Explanation of some of the rulings regarding the prayer screen, with mention of some of the hadiths indicating this.

The Shaykh : I would like to remind you of two matters, each of which has its own relevance. The first matter is that many of our brothers who are eager to follow the Sunnah of our Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) pay attention to praying facing a prayer screen, and they do not do as the general public does, who do not know where they are praying; one of them prays in the mosque however it happens, without praying facing a screen. Our discussion now is not with these people, but with those brothers who are eager to follow the Sunnah. Part of their following of the Sunnah is that they pray facing a screen. The screen does not have a specific form; whether it is a wall, a pillar, a stick, or a person sitting in front of him, and so on. Many of those who are eager today—praise be to Allah—to follow the Sunnah have come to know this Sunnah. However, many of the followers of the Sunnah among them overlook or forget—I do not know what to say—about a Sunnah related to this Sunnah, which is approaching it from one side, and not exaggerating in approaching it from the other side. Rather, it should be that the distance between the place of the worshipper’s prostration and the screen is, as stated in the authentic hadith, the width of a forearm or two. This means that the worshipper should not stand far from the screen, nor should he approach the screen so closely that he is about to butt it with his head. This wall here, he is about to touch the wall with his head; this is contrary to the Sunnah. This wall, he stands far from it at a great distance. Rather, the limit and the defined boundary in the description of the prayer of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), who said: As stated in "Sahih al-Bukhari" from the hadith of Sahl ibn Sa'd al-Sa'idi, who said: "There was between the place of prostration of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and the wall the passage of a sheep." Place of prostration means: the place of prostration. There was between the place of prostration of the Messenger (peace be upon him) and the screen he was facing the passage of a sheep; that is, the width of a forearm, a forearm and a half, or two forearms at most. Therefore, what we should note is that we should not be completely far from the screen when we stand to pray facing it. Praying facing a screen is necessary, as we mentioned earlier, and we should not approach it so closely that we are about to touch it with our heads. Rather, the matter is as our Lord (Mighty and Majestic) said in the Noble Qur'an on another occasion...
I remind some people who imagine that this screen is only prescribed to be used in the desert in the open, and not in buildings like a house or a mosque. This is an illusion, and their doubt in this is that the screen is only placed where it is feared that someone might pass in front of one, and in their belief, it is not used in a mosque or in a house, especially in a house in a small room, where this worshipper says: "Who will pass in front of me?" So he prays however it happens. We say to him: This is an illusion, this is a mistake. Someone whom the worshipper does not see may pass in front of him, and this is what the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) indicated by his saying: There are creatures among the creation of Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He) whom our Lord (Mighty and Majestic) described in the Noble Qur'an by His saying: The devil, who was created from a flame of fire, we do not see him, but he sees us and his kind from where we do not see them. Therefore, one of the legal reasons for preventing the prayer of the worshipper from being exposed to any corruption or deficiency is to use this screen, and let not one of them say: "There is none."

The questioner : Explain to us the screen...?

The Shaykh : Yes—may Allah bless you—we said: the wall, or the pillar, or the stick, or the person in front of him.

The questioner : Yes, that is it.

