Does the saying of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him): “Pray as you have seen me praying,” apply specifically to men and not to women?

The questioner : The questioner asks here, saying: The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: Does the meaning of this hadith apply specifically to men and not to women? And are there other hadiths that clarify how women pray?

The Shaykh : The answer is that this hadith is general and includes both women and men. It is an address to all believers, and any address in the Qur’an or the Sunnah using the masculine pronoun or masculine address includes the believing women along with the believing men. This is a masculine address. If he had intended only women, he would have said, “Establish prayer and give zakah,” but in the generality of the address, the other gender, namely women, is included. Therefore, his saying (peace and blessings be upon him): in terms of its generality includes women as well, just as his saying (peace and blessings be upon him and his family): So, means that women are included in it just as men are. Therefore, the Hajj of women is like that of men, except for what is excluded. There are some exclusions in Hajj, but in prayer, there is absolutely no exclusion. It is said that there are some exclusions based on independent legal reasoning, and I will mention that before drawing your attention to it. After drawing your attention to some exclusions related to women and not men, for example, our Lord (Mighty and Majestic) said: This is also a general address, but does it include women? The answer is no. Why? Because it is established in the Sunnah that women are not required to shave their heads; rather, they are required to shorten their hair. A woman shortens some of her locks, and by doing so, she exits the state of ihram. This is a ruling in which women are distinguished from men, so it is not permissible for them to shave their heads. This is an example, and it is a very important ruling that you must know, because most people neglect it when they perform Hajj. It is that the pilgrim must pray Fajr at Muzdalifah when the people move from ‘Arafah to Muzdalifah, and they combine Maghrib and ‘Isha’ there by delaying them, and they spend the night there. This spending of the night is obligatory, but more obligatory than that is that they remain there until they pray Fajr in Muzdalifah. Praying Fajr in Muzdalifah is a pillar, and spending the night after moving from ‘Arafah to Muzdalifah is obligatory, whereas praying Fajr in Muzdalifah is a pillar. Therefore, when a man came to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) and said to him: “I came from Mount Tayy and I did not leave anything that I missed until I came to you here,” asking him whether his Hajj was valid or not, he (peace and blessings be upon him) said: meaning the Fajr prayer. His Hajj was completed and his rites were fulfilled. So, two things are necessary, one of which is more obligatory than the other. The obligatory one is spending the night in Muzdalifah until dawn, and praying Fajr in Muzdalifah is a pillar. But is this ruling also general and includes women? The answer is no. It is authentic from the hadith of Ibn ‘Abbas (may Allah be pleased with him) that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) permitted women and the weak to depart from Muzdalifah after the middle of the night. So, it is permissible for women to depart from Muzdalifah after the middle of the night, meaning that spending the night is not obligatory for them, and a fortiori, praying Fajr in Muzdalifah is not obligatory for them. Once we know this exclusion in some of the rites of Hajj, we return to prayer. The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) did not exclude anything from the generality of his saying: for women. So, the prayer of women is exactly like the prayer of men. However, some scholars say that when a woman prostrates, she should not separate her arms from her sides; she should not raise her upper arms from her armpits, but rather she should keep them close to her body like this. Why did they say this? That is because of the corruption of the times and the women’s turning away from hijab, specifically the loose, wide, lawful jilbab in which, if she prays in the mosque, she is covered. If she had separated her upper arms from her armpits, some scholars found that some women were lax in their jilbab, so they said it is better for her to keep her arms close in her prostration. But we see, and indeed we believe, that the matter is as Allah the Exalted said: Our Lord (Mighty and Majestic), who revealed this complete Islam to His Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family), and who clarified to people everything that Allah (Mighty and Majestic) commanded him to convey, as we mentioned in some previous lectures, did not single out women with a ruling in prayer as He did in Hajj. If there had been a specificity for women in prayer, the Messenger of Allah would have clarified it from Allah, as He did in Hajj. So, since He did not do so, there is nothing of this specificity that some mention regarding the women of the last times. And if they wanted to address the error that some women have fallen into, in that their jilbab or clothing when they leave their homes is not lawful, this error should not be addressed with another error. This is an error that must be corrected, and the error should not be addressed with another error by saying, “Do not separate your arms as men do,” while the Messenger said: Addressing an error with an error is not of Islam at all; rather, it is an address, as I say on some occasions, according to the school of Abu Nuwas. What did Abu Nuwas, the licentious one known for drinking intoxicants and mixing with concubines, and so on, say? He used to say: “And I treated the disease with what was the disease.” So, the error is a disease, and addressing this error with another disease is not permissible in Islam. Rather, the women who are keen on praying in the mosques, knowing the saying of their Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family): If they prefer to attend the mosque for a scholarly benefit they wish to obtain, there is no harm in this, because the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) said: But if their going out leads to them falling into a violation of the Shari’ah, then the saying of ‘Aishah (may Allah be pleased with her) applies: “If the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) had known what the women had innovated after him, he would have prevented them from the mosques.” The women have innovated these transparent clothes, these tight, belted clothes, these shoes that clatter as they walk in the street, and the like. All of this is not permissible in Islam. So, we address the error with the correct, and we do not address the error with an error. Yes.