The One Answer You Never Give Back to the Muʾadhdhin

Five times a day, a voice rises over a neighbourhood and most people keep doing exactly what they were doing. The instruction on record for what to do instead is not vague. It does not ask for a feeling. It asks for a specific, word-for-word response, repeated call after call, that most people who consider themselves practising still do not know in full — because one part of it is not a repetition at all. It is a substitution, delivered exactly twice, and it is the part of the adhān that tells you the most about what the whole call is actually for.

Say What He Says

The base instruction comes first, plain and unqualified. Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī reported that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said:

إِذَا سَمِعْتُمُ النِّدَاءَ فَقُولُوا مِثْلَ مَا يَقُولُ الْمُؤَذِّنُ

“When you hear the call, say what the caller says.”

— Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, hadith 383, printed page 1/288 of Read this page: ت عبد الباقي.

Read on its own, that is a rule about mimicry: a voice announces the greatness of Allah, and you answer with the same words, at the same moment, for as long as the call lasts. It would be a strange kind of worship if it stopped there — a chorus with no content beyond echo. It does not stop there. The fuller version of the same instruction, transmitted through ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, shows the response is built out of the entire adhān phrase by phrase, and that inside that structure sits one deliberate break in the pattern.

The Two Words You Don’t Echo

Here is the sequence in full, exactly as the report gives it:

إِذَا قَالَ الْمُؤَذِّنُ: اللَّهُ أَكْبَرُ اللَّهُ أَكْبَرُ. فَقَالَ أَحَدُكُمُ: اللَّهُ أَكْبَرُ اللَّهُ أَكْبَرُ. ثُمَّ قَالَ: أَشْهَدُ أَنْ لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ. قَالَ: أَشْهَدُ أَنْ لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ. ثُمَّ قَالَ: أَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا رَسُولُ اللَّهِ. قَالَ: أَشْهَدُ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا رَسُولُ اللَّهِ. ثُمَّ قَالَ: حَيَّ عَلَى الصَّلَاةِ. قَالَ: لَا حَوْلَ وَلَا قُوَّةَ إِلَّا بِاللَّهِ. ثُمَّ قَالَ: حَيَّ عَلَى الْفَلَاحِ. قَالَ: لَا حَوْلَ وَلَا قُوَّةَ إِلَّا بِاللَّهِ. ثُمَّ قَالَ: اللَّهُ أَكْبَرُ اللَّهُ أَكْبَرُ. قَالَ: اللَّهُ أَكْبَرُ اللَّهُ أَكْبَرُ. ثُمَّ قَالَ: لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ. قَالَ: لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ، مِنْ قَلْبِهِ - دَخَلَ الْجَنَّةَ

“When the muʾadhdhin says, ‘Allah is greatest, Allah is greatest,’ one of you says, ‘Allah is greatest, Allah is greatest.’ Then he says, ‘I bear witness there is no god but Allah,’ and you say the same. Then he says, ‘I bear witness Muḥammad is the Messenger of Allah,’ and you say the same. Then he says, ‘Come to prayer,’ and you say, ‘There is no power and no strength except through Allah.’ Then he says, ‘Come to success,’ and you say the same. Then he says, ‘Allah is greatest, Allah is greatest,’ and you say the same. Then he says, ‘There is no god but Allah,’ and you say, ‘There is no god but Allah’ — from the heart — he enters Paradise.”

— Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, hadith 385, printed page 1/289 of Read this page: ت عبد الباقي.

Read the sequence again and count where it breaks. Every clause of the adhān is answered in kind, word matching word, except two: “come to prayer” and “come to success.” At exactly those two points the listener is told not to repeat, but to say something else entirely — lā ḥawla wa lā quwwata illā billāh, “there is no power and no strength except through Allah.” Everywhere else in the adhān, the muʾadhdhin is announcing a fact about Allah or bearing witness to something true, and the listener’s part is to affirm the same fact. “Come to prayer” and “come to success” are different in kind: they are not statements to affirm but a summons to act, addressed to you personally, right now. The report does not have the listener answer a summons with the same summons — that would be an echo pretending to be an answer. It has the listener answer with an admission: that responding to this particular call, of all the things a human being is asked to do, is not within your own strength to guarantee. You bear witness to Allah’s oneness on your own conviction. You cannot promise, on your own strength, that you will actually rise, wash, and stand in prayer — that promise needs help larger than intention.

