Holding a second Friday prayer outside when the loudspeaker fails

A question about worshippers outside a mosque who lost the loudspeaker's sound, so that one of them gave a sermon and led them in the Friday prayer, in which Jordan's General Iftaa Department answered that their Friday prayer was not valid because the first one was being held in the same place, and that they must pray it as zuhr. ¹

The questioner said the loudspeaker cut out during the Friday sermon while many worshippers were outside the mosque, so one of them stood up, gave a sermon and led those outside in prayer; he asked about the validity of that sermon and prayer. ¹

The Department answered that the Friday prayer has conditions of validity, among them that it is prayed in congregation at the time of zuhr, after two sermons, within a settled built-up area and with forty of those obliged to attend, citing Ibn al-Naqib al-Misri's Umdat al-Salik. ¹ It said another condition is that no other Friday prayer in the town precedes or coincides with it unless the town is large and its people cannot gather in one place, citing al-Nawawi's Minhaj al-Talibin. ¹ It said it is not a condition that the preacher be heard by everyone present: it is enough that forty of those who make up the congregation hear him, citing al-Khatib al-Shirbini's Mughni al-Muhtaj. Losing the sound outside is therefore no excuse to hold a new Friday prayer; it would have been enough to sit and wait for the call to begin the prayer. ¹ It said that if they did not know when the prayer would begin and could not follow the imam, they had to pray zuhr, because two Friday prayers are not held in the same place at the same time. ¹ It concluded that the valid one of the two is the prayer led by the mosque's appointed imam, that whoever's Friday prayer was invalid prays zuhr instead, and that whoever prayed two units must repeat it as zuhr. ¹

Jordan's General Iftaa Department published this fatwa on aliftaa.jo as no. 3897, dated 11 July 2024. ¹ The museum records this text as a historical document attributed to the body or scholar that issued it; it issues no ruling of its own.