How to perform friday prayer in islam?
The Friday prayer is performed in the biggest mosque of the village or district in the time of the Noon prayer.
First, the person performs a two-cycle Sunnah muakkadah prayer and then, if there is time, the person performs two more cycles of Sunnah ghayr muakkadah prayer, which is followed by waiting for the sermon. Then the imam goes up to the pulpit while the inner call for prayer is being announced. It is after this inner call for prayer that it becomes prohibited for those upon whom Friday Prayer is obligatory to keep themselves busy with any worldly affairs.
If the imam is on the pulpit when a person enters the mosque, he performs a two short cycles of tahiyyat al-masjid prayer. It is not permissible to perform more than two cycles. If one sits down before performing tahiyyat al-masjid prayer, then it is not required for him to stand up and offer it.
After listening to the sermon, the two obligatory cycles of Friday Prayer are prayed in congregation. The imam makes the recitation aloud and the congregations listens to him. It is a Sunnah for the imam to recite chapter al-Jumu’a (62) in the first cycle and chapter al-Munafiqun (63) in the second cycle after the recitation of chapter al-Fatiha.
After performing the obligatory cycles, one performs two cycles of Sunnah muakkadah prayer and, if he desires, two more cycles of Sunnah ghayr muakkadah prayer. It is not appropriate to omit the Sunnah muakkadah cycles of the Friday Prayer. Those who have some missed prayers and need to perform makeup prayers should perform makeup prayers after the obligatory cycles of the Friday Prayer.
It is prohibited to set out to a journey on Friday morning before offering Friday Prayer for those upon who the Friday Prayer is obligatory unless it is necessary. However, if there is a possibility to reach to a place on the way and perform the Friday Prayer there, then it becomes permissible to set out on a journey on Friday morning.
The Friday prayer is an act of worship that brings all Muslims living in the neighborhood together in one place. This is because it is performed only in the biggest mosque of a neighborhood. If there are more than one mosque in which the Friday Prayer is performed without a necessity, then only the prayers of those who perform it first will be valid. In this situation, according to the Shafi’i school, since it is hard to know in which mosque the Friday Prayer will be performed first, one should perform the obligatory cycles of the Noon prayer and its Sunnah cycles. However, if there are more than Friday mosques out of necessity, all Friday Prayers becomes valid. It is said that the Friday Prayer becomes valid if there is a river passing through a city and there are mosques on each side of the river or by having one Friday mosque in each district of a metropolitan city. However, it is still recommended to perform the Noon prayer after the Friday prayer.
Source: Fiqh1 (According To The Shafi’i School Of Islamic Law), Erkam Publications
