What breaks your prayer?
10 min read
Short answer
Salah is invalidated by speaking deliberately, laughing out loud, eating or drinking, a lot of movement that has nothing to do with the prayer, losing your wudu, turning your body away from the qibla, and deliberately dropping or adding one of the prayer's essential parts.
If your prayer is broken you start again from the opening takbir. Many things people worry about, including someone walking past you, a phone ringing, a small movement or a cough, do not break it at all.
The prayer is a single, sealed act. You enter it with the opening takbir and you leave it with the salam, and between those two points you are in a different state from ordinary life. Most of what breaks the prayer breaks it because it pulls you back out of that state before you meant to leave it.
This page is about the prayer itself. Losing your wudu is one of the nullifiers, but the list of what causes that is a separate subject, and it is covered on what breaks your wudu.
The nullifiers, in short
- Speaking deliberately. Any ordinary human speech, even one word.
- Laughing out loud. Smiling silently does not count.
- Eating or drinking. Any amount taken deliberately.
- A lot of movement that has nothing to do with the prayer.
- Losing your wudu at any point before the salam.
- Turning your chest away from the qibla without excuse.
- Uncovering the awrah substantially and leaving it uncovered.
- Impurity falling on your body, clothes or the place you pray and staying there.
- Deliberately dropping or adding an essential part, such as leaving out a bowing or adding a rakah on purpose.
- Leaving Islam, losing consciousness, or falling into deep sleep.
The rest of this page takes the ones people actually run into and gives the detail, including where the schools disagree.
Speaking
Deliberate speech invalidates the prayer by agreement. Mu'awiyah ibn al-Hakam, newly arrived in Islam, said something aloud when a man sneezed during the prayer, and was told afterwards that human speech does not belong in it, and that the prayer is glorification, takbir and the recitation of the Qur'an. Zayd ibn Arqam described the earlier period, when the Companions did speak during the prayer, and said it ended when they were commanded to stand before Allah in silence.
Recitation, tasbih, takbir and du'a are not speech in this sense. Neither is saying subhanallah to alert someone, or answering the imam's mistake by prompting him with the verse. Those are all part of the prayer's own vocabulary.
Where the schools part company is the person who speaks without meaning to, out of forgetfulness that he was praying, or not knowing the rule.
What the four schools say
What if someone speaks by mistake or out of forgetfulness?
The three schools that excuse it lean on the hadith of Dhul-Yadayn, where the Prophet ﷺ gave the salam after two rakahs by mistake, was questioned, spoke in reply, and then completed the prayer rather than starting it again.
Laughing
Audible laughter invalidates the prayer in all four schools. A silent smile invalidates nothing in any of them. The interesting difference is what else laughter does.
What the four schools say
Does laughing break the wudu as well as the prayer?
The Hanafi ruling is restricted to a prayer that contains bowing and prostration, which is why it is not applied to the funeral prayer.
Eating and drinking
Deliberately eating or drinking during the prayer invalidates it. There is no minimum that makes it acceptable, because the act itself is foreign to the prayer rather than a matter of quantity.
The schools do discuss the edge cases. Food left between the teeth that dissolves and goes down without any chewing is generally overlooked if it is a trace amount, while anything you have to gather and swallow is not. Swallowing your own saliva is not eating or drinking at all.
Movement
Every school agrees that a small amount of movement is fine and that a lot of it invalidates the prayer. What they do not agree on is where the line sits, and this is the difference most likely to come up in an ordinary prayer at home with children about.
What the four schools say
How much movement invalidates the prayer?
All four exempt movement that is genuinely necessary, and the reports themselves show it. The Prophet ﷺ led the prayer carrying his granddaughter Umamah, setting her down when he prostrated and lifting her when he stood.
Scratching an itch, adjusting your clothes, taking a step to close a gap in the row, opening a door for someone, putting a hand out to stop a child walking into something, and silencing a phone are all within the allowance in every school. The instruction in the Sunan collections to kill a snake or a scorpion during the prayer settles the principle for anything urgent.
Losing your wudu
Wudu is a condition for the prayer, so if it goes, the prayer goes with it. Leave, make wudu, and start the prayer again from the beginning. If you were praying in congregation and this happens, walking out quietly is the correct thing to do, and there is no shame in it. The full list of what breaks it is on what breaks your wudu, and if water is not available where you are, see tayammum.
Deep sleep is worth singling out, because it can happen standing in the night prayer. Sleep heavy enough that you lose awareness breaks the wudu, and therefore the prayer. Drowsiness that leaves you aware of yourself does not.
Turning away from the qibla
Turning your chest away from the direction of prayer, without a recognised excuse such as fear or being on a moving vehicle, invalidates the prayer. Facing the qibla is a condition of the prayer, not a feature of it, so abandoning it ends it.
Turning only your head to look at something is a different matter. It does not invalidate the prayer, but it is discouraged, and the Prophet ﷺ described it as a snatching that the devil steals from a servant's prayer. The prayer survives it. The attention does not.