And the hadith closes on the smallest, hardest condition in the whole exchange: not that you say the final “there is no god but Allah,” but that you say it min qalbihi — from the heart. Everything before it can, in principle, be recited by rote while the mind is elsewhere. The closing line names the one thing rote repetition cannot fake.

Contentment as a Sentence

The response does not end when the adhān does. Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ reported a second sentence, said once the muʾadhdhin has finished, that carries its own separate reward:

مَنْ قَالَ حِينَ يَسْمَعُ الْمُؤَذِّنَ: أَشْهَدُ أَنْ لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ وَحْدَهُ لَا شَرِيكَ لَهُ، وَأَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا عَبْدُهُ وَرَسُولُهُ، رَضِيتُ بِاللَّهِ رَبًّا وَبِمُحَمَّدٍ رَسُولًا وَبِالْإِسْلَامِ دِينًا، غُفِرَ لَهُ ذَنْبُهُ

“Whoever says, on hearing the muʾadhdhin, ‘I bear witness there is no god but Allah alone, without partner, and that Muḥammad is His servant and Messenger; I am content with Allah as Lord, with Muḥammad as Messenger, and with Islam as religion’ — his sin is forgiven him.”

— Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, hadith 386, printed page 1/290 of Read this page: ت عبد الباقي.

Notice what this sentence does that the phrase-by-phrase repetition does not: it stops answering the muʾadhdhin and starts speaking about your own state. Raḍītu — “I am content” — is not a fact about Allah being repeated back; it is a claim about the speaker, made once the call has gone silent and there is nothing external left to echo. The two testimonies you have just repeated a dozen times, phrase by phrase, are here restated in your own voice, as your own considered position, and joined to a declaration of satisfaction with the whole arrangement — this Lord, this Messenger, this religion — rather than a bare acknowledgment of doctrine.

Ten Blessings and a Station You Ask For Him

The response then turns outward again, this time toward the one who delivered the message rather than the message itself. ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿAmr reported the Prophet’s own instruction for what comes next:

إِذَا سَمِعْتُمُ الْمُؤَذِّنَ فَقُولُوا مِثْلَ مَا يَقُولُ. ثُمَّ صَلُّوا عَلَيَّ. فَإِنَّهُ مَنْ صَلَّى عَلَيَّ صَلَاةً صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ بِهَا عَشْرًا. ثُمَّ سَلُوا اللَّهَ لِي الْوَسِيلَةَ. فَإِنَّهَا مَنْزِلَةٌ فِي الْجَنَّةِ لَا تَنْبَغِي إِلَّا لِعَبْدٍ مِنْ عِبَادِ اللَّهِ. وَأَرْجُو أَنْ أَكُونَ أَنَا هُوَ. فَمَنْ سَأَلَ لِيَ الْوَسِيلَةَ حَلَّتْ لَهُ الشَّفَاعَةُ

“When you hear the muʾadhdhin, say what he says. Then send blessings on me — whoever sends one blessing on me, Allah sends ten upon him for it. Then ask Allah for me the wasīlah, for it is a rank in Paradise fit for only one of Allah’s servants, and I hope that I am the one. Whoever asks the wasīlah for me, intercession becomes due for him.”

— Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, hadith 384, printed page 1/288 of Read this page: ت عبد الباقي.

