Question:
May Allah always bless you in health and happiness.
I have friends asking me whether they can do jamak prayer although they’re not traveling because of their meetings or stuck in traffic to avoid missing prayer.
Well I told them, there’s always break time in between long meeting usually and as far as on traffic, I usually pray in car.
1) What’s the ruling on this case Sayyidi? Can we join our prayers to avoid missing them for a reason of meeting or stuck in traffic?
2) What’s the ruling in praying on the road? Do we need to face qiblah?
Syukran
Answer:
Alaykum Salam,
Amin, may Allah bless you and your family also. This is a good and important question.
Based on certain conditions,
1. If one finds oneself at one time helplessly stuck in traffic and they fear the time is getting short, they can pray sitting in the direction of traffic and when they get home they can repeat that prayer properly. This is what Mawlana Shaykh Nazim (may Allah bless him and grant him long life) said that he did one time. If without wudu then make tayammum.
2. When one has reasonable fears that they will inevitably miss the Asr prayer, they may join it together with the Zuhr prayer at the time that they pray Zuhr, meaning beforehand.
However, the above scenarios are when people have no control of circumstances such as in a bus or train or plane, or when it is too dangerous to stop and pray.
Furthermore, it is a one-time occurrence, not a regular event repeating itself. But when people move daily in a city which they know is full of long delays due to traffic jams, then they have to plan accordingly and they must not make light of the prayer. Accordingly, when people do have control, such as:
– being in a private group where they are driving or they can ask the
driver to stop,
– and they are located in a Muslim city filled with musallas and
mosques,
– and they are moving through chronic traffic jams across prayer times
on a regular basis,
then there is simply no excuse for missing the prayer.
If one had to stop to pick up a gift of USD100 one would make sure to stop and pick it up, traffic or no traffic. One might dislike to momentarily stop because they might have certain engagements or meeting appointments, but again this is not an excuse to skip Salat or to pray similar to a musafir. Furthermore, even the musafir needs to pray standing and prostrating for a fard salat. This is even more the case for the non-musafir.
So let the worshipper remember that the debt one owes to Allah is more deserving of repayment, and that the first thing we will be audited for in the grave is Salat.
Hajj Gibril Haddad
