Not paying attention to wiping my head during wudu - were all my prayers incorrect?

Question

Asalam alaikum, I have just found on the web that among one of the obligations of wudu is wiping the head with water.

I have been always doing wudu like following: Washing the hands, then forearms up to the elbows thrice, Rinsing mouth with water thrice, Rinsing nose thrice, Wiping my face thrice from the forehead also through fore sides of ears, down to the beard, Washing ears with fingers from water And then washing feet up to ankles. I sometimes washed my neck as I saw it from others, or scarcely front of the head.

My question is: since I did not wipe my head everytime, were all my prayers invalid, do i have to make them up? Can I repent? When repenting, are my prayers still invalid because I did not wipe the head? Would Allah forgive me for not being notified that I must wipe my whole head?

Thanks for the answers, and wish you all peaceful rest of Ramadan brothers and sisters.

Answer 1

Allah says in (5:6):

" O you who have believed, when you rise to [perform] prayer, wash your faces and your forearms to the elbows and wipe over your heads and wash your feet to the ankles. ...."

So by onky wiping the face instead of washing it and not wiping the head while it is an ordered act, you already missed two essential fard acts of wudu'. Your wudu' is invalid, beside this some scholars consider the order of the fard acts of wudu' as essential too.

For a correct wudu' you must at least:

1. wash your face including the beard and whatever is considered as part of it (scholars may hold different opinions on that).
2. Wash your forearms to the elbows.
3. wipe over your head (at least partly)
4. wash your feet to the ankles

However it is sunnah to wash your hands first, rinsing mouth and nose and then starting the above fard acts and after wiping over the head to wipe the ears before washing the feet.

Further the validity fo the prayer depends on the validity of your wudu' or taharah in a more general context. Without a valid wudu' or ghusl your prayer would be incorrect and invalid.

We can not safely say that all your prayers are invalid as you may have performed some after ghusl etc..
What or whether or not Alalh will accept your prayers is not for us to judge, but we can technically say whether you have follown the orders of Allah and the sunