The ruling on making up missed prayers for an elderly person who repents

The questioner : Now, it has appeared in one of the magazines and one of the newspapers: Is there a ruling on making up prayers for a person who repents and is elderly, meaning he did not pray throughout his life? So, does he make up, for example, the prayers?

The Shaykh : Yes, the answer is that his repentance suffices him and benefits him, if it is a sincere repentance with its known conditions according to the jurists. It is not obligatory for him to make up the prayers; rather, we say that perhaps you have not yet heard this with such explicitness: it is not permissible for him to make up the prayers.

The questioner : ...

The Shaykh : Well, because claiming the obligation of making up prayers is legislation, and no one has a share in legislation; it comes from the Lord of the Worlds, Blessed and Exalted is He, as is derived from His saying, the Exalted: . We do not deny that great scholars said that making up prayers is obligatory. However, since these great scholars, by virtue of their knowledge and virtue, directed the entire Ummah to the obligation of returning to the Book of Allah and the Hadith of the Messenger of Allah when there is disagreement, as is explicit in the Qur'an, when we did so and heeded their advice in what they advised us of, we did not find with them any binding evidence for their position that making up prayers is obligatory. Moreover, some of the early scholars among them do not explicitly state the obligation, but rather say: "He makes up the prayers." The evidence they use to argue for this does not support their claim; rather, it turns against them upon careful examination of it—in these evidences, for example—and we do not lengthen this in order to save time. Some of them say the evidence for this is his saying, peace and blessings be upon him: , in the sense of . They say: If the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) ordered the one who forgets and the one who sleeps to make up the prayer, then it is even more fitting that he would order the one who did it intentionally. We say this is a completely reversed analogy, because the pen is lifted from the one who forgets and the one who sleeps, so how can the one from whom the pen is not lifted be analogized to them? This analogy is, in reality, as Ibn Hazm says, with his known exaggeration in denying analogy in its entirety and in detail, but sometimes when he discusses two analogies, he says: "This is an analogy, and all analogy is invalid, and even if there were truth in it, this is the very essence of falsehood." The truth is that this analogy is the very essence of falsehood. And as they also say in another issue, which is the issue of speaking in prayer regarding the one who sleeps or the one who forgets or the ignorant one, they say: The prayer is invalid by analogy to the one who did it intentionally. How is it permissible for the one who did not do it intentionally to be analogized to the one who did it intentionally? Therefore, it is not obligatory for such a person who did not pray in the past time and then repented and turned to Allah (Mighty and Majestic) to make up the prayers; rather, it is not permissible for him, because it is a legislation for which Allah has not sent down any authority.