Distance between feet in individual prayer
Fatwa No: 323242

Question

Assalaamu alaykum. What should be the distance between one's feet when praying by yourself?

Answer

All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah and that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger. 

The Sunnah is that the praying person should not join his feet together but separate between them.

Al-Athram, narrated from Uyaynah ibn ‘Abdur-Rahmaan ibn Jawshan, who said, “I was with my father in the mosque, and he saw a man praying, joining his feet adjacent to the other, so my father said, 'I have seen eighteen men from the Companions of the Prophet  in this mosque, but I have never seen anyone of them do that at all.

Ibn ‘Umar did not separate his feet wide apart nor did he make them touch each other; rather, he was moderate between the two; he did not join them closely and he did not separate widely between them.

Ibn Taymiyyah said in Sharh al-‘Umdah:

It is desirable to separate between one’s feet when standing, as has been mentioned by our companions [scholars of our School], as Abu ‘Abdullaah used to do, because it was narrated that when ‘Abdullaah ibn Mas’ood saw a man join his feet, he said, 'He did not comply with the Sunnah; it would have been better if he had separated between them.'

When someone like Ibn Mas’ood mentioned the Sunnah, he meant the Sunnah of the Prophet and that he knew that from the Prophet himself either by action or by words.” 

As for the amount of space between the feet, there is no text that was reported about its specification. This varies from one person to another. It may be appropriate to be moderate: one should not join them nor widely separate between them. He should just be in-between, naturally.

Ibn ‘Uthaymeen was asked about this, and he replied, “I do not know any Sunnah regarding the distance between the feet when standing in prayer; so the distance should be natural because everything that has not been Islamically specified on how to do it remains as nature requires it.

Allaah knows best.

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