What is the criterion for distinguishing between the pillars of prayer, its obligations, and its recommended practices?

The questioner : Is there a criterion, O Shaykh, regarding the pillars of prayer? We know that there are recommended practices and pillars in the prayer.

The Shaykh : No, you jumped ahead. You know that there are recommended practices and there are obligations.

The questioner : Or obligations, okay.

The Shaykh : Not from the recommended practices directly to the pillars.

The questioner : Yes, recommended practices and obligations.

The Shaykh : And pillars.

The questioner : And pillars.

The Shaykh : Okay.

The questioner : There are criteria for this matter that we mentioned.

The Shaykh : Of course, there is nothing in Islam that does not have criteria, but the reality, as he (peace and blessings be upon him) said regarding medicine: Similarly, these criteria are known by the people of knowledge, whereas the ignorant and those seeking knowledge in the second rank cannot know this reality unless they become among those to whom one must turn for verifying the statement of Allah, Blessed and Exalted is He: So, whoever is among the people of knowledge, how easy it is for him to know what the criterion is for identifying the pillars and distinguishing them from the obligations. The obligations are those that the Muslim must perform, and he would be sinful if he were afflicted with leaving them. Similarly, the pillars are like the obligations in terms of sin if one neglects them, but the sin for neglecting the pillars is much greater by a large margin. This is because neglecting an obligation in the form of a certain act of worship does not invalidate it, but if one performs it, he is sinful for having left what was obligatory in it. As for the pillar, it is that whose neglect necessitates the neglect of the form itself, like one who prays and does not pray! He prays and does not pray! How can he pray and not pray? For example, he prayed, and let us give it a high example, as they say in our region in Syria, because we are still in the Levant, praise be to Allah, but they say among us, let us give it a high example, like one who prays without ablution. He prayed, but he did not pray. Why? We gave it a high example to give it a low one, but it is high. Now, this person prayed and did not pray. Why? The Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) used to say: So, this person prayed and did not perform ablution, so he did not pray. This text resembles many texts like it, by which we know that something is a pillar or a condition. The distinction between a condition and a pillar in the terminology of jurists will come later. Listen to the complete hadith, and the complete hadith is more important than its beginning, because the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: And how many people today perform ablution and have no ablution by the text of the hadith, because they do not mention Allah in their ablution. So, this person prayed and did not pray, not that he did not perform ablution at all, but rather that he did not perform all that I say are conditions, but also obligations, but also recommended practices. However, he was negligent and left what? The mention of Allah at the beginning of the ablution. And the Messenger said: Of course, a questioner might ask, what if he forgot? We say: But the important thing is that the Muslim should strive to remember Allah, Mighty and Majestic, in his ablution, in implementation and application of the saying of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him): A text like this, which necessitates the negation of the self by the negation of one of its parts, helps in understanding that something is a pillar or a condition. This is a terminological matter, and there is no dispute in terminology, as they say. That is, whether something is a condition or a pillar, in terms of the method of knowledge you asked about, is one thing. But the jurists agreed that what is a part of the parts of the thing is a pillar, and what is not in the thing but in its preamble is a condition. So now, ablution is not in the prayer itself; it is a preamble. So, whoever does not perform ablution has no prayer. Thus, ablution is a condition. But let us now come, as we came with an example related to the conditionality of mentioning Allah in ablution, and most people are unaware of this condition. Similarly, we should mention a ruling for which evidence came in the hadith, which is at the same time an answer to what you asked about: how do we know that something is a condition or not?
The Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) said in the authentic hadith: This negates the prayer due to leaving something from what we call the form of the prayer. And I say, let us call it that, because there is a Shafi'i juristic terminology where they use the term "form" for the recommended practices and the desirable ones. But I mean the general image. So, when the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) said: it means that if you prayed, your prayer is invalid. So, this text is among the means by which it is understood that something is a pillar or a condition, and its essence is the negation of the self due to the absence of one of the parts of the self...

The questioner : Is this a pillar, O our Shaykh?

