Unnecessarily Correcting the Imaam

Q: Salaah-249: In the first Rakaah of the salaah, the Imaam recited the part of a Surah (Zumar) that begins with (VASEEKALLADHIN KAFARU) In the second Rakaah, he forgot to recite (QEELAD KHULU ABWAABAA JAHANNAM) but continued to recite (WASEEKALLADHINT?TAFAV RABBAKUM) Zaid then corrected him by saying that he ought to recite QEELAD KHULU AB JAHANNAM) After completing the salaah, the Imaam told Zaid that it was not necessary to correct him, but Zaid insists that it was because a particular subject matter has to be completed before another is started. To substantiate this, he quoted the verse : (WARAT?TILIL QURAAN TARTILA) Is this correct? Was it necessary for him to correct the Imaam when the Qur'aan is not completed during the Taraaweeh salaah?

Answer: Since the Imaam had already started the next verse, there was no need to correct him. In fact, the Fuqahaa have ruled that salaah is nullified when a person unnecessarily corrects the Imaam. Hidaayah (Vol.1 Pg.116) states that when a person corrects an Imaam when the Imaam has already proceeded to the following verse, the salaah of the person correcting is nullified. If the Imaam then accepts the correction (and recites the verse), his salaah is also nullified and, subsequently, the salaah of the entire congregation is nullified. This is because the correction was unnecessary.

Although this has been stated, the preferred ruling is that the salaah will not be nullified in this case, but doing so is Makrooh. The books of Fiqh have explicitly state that followers must never be hasty to correct the Imaam and have also directed Imaams never to force people to correct them by repeating a verse several times or by standing silent. If they have recited the necessary amount of Qiraa'ah, they should rather proceed into' Ruku or recite from another portion of the Qur'aan.

The correction made in the question was unnecessary because the salaah would have been unaffected by omitting the said verse. It is also incorrect to substantiate the correction using the verse (WARAT?TILIL QURAAN TARTILA) And Allaah knows best what is most correct.

Fatawa Rahimiyyah vol.2