Matn al-Ḥadīth
Can the Shia pray behind the Mukhālifīn (non-Shia) or not? This is a practical question that our earliest predecessors must have asked themselves seeing as they were a minority group who sometimes had to dissimulate and partake in public ritual with the majority.
One interesting report that gives us a precious window into how the early Shia community dealt with this ‘problem’ is the following one[1].
Abū ʿAbdillāh al-Shādhānī asks al-Faḍl b. Shādhān (d. 260):
انا ربما صلينا مع هؤلاء صلاة المغرب، فلا نحب أن ندخل البيت عند خروجنا من المسجد، فيتوهموا علينا أن دخولنا المنزل ليس الا لإعادة الصلاة التي صلينا معهم، فنتدافع بصلاة المغرب الى صلاة العتمة
We sometimes pray with these (i.e. non-Shia) the Ṣalāt al-Maghrib, so we do not like to return home immediately after leaving the Masjid for they will suspect our returning home is not for any other reason than to repeat the prayer that we had just prayed together with them. So we push back (the actual performance of) Ṣalāt al-Maghrib up to (the time of) Ṣalāt al-ʿAtama (i.e. Isha) (i.e. when we can return home without arousing suspicion).
Al-Faḍl b. Shādhān responds:
لا تفعلوا هذا من ضيق صدوركم، ما عليكم لو صليتم معهم فتكبروا في مرة واحدة ثلاثا أو خمس تكبيرات، وتقرءوا في كل ركعة الحمد وسورة أية سورة شئتم بعد أن تتموها عند ما يتم امامهم. وتقولوا في الركوع سبحان ربي العظيم وبحمده بقدر ما يتأتي لكم معهم، وفي السجود كمثل ذلك، وتسلموا معهم، وقد تمت صلاتكم لأنفسكم، وليكن الامام عندكم والحائط بمنزل واحدة، فاذا فرغ من الفريضة فقوموا معهم فصلوا السنة بعدها أربع ركعات
Do not do this whilst bearing a grievance in your hearts (i.e. for missing the Ṣalāt al-Maghrib in its best time).
What (impediment) will be upon you if you pray with them: So you make the Takbīr – three or five Takbīrs in one go, and recite in every unit al-Ḥamd and a Sūra, whichever Sūra you wish, making sure to complete it when their Imam completes (his recitation), then you say in the Rukūʿ ‘Subḥāna Rabbiya-l-ʿAẓīm wa bi-Ḥamdi’ for as long as you have to stay with them, and you do in the Sujūd like that, and you make the Salām with them, and your Ṣalāt will have been completed for yourselves, and the Imam should be like the wall for you (i.e. ignore him completely). So when the obligatory prayer is completed stand with them and pray the Sunna after it which is four units.
A surprised Abū ʿAbdillāh al-Shādhānī asks:
يا أبا محمد أفليس يجوز اذا فعلت ما ذكرت؟
Will it be permissible for me to do what you mention O Abā Muḥammad (i.e. Faḍl)?
Al-Faḍl says:
Yes
Abū ʿAbdillāh al-Shādhānī asks:
فهل سمعت أحدا من أصحابنا يفعل هذه الفعله؟
Have you heard of anyone from among our Aṣḥāb who does this?
Al-Faḍl says:
نعم كنت بالعراق وكان يضيق صدري عن الصلاة معهم كضيق صدوركم، فشكوت ذلك الى فقيه هناك يقال له، نوح بن شعيب، فأمرني بمثل الذي أمرتكم به فقلت هل يقول هذا غيرك؟ قال: نعم
Indeed.
I was in Iraq and my heart used to grieve at having to pray with them the way your hearts grieve, so I complained about this to a Faqīh there called Nūḥ b. Shuʿayb, so he instructed me to do the way I have instructed you to do.
I said to him, ‘Is there anyone else who says this apart from you?’
He said, ‘Yes’
But it becomes clear that Faḍl was not content with only one man telling him this for he continues:
فاجتمعت معه في مجلس فيه نحو من عشرين رجلا من مشايخ أصحابنا، فسألته يعني نوح بن شعيب أن يجري بحضرتهم ذكرا مما سألته من هذا
Then I had a chance to be in a Majlis (gathering) with him in which there were about twenty men from among the Mashāyikh of our Aṣḥāb.
So I requested him – that is Nūḥ b. Shuʿayb – to broach what I had asked him about in their presence.
Nūḥ b. Shuʿayb who is angry at having his initial response second-guessed raises his voice so that everyone can hear him:
فقال نوح بن شعيب: يا معشر من حضر ألا تعجبون من هذا الخراساني الغمر يظن في نفسه أنه أكبر من هشام بن الحكم، ويسألني هل يجوز الصلاة مع المرجئة في جماعتهم؟
O assembly of those who have attended – do you not wonder at this naïve Khurāsānī who thinks himself to be greater than Hishām b. al-Ḥakam?!
He asks me whether it is permissible to pray with the Murjiʾa in their congregation?!
Faḍl continues:
فقال جميع من كان حاضرا من المشايخ كقول نوح بن شعيب، فعندها طابت نفسي وفعلته
So all those who had attended from the Mashāyikh took the same position as that of Nūḥ b. Shuʿayb – it is only then that my heart was convinced and I also practised it.
