بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَنِ الرَّحِيم

Salaam alaykum warahmatullah

During Ramadhan, we naturally go to mosque more – even us women and if you’re like me, you may sometimes miss parts of the jamaa prayer and have to complete your salat on your own. This has happened to me a couple of times and I realised that looking around, I could see people making up the missed rakaat in different ways. Hence this post, there’s a need to always remind ourselves the tenets of our religion.

First, we should not rush to meet up with salat. The Prophet says as narrated by Abu Hurairah: “The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said (what is translated as): ‘When you come to pray, do not come running (rushing); come walking with tranquility (in a dignified manner), and whatever you catch up with, pray, and whatever you miss, complete it (make it up).”‘

There are two slightly different versions of this hadith hence the brackets. The hadith has been interpreted and explained by scholars to mean two different ways of making up the missing parts of one’s salat.

One school of thought (who interpreted the hadith as meaning one should ‘make it up’) explain that in making up the remining rakaat, one should pray the exact missing rakaat. For example, if one meets the last 2 rakaat of Isha, she should pray the missing rakaat with Suratul Fatha and another surah.

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While, the other school of interpreted the hadith as meaning one should ‘complete’ the missing parts. This means one should consider the parts of the salat prayed with the Imam as the first parts of her salat. This post will focus on the details in line with this school of thought.

“Al-Bayhaqi said: Those who narrated the words “complete it” are greater in number, have better memories and are closer to Abu Hurayrah who is the narrator of this hadeeth, so they are more correct. Shaykh Abu Haamid and al-Maawirdi said: Completing a thing can only be done after doing the first part of it. Al-Bayhaqi also narrated a view similar to ours from ‘Umar ibn al-Khattaab, ‘Ali, Abu’l-Darda’, Ibn al-Musayyib, Hasan, ‘Ata’, Ibn Sireen and Abu Qilaabah (may Allah be pleased with them)”. Culled from https://islamqa.info/en/49037

Note:

• One who comes late to salat is called a masbuq
• A rakaat is considered missed once the Imam has stood up from rukuu.
• Rushing towards salat is makruh (disliked) {what if you fall and don’t make the prayer at all?}
• Takbiratul Ihram (first Takbir of salat must be done while standing with the back straight)
• We should join the jama’a after our takbir and follow the Imam through to the last tashahhud
• We do not do salaam with the Imam. We stand to complete our salat after the second salaam.
• We do not need to make up missed congregational nawaafil

Scenario 1 – 2 Rakaat salat (one tashahhud) (only Salatul Fajr)

Where we’ve missed one or both rakaat, we should get up after the second salaam, pray the missed rakaats and do tashahhud.

Scenario 2 – 3 Rakaat salat (two tashahhud) (only Salatul Magrhib)

Where we only meet the last rakaat of Maghrib, we should continue after Imam’s second salaam by praying one rakaat with Suratul Fatha and another Surah, being our second rakaat, we should do a tashahhud. Then another rakaat with only Suratul Fatha followed by tashahhud and salaam.

Where we miss only the first rakaat, we should pray one rakaat with only Suratul Fatha followed by tashahhud and salaam after the imam has done salaam. This would be our third rakaat.

Scenario 3 – 4 Rakaat salat (two tashahhud) (Dhuhr, Asr, Isha)

Where we only meet the last rakaat of Asr (for instance), we should continue after Imam’s second salaam by praying one rakaat with Suratul Fatha and another Surah, being our second rakaat, we should do a tashahhud. Then two rakaats with only Suratul Fatha followed by tashahhud and salaam.

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Where we miss the first 2 rakaats, we should continue after Imam’s second salaam by praying two rakaats with only Suratul and end with tashahhud and salaam.

Where we miss only the first rakaat, we should continue after Imam’s second salaam by praying one rakaat with only Suratul Fatha followed by tashahhud and salaam.