Question:
In one of our previous sessions, it was mentioned that if someone is extremely sleepy during the Fajr prayer, they may go back to sleep and pray after waking.
He (the questioner) says: although the hadith may be correct, if people hear this, they may become careless about the Fajr prayer. People might set alarms and say, “There are ten minutes left, twenty minutes left, let us sleep more,” and they may neglect the prayer. So, he asks that this matter be clarified: for whom does this ruling apply?
Answer:
The hadith itself contains the clarification. It is not a general instruction that anyone may skip the Fajr prayer and sleep. The hadith describes a particular situation. In that narration a wife complained about her husband. She mentioned several complaints, and one of them was that he does not wake up for Fajr prayer. When this was mentioned before Prophetﷺ , the husband explained the situation. He said that the complaint is true in a certain sense. He explained that they were people who worked very hard physically, often during the night. Their work sometimes continued until very late hours. When they finished work at three or four in the morning and went to sleep, they could not wake up for Fajr because they were extremely exhausted. When the Prophetﷺ heard this explanation, he asked when he would wake up. When the man said he would wake later, the Prophetﷺ told him to pray when he wakes up.
So, the ruling was given for someone whose lifestyle involves heavy work late into the night and who becomes extremely exhausted. It was not meant for someone who sleeps comfortably at ten at night and simply decides to ignore Fajr. If someone intentionally neglects Fajr after having sufficient rest, this hadith cannot be used as justification. It applies to rare situations where a person is overwhelmed by unavoidable exhaustion. Even the Prophetﷺ himself experienced a rare instance where he overslept and prayed afterward, but such situations were exceptions, not daily habits. Therefore, this ruling applies to those whose circumstances resemble the situation described in the hadith, not to everyone generally.