Salam, Is it true that according to hadith ones prayer or supplication becomes invalid when you don't speak to a person for more than three days. Many times I have neglected my prayers because I thought that there was no point of continuing. But I don't also understand why my prayers have to be affected to the point of validity if people are immature and don't solve issues by sitting down and communicating.
Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,
There is a narration in Sahih al-Bukhari and Muslim in which the Prophet ﷺ says it is not permissible (halal) for a Muslim to stop talking to another for more than three days. The Maliki jurist Ibn Abd al-Barr says:
أجمعوا على أنه يجوز الهجر فوق ثلاث، لمن كانت مكالمته تجلب نقصاً على المخاطب في دينه، أو مضرة تحصل عليه في نفسه، أو دنياه. فرب هجر جميل خير من مخالطة مؤذية .
They [i.e. the scholars] have agreed that it is permissible to stop talking to someone for over three days with a person who, if one was to talk to them, this would bring a deficiency in one's faith or a harm in their psyche or their material well-being, therefore perhaps a good avoidance of someone [i.e. avoidance with good intentions] would be better than a mixing that brings harm.1
In other words, what the Prophet meant is that it is not acceptable to intentionally inflict suffering on someone by not talking to them. But if there is a good reason for not talking to them, then that might be fine.
You should not let others affect your relationship with God. If someone tells you something about Islam that sounds like nonsense to you, instead of thinking that God is illogical, you should think that that person has misunderstood Islam, taken something out of context or is following an extremist or literal interpretation that more intelligent scholars do not support.
Footnotes
- Mawlay Ahmad Subair al-Idrisi, Niʿ mat al-ʿ allām fi ʾikhtisār subul al-salām, Beirut, Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyyah, 2012, p. 540.