Title: What should be done about Missed Prayers? Question: If you miss prayers, are you considered to be a kafir ?? Can that sin be forgiven if you are very sincere? Are you supposed to make up those prayers that you missed? But what do you do if you don't know how many prayers are missed if you try to make it up? Muhammad Soh United States of America Answer: After having accepted Islam, it is a great sin to intentionally miss ones prayers, but it cannot be termed as rejection ( kufr ). Every sin, by the eternal grace of the Almighty, can indeed be forgiven if one truly repents and sincerely commits to correct his behavior in future. However, true repentance includes that the repenting person should, wherever possible, try to counter or undo the wrong that he has done. Thus, in my opinion, if a person, after having attained maturity of mind and after having consciously accepted Islam, intentionally misses any prayer, he should then not only repent for having failed to fulfill an obligation imposed upon him by his Creator, but should also offer the prayer that he has missed. In case a person has missed a large number of prayers but is not sure about the exact number of prayers that he has missed, then he should continue to seek forgiveness for his sin of missing his obligatory prayers, while offering regular supererogatory prayers with every obligatory prayer that he offers. It may be hoped that God shall accept his repentance, forgive his sins and shall accept his supererogatory prayers as expiation for his missed obligatory prayers. I hope this helps. Regards, Moiz Amjad December 16, 2002