A man joins the congregational prayer and the rows are complete; does he stand alone?

The questioner : A man joins the congregational prayer and the rows are complete; does he stand alone or not?

The Shaykh : Yes, this question is well known. This man who entered and found the rows complete must do his best to join the row in front of him. This is especially the case in these days when most people do not strive to maintain tightness in the rows. It is possible to join easily and gently. Naturally, he may find two people with a gap between them; he can be gentle with them and move them slightly apart. There are gaps, or half-gaps, which will merge with one another. By this method, he may find more than one person in the row in front of him. So I say: if such a loose row with space between the people is found, it is obligatory for him to join the row in front of him. If that is not feasible, and we imagine that we are praying in a mosque where everyone is from the people of the Sunnah, who are keen to perform the prayer in its entirety according to the correct Sunnah, and this man enters and finds the row in front of him tightly packed so that it is absolutely impossible to break it between two people as we described earlier, then he prays alone. He does not pull a person from the row to join him, because this pulling, first, is not established from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). Rather, it is a hadith narrated by Abu Ya'la with a weak chain. Therefore, it is not permissible to act upon this hadith because it is not established, first. Second, because pulling a person from the row introduces a defect in the row. We want to fix things, and instead we ruin them. This defect that arises from pulling a person, if the people in the row are from the people of the Sunnah as we mentioned, then they must fill this gap. A gap will result in the row, either on the right side or the left side. So this man has not improved the situation with this action, because first, he did not bring a sound hadith, and second, because he was the cause of creating a gap in the row. We are commanded to fill gaps, not to create them.
Therefore, I see absolutely no difference between this man who comes to the mosque and finds the row in front of him completely tight, so he has no choice but to pray alone. , and the hadith: . And yet, there are some cases where a person prays and his prayer is valid without his reciting al-Fatihah; for example, a man enters the mosque and finds the imam bowing, so he joins the bowing and is unable to recite al-Fatihah. Is it said that his prayer is valid or not valid because of the hadith: ?
The answer is: his prayer is valid. Because this hadith is general, but it is specified by other evidence indicating that if a person enters the mosque and finds the imam bowing, he bows with him, because he has caught the rak'ah, even though he missed al-Fatihah. Similarly, for example: . A man who cannot pray standing prays sitting, and his prayer is valid. A man who can pray standing but prays sitting, his prayer is invalid—in the obligatory prayer, of course. There is no difference between these rulings and a man who enters the mosque and finds no space to join the row, so he prays alone. The hadith: does not apply to him, because Allah does not burden a soul beyond its capacity.