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Does a woman's prayer become nullified if a strange man sees her, especially since women pray amidst men in Mecca?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

A woman's prayer is not invalidated by men seeing her, nor is her prayer or a man's prayer invalidated if she prays beside him. This is the view of the majority of scholars, in contrast to Abu Hanifa, who believes that the prayer of the person beside her is invalidated if she joins him in prayer. The proof for the correctness of this is that the default state of prayer is validity unless there is sound evidence to the contrary. Additionally, there is the muttafaqun alayh hadith of Aisha, may Allah be pleased with her, that she was lying down between the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, and the Qiblah while he was praying.

Summarized from the full answer at Ftawy · reviewed Sep 2, 2026

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