Question:
Minushaytaanir Rajeem… Bismillahir Rehmanir Raheem
Assalam o Alaikum wr wb Hajjah(q), Mawlana(q) and all the staff,
What is the procedure for combined salat, like Salat-ud-dhur and Asr, as combined or Magrib and Isha? In winters, days are short so can we do combined salats?
Forgive me Ya Sayyidi for you are Merciful, I love you.
Answer:
`Alaykum as-Salam,
Prayers can be combined and shortened when travelling a distance of 80km. (50 miles) or more, joining either joining between the noon prayer (Zhuhr) and midafternoon prayer (`Asr) and praying 2 rak`ats each instead of four, or between the sunset prayer (Maghrib) and nightfall prayer (`Isha) and praying 3+2 instead of 3+4. The joining is valid whether in the time of the first prayer of each of these two pairs, or in the time of the second prayer of each of them.
In the Shafi`i school, there are no valid reasons other than travel or rain for joining prayers and there is no school to our knowledge in which prayers may be shortened in winter on the basis that days are very short. However, in the Hanbali school, joining and shortening is valid for any of the following cases:
1- a traveller on a trip in which shortening prayers is permissible;
2- a sick person for whom not to join prayers would pose a hardship;
3- a woman who is nursing an infant, or who has chronic vaginal discharge, since she is permitted to join prayers to obviate the hardship of purification for every single prayer;
4- someone with an excuse similar to the woman with chronic discharge, such as a person unable to prevent intermittent drops of urine coming from him;
5- or someone who fears for himself, his property, or his reputation, or who fears harm in earning his living if he does not join prayers; the latter giving leeway to workers for whom it is impossible to leave their work. (al-Fiqh `ala al-Madhahib al-Arba`a as translated in the Reliance of the Traveller)
Hajj Gibril