Passing in front of a praying person
This one is worth stating carefully, because it is widely misunderstood in both directions.
Walking in front of someone who is praying is a serious matter for the person doing the walking. The Prophet ﷺ said that if the one who passes in front of a praying person knew what was upon him, waiting a very long time would be better for him than passing, and the narrator was unsure whether the period named was forty days, months or years. That warning is about the passer, not about the person praying.
What it does to the prayer itself is the point of difference. There are reports naming certain things that cut the prayer of a person praying without a sutrah in front of him, and the schools read them differently.
What the four schools say
Does someone or something passing in front invalidate the prayer?
All four agree on the remedy, which is to pray towards a sutrah, an upright object such as a wall, a pillar, a chair or a bag placed in front of you, and to gently prevent someone trying to cross between you and it.
Things that do not break the prayer
A good deal of anxiety around salah is spent on things that were never nullifiers.
- Losing your place or forgetting a rakah. The prayer is repaired with the prostration of forgetfulness, not restarted.
- Your mind wandering. Nobody's prayer would survive if this broke it. Bring your attention back and carry on.
- Coughing, sneezing or yawning. Involuntary and excused.
- Crying from fear of Allah. Excused by the majority, with the Hanafi school distinguishing it from weeping caused by pain or grief.
- Saying subhanallah to correct the imam or to alert someone. This is the prescribed method, and women clap instead.
- A small necessary movement. Adjusting clothing, moving a child, closing a door.
- Someone talking near you, or a phone ringing. Noise around you is not your action.
- Reciting a different surah than you intended, or stumbling over the words. Correct yourself and continue.
If it breaks, what then?
Start the prayer again from the opening takbir with a fresh intention. Nothing is owed beyond that, there is no expiation, and a prayer that was invalidated and then prayed properly is simply a prayer prayed properly.
Two habits remove most of these problems before they start. Pray towards a sutrah, which closes off the whole question of people passing. And deal with distractions before the takbir rather than during the prayer, by silencing the phone, closing the door, and settling whatever is going to need settling. For the full sequence itself, see how to pray salah.
Common questions
›If my prayer breaks, do I carry on or start again?
You start again from the beginning, with a fresh intention and a fresh opening takbir. A prayer is one connected act, so there is no resuming it from where it stopped. This is different from the prostration of forgetfulness, which repairs a prayer that is still valid, such as forgetting a sitting or being unsure how many rakahs you have prayed.
›Does my phone ringing break my prayer?
No. The sound itself does nothing at all, and reaching out to silence it is a small movement of the kind every school permits, in the same category as adjusting your clothing or opening a door. Leaving it ringing and distracting the congregation is worse than the brief movement of switching it off. Only a long sequence of fiddling with the phone, unlocking it and scrolling would reach the level of movement that invalidates.
›Does someone walking in front of me break my prayer?
In the Hanafi, Maliki and Shafi'i schools nothing that passes in front of you invalidates your prayer, and the sin falls on the person who walked through. The Hanbali school is the exception, holding on the wording of the hadith that a black dog passing in front cuts the prayer. Either way, the practical answer is to pray towards a sutrah, a wall, a pillar or any upright object in front of you, which is the sunnah and settles the question.
›What about coughing, sneezing, crying or saying subhanallah to alert someone?
None of these break the prayer in the normal case. Saying subhanallah aloud is the prescribed way for a man to alert the imam or anyone else, and a woman does it by clapping, so it is part of the prayer rather than a breach of it. A cough or a sneeze is involuntary. Crying from fear of Allah is excused by the majority, with the Hanafi school distinguishing between weeping caused by pain or grief and weeping caused by the remembrance of Allah.
Sources referenced
- Qur'an 2:238, the command to stand before Allah devoutly obedient, which the Companions understood as the end of speaking during the prayer.
- Sahih Muslim, the hadith of Mu'awiyah ibn al-Hakam, who spoke during the prayer and was told that nothing of the speech of people is fitting in it, and that it is only glorification, takbir and recitation of the Qur'an.
- Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, the report of Zayd ibn Arqam that the Companions used to speak during the prayer until they were commanded to stand in silence.
- Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, the hadith of Dhul-Yadayn, in which the Prophet ﷺ ended the prayer early, spoke, and then completed it with the prostration of forgetfulness.
- Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, the warning about what falls on a person who passes in front of someone praying, and the report describing what passes before one who has no sutrah.
- Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, the report of the Prophet ﷺ leading the prayer while carrying his granddaughter Umamah, setting her down when he prostrated and lifting her when he stood.
- Sahih al-Bukhari, the description of turning away during the prayer as something the devil snatches from a servant's prayer.
- The Sunan collections, the instruction to kill the snake and the scorpion during the prayer.
Where the schools of thought differ we have given each position rather than choosing one. For a ruling on your own situation, ask a qualified scholar in your community.
Put it into practice
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