Sheikh Farid Dingle they ask whether college lectures are a valid excuse for postponing prayer until the required time at Maliki school.
Question:
Assalam alaikum wa rakhmat Allah wa barakatuh.
This is a question regarding the previous answer that was asked by someone else called: What are good reasons to postpone prayer until the required time at Maliki school?
Is a college lecture an excuse? For example, I have a lecture that begins before the time of the Maghreb enters, and ends after the time of Isha has already entered.
Answer:
Wa Alaikum Assalam Wakhmat Allah Wa Barakatul.
It is unacceptable to postpone any prayer intentionally to postpone any prayer to the “time of necessity” (waqt darura), unless the person is able to pray at the usual time.
Excuses for delaying “Time of Necessity”
The excuse to delaying pray are “to be during menstruation or lochia, having have just entered Islam, have just reached puberty, have just gained sanity, have just regained consciousness, or are asleep, or have forgotten to pray.” (Sharh Abi al-Hassan)
Al-Adawi commented on the justification of sleep and forgetfulness, saying: “That is, when someone wakes up who is sleeping, or someone who has forgotten, remembering at the“ necessary time ”, they are not considered sinful. (Hashiya al-Adawi)
Sleeping through a prayer or forgeting to pray
It goes without saying that the one who sleeps is meant the one who really sleeps, and not just intentionally goes back to sleep; and the one who has forgotten is the one who has truly forgotten, and not the one who is too busy or too lazy to pray.
As it appears from the Prophetic Tradition, “there is no lack in a dream: the only disadvantage is not to pray until the time of the next prayer comes”. (Muslim) That is, it is a sin to miss a prayer, but not if one sincerely overslept through it after having taken the means to wake up on time.
The concept of “necessary time”
The concept of “necessary time” is not connected with sin or its absence; rather, it is simply a way of categorizing such prayers from the point of view of being make-ups or not. It is also a way to evaluate whether to pray to a previous prayer (say, Dhuhr) at “necessary time.”.
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For example, if you sleep through Fajr, prayer is make-up, and if you sleep through Dhuhr and pray during Asr time, it is not make-up. None of them can be intentionally omitted or deliberately slept, but they simply fall into different categories.
In the same way, if someone stopped her menstruation in Isha, one would pray Maghrib and Isha, because Isha is the “necessary time” for the Maghrib; whereas if you stopped at Fajr, you would not pray Isha, because Isha’s “necessary time” ends at the beginning of Fajr.
The reason why “the necessary time” is distributed in Dhur and the Maghrib for subsequent prayer times is that Dhur and Maghrib can be joined with Asr and Isha, respectively, in circumstances that allow joining. For this reason, the three schools that allow you to join a prayer under certain circumstances also have the same general prayer period.
Upshot
It is unacceptable to postpone a prayer until “time of necessity” (waqt darura) due to the fact that being in a lecture. You just need to make sure you have wudu in advance and ask for excused for five minutes while you pray.
In more urgent scenarios, joining a prayer may occur, but this other discussion does not apply to this scenario.
I pray this helps.