Q: I was asked about the authenticity of the following hadith as narrated by Tirmidhi:
On the authority of Abu l-Ja’d al-Damri – who had some (i.e. brief) Companionship according to the claim of Muhammad ibn Amr – that he said: God’s Messenger ﷺ said, “Whoever leaves the Friday Prayer three times, because of not giving it much value (i.e. not thinking it important), then God will put a seal on his heart.”
A: Attending the Friday Prayer is an obligation on every non-travelling adult male who has no excuse for missing it.
As for this Hadith, Tirmidhi classified it as Hasan only, without adding Sahih, and then mentioned that it only comes via Muhammad ibn Amr ibn Alqama, which is the main reason he does not authenticate it. The reason is that narrations that only come via Muhammad ibn Amr cannot be relied upon (as explained in the discussion of the hadith on women prostrating to their husbands). There is another lesser problem too, which is that it comes via Abu l-Ja’d al-Damri, whose identity as a Companion is not strongly established. His actual name is not known (Abu l-J’ad is a kunya), he is only known to have narrated this one hadith, and only has one student; Tirmidhi says (as quoted above) that his status as a Companion relies on the claim of his student’s student, the unreliable Muhammad ibn Amr himself. Although there are others who have also described him as a Companion, such as Ibn Sa’d in his Tabaqat, Bukhari for example would not narrate from a little-known Companion with only one little-known student because their Companionship would not be fully established by this criteria.
There is a similar authentic statement, however, of the Companion Ibn Abbas (may Allah be pleased with him). Abd al-Razzaq, al-Bayhaqi and others narrated with a sound chain that he said,
“Whoever leaves the Friday Prayer four times in a row without any excuse, has thrown islam (submission) behind his back.” (Some versions say three times instead of four). Some scholars have argued that this statement of Ibn Abbas has the status of a hadith of God’s Messenger ﷺ because Ibn Abbas could not have made such a statement of his own accord. Others have rejected this, saying that this is not necessarily based on knowledge of the unseen and could be an inference made by Ibn Abbas. Therefore the idea that there is a particular number of Friday Prayers which, if missed consecutively, then a Muslim is liable to divine punishment of one sort or another, cannot be established as a saying of God’s Messenger ﷺ himself. In any case Ibn Abbas’s statement gives the important clarification that one should not abandon multiple consecutive Friday Prayers without any excuse.
However, Imam Muslim narrated in his Sahih that God’s Messenger ﷺ said,
“Certain people need to desist from abandoning the Friday Prayers or God may seal their hearts so that they become neglectful (of Him).”
This hadith is the strongest hadith on the topic going back to God’s Messenger ﷺ himself. It does not mention a specific number of prayers but speaks of abandoning the Friday Prayers altogether. This hadith itself has many problems, and it appears to us to be one of Imam Muslim’s shawahid (secondary, weaker narrations that are not on his condition), which he appended after the narrations about the Quranic verse in Surat al-Jumu’ah which speaks about people abandoning the Friday Prayers during the speeches of God’s Messenger ﷺ for the sake of trade or entertainment. There are multiple narrators in this hadith’s chain who do not fit Bukhari or Muslim’s criteria and do not appear in Bukhari at all, and who only appear in Sahih Muslim in this one hadith, strengthening the idea that this is only here as a shahid. Secondly, it is well known that this hadith suffers from major differences in its chains of transmission (there are many different versions of what the chain is, as different narrators differed from each other), as well as many different versions of which Companions this hadith is supposedly narrated from (some say Ibn Abbas and Ibn Umar, some say either both of them or one of them, some say Ibn Umar and Abu Hurayra, some say Abu Hurayra and Abu Sa’id al-Khudri). These differences are discussed by al-Daraqutni and Ibn Abi Hatim in their books of Ilal (hadith faults). It is generally agreed that Imam Muslim chose the best version. However, a careful analysis and evaluation of all these differences to decide the ultimate status of this hadith and whether imam Muslim authenticated it or simply narrated it as a shahid would take considerable time, effort and expertise. I will leave it until Dr. Akram Nadwi is finished with his commentary on Sahih Muslim, and update this post based on his conclusion.
It is very possible that the statement made by Ibn Abbas is an inference from this Hadith in Sahih Muslim as he is one of its narrators according to Muslim’s version.
And Allah knows best.
Basira Academy 