What is the ruling on changing one's intention during an act of worship?
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
The questioner : What is the ruling on changing one's intention during an act of worship?
The Shaykh : Changing one's intention during an act of worship is either invalidating of the act, as if a fasting person changes his intention to break his fast; whoever intends to break his fast has broken it, and his fast becomes invalid. Or the change of intention may not invalidate the act, but it transfers the person from one act to another. An example of this is a man who begins the obligatory prayer, and then the congregation arrives, so he changes this obligatory prayer to a voluntary one. That is permissible, and he completes it as a voluntary prayer and joins the congregation.
As for changing a specific prayer to another specific prayer, such as changing the regular voluntary prayer (rawatib) to the witr prayer, that is not valid.
The Shaykh : Changing one's intention during an act of worship is either invalidating of the act, as if a fasting person changes his intention to break his fast; whoever intends to break his fast has broken it, and his fast becomes invalid. Or the change of intention may not invalidate the act, but it transfers the person from one act to another. An example of this is a man who begins the obligatory prayer, and then the congregation arrives, so he changes this obligatory prayer to a voluntary one. That is permissible, and he completes it as a voluntary prayer and joins the congregation.
As for changing a specific prayer to another specific prayer, such as changing the regular voluntary prayer (rawatib) to the witr prayer, that is not valid.