What Counts as Standing in Prayer Before the First Sitting?

Answer

 In the name of Allah, Most Compassionate, Most Merciful, 

Assalam’aleykum,

I pray this finds you in the best of states.

1. After finishing the second cycle of prayer, we have to perform the first sitting of the prayer. If you forget about it and start to stand up, there are two possibilities:

(1) you remember the first sitting while being closest to the sitting position. In this case, you go back to the sitting position, and you perform the tashahud.

(2) you remember the first sitting while being closest to the standing position. In this case, you don’t go back to the sitting position, and you perform the prostrations of forgetfulness at the end of the prayer.

To be closer to the sitting position means that while standing, you didn’t pass the bowing (ruku’) position of the prayer. To be closer to the standing position means that while standing, you have passed the bowing (ruku’) position of the prayer.

This is what Shaykh Faraz Rabbani, may Allah protect him, taught us and is in line with what is described in the Lubab, a commentary of Mukhtasar al-Quduri by Shaykh Abd al-Ghani al-Ghunaymi al-Maydani, may Allah have mercy on him.

Please note that the ruling above is only for the obligatory prayers ( witr included). As for someone who is praying a voluntary prayer, he has to go back to the first sitting as long as he has not performed the first prostration of the following cycle. [Maydani, Lubab]

2. If you have doubts on whether or not you have prayed, you have to assume that you didn’t pray because you are certain that at one point in time you have not prayed, and now you have doubts on whether or not you have prayed.

“Certainty is not lifted by a doubt.”

[Ibn Nujaym, al-Ashbah wa’l Nadha’ir]

This means that if one is certain about something is true; then we will keep assuming it is true until certain that it has become untrue. Mere possibilities and likelihoods do not change this.

And Allah knows best.

Wassalam

[Ustadh] Sufyan Qufi