The Shaykh : It is this, yes.
The Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) in the previous hadith: indicates that there is a passerby who may pass in front of you whom you do not see, because he is not of your kind, and he was not created from what you were created from, which is clay, but he is a creation from a flame of fire. So he may pass in front of you and you do not see him. What is the legal means to keep the devil away from this worshipper so that he does not expose his prayer to corruption or deficiency? That you pray facing this screen, as he (peace and blessings be upon him) said: In the other narration or the other hadith: ; that is, so that the devil does not cut off his prayer.
It is established in "Sahih Muslim" that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), while he was praying one day among his companions, they saw him extend his hand as if he were grasping something. After his prayer (peace be upon him) and his completion of it, they asked him: "We saw you do something you had not done before?" He said: He (peace be upon him) said: But out of his (peace and blessings be upon him) good manners with his brother Sulayman (peace be upon him), who made this supplication, he (peace and blessings be upon him) did not want to share in his (peace and blessings be upon him) dominance over that devil. So after he had almost strangled him until he felt the coolness of his saliva in his hand (peace be upon him) and his fingers, he released him out of good manners with his brother Sulayman (peace be upon him).
The point of this hadith is that the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), who is the most perfect of people and the master of people, as he (peace be upon him) explicitly said in "Sahih al-Bukhari and Muslim": Then he mentioned the hadith of the great intercession. The point is: if the master of people was almost passed in front of by the devil, but the Messenger (peace be upon him) was chosen by Allah (Mighty and Majestic) with characteristics and honored with miracles that were not for anyone after him, and perhaps not for anyone before him. Among these is that he sees what we do not see; he (peace be upon him) sees what we do not see. That is, he (peace and blessings be upon him), and this is a benefit that does not fall under the generality of the previous verse: He sees you, O people, except the master of people, so he sees him (peace and blessings be upon him). And this is a special attribute, as he used to see Jibril (peace be upon him) and see the noble angels. It came in "Sahih al-Bukhari"—I say also on this pleasant occasion—that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said to the Lady Aisha one day: She did not see Jibril, and he was with her in the room with the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him): She said: "O Messenger of Allah, peace be upon you." He said: "And upon him peace." And in a narration:
The point here is that the Messenger (peace be upon him) was able to see Satan when he passed in front of him, but we have no way of doing so. Therefore, we should adopt the lawful means to keep Satan from corrupting or diminishing our prayers. For this reason, he (may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him) commanded us to place a sutrah when we stand to pray. As I mentioned earlier, there is no difference in this between praying in the open desert or in a building, whether it is a large, spacious mosque, a small mosque, or a small room. There is no difference in this, because Satan has the power, which Allah has granted him, to enter any place. It also came in the two Sahihs that the Prophet’s (peace and blessings be upon him) wife, Safiyyah bint Huyay, visited him one night. She sat with him for a while and then left to return to her house. The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) went out to see her back to her family. He stood with her for a moment when two men from the Ansar passed by. When they saw the Messenger (peace be upon him) standing with a woman, they hurried their pace. This was out of their good manners, modesty, and reverence for the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him). He said (peace and blessings be upon him): ; meaning: Do not hurry... in your walking as you were before. . He was telling them: Do not have any thoughts in your minds; this is my wife, she is not a strange woman. They said: “O Messenger of Allah, if we ever suspected anyone of something, we would never suspect you, O Messenger of Allah.” And this is natural; meaning, it is possible for people to be suspected of bad things, except for the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), who is protected from sin. So what was the Messenger’s (peace be upon him) response to their statement?
He said: — and here is the point —. . So, Satan is exposed to passing in front of a person even if he is in a small room. So that his prayer is not exposed to any corruption or diminishment, as we said earlier, we pray facing a sutrah. This is a lawful means, not a material means that we can understand with our short, rigid minds. This is one of the matters of the unseen that must be believed in and submitted to, because that is among the first conditions of correct faith, as our Lord (Mighty and Majestic) said: . Who are they? The first description is . So, we believe in the unseen first, that there are creations we do not see with our eyes, and among them are the jinn and Satan. This is stated in the Book and the Sunnah, and it is a matter of mass transmission, certain in its existence.
