Al-Albani on Bringing Little Children to the Mosque

Interrupter: No—for me, he should not take him as long as [the child] is still under the age of seven.

The Shaikh: I thought you were going to say: Is it permissible for the father to take the boy to the mosque without the boy asking—what do you think: permissible or impermissible?

Interrupter: For him to pray or to just go to the mosque?

The Shaikh: Take it as you wish.

Interrupter: As for him praying, that’s something else.

The Shaikh: Isn’t his going to the prayer of higher priority than anything else?

Interrupter: Under the age of seven?

The Shaikh: This is what we are looking into.

Interrupter: Ok.

The Shaikh (after chuckling): You know, Ustādh, that the early Salaf [our predecessors upon piety in Islam]—foremost among them our Prophet ﷺ—used to allow their children to enter his ﷺ mosque.

And it’s not a distant memory to you, the story narrated by one of the Companions, that he once prayed ʿAṣr behind the Prophet ﷺ [when] the Messenger of Allāh ﷺ extended the length of the prostration at one point during his prayer—an an extended amount of time that was not from his usual way. So this Companion raised his head to check on his Prophet, fearing that his appointed time [death] had come, only to see a strange sight: he found him in prostration, with Al-Ḥasan or Al-Ḥusayn [on his back].

At any rate, the Companion felt reassured and returned to prostration. Then, after he ﷺ gave salām [to complete] the prayer, they said to him: “O Messenger of Allāh, you made a prostration whose length you extended during your prayer.” So he ﷺ said: “This son of mine climbed onto me for a ride, and I didn’t like to rush him.”

This boy, [the Prophet’s ﷺ grandson], attended the mosque for the prayer; he was, as you said, below the age of discernment. And it was not from his guidance ﷺ to remind those coming to pray—whether men or women—to not bring their children along to the mosque; rather, he approved of that from them—contrary to the well-known ḥadīth whose chain is not authentic: “Keep your children, your insane, and your buying and selling away from your mosques,” even though the latter part of [the ḥadīth] is authentic, as other ḥādīths attest to, as is not hidden from you—if Allāh wills.

The part to be taken as evidence here is that he would not forbid them [from bringing their young children]; rather, he showed that he approved of this situation. In fact, he had even established a specific ruling to apply to it, taking into consideration the feeling of any mothers praying behind him ﷺ with their children crying at the same time: the Messenger ﷺ would pay attention to this, even while he was calling upon his Lord, that there was a woman praying with her child. So he would get started, as he said: “Indeed, I get started with the prayer intending to lengthen it, but then I hear the crying of a child and then shorten it, so that I can free his mother up to attend to him.”

So the long recitation which was his habit ﷺ—he would lighten it so that he could free up the mother to attend to her child. It was within his ability to [say], as many ignorant imāms [now say]: “Why do you bring your children to the mosque and cause disturbance for us…,” and so on. [But] he did nothing of that sort.

Based on this, it is even more deserving that a child, if he’s been raised Islamically and yearns to attend the mosque—even if [just] to play—if he were to ask his father to take him with him to the mosque, [that he be taken].

So on that basis, it is permissible for the father to accede to this child’s request, since there’s training in that for him to frequent the best of places, about which the Messenger ﷺ was asked by one: “What are the best of places and what are the worst of places?” So he ﷺ answered: “The best of places are mosques, and the worst of places are markets.”

So if the child has grown up this way—wanting to go to the mosque and not out into alleys—then this is a blessing and tremendous glad tidings. It’s then upon the father—and indeed the mother—to take advantage of this situation and clear the way for him to go to the mosque. Then if something crops up from him—and there’s no way it cannot but crop up from him—of [behavior] that does not befit mosques like messing or playing around—and what kind of messing around do you want to take to be greater than taking the Chief of Mankind [ﷺ] as a mount to be ridden upon? Yet despite that, he did not denounce it; rather, he established a specific ruling as well, just as he had done there with the mother of the [crying] child: he lengthened the prostration.

If this were to be done today, cries would rise up from all corners of the mosque: “You made it too long for us, Shaikh!” “Slow down—the child, why’d you bring the child?”

They do not know the guidance of the Messenger ﷺ; they do not know his kindness and compassion toward his Ummah. And Allāh spoke the truth when He said [that which in English means]: “To the believers he is compassionate and merciful.” [Al-Tawbah, 128].

Silsilah Al-Hudá wa-l-Nūr, tape 668, as quoted by Jāmiʾ Al-Turāth Al-Albānī fī-l-Fiqh, vol. 8, pp. 69-72.