Does Adding a Surplus Integral in the Prayer Invalidate It? (Shafi’i)

Answered by Shaykh Jamir Meah

Question: Assalamu alaykum

When reading Reliance of the Traveller, I read that adding a surplus integral action invalidates the prayer. In the past I have been under the impression that I may have missed my second prostration and the sitting before it. I went back to perform the first prostration, the sitting, the second prostration, and the Tashahud. Would these prayers be accepted?

Answer: Wa’alaykum assalam. Jazakum Allah khayr for your question.

Purposefully adding an additional integral to the prayer nullifies the prayer, as you mentioned is stated in Umdat al Salik, as well as other Shafi’i works such Bushra al Karim and the various commentaries of al Minhaj.

Proper procedures

So in your situation, the proper procedure would have been to simply count your sitting position that you were already in as the sitting between the two prostrations, pause for a moment, and then go into the second sujud.

Making up prayers

If possible, work out how many prayers the errors occurred in, and which prayers, and make those up.

If you don’t know which exact prayers you made the mistake, then roughly work out how many times the mistake occurred, then add a few more days worth, and then make up the 5 prayers for each day. For example, if you think that the mistake did not occur any more than on 6 times but you don’t know in which exact prayers they occurred – make 6-9 full days of prayers up.

Also, if, for example, you know that the error definitely never occurred in a particular prayer, such as in the Fajr prayer, then you can make up all the other prayers except Fajr for those days. And Allah knows best.

May Allah grant you every ease and I wish you tawfiq.

Warmest salams,
[Shaykh] Jamir Meah

Shaykh Jamir Meah grew up in Hampstead, London. In 2007, he traveled to Tarim, Yemen, where he spent nine years studying the Islamic sciences on a one-to-one basis under the foremost scholars of the Ribaat, Tarim, with a main specialization and focus on Shafi’i fiqh. In early 2016, he moved to Amman, Jordan, where he continues advanced studies in a range of Islamic sciences, as well as teaching. Jamir is a qualified homeopath.