Advice for those who deliberately seek out mosque imams for their long recitations
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
May Allah reward you. This questioner says: There is a phenomenon among some of the righteous young men, which is that they deliberately seek out certain mosque imams to pray behind them. As a result of this gathering, some of these imams have become clearly protracted in their recitation during the obligatory prayer, and they exaggerate in using sound amplification devices. Is there any advice for these people?
Answer:
This, in fact, contains two dangers. The first danger is that this is a matter of savoring. Savoring voices. It is not out of a desire for prayer, but rather a savoring of the voices. So-and-so’s voice is better than so-and-so’s. And he did not come out of a desire for prayer, but rather came only to hear the voice. The second aspect is that this leads some imams to boast. If he sees people gathering around him, this increases his self-admiration. It increases his self-admiration in his recitation. He may strain in his recitation and strain in amplifying his voice. And this takes the worship away from being humility, submission, and subservience to Allah, and turns it into boasting and showing off, and there is no power and no strength except with Allah.
Muslims pray in the mosques and enliven the mosques. Every person prays in the mosque closest to him in order to enliven the mosque.
Also, this is a wrong done to the mosque imams whom they leave. Their neighbors leave them. The mosque imams whom their neighbors leave and go to other mosques, so this affects the imam’s psyche, causing a kind of humiliation, and perhaps he feels that they are observing something in him or that they see something in him that is detrimental to the prayer. And people leave him because of that. So when they see this one leaving and that one leaving, and leaving this imam and this mosque, people say they did not do this except because there is something wrong with the imam or there is an observation about him. Muslims should be deliberate in this matter and leave off boasting, and let the worship be pure for the face of Allah the Mighty and Majestic. Yes.
May Allah reward you. This questioner says: There is a phenomenon among some of the righteous young men, which is that they deliberately seek out certain mosque imams to pray behind them. As a result of this gathering, some of these imams have become clearly protracted in their recitation during the obligatory prayer, and they exaggerate in using sound amplification devices. Is there any advice for these people?
Answer:
This, in fact, contains two dangers. The first danger is that this is a matter of savoring. Savoring voices. It is not out of a desire for prayer, but rather a savoring of the voices. So-and-so’s voice is better than so-and-so’s. And he did not come out of a desire for prayer, but rather came only to hear the voice. The second aspect is that this leads some imams to boast. If he sees people gathering around him, this increases his self-admiration. It increases his self-admiration in his recitation. He may strain in his recitation and strain in amplifying his voice. And this takes the worship away from being humility, submission, and subservience to Allah, and turns it into boasting and showing off, and there is no power and no strength except with Allah.
Muslims pray in the mosques and enliven the mosques. Every person prays in the mosque closest to him in order to enliven the mosque.
Also, this is a wrong done to the mosque imams whom they leave. Their neighbors leave them. The mosque imams whom their neighbors leave and go to other mosques, so this affects the imam’s psyche, causing a kind of humiliation, and perhaps he feels that they are observing something in him or that they see something in him that is detrimental to the prayer. And people leave him because of that. So when they see this one leaving and that one leaving, and leaving this imam and this mosque, people say they did not do this except because there is something wrong with the imam or there is an observation about him. Muslims should be deliberate in this matter and leave off boasting, and let the worship be pure for the face of Allah the Mighty and Majestic. Yes.
Source
قناة «العلامة الدكتور صالح الفوزان»، 3 - 55 هناك بعض الشباب يتقصدون بعض الأئمة للصلاة خلفهم وأصبح أولئك الأئمة... - الشيخ صالح الفوزان — youtube.com
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.