I’ve got a problem when I pray. I recite al-Fatihah but then I get Satan’s whispers and I get scared of reciting wrong so I recite the Surah over and over again. It’s starting to be annoying and I want it to go away very much. The same thing happens with Wudu sometimes. Please help me.

Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds; and may His blessings and peace be upon our Prophet Muhammad and upon all his Family and Companions.

It is not permitted for a Muslim to surrender to these whispers during Wudu, prayer, and remembrance of Allah, etc. because they (whispers) are from Satan in order to deviate the pious from their worship and to put a barrier between them and what brings them closer to Allah.

Sheikh Al Islam Ibn Taymiyah said: 'Whispers occur to anybody who turns to Allah with remembrance or any other act of obedience, so a person has to be patient and steadfast. He also has to carry on doing remembrance of Allah and performing prayers without being bored, because with his perseverance he will be able to get rid of Satan.  {…Ever feeble indeed is the plot of Shaitân (Satan)….}[4:76].

Whenever someone wants to turn sincerely to Allah, a lot of whispers come to him.  Satan is like a bandit who stands in people’s way, and whenever a person wants to tread a path towards Allah, Satan will stand as an obstacle in his way.

One of our righteous predecessors was told that the Jews and Christians say that they do not have any whispers, he replied: ‘they have indeed said the truth.  What would Satan do with a wrecked house’.

If a person surrenders to whispers and does not struggle to get rid of them, they could lead him/her to unpleasant consequences – we seek refuge in Allah from that.

The best methods of getting rid of whispers are:

- To be convinced that sticking to these whispers is following Satan.  Sheikh Muhammad Alish Al Maliki reported that some Sheikhs said that ‘Whispers are an innovation, the foundation of which is ignorance about the Sunnah, or a deficiency in the mind.

- The second method of getting rid of whispers is to seek refuge in Allah from Satan, to make Du’a, return and repent to Allah, and to renounce them and oblige our self to accept this.

Ibn Hajr Al Haythami was asked whether there is any remedy for whispers, he replied: ‘Yes, it has a beneficial remedy – which is to renounce them all – even if our own self recalls what had happened – because by renouncing them they do not stay for a long time and disappear quickly.'

For more details, please read the Fatawa: 85823, 84625 and 83401.

Allah knows best.