The wasīlah the Prophet asks be requested for him is not a vague word for closeness. It is a specific station, named and described in a fuller wording that ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿAmr’s contemporary Jābir ibn ʿAbdullāh also transmitted, with the exact sentence to say:

مَنْ قَالَ حِينَ يَسْمَعُ النِّدَاءَ: اللَّهُمَّ رَبَّ هَذِهِ الدَّعْوَةِ التَّامَّةِ، وَالصَّلَاةِ الْقَائِمَةِ، آتِ مُحَمَّدًا الْوَسِيلَةَ وَالْفَضِيلَةَ، وَابْعَثْهُ مَقَامًا مَحْمُودًا الَّذِي وَعَدْتَهُ، حَلَّتْ لَهُ شَفَاعَتِي يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ

“Whoever says, on hearing the call: O Allah, Lord of this perfect call and this established prayer, grant Muḥammad the wasīlah and the excellence, and raise him to the praiseworthy station You have promised him — my intercession becomes due for him on the Day of Resurrection.”

— Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, hadith 614, printed page 1/126 of Read this page: ط السلطانية.

Al-wasīlah as a word for the means of approach to Allah is not confined to this hadith. The Qurʾān uses the same root to describe what any sincere seeker is doing when calling on Allah at all:

أُو۟لَـٰٓئِكَ ٱلَّذِينَ يَدْعُونَ يَبْتَغُونَ إِلَىٰ رَبِّهِمُ ٱلْوَسِيلَةَ أَيُّهُمْ أَقْرَبُ وَيَرْجُونَ رَحْمَتَهُۥ وَيَخَافُونَ عَذَابَهُۥٓ ۚ إِنَّ عَذَابَ رَبِّكَ كَانَ مَحْذُورًا

“Those they call upon are themselves seeking the means of access [al-wasīlah] to their Lord — whichever of them can be nearest — and hoping for His mercy and fearing His punishment. Indeed, the punishment of your Lord is ever feared.”

— Sūrat al-Isrāʾ, 17:57

Set beside each other, the two texts describe the same movement from two ends. The Qurʾān’s verse describes every creature capable of calling on Allah as itself striving toward Him by whatever means draws it nearer. The hadith asks the listener to spend that same striving on someone else’s behalf — asking Allah to grant the Prophet the highest such station, rather than asking for anything for oneself at all. It is, among the five acts named here, the only one that is pure petition for another person, with no personal benefit named except the intercession promised in return.

The Open Window

There is one more moment attached to the adhān that is not a response to any of its words at all, but a use of the silence that follows them. Anas ibn Mālik reported the Prophet’s own description of what that silence is for:

الدُّعَاءُ لَا يُرَدُّ بَيْنَ الْأَذَانِ وَالْإِقَامَةِ

“Supplication is not turned away between the call and the second call to rise.”

— Sunan al-Tirmidhī, hadith 212, printed page 1/253 of Read this page: ت بشار. Al-Tirmidhī himself graded this report of Anas ḥasan.

Nothing here specifies which duʿāʾ to say, in which words, in which language. Every phrase named earlier in this piece has an exact wording attached to it; this one does not, because by this point the listener has already run through five acts of the tongue — repetition, substitution, testimony, blessing, and petition for someone else — and the window that opens now is finally for whatever the person standing there actually needs to ask for. The general promise behind it runs through the Qurʾān itself, in language that reads almost like a direct gloss on why this particular gap between two calls to prayer was singled out:

وَإِذَا سَأَلَكَ عِبَادِى عَنِّى فَإِنِّى قَرِيبٌ ۖ أُجِيبُ دَعْوَةَ ٱلدَّاعِ إِذَا دَعَانِ ۖ فَلْيَسْتَجِيبُوا۟ لِى وَلْيُؤْمِنُوا۟ بِى لَعَلَّهُمْ يَرْشُدُونَ

“And when My servants ask you concerning Me, indeed I am near. I respond to the call of the caller when he calls upon Me. So let them respond to Me and believe in Me, that they may be guided.”

— Sūrat al-Baqarah, 2:186

Most of what the adhān asks of the listener is fixed, word for word, down to the two phrases you are told not to echo. The window between the call and the iqāmah is the one part left open on purpose. Everything else in the exchange is scripted precisely because the response has to match what is being announced; this last part is unscripted precisely because, at this point, the announcement is finished, and what is left is simply between the caller and the One he has just spent a minute proclaiming.