Starting Off Salah With Rafa Yadayn
It is a compulsory ritual in Ghamidi’s discourse. The main question to ponder however is that – is the Sunnah same thing to other traditional scholars as in Ghamidi’s discourse – the answer is NO. According to Ghamidi sb, The Sunnah is an independent source of religion. Just as the Qur’an is not validated through khabar-e wahid, the Sunnah is also not validated through it. Those acts that the Prophet (sws) never wanted to constitute them as Sunnah cannot be considered sunnah in Ghamidi’s discourse. For example the Prophet (sws) taught utterances and supplications which are said in the qa‘dah. Sitting in qa’dah is Sunnah but the supplications are not coz he never made them mandatory. If the Prophet has constituted something as Sunnah, it becomes Deen (compulsory act). Now, we know everyone agrees that a prayer contains two parts of its rituals (i) optional (ii) mandatory Raising hands with Takbeer e Tehrima is Sunnah for all scholars – with no distinction. Here is the tricky part. For all, it is Sunnah but for all the Sunnah is not a common element. For Ghamidi it becomes a compulsory act however, among others a huge number of jurists consider it as compulsory too (being Sunnat e Moa’kada) but for few it becomes Amal e Mustahab. Finally, those who do not consider it as mandatory are mistaken (according to others) due to misconception of a tradition (Akhbar e Ahad). Where it was mentioned that during the prayer raising hands (rafa yadain) is optional. They considered this ruling included raising hands in the beginning of prayer too. However, a majority believes that raising hands at the beginning were understood and constituted as Sunnah (Sunnat e Moa’kada) and that was not mentioned in this khabar e wahid. The Khabar e Wahid actually mentions raising hands during the prayer i.e. while going to raku or performing sajda etc.