Reciting Iqamah if one prays alone
Fatwa No: 83388

Question

If I miss the Jamaat for any Fard prayer do I have recite the Iqama if I pray alone?

Answer

Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the World; and blessings and peace be upon our Prophet Muhammad and upon all his Family and Companions. Pronouncing Iqama is neither (Rukn) an integral part of the obligatory prayer nor a Shart (condition) so reciting it is not mandatory. However, since it is a confirmed Sunnah and among the symbols of Islam one should not leave calling it. Some Muslim scholars even ruled that the Muslim is recommended not to leave Iqama. The evidence that Iqama is merely a Sunnah is that the Prophet (peace be upon him) did not tell the person who had made mistakes in his prayer and whom the Prophet ordered to re-do his prayer was not told of the Iqama although the Prophet (peace be upon him) taught him how to perform a correct prayer. If the Iqama was a mandatory act of the prayer, the Prophet would have told that man to make it.
Allah knows best.

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