Recordings › How to Pray Salah According to the Maliki Madhhab- Mufti Abu Layth · 2 Apr 2017 › Segment 12 of 13

Do men need to cover their head to pray, and can I pray in shorts?

salat salaah namaz salaat namaaz as-salah al-salah salawat sajdah sajda sujood prostration imaam imams prayer leader maaliki malikite malikiyyah maliki school 'urf muftis makrooh makruh tahrimi makruh tanzihi disliked sunna sunnat sunan prophetic practice madina al-madinah madeenah yathrib awra satr in sha allah insha'allah in shaa allah insha allah inshaa allah

Do men have to cover their head in salah? And praying in long shorts

QuestionWritten question · questioner not identifiedAnswered 2 Apr 2017Segment 12 of 13 in the recording2017-04-02-S12

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This segment45:56 to 47:35 · 1 min 39 sGeneral teaching

The answer in brief

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No: covering the head is custom and convention, not a sunnah of salah, so praying bareheaded is fine and not makruh. Long shorts are fine if they cover the 'awrah.

In more detail

Asked whether men should cover their head in salah, Mufti Abu Layth says the school of Madinah does not recognise covering the head as a sunnah of salah and it is not virtuous in itself. He reports a Maliki imam from Granada [?] who, some 700 years ago, placed the matter under custom and convention, observing that men in the East covered their heads and saw it as noble while Muslim men in the West generally did not. So the prayer is fine and not makruh without a head covering. He adds a quick clarification that someone in long sports shorts can pray as long as the 'awrah between navel and knee is covered.

Question as read aloud · questioner not identified
What about covering the head for men, is this something we ought to do, and is it discouraged if we are not doing it? And can someone pray in long sports shorts?

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Mufti Abu Layth says the Maliki school does not regard covering the head as a sunnah of salah but as a matter of custom and convention, so praying bareheaded is neither makruh nor a defect, and long sports shorts that cover the 'awrah are fine to pray in.

In his words

“this is seen as really in essence especially within the school of Medina as part of convention and Custom it is not seen as a Sunnah which people have to have to be doing”

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Transcript

machine45:56 to 47:35 · click a time to seek · dotted terms open the glossary

45:20

advises the women to delay uh in their sujud before they rise it explains that the men that they would uh the isar the kind of songs that they would wear they would be wrapped so tight it says that because they were so tightly wrapped that it would Define everything clearly when they were in sujud The Contours and everything and so and yet the prophet did not forbid that he did not say it violated their Salah in any way so just to keep that in mind okay so these are things to do with uh clothing within Salah another good question that comes to mind right here what about

45:59

covering the head for men is this something uh that we ought to do is it discouraged if we're not doing it the school of Medina does not recognize wearing a hat or covering your head as a Sunnah within Salah or Sunnah of Salah it is not virtuous per se in fact Imam in his when speaking of this puts it under the category of the this is to do with custom and Convention and he says that we see that certain people in the East tend to cover their heads men and that is seen as Noble amongst

46:38

them he said and in the west and he was from Muslim Spain Granada 700 years ago and he says in the west there is a tradition that the Muslim men generally do not cover their heads so this is seen as really in essence especially within the school of Medina as part of convention and Custom it is not seen as a Sunnah which people have to have to be doing so your Salah is absolutely fine it's not Mak it's not you know you haven't violated anything and it is correct inshallah okay something to just quickly add here by the way one is if what if I I mentioned just briefly about the a

47:18

before for men between the navel and knee so what if somebody was playing sports and they had these kind of long shorts on can they just come in and pray like that well if you're covering that AA of course you can okay just to clarify as I mentioned before the main thing is covering the AA if it's covered there isn't a problem another thing I'd like to highlight is uh and it's I suppose perhaps more so uh linked to the fashion of the age sometimes people wear certain types of jeans or trousers men especially that kind of hang loose or drop slightly uh from the the hip and

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Cite this segment

Stable id, transcript version and tier are part of the citation. Every change to a transcript is logged.

Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment 2017-04-02-S12, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/bin9uqpopma/s/12/ (accessed 1 November 2026)

APA 7

Mufti Abu Layth. (2017, April 2). Do men need to cover their head to pray, and can I pray in shorts? [Video, segment 2017-04-02-S12, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/bin9uqpopma/s/12/

Chicago author-date

Mufti Abu Layth. 2017. "Do men need to cover their head to pray, and can I pray in shorts?" Video, segment 2017-04-02-S12, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded April 2, 2017. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/bin9uqpopma/s/12/

BibTeX

@misc{abulayth-2017-04-02-S12,
  author = {Mufti Abu Layth},
  title = {{Do men need to cover their head to pray, and can I pray in shorts?}},
  year = {2017},
  month = {4},
  date = {2017-04-02},
  howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/bin9uqpopma/s/12/}},
  url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/bin9uqpopma/s/12/},
  organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive},
  urldate = {2026-11-01},
  note = {Segment 2017-04-02-S12, auto-transcribed, may contain errors}
}

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