English Translation

Abu Mu’awiyah told us: Ibrahim ibn Muslim al-Hajari told us, from Abu al-Ahwas, from Abdullah, who said: Whoever would be pleased to meet Allah, Mighty and Majestic, tomorrow as a Muslim, let him maintain these prescribed prayers wherever they are called, for they are among the ways of guidance. Allah, Mighty and Majestic, has legislated for your Prophet the ways of guidance, and there is not one of you but has a place of prayer in his house; yet if you were to pray in your houses as this one who stays behind prays in his house, you would abandon the sunnah of your Prophet, and if you abandoned the sunnah of your Prophet you would go astray. I have indeed seen the time when none stayed away from it except a hypocrite whose hypocrisy was well known; and I have indeed seen a man being supported between two men until he was made to stand in the row. And the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, "There is no man who performs ablution and does it well, then goes to one of the mosques, taking a step, but he is raised a degree thereby, or a sin is removed from him thereby, or a good deed is recorded for him thereby — so much so that we would draw our steps close together — and indeed the merit of a man’s prayer in congregation over his prayer alone is twenty-five degrees."