Why Abandoning Salah Is More Serious Than Zina

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته I keep seeing people talk about zina a lot, because it’s one of the gravest sins - it harms your honor and that of your family and wali, all for a brief thrill. I want to compare skipping salah to zina because abandoning prayer without a valid reason has become kind of normalized and even excused. People miss prayers out of laziness and no one seems to react. But if someone commits adultery, people get upset, disgusted, and gossip. I’m not trying to say zina isn’t awful - it is sinful and damaging - but leaving even one prayer intentionally is worse in the sight of Allah. Zina is disobedience that hurts yourself and your family, while abandoning salah is direct disobedience to Allah. Someone who persistently abandons prayer is in a graver state because Allah commanded us to pray, and abandoning it carries a severe consequence in the hereafter. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said that the covenant between Muslims and their Lord is the prayer, and whoever abandons it has committed disbelief. You wouldn’t keep close company with someone known for adultery, yet some will still spend time with someone who abandons their prayers - someone whom the angels dislike and who is in a perilous spiritual state - while the adulterer, though sinful, remains a Muslim. Scholars like Shaykh Salih al‑Fawzan have explained that ‘abandoning’ means not doing the prayer when its time comes; if a person intentionally leaves prayer, whether in congregation or alone, it reaches the level of disbelief and they must sincerely repent and return to their religion, holding fast to the prayers and rulings of Islam. When asked if this applies even to leaving one prayer intentionally, the answer given was yes. So, brothers and sisters, let’s remind one another gently to keep our salah and to seek forgiveness if we’ve been neglectful. May Allah guide us and make us steadfast.