Full Lecture Transcript (Cleaned)
The Question — 0:28
One of the most common questions we constantly get asked: a person wasn't practicing Islam, started practicing Islam, and they have to make up salah for many, many years. What do they do? Is there something — can we just do one action and get it all done with? Can we go to the Haram and pray one prayer for 100,000? Is there some "buy one, get one free" scheme going on?
The Two Scholarly Opinions — 0:56
This is one of the most common questions asked, and as I have explained multiple times, there are two opinions, both of which kind of overlap.
The first opinion, which is the dominant majority opinion, is that you should try to make up for all of the past salawat you haven't prayed at a reasonable level. So if you haven't prayed for, let's say, 10 years, try for the next 10 years to do double. That means you prioritize qada over sunnah prayers. So instead of praying the sunnah of two rak'ahs before and after, if you haven't prayed for a decade, you pray the fard, and after that you pray another four rak'ahs, and that is the qada for the prayer you haven't done. You do this roughly the same number of years that you weren't praying, and you try to be honest — because in the end, you cannot be exactly sure, but Allah knows you are trying.
The second opinion is that there is no formal qada per se, but you still have to pray extra as a sign that you're trying your best to make up. So both opinions say you pray extra. It's just that the first opinion says the extra should be qada, and the second opinion says the extra should be nafl — and Allah is going to forgive me if I'm doing extra.
Without a doubt, this is something that you should try your best to do. Whichever opinion you follow, I don't see that to be a very big deal.