The Shaykh : This is a pillar, of course, because he is praying. But the reality is that this pillar requires detail. It came in the authentic collections of al-Bukhari and Muslim from the hadith of Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) that a man asked the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), saying: The answer, of course, regarding the hard life that our righteous predecessors lived, it can be said. But this society now, can we say, conveying from the Messenger to you: "Or does everyone find two garments?" What Allah willed! Six or four garments, one of us is wearing today. So, we do not live the life that the predecessors lived. Therefore, we say: The original rule for the one praying is to cover his major awrah. And I will say something that may be new to some of you: major awrah and minor awrah. The major awrah is that which is not permissible for the Muslim to expose to his brothers and friends, whether in prayer or outside of prayer. But there is an awrah for the sake of prayer. And this is exactly like a ruling related to women. A woman with a woman, her awrah is her entire body except the places of ablution. The woman...

Another questioner : The prayer.

The Shaykh : No, no, right now I am outside of the prayer. A woman’s awrah (the part of the body that must be covered) in front of a Muslim woman is her entire body except for the places of wudu' (the ablution for prayer): the head and what it contains, the arms down to some of the upper arm, and the feet down to the back or lower part of the calves. This is her awrah, so there is no blame on her for showing this in front of her Muslim sister or her mahram (a relative one may not marry). However, if she prays, she has a second awrah with respect to the prayer. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: except with a khimar (the head covering). So, so it is obligatory for her, when she enters into prayer, to cover her head, which is not originally considered part of her awrah, just as it is for a man to be complete in prayer. The upper part, meaning what is above the navel, is not an awrah between a man and a man, but in prayer he must cover it whenever he has another garment for that purpose. Therefore, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: Whoever has an izar (lower garment) that covers the upper part—excuse me—whoever has a rida' (upper garment) that covers the upper part of the body and an izar that covers the lower part, he must combine them. If he has only one garment, here comes the detail. I do not want to repeat what came before, but here comes the detail: if the garment is wide, he wraps it around himself so that it covers the upper part as well. If it is narrow, he wears it as an izar down to here. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) cared about this issue so much that he detailed it for us, saying: If the garment is wide, wrap it around yourself; if it is narrow, wear it as an izar. But if you have two garments, Allah is more deserving that you adorn yourself for Him. Here comes the previous hadith: This garment is either one wide, loose garment that covers the upper and lower parts of the body, or if it is two garments, that is more complete and more beautiful, fulfilling the saying of the Blessed and Exalted is He in the Noble Qur'an: Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah (may Allah have mercy on him) mentioned in his treatise on the clothing of the woman in prayer, which is a small treatise but great in its benefit, that 'Abdullah ibn 'Umar (may Allah be pleased with him) saw his slave Nafi' praying one day with his head uncovered. After he finished praying, he called out to him and said: "Do you think that if you went to meet one of these governors, would you stand before him like this, or would you cover your head?" He said: "I would cover it." He said: "Then Allah is more deserving that you adorn yourself for Him." Ibn 'Umar took this etiquette in this hadith from the hadith I mentioned earlier, which was not attributed to him specifically; he is the one who narrated it for us, as in Sunan Abu Dawud: This adorning, with respect to covering the shoulders and what is below them, is a pillar of the prayer if it is available. Where did we take this from? From the prohibition of the one who is praying from praying. If the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) prohibited the one who is praying from praying in a certain state, this prohibition of prayer indicates its invalidity. This is one of the indications and methods by which the jurist can know whether something is a pillar or a condition, as opposed to it being merely obligatory and not a pillar or condition. This is the answer.

The questioner : May Allah reward you with good.

The Shaykh : May Allah keep you in good health.

The questioner : If you would allow me, does forgetting a pillar or a condition drop it?

The Shaykh : No, but there are things in it that can be made up and things that cannot be made up, especially in prayer. So you know what is missing, and you must perform the pillar that you missed, whether it was a prostration, a bowing, or a unit of prayer, and then you perform the prostration for forgetfulness. But with respect to what we discussed, which is the mention of Allah in the ablution, this is for the one who is afflicted with forgetfulness; otherwise, he must make up for the matter.