Order of make up prayer
Question:
If you pray your fajr prayer and zuhr prayer but miss your asr for whatever reason, do you pray the 4 rakah qadha of asr at maghrib time but before the maghrib prayer or after completing maghrib?
Answer:
In the Name of Allah, the Merciful and Compassionate
Assalamu alaikum,
I hope you’re doing well, insha’Allah.
In the Hanafi school, it is necessary to maintain order between our obligatory prayers (and the Witr prayer). [Shurunbulali, Maraqi al-Falah]
The basis of this is that when the Messenger of Allah (peace & blessings be upon him) and the believers were unable to pray on time during the Battle of the Trench, they made up the prayers in order. This is also understood from the indications of various Quranic verses. [ibid.]
Thus, in the case you mentioned, you need to pray the make-up (qada’) of Asr before performing the Maghrib prayer.
The details of this issue are explained in courses on the Fiqh of worship. See the Level One courses offered at SeekersGuidance — www.seekersguidance.org
Important Note: There is a Difference of Opinion on This
There is a difference of opinion regarding this ruling: maintaining order between missed prayers and current prayers isn’t a requirement in some other Sunni schools, such as the Shafi’i school.
As such, don’t worry about the validity of past prayers in which you didn’t uphold this order.
And Allah is the giver of success and facilitation.
[Shaykh] Faraz Rabbani
Shaykh Faraz Rabbani spent ten years studying with some of the leading scholars of recent times, first in Damascus and Amman, Jordan. His teachers include the foremost theologian of recent times in Damascus, the late Shaykh Adib al-Kallas (may Allah have mercy on him), and his student Shaykh Hassan al-Hindi, one of the leading Hanafi fuqaha of the present age. He returned to Canada in 2007, where he founded SeekersGuidance to meet the urgent need to spread Islamic knowledge–both online and on the ground–in a reliable, relevant, inspiring, and accessible manner. He is the author of Absolute Essentials of Islam: Faith, Prayer, and the Path of Salvation According to the Hanafi School (White Thread Press, 2004.) Since 2011, Shaykh Faraz has been named one of the 500 most influential Muslims by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center.
