The Prayer of an Elderly Woman Who Does Not Memorize al-Fatihah
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
Honorable Shaykh, there is an elderly woman who cannot read. When she prays, she does not perform the prayer properly; rather, she recites dreams she has heard when she hears the prayer, and she does not recite al-Fatihah because of her condition, so she prays.
Answer:
As long as she has some mental capacity, meaning you instruct her to pray, and she prays according to her ability, for Allah does not burden a soul beyond what it can bear, she prays according to her ability. But if her mental capacity is completely gone, and she has no mental capacity, then there is no prayer required of her.
Honorable Shaykh, there is an elderly woman who cannot read. When she prays, she does not perform the prayer properly; rather, she recites dreams she has heard when she hears the prayer, and she does not recite al-Fatihah because of her condition, so she prays.
Answer:
As long as she has some mental capacity, meaning you instruct her to pray, and she prays according to her ability, for Allah does not burden a soul beyond what it can bear, she prays according to her ability. But if her mental capacity is completely gone, and she has no mental capacity, then there is no prayer required of her.
Source
قناة «العلامة الدكتور صالح الفوزان»، 13/1 شرح العقيدة الطحاوية/ صالح الفوزان — youtube.com (1:09:10)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.