The Meaning of the Hadith: "What You Catch of the Prayer"
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
And may Allah bless you. Honorable Shaykh, a woman asks: In the hadith of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) regarding a person’s prayer, where it says he gets half, a third, a quarter, a fifth, and so on, why did the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) start with half?
Answer:
No, the one praying gets only what his heart is present for in his prayer. So if he prays but his heart is not present for the entire prayer, he gets no reward for it. And if his heart is present for part of the prayer, he gets reward according to the amount for which his heart was present. As for the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) limiting it to half, I do not know of anything regarding that. But he does not have anything like the hadith; he has only what he understood of his prayer. Yes.
The presenter:
May Allah reward you,
And may Allah bless you. Honorable Shaykh, a woman asks: In the hadith of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) regarding a person’s prayer, where it says he gets half, a third, a quarter, a fifth, and so on, why did the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) start with half?
Answer:
No, the one praying gets only what his heart is present for in his prayer. So if he prays but his heart is not present for the entire prayer, he gets no reward for it. And if his heart is present for part of the prayer, he gets reward according to the amount for which his heart was present. As for the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) limiting it to half, I do not know of anything regarding that. But he does not have anything like the hadith; he has only what he understood of his prayer. Yes.
The presenter:
May Allah reward you,
Source
نور على الدرب - الفوزان - 03/044 — archive.org (6:19)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.