Prayer: Paralysed and Unable to Purify or Recite: What’s the Ruling on Current and Missed Prayers?

Practical Laws of Islam as per the teachings of Imam Khamenei

Prayer: Paralysed and Unable to Purify or Recite: What’s the Ruling on Current and Missed Prayers?

English:

Question #530:

Someone’s head was injured causing damage to a part of his brain. As a result, his left hand and foot as well as his tongue were paralysed. Moreover, he has forgotten how to pray and is not able to learn it either. But he can make out the different parts of prayers by following a book or by listening to a tape. Presently, he is faced with two problems with respect to his prayers. First, he is not able to make his urinary outlet pure or to perform wuḍū’. Second, he has a difficulty with recitation in prayers. What is the ruling in this case? And what about the prayers he has not performed over the last six months?

Answer #530:

If he is able to do wuḍū’ even with the help of somebody else, or to do tayammum, then it is obligatory for him to perform his prayers as he can, even if he has to listen to a tape, or look at a book, or whatever it may be. As for the purity of his body, if he is not able, even with help of others, to wash his body pure, he must say his prayer with najis body and his prayer is valid. It is obligatory for him to perform his missed prayers in qaḍā’ unless he was unconscious and the unconsciousness took the whole time of prayer.

-Imam Khamenei, Practical Laws of Islam, Importance and Conditions of Prayer