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Is my prayer valid after I intentionally moved away from the person praying next to me in congregational prayer and did not align my foot with his, and what are the consequences if it is not?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

Your prayer is valid, and you do not need to repeat it. Your mere distancing yourself from the worshiper next to you and not touching your foot to theirs does not invalidate the prayer, because straightening the rows is among the sunan (recommended practices) of prayer, and abandoning sunan does not invalidate it. Furthermore, any oversight by the ma'mum (follower) is borne by the imam (leader). Similarly, doubt about whether you left the imam or continued praying with him does not affect the validity of the prayer, and there is no prostration of forgetfulness (sujud al-sahw) for the ma'mum in such a case, because this is something borne by the imam.

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

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