Is It Permissible To Offer Eid Prayer at Home Due to COVID?
Hanafi Fiqh
Answered by Ustadh Salman Younas
Question
If mosques are closed because of Coronavirus then do we have to perform Eid prayer at home? If we do have to perform then please tell us the method of prayer according to the Hanafi school.
Answer
There is a difference of opinion between scholars on whether the Eid prayer can be performed at home.
According to the Hanafi school, the Eid prayer cannot be performed at home because it needs to fulfill the same conditions as the Friday prayer. Furthermore, if one misses the Eid prayer with one’s local congregation, he performs salat al-duha instead.
The Shafi’i school permits the performance of the Eid prayer by an individual at home (either by himself or as part of a congregation) because they deem the Eid prayer as similar to any other supererogatory prayer. For the precise method of performing it, one should consult a Shafi’i scholar.
Other schools also have opinions permitting Eid at home. Given the current situation, one may choose to follow this view in order to maintain the performance of Eid and make it a day of joyous celebration and worship for one’s family. [Ibn ‘Abidin, Radd al-Muhtar, 2:175-76; Nawawi, Rawdat al-Talibin, 1:578]
[Ustadh] Salman Younas
Checked and Approved by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani
Born and raised in New York, Ustadh Salman Younas graduated from Stony Brook University with a degree in Political Science and Religious Studies. After studying the Islamic sciences online and with local scholars in New York, Ustadh Salman moved to Amman. There he studied Islamic law, legal methodology, belief, hadith methodology, logic, Arabic, and tafsir. He is now in his final year of his PhD at Oxford University, looking at the early evolution of the Hanafi madhab.
His teachers include: Shaykh Faraz Rabbani, Shaykh Salah Abu’l Hajj, Shaykh Ashraf Muneeb, Shaykh Ahmad Hasanat, Shaykh Hamza Karamali, Shaykh Ahmad Snobar, Shaykh Ali Hani, Shaykh Hamza Bakri, Ustadh Rajab Harun and others.
Ustadh Salman’s personal interests include research into the fields of law/legal methodology, hadith, theology, as well as political theory, government, media, and ethics. He is also an avid traveler and book collector. He currently resides in the UK with his wife.
