The issue of cell phones is so important that although I was initially going to put it in the “General Advice” section of my Hajj article, I decided to devote an entire article.

Once upon a time, people lived without cell phones. People were able to come for salat, focus to the best of their abilities to try to attain khushoo in salat and complete their salat with very little external disturbances. With the advent of cellular phones, the everso cunning and clever shaytaan figured out a way to distract people not only by leveraging the strength of their nafs, but now is able use the Muslims themselves to distract each other!

My brothers and sisters in Islam, the last thing we want is to stand before Allah subhana wa tala on the Day of Judgement and have to be held accountable for distracting hundreds of his righteous ebad during their salat (especially during Hajj in the haram!). The haram in Mecca and the haram in Medina are two of the most sacred and beloved places to Allah on this earth. Righteous people (including shayook, maybe some awliya, etc) come to these places to worship Allah – do we want to be held accountable for disturbing the connection between Allah and his righteous servants?

There is of course a practical solution to this issue – we need to begin developing the habit of turning our cell phones off in the masjid. And by off I mean powered off – do not put it on vibrate, do not put it on silent, but turn it off. I strongly believe that we can live without our cell phones for the short length of time that we spend in salat (if not for our whole lives) as this is how people used to live before cell phones existed. Today, there are cell phones that have their alarms go off even when the cell phone is silent or when the phone is off! This is even considered “a feature” of the cell phone (as opposed to a design defect or poor design).

I would like to first briefly define the different modes (also called “profiles”) that are available on cell phones.

Loud - The phone ringer is on and (in all likelihood) it is obnoxiously loud. We should try not using this mode at all
Normal - The ringer is on in what is considered to be normal volume
Vibrate - The ringer is off, the cellphone vibrates to provide notification of calls, text messages, alarms, etc
Lamp - The ringer is off and the cell phone does not vibrate. Instead, the cell phone’s lights start to go off to give notification of calls, text messages, alarms, etc. If the phone is in your pocket, the lights tend to not be noticed

Keeping in mind these modes, I am of the belief that if you are not going to turn off your phone or leave it in the car – only vibrate and lamp mode is acceptable in the masjid. However, if you are in salat, ONLY lamp mode should be used. The reasoning for this is, if you intentionally leave your phone on vibrate during salat, you are making the conscious decision to be notified during salat of when you receive a call. In other words, you consciously want to be disturbed and distracted in salat. Although vibrate mode may not distract others (and actually, even this is not true in many cases since people in your proximity can here that something is shaking in your pockets) a cell phone that is vibrating does at the minimum distract you. The only mode that will probably not distract you is Lamp mode.

Again, my proposal for a practical solution to this issue is this – lets make a habit of turning our cell phones off. Let’s not even use lamp mode because its too much trouble and in our salat shaytaan may start whispering to us “did you put your cell phone on lamp mode or was it vibrate?”, or “are you sure the alarm doesn’t go off in lamp mode?” or “hmmm, maybe someone called you and you have a missed call.” Do not give shaytaan this opening and develop the habit to just turn it off. And when I say develop the habit, I mean exactly that. An example of a habit is signaling when driving. After learning to drive a car, it eventually becomes natural to signal right or left when turning. You don’t even think about it and it doesn’t matter where you are – when you turn, you find your self signaling left or right automatically. Similarly, no matter which masjid we are in, no matter which country we are in, no matter what season we are in, let us turn our cell phones off when entering the house of Allah.

JazakAllah khair and may Allah give us the full reward of our salat and keep us away from distracting other Muslims in their salat. Ameen.