The condition of facing the qiblah for the validity of the prayer
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
Another question, may Allah bless you. This questioner, Abdulaziz Muhammad, says: Is it valid to establish the prayer while a person is not facing the qiblah due to his ignorance?
Answer:
Facing the qiblah is a condition for the validity of the prayer, based on the saying of Allah the Exalted:[Al-Baqarah 2:144]. Therefore, facing the qiblah is a condition for the validity of the obligatory prayer. The qiblah is known through evidence and signs. If you are in a town, you look at the mosques and mihrabs and ask people about the qiblah. If you are in the desert, you act according to the signs indicating the qiblah, such as the sun, the moon, the stars, and the mountains. These are the signs on the earth by which the qiblah is indicated. If you do not know the signs, you ask someone who knows them and follow him in that. Yes.
Another question, may Allah bless you. This questioner, Abdulaziz Muhammad, says: Is it valid to establish the prayer while a person is not facing the qiblah due to his ignorance?
Answer:
Facing the qiblah is a condition for the validity of the prayer, based on the saying of Allah the Exalted:
So turn your face toward al-Masjid al-Haram. And wherever you [believers] are, turn your faces toward it [in prayer]
فَوَلِّ وَجْهَكَ شَطْرَ الْمَسْجِدِ الْحَرَامِ وَحَيْثُ مَا كُنتُمْ فَوَلُّوا وُجُوهَكُمْ شَطْرَهُ
Source
نور على الدرب - الفوزان - 03/273 — archive.org (10:00)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.