In my youth, due to laziness and heedlessness, I did not pray for years. Now Allah has granted me the ability to repent and I pray regularly. Is making up the prayers missed in the past years obligatory upon me? If it is obligatory, what will be the practical method of making up so many prayers? And if it is not obligatory, is repentance alone sufficient?

Prayer is the pillar of the religion, and deliberately abandoning it is, in the view of the scholars, the greatest of the major sins. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “The covenant between us and them (the disbelievers) is prayer; whoever abandons it has disbelieved” (Jami' al-Tirmidhi: 2621; hasan sahih according to al-Tirmidhi). And he said: “Between a man and polytheism and disbelief is the abandonment of prayer” (Sahih Muslim: 666). On this very basis, a large group of scholars has even declared one who deliberately abandons prayer to be outside Islam. So this matter is not light; sincere repentance alone is its door: remorse over the past, immediate commencement of prayer, a firm resolve never to abandon it in the future, and abundance of seeking forgiveness and voluntary prayers.

There is no disagreement that a prayer missed by sleeping or by forgetting must be made up at the very time one remembers it or wakes up. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “Whoever forgets a prayer, let him pray it when he remembers it; there is no expiation for it other than that” (Sahih al-Bukhari: 597; Sahih Muslim: 684). Therefore, in the present time too, if any prayer is missed due to sleep or forgetfulness, praying it immediately is obligatory; deferring it until the same time the next day is not correct.

- The view of the majority (the four imams): Qada is obligatory, however great the number may be; prayer is a debt owed to Allah, and along with repentance the debt will have to be paid. In their view the method is that only the obligatory prayers (and, according to the Hanafis, witr as well) be made up in order — for example, with each timed prayer one qada of that same time, or as many as possible in the times of leisure. - The view of Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn Hazm and a group: A prayer that was deliberately taken out of its time is not discharged now by making it up; qada is not obligatory upon such a person — rather, sincere repentance, abundance of seeking forgiveness, and increase in voluntary prayers and good deeds are obligatory upon him. The evidence is that the ruling of qada has come in the text in connection with sleep and forgetfulness, and the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “Islam wipes out the sins that came before it” (Sahih Muslim: 121) — the Companions, may Allah be pleased with them, did not order those returning to Islam to make up the past prayers. Shaykh Ibn 'Uthaymin, may Allah have mercy on him, declared this very view preponderant, and in the fatwa of Al-Lajnah Ad-Da'imah too it has been stated for the repentant person that when he repents and becomes regular in prayer, the past prayers drop from him.

In the view of this Dar al-Ifta, the preponderant view is this second one: counting and making up the prayers deliberately abandoned for years is not obligatory — nor is any such reckoning handed over to the questioner. What is obligatory is: (1) that repentance be sincere from the heart and prayer begin from that very day without a single miss; (2) that there be abundance of seeking forgiveness and voluntary prayers, especially those voluntary prayers which are prayed along with the obligatory ones, and tahajjud, because this is the proven way of compensating for that deficiency; (3) that prayer never be abandoned again in the future — abandoning it again after repentance is a greater danger than before. However, one who wishes to make qada acting upon the majority's view will not be stopped; that is his precaution; and those prayers which were missed during that period due to sleep or forgetfulness, their qada is obligatory according to every view. This same detail applies to the past fasts as well.

A Maqasid-based caution: Entangling one in the reckoning of qada and thereby making repentance difficult is not the purpose of the Shariah; the purpose is that the servant become firm from today in Allah's covenant (prayer) and remain established upon it for the rest of his life. The cure for the past is repentance and remorse; the protection of the future is regularity.

Translated from the original Urdu fatwa.