What is the ruling on following a latecomer in prayer?

The questioner : If you please, elaborate for us regarding following a latecomer in prayer. If a man comes to the mosque and finds that the congregational prayer has ended and he has exited from it, is it permissible for him to follow a latecomer? And regarding the response to the hadith where a man came to the mosque and found the prayer had been completed, and the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: .

The Shaykh : As for responding to a hadith, may he be far from that!

The questioner : Regarding the interpretation of the hadith.

The Shaykh : I know what you mean, but we...

The questioner : There are hadiths that it is permissible.

The Shaykh : We want to improve the wording.

The questioner: Yes.

The Shaykh : In any case, the hadith you referred to is related to the second congregation, and one can derive from it your question, which is following a follower. The hadith: Its relevance is that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) prayed one day, and after he had prayed, a man entered the mosque intending to pray. So he (peace and blessings be upon him) said to his companions who were praying with him: And in another narration: , so a man stood up and prayed with him. Many people assume that this hadith indicates the permissibility of the second congregation, which is practiced in many mosques today, where two or three people enter the mosque after the regular imam has prayed, one of them steps forward and prays, then a second congregation comes, one of them steps forward and prays, and so on, with multiple congregations in the same mosque. Their argument for this is this hadith. This hadith has absolutely no relation to these congregations we mentioned earlier; why?
Because the congregation that was established in the mosque of the Messenger (peace be upon him), and in his sight, indeed in his presence, is not these congregations that occur today, which we mentioned earlier. This congregation that was established for the man who had prayed with the Messenger (peace be upon him)—this congregation is a voluntary congregation, not an obligatory one; because the one who prayed following this man who missed the congregational prayer is performing a voluntary prayer behind that man, so his prayer is a voluntary prayer, and consequently the congregation is a voluntary congregation. And what clarifies and confirms that it is not valid to use this hadith as evidence for these congregations that are practiced today is that the hadith explicitly states that there is a man giving charity and a man receiving charity. The congregations that are established now do not have these two descriptions of a giver and a receiver. And we understand from the word of the Messenger: that the giver is rich, and the receiver is poor. So who is the giver and who is the receiver? The one who had prayed with the Messenger (peace be upon him) and gained the virtue of the congregation, which is twenty-five or twenty-seven degrees, is undoubtedly the rich one, and this one who missed this congregation is the poor one. So this one who received the charity had prayed the obligatory prayer with the congregation, and this one missed this obligatory prayer; so he is the one who received the charity. So now, when three or four people enter the mosque and they all missed the congregation, and one of them steps forward, who is the one receiving the charity? I do not know, they are all poor; why? They all missed the congregation, they missed twenty-seven degrees; so applying this hadith to these congregations that occur today is in reality imposing on the hadith what it cannot bear. The clearest thing is to note the giver and the receiver; this does not exist in this congregation; because they are all obligated, whereas there was one who was obligated, who was the imam, and one who was performing a voluntary prayer, who was the receiver.
Therefore, using this hadith as evidence is, as al-Shafi'i and others said, regarding the one who has already prayed the obligatory prayer with the congregation and then attends another congregation; is it permissible for him to repeat that prayer with the other, the prescribed congregation? They said: Yes, and this is the evidence. Or, can the one who prayed the obligatory prayer lead a congregation that has not prayed the obligatory prayer? The answer is: Yes; because this occurred in the time of the Messenger (peace be upon him), where Mu'adh ibn Jabal, as in "Sahih al-Bukhari," used to pray the 'Isha prayer behind the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), then he would go to his tribe and pray the same prayer with them; that is, he would lead them in the 'Isha prayer. They knew that he was the most eloquent, the most knowledgeable, and the best reciter among them, and they knew from another aspect that he prayed behind the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), so they would wait for him until he returned to them, and he would pray the 'Isha prayer with them. The narrator of the hadith, Jabir ibn 'Abd Allah al-Ansari (may Allah be pleased with him), said: "It was a voluntary prayer for him and an obligatory prayer for them."
So Mu'adh had already prayed, and he repeated it, so this is permissible; likewise, it is permissible for the one who prayed the obligatory prayer to find another congregation and pray that same prayer with them, but it will be a voluntary prayer for him. And there are evidences for this scenario, among them:
The hadith of Imam Malik in "al-Muwatta" that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) prayed in the Farewell Pilgrimage in the mosque of al-Khayf, which is known today, in that place he prayed the Fajr prayer. When he finished, he found two men who had withdrawn to a side, and their position indicated that they had not participated in the prayer with the congregation. So he (peace and blessings be upon him) said to them: . They said: "Yes, O Messenger of Allah." He said: . They said: "O Messenger of Allah, we had already prayed in our tents." He said: . So this Companion who had prayed with the Messenger and stood up in response to the Messenger's urging prayed the same prayer with him as a voluntary prayer.
Likewise, among the evidences for this scenario or something similar to it is his (peace be upon him) statement, as in "Sahih Muslim" from the hadith of Abu Dharr al-Ghifari, he said: He (peace and blessings be upon him) said: . In another narration: . So the hadith: does not absolutely indicate the legitimacy of the second and third congregations, due to the difference in their form from the form that the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) approved.
Once this is known, it enables us to move to the original question; which is: A man entered the mosque and the imam had already finished, and one of them stood up who was a latecomer by one rak'ah or more; is it permissible for this entrant to follow this latecomer?
The answer is: No, and the reason is that the second congregation is not known in the time of the Messenger (peace be upon him), and we have known the answer regarding this hadith. And secondly, it came in "Sahih al-Bukhari" that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) went out in the morning of a day with the Fajr prayer to relieve himself, and al-Mughirah ibn Shu'bah (may Allah be pleased with him) was with him. And it was his (peace be upon him) custom that when he went out to relieve himself, he would go far to be out of sight. And the Fajr prayer time had arrived, so when they found that the Messenger (peace be upon him) was delayed beyond the usual time for the Fajr prayer, they put 'Abd al-Rahman ibn 'Awf forward. And this incident was during a journey, so he prayed with them, then he (peace be upon him) performed ablution, and al-Mughirah ibn Shu'bah poured the water for his ablution, then they set off walking to the mosque where the congregation was. When al-Mughirah ibn Shu'bah saw that they were praying, the matter became great for him, and he intended to clap to alert the imam; because the original imam had arrived and come, so the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) gestured to him to leave him alone, and he and al-Mughirah followed him. When the imam finished, the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) stood up and prayed the missed rak'ah, and so did al-Mughirah. Here, it was possible for al-Mughirah to follow the Messenger (peace be upon him), especially since he was a Prophet, but none of that occurred, and the Messenger did not alert al-Mughirah after the prayer that he should have followed him. Rather, he (peace be upon him), when he finished, turned to the people who had prayed behind 'Abd al-Rahman ibn 'Awf to reassure them; because something had come to their minds, and for the first time in their lives with the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him)... do it this way; that is: if the regular imam is delayed or late for the prayer, put one of you forward and do not delay yourselves from the prayer. And this is despite the fact that he is the master of mankind (peace and blessings be upon him) and the master of the messengers, he encouraged them that if the imam is delayed, they should put forward from among them whoever is suitable for leading the prayer.
The point is that here the occasion was ... the second congregation in any form, and none of that occurred. Therefore, the answer is that he should not follow the one who entered late, but rather pray alone, as the Salaf did, as narrated by Abu Bakr ibn Abi Shaybah in *al-Musannaf* from al-Hasan al-Basri, who said: "When the Companions of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) missed the prayer with the congregation, they prayed individually." Imam al-Shafi'i commented on this report and added clarification and explanation, saying: "And they were able to gather for a second time, but they did not do so; because they disliked to gather in a mosque twice."
The truth that we know from ourselves and then from others is that whoever has the idea in his mind that the second congregation is legitimate, this idea will have a negative effect on him, which is that he becomes negligent in hastening to the prayer with the first congregation on the excuse that there is a second and third congregation, and so on. And I too ... recently, I know this from myself when I used to believe that the second congregation and those after it were prescribed, I would often leave the prayer with the congregation; because in my psychological conviction, it was possible for me to pray a second or third congregation. And on the contrary, when it became established in my mind that there is no second congregation, I became one of the most eager people to pray with the first congregation; because I know that if I do not hasten to this good, it will be lost to me and I will not find what compensates for it.
And this is sufficient, and praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds.
And we ask permission of the master of the house here.