Some worshippers cited the story of the change of the qiblah as evidence that the prayer of one who prays in front of the imam is valid; is this correct?

Eid Abbasi : The Shaykh said: Some worshippers cited the hadith in which the people of the mosque of the two qiblahs were praying, and then someone came to inform them that the qiblah had changed, as evidence that the prayer of those who pray in front of the imam is valid. He said: The imam stood in his place, then he turned around, and the worshippers ended up behind him; is this correct?

The Shaykh : The Shaykh said: We do not know of any basis for this.

Eid Abbasi : ... .

The Shaykh : The Shaykh said: We do not know of any source for this with such explicitness; rather, it is assumed that the imam, just as he turns, also moves forward.

The questioner : The Shaykh said: ... from Imam Malik, this is the case.

The Shaykh : Yes?

The questioner : The Shaykh said: Imam Malik relied on the fact that ... he turned around, and the imam turned around with them.

The Shaykh : The Shaykh said: The question is hadith-based, not a purely jurisprudential one. From the hadith perspective, we do not know this hadith with this level of detail. What is known in al-Bukhari and Muslim is that they turned around as they were. It is possible that the imam remained in the back, and it is possible that he was in front. But when we find that Islam permits the imam and the followers to perform this action, does it not permit the imam to move forward with the congregation to fully apply the Sunnah? As for the school of Imam Malik, this is a jurisprudential issue, and we agree with him on this issue. We do not say that the prayer of the one who moves in front of the imam is invalid; rather, we distinguish: if he moves forward and there is space for him to move back, he is sinful. If he moves forward out of necessity, as happens specifically in the Prophet’s Mosque, his prayer is valid and there is nothing wrong with it, provided it is out of necessity. Otherwise, in a situation other than necessity, he is sinful.

Eid Abbasi : ... .

The Shaykh : The Shaykh said: That is not our concern, my brother; may Allah guide you. The research is either hadith-based or jurisprudential. In the hadith research, there is no text stating that the imam remained in his place; it is possible that he did, and it is possible that he moved forward, and this is what jurisprudence requires. These people who were addressed while they were praying with their backs to the Ka'bah and facing the House of Solomon, because that was the Shari'ah at the time, when the truthful messenger came to them saying that the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) had turned toward the Ka'bah, these people, when they responded to the messenger while in prayer, I wonder, if someone today—and I might consider this a joke—if someone today from the knowledgeable received news like this news, do you know what he would do?
The Shaykh said: I have seen a very strange phenomenon in some of our homes while we were traveling to Medina. We stopped in a village and entered a small, dark mosque at the time of Maghrib prayer. A Turkish man, stout and of medium height with a tall build, stood slightly behind the row. The mosque was small and needed the rows to be brought closer together, so a man from your country came and tried to push him forward a bit, but he did not move. It was as if the only option left was to push him so hard he would fall to the ground, but by Allah, he did not move at all, not at all. I was praying, but my mind was working on why this man was not moving? Because in the Hanafi school, if a man outside of prayer says to someone who is praying: "Face the qiblah, you are deviating from it, face it immediately," his prayer is invalidated. And if someone grabs him like this by his shoulders and turns him, he must remain still. Why? Because he is responding to him, like speech, for example. So these Ansar in the mosque of Quba (may Allah be pleased with them)—from this you can know the jurisprudence of the Salaf and the jurisprudence of the Khalaf—if they had been on this school, they would not have listened to the messenger's words for a long time, for a long time, until it would not appear to the observer that, by Allah, these people had heard his words. I wonder, did they hear his words after a moment, or five, or ten, what is the difference? They heard his words. This is later jurisprudence!
The Shaykh said: The point is that these people, with their jurisprudence, responded to the messenger ... the imam is more deserving of responding and moving forward with the people; because there is no imam in the known Islamic prayer who leads people while he is behind them; so he must apply the methodology he received from the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) just as they received this new methodology that the Ka'bah is now from here, not from there.