The second thing is that the prayer of the one praying may be exposed to Satan interfering with this person’s prayer by passing between him and the place of his prostration. If a sutrah is placed, this sutrah is like a sign that he is not allowed to pass in front of him. This is a lawful means. So a person should not say: I am praying in a place where there is no child, and there is no animal that passes in front of me. No. There is an animal — meaning a creation of Allah — that we do not see with our eyes, and that is Satan. This is what the Messenger (peace be upon him) stated explicitly in the previous hadith: .
It often happens that one of us is praying in his house, and there is a cat in the house that wants to pass, or a domesticated animal; meaning a chicken, a sheep, a goat, or something similar. And this happened to the Messenger (peace be upon him); where one day he was praying, and a sheep or a kid — this is the text of the hadith, a kid means a small sheep — wanted to pass in front of him. So the Messenger raced with it. “Raced with it” means he lowered himself to compete with it; meaning he did not let it get ahead of him and pass in front of him. So he raced with it until he pressed his belly against the wall, and the sheep or the kid passed behind him (peace be upon him). This indicates to us the importance and care in adopting what? The sutrah. This is a sheep, or this is a kid, an animal that does not reason, unlike Satan who lies in wait for a person. So this is an animal that passes by without reasoning and without aiming for anything, whereas Satan aims to corrupt the prayer. Nevertheless, the position of the Messenger (peace be upon him) regarding this beast was that he raced with it and pressed his belly (peace be upon him) against the wall until it passed behind him.
These are all matters that indicate to us — we Muslims who are concerned with following the Sunnah of the Master of the Messengers — that it is obligatory for us to first be concerned with placing a sutrah. And we have learned that a sutrah is anything upright like this in front of you; whether it is thin or thick. And he (may Allah’s prayers and peace be upon him) said, clarifying in the language of the Arabs that they understood at that time, what type of sutrah they were using at that time; he said (peace be upon him): . Do you know what the back of the saddle is? What is it? What do you call it? The saddle is for the camel like the saddle is for the horse. This is what is placed on the back of the camel, it is called a saddle (rihl). And the back of the saddle is this pole that is in the back, one in the back and one in the front. This one in the front, the rider wraps his leg around it, and it becomes what? ... This is called in the language that the Messenger and the Companions spoke in his time, it is called the saddle (rihl). And this stick from the front and the back, the Messenger (peace be upon him) called it: . This is not long, not a meter or half a meter, but rather a span or a little more. This back, the back of the saddle, the rider hangs his belongings on it, and this front, he wraps his leg around it, and it becomes one piece of the mount. Ah, this is what we learned, and we are non-Arabs, but we learned it from the language of the Messenger (peace be upon him). So he said: . How long is the back of the saddle? A span, a span and a half, two spans. So if there is not in front of the one praying a stick of a span or two spans, and something from these three things that will be mentioned in the complete hadith of the Messenger (peace be upon him) passes, his prayer is invalidated. It is invalidated; he must repeat the prayer. But if something else passes, the prayer is diminished and not invalidated; meaning the first hadith: , Ah, his saying (peace be upon him): . The cutting here does not mean invalidation, but rather the diminishment of the reward.
As for the cutting mentioned in the second hadith: . This invalidates the prayer. So if a black dog passes, or a donkey passes, or a woman passes, on the condition that she is an adult, mature woman; at that time, the prayer is invalidated if there is not in front of him something like the back of the saddle.
In short: if there is not in front of him a sutrah, and this is one of the benefits of the sutrah, that it preserves the prayer of the one facing it from cutting in the sense of invalidation, invalidating the prayer, and from cutting in the sense of diminishment of the reward. So we must be concerned with praying facing a sutrah, whether we are in the house, or in the mosque, or in the desert. And we should note what I mentioned earlier, that we should be close to it, with a distance of a span or two spans between the place of prostration and the sutrah. And we should not go further than that, nor exceed this distance that his action (peace be upon him) defined in the Prophet’s Mosque; where he used to pray there facing a wall, and between the place of his prostration and the wall was the distance of a sheep’s passage.
One of the benefits of the sutrah is that if a person is praying not facing a sutrah, and someone wants to pass in front of him; he does not have the right to prevent him; why? Because he did not place the sign indicating that I am in prayer, so do not cross your limit. But if he placed a sutrah and prayed facing it, and someone wants to pass in front of him, he has the right to prevent him and he has the right to push him. Rather, he has the right to fight him; because he is a Satan. Either he is a Satan from the Satans of mankind; because he was told so, and he did not respond to you, then you increased and he did not respond to you, then he wanted to charge despite your nose while you are standing in prayer in front of your Lord, so you hit him like this with a blow; this is either from the Satans of mankind or from the Satans of the jinn who took the form of a human from among the humans.
All these rulings pertain to this sutrah; a stick, a pole, or anything you place in front of you; it prevents you from diminishing your prayer or exposing it to invalidation.
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