Fawāʾid al-Ḥadīth
Any report when read carefully yields a number of important insights.
As for me then this is what I have come up with for this report:
1. The impermissibility of following a non-Shia Imam in prayer was an indisputable fact as far as the early Shia were concerned. There was no discussion on this and it was taken as a given. This must have arisen from the unanimity found in the reports from the Imams which are all agreed on this issue.
2. The ideal scenario was praying in our own congregation, or when that was not possible, praying at home by yourself. However, and as Abū ʿAbdillāh al-Shādhānī indicates, in some cases one had to attend their congregations since missing from them would cause one to be identified as not of the Jamāʻa and that would lead to repercussions.
3. The preponderant practise in Nishapur (where both al-Shādhānī and Faḍl hailed from), at the very least, was to pray with them in their congregation before repeating the prayer when alone.
4. One could have an excuse for not attending Fajr, which to this day is only attended by a few, or one could come to the Masjid and pray it for himself without arousing suspicion of onlookers who would conclude that you are praying a Sunna prayer which fortunately has the same number of units (i.e. 2). One could repeat the Ẓuhr, ʿAṣr and ʿIshāʾ after leaving the Masjid because everyone leaves after these prayers.
The reason Ṣalāt al-Maghrib is specified in the report is because it has the smallest Faḍīla time-frame before the next prayer begins and there is no Sunna prayer which has three units so one cannot pray it after completing the congregation while masking it to be something else.
Most people would still be in the Masjid waiting for ʿIshāʾ to begin and as Abū ʿAbdillāh al-Shādhānī notes – always leaving for home would arouse suspicion.
What was grieving the hearts of the Shia is that they would have to stay in the Masjid and pray two simulated Ṣalāt, one after the other, before having to repeat both at home when the Faḍīla time of Maghrib has elapsed.
5. Faḍl’s summary of how the Ṣalāt is to be prayed is wholly consistent with how we pray today and this speaks to how well the method of our Ṣalāt has been preserved through the ages.
6. The “solution” to this problem by the Aṣḥāb is not of their own invention, rather, the seeds of this are already planted in the reports of the Imams.
Refer to the chapter in al-Kāfī entitled ‘Praying behind the one who is not be followed’[2] and you will find a report from Zurāra quoting al-Bāqir as stating ‘They (i.e. the non-Shia Imams) have no status with me except that of of a wall’.
Another report in the same chapter has Zurāra asking al-Ṣādiq how to avoid completing your second Sūra before their Imam completes his. This assumes that you had to recite for yourself when praying behind them and not give any consideration to the recitation of their Imam. al-Ṣādiq responds that you should leave a verse, continue glorifying God, wait until their Imam finishes his recitation, and then complete your verse so that you can make Rukūʿ in a coinciding manner[3]
So while there is no single report telling you what to do from start to finish when praying behind ‘them’, a Faqīh only had to take these reports in conjunction and work on them to derive the whole.
But a Faqīh does not need to give his raw-data to the questioner as Faḍl did not give it to Abū ʿAbdillāh al-Shādhānī, nor was Faḍl himself given this by the Faqīh Nūḥ b. Shuʿayb and the Mashāyikh. Of course, Faḍl who later came to become a Faqīh in his own right would have gained access to what this was based on in due time.
7. Notice how careful our predecessors were in such matters which had the utmost significance for their religion. Thus they did not take an answer lightly but attempted to confirm it.
8. The reason Abū ʿAbdillāh al-Shādhānī asks ‘who does this?’ instead of asking for a ‘report’ is that in such matters of ritual, and especially one as ubiquitous as Ṣalāt, the ʿAmal (practise of) of the Aṣḥāb can be as important, if not more important, than a solitary report. This is because the ʿAmal would not have come about without there being some basis behind it.
Similarly, Faḍl discovering that ‘about twenty’ Mashāyikh have the same position put his heart at ease because it is akin to seeing multiple Marājiʿ say the same thing.
9. It is clear that when Faḍl had this encounter with the Mashāyikh he was a young man who had just arrived in Iraq to seek knowledge. The word that Nūḥ uses for him غمر means ‘inexperienced’, ‘green’ and even ‘ignorant’.
It also tells us something about Hishām b. al-Ḥakam’s status that Nūḥ chose him to drive the stark contrast home. Clearly Hishām was ‘the man’ as far as our Baghdadi Aṣḥāb were concerned.
But there is a major irony here as fate would have it. Faḍl really did come close to becoming the next Hishām and was considered the rightful head of Hishām’s school in his time. Furthermore, while he might have been a very important person in his lifetime, the Faqīh Nūḥ b. Shuʿayb is totally irrelevant to later scholarship, indeed we only remember his name because of this encounter with the great Faḍl b. Shādhān.
10. It is a misnomer to refer to the Mukhālifīn as the Ahl al-Sunna. Indeed one of the names our Aṣḥāb used to call them by was the Murjiʾa since they ‘sat on the fence’ when it came to the significant religious question of who was right in the early wars by considering all the companions to be rightful.
Footnotes
Shiitic Studies 