Compelling People to Pray

Question

In the present age, when Muslims have completely cast their religious obligations behind their backs and take offence if they are admonished to fulfil their religious obligations — if in some neighbourhood an agreement and consensus is reached that whoever does not perform the prayer and the fast will first be reasoned with, and if he still does not listen, he will be made to perform [them] by beating him and will be compelled to pray — then the question is: does sin, according to the Shari‘a, fall upon those who…

Answer

Prayer is fard ‘ayn (an individual obligation); the one who denies it is a kafir, and the one who abandons it is a fasiq. The same is the ruling regarding fasting. Conveying (tabligh) the rulings of the Shari‘a is also necessary. Therefore it is necessary first of all to explain the ruling to the one who does not pray and to reason with him gently.

Source: Fatawa Mahmudiyya

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