She says: I doubt myself in prayer when I pray, and I repeat the prayer several times because I doubt it and do not know how many rak'ahs I have prayed, and this is always the case. I ask you to issue a ruling on this.
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The questioner : She says: I doubt myself in prayer when I pray, and I repeat the prayer several times because I doubt it and do not know how many rak'ahs I have prayed, and this is always the case. I ask you to issue a ruling on this, and does frequent doubt invalidate the prayer or not?
The Shaykh : These doubts that come to you and to many people are mostly illusions and whispers that Satan casts into the heart of the one who worships Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He) to spoil his worship and confuse him about his religion. Therefore, we advise you not to pay attention to these doubts and to cast them aside, because their frequency in worship indicates that they are mere illusions. This is why you see that when you engage in other activities that have no connection to worship, you do not experience these illusions and doubts. This is what we mostly see in cases like yours.
So our advice to you is not to pay attention to these matters, but to cast them aside and not consider them, and to act according to what first comes to your mind and your estimation, and to discard anything else. If this is not possible, then you should use something to determine the number of prayers, such as placing dates or pebbles in front of you equal to the number of rak'ahs in the prayer you are performing. For example, if you are praying Zuhr, you place four dates, and every time you stand up from the second prostration, you remove one until you finish these four. And in Maghrib, you place three, and when you stand up from the second prostration of the first rak'ah, you throw one, then the second, then the third, until you complete your prayer in the required manner.
The questioner : This is a message we received from one of the listeners who did not mention his name.
The Shaykh : These doubts that come to you and to many people are mostly illusions and whispers that Satan casts into the heart of the one who worships Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He) to spoil his worship and confuse him about his religion. Therefore, we advise you not to pay attention to these doubts and to cast them aside, because their frequency in worship indicates that they are mere illusions. This is why you see that when you engage in other activities that have no connection to worship, you do not experience these illusions and doubts. This is what we mostly see in cases like yours.
So our advice to you is not to pay attention to these matters, but to cast them aside and not consider them, and to act according to what first comes to your mind and your estimation, and to discard anything else. If this is not possible, then you should use something to determine the number of prayers, such as placing dates or pebbles in front of you equal to the number of rak'ahs in the prayer you are performing. For example, if you are praying Zuhr, you place four dates, and every time you stand up from the second prostration, you remove one until you finish these four. And in Maghrib, you place three, and when you stand up from the second prostration of the first rak'ah, you throw one, then the second, then the third, until you complete your prayer in the required manner.
The questioner : This is a message we received from one of the listeners who did not mention his name.