What do we do with those who persist in violating the Shari'ah?

Peace be upon you: Well, is there another matter?

The Shaykh: Go ahead.

The questioner : The same mosque, or the same people, have the issue of preventing the sutrah in prayer, as this brother spoke about. This is a matter we encounter, meaning, we fall into it.

The Shaykh : Excuse me, is there anything new besides what they mentioned and what I mentioned?

The questioner : No, no, there is something new.

The Shaykh : Go ahead...

The questioner : The new thing is that they do not respond to the call of Allah, Glorified and Exalted is He. We spoke with them.

The Shaykh If they do not respond to your call, then it is sufficient for you to respond to your own call.

The questioner : May Allah reward you with good.

The Shaykh : And so, I felt that there was nothing new in your speech, because I said earlier, in answer to the brother Ghazi, that you should pray behind a wall, behind a pillar, and not respond to this table that draws their attention and causes them to argue and dispute, and so on. Practically speaking, you cannot do without the sutrah, because this is an obligatory matter.

The questioner: Yes.

The Shaykh : But at the same time, O our brothers, O Muslims, this is what the Messenger said, and this is what the Messenger did. There is a story I did not mention earlier, and now that you have returned to the same topic, we return to it in another way. The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), as in Sahih Muslim, was one day leading the people in prayer in his mosque as imam. They saw him as if he were reaching out to something in front of him, though they did not see this thing. But they saw that he (peace and blessings be upon him) did an action that was not his custom in his prayer, as they saw him once when he (peace and blessings be upon him) led them in the prayer of the solar eclipse, which he performed only once in his life. He was praying, advancing and extending his hand, and they were amazed by that. After a while, he delayed, as if he were seeing something frightening, until the rows behind him (peace and blessings be upon him) wavered. After exiting the prayer, they said to him: O Messenger of Allah, we saw you do in your prayer what you did not used to do. He (peace and blessings be upon him) said: Then he remembered that this was food forbidden to the people until they enter Paradise. He said: Then he said to them (peace and blessings be upon him): Similarly, in other than this prayer, they saw him leading the people in prayer as if he were grasping something. They asked him about the reason, and he said: لقد هجم الشيطان عليّ وفي يده شعلة من نار يريد أن يقطع عليّ صلاتي فقبضت على عنقه وشددت عليه حتى وجدت برد لعابه في يدي ولو دعوة سليمان عليه السلام رب هب لي ملكا لا ينبغي لأحد من بعدي لربطته في سارية من سواري المسجد حتى يصبح ولدان المدينة يلعبون به Satan attacked me, and in his hand was a flame of fire, wanting to cut off my prayer, so I seized his neck and tightened it until I felt the coldness of his saliva in my hand. If I had the prayer of Solomon (peace be upon him), "My Lord, grant me a kingdom that belongs to no one after me," I would have tied him to one of the pillars of the mosque until the boys of the city played with him If the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), who is protected from error, wanted Satan to cut off his prayer, then what are we? We must adopt the lawful means that help us so that we do not expose our prayer to invalidation or to a reduction in its reward. The purpose of all this is that the imam is not excused if he leaves such an obligatory matter to accommodate the people, especially since this issue, as I indicated earlier, can be handled with compromise and tact, and not with deception. Compromise and tact are possible with these people who are deaf, dumb, and do not understand. But even so, it is necessary to be gradual in calling them to Allah, and to use the best manner.