath or a choking in the chest,^[15] then everything the imam performs, he is obliged to take into account the condition of the followers in it, and not to burden them in any way. It is easy for me to show off to you my memorization of the whole of Sūrat al-Baqarah, to stand and recite slowly while the people behind me are distressed and come to hate coming to the mosque because of me. But that is not fiqh; rather fiqh is taking into account the conditions of the people in the obligatory prayer. As for the voluntary prayer, it is a choice: whoever wishes to complete it with you completes it, and whoever wishes to leave leaves. And in addition to that, in the voluntary prayer the servant may sit while the imam is standing and there is no sin on him in that, whereas in the obligatory prayer there must be standing, and the imam must take into account the condition of the followers.

I ask Allah, Blessed and Exalted, to grant us and you sincerity in word and deed, to turn away from us the whispers of Satan, to make us among the people of obedience, and to record our traces on the earth. O Allah, we ask You for a good deliverance when we stand before You on the Day of Resurrection, and we ask You, our Lord, for a good provision from You in our world and our hereafter. And the last of our prayer is that praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds, and may Allah send prayers and peace upon our Prophet Muhammad.

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: The phrase breaks off in the transcript at "and the voluntary counterpart of zakat," so what the lecturer said about it was not established. ^[2]: Editor's documentation: The well-known wording in the narration is "and none will preserve his ablution except a believer," and it is narrated from the ḥadīth of Thawbān (may Allah be pleased with him) in Aḥmad and Ibn Mājah as it appears to the editor; what is recorded here is the lecturer's wording, and the transcript's wording is garbled at "and you will never be able to count." ^[3]: Editor's documentation: The transcript has garbled places in this explanation ("hafr," "ghafr," "hasw"), and "slip" (hafwah) is an estimate of a garbled word ("hafr"); what could not be made out in the other two expressions has been omitted. ^[4]: Editor's documentation: The transcript reads "not wajī by our deeds," and the likely meaning is that the blessing is not the fruit of deeds. ^[5]: Editor's documentation: The transcript's wording is garbled ("yaʿlamuhu dhālika al-ṭahūr aw al-ṭuhūr fī nafsihi wa-qalbihi"), so it has been rendered with caution. ^[6]: Editor's documentation: The wording is colloquial ("qūm shūf lak rakʿatayn yā rāgil irḥamnā"), and it is not clear from the transcript on whose tongue it is said, and it has been rendered here by way of illustration. ^[7]: Editor's documentation: The ḥadīth is in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim from the ḥadīth of Jābir (may Allah be pleased with him) with the wording "when one of you has finished the prayer in his mosque," and what is recorded here is the lecturer's wording. ^[8]: Editor's documentation: "Follow me in prayer" is a vocalization of a distorted word in the transcript ("tahtamm bī"), favored by the context. ^[9]: Editor's documentation: The transcript reads "fa-yutimm bi-abīhi," so it has been vocalized to the closest meaning; it needs to be checked against the audio. ^[10]: Editor's documentation: The lecturer did not mention its narrator, and the editor was not certain of its attribution or its grade. ^[11]: Editor's documentation: Narrated by al-Bukhārī and Muslim from the ḥadīth of Ibn ʿUmar (may Allah be pleased with them both). ^[12]: Editor's documentation: The transcript reads "the story of Nūsā with his people," and perhaps it is Mūsā, peace be upon him, so it was not established. ^[13]: Editor's documentation: The lecturer is relaying this from an unnamed book, and the phrase "the Group except Abū Dāwūd narrated" is from the words of the book's author; and the ḥadīth is in the two Ṣaḥīḥs from the ḥadīth of al-Mughīrah (may Allah be pleased with him). ^[14]: Editor's documentation: The transcript reads "lā yastaṭīʿ an yakhiff ṭawīlan," and "stand" (yaqif) has been favored because the context indicates it. ^[15]: Editor's documentation: The transcript's wording here is garbled ("karsh al-nafas," and "yakhiff ṭawīlan"), and what is recorded is an estimate of the meaning.