Hadith
‘Abdullah bin Mas’ud reported: The Prophet ﷺ said:
“Among those in charge of you, after I am gone, will be men who extinguish the Sunnah and act upon innovated matters. They will delay the Salah from its respective times.” I said: “O Messenger of Allah, if I live to see them, what should I do?” He said: “You ask me, O Ibn ‘Abd, what you should do? There is no obedience to one who disobeys Allah.”
عَنْ عَبْدِ اللَّهِ بْنِ مَسْعُودٍ، أَنَّ النَّبِيَّ صلى الله عليه وسلم قَالَ " سَيَلِي أُمُورَكُمْ بَعْدِي رِجَالٌ يُطْفِئُونَ السُّنَّةَ وَيَعْمَلُونَ بِالْبِدْعَةِ وَيُؤَخِّرُونَ الصَّلاَةَ عَنْ مَوَاقِيتِهَا " فَقُلْتُ يَا رَسُولَ اللَّهِ إِنْ أَدْرَكْتُهُمْ كَيْفَ أَفْعَلُ قَالَ " تَسْأَلُنِي يَا ابْنَ أُمِّ عَبْدٍ كَيْفَ تَفْعَلُ لاَ طَاعَةَ لِمَنْ عَصَى اللَّهَ " .
Ponder This Hadith
The Prophet ﷺ warned against leaders who merely delay the prayer from its proper times—declaring such behavior disobedience to Allah and explicitly forbidding obedience to them.
If delaying the Salah is enough to invalidate obedience, what then of one who commands for the Salah to be abandoned altogether—along with fasting in Ramadan, giving Zakat, performing Hajj, and adherence to the Prophetic Sunnah as a whole?
So whom does this warning most accurately describe—those who preserve the acts of Islam, acting upon both their inward meanings and outward obligations as the Prophet ﷺ taught to do, or those who replace them with innovated systems and symbolic substitutes, abandoning the explicit teachings of the Prophet ﷺ altogether?