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The question

Is delaying a single prayer beyond its elective time considered a greater major sin than suicide, adultery, consuming alcohol, and theft by scholarly consensus of Muslims, and what is the evidence for that?

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Source: FtawySummary from Ftawy's records · added here Sep 2, 20261 min readAlso available in العربية
The answer

This ruling applies to one who deliberately abandons prayer until its time expires without an excuse, not to one who delays it beyond its preferred time.

Muslims are in agreement that deliberately abandoning an obligatory prayer is one of the gravest sins and major transgressions, and its sin is greater than the sin of taking a life, seizing wealth, committing adultery, theft, or drinking alcohol.

There is no comparison between abandoning prayer and other major sins, for the texts that emphasize the severity of abandoning prayer are unparalleled. Many scholars have declared the one who abandons prayer to be a disbeliever due to the enormity of his crime, while no one has declared an adulterer or a murderer to be a disbeliever.

Summary from Ftawy's records · added here

Reviewed by El Fatwa's sharia committee.

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Where this answer came from
Source platform
Ftawy
Original fatwa ID
135724
Added here
. This is when the answer was added to El Fatwa, not the fatwa's date.
Text
Summary from Ftawy's records, reviewed by El Fatwa's sharia committee.
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Read the full answer on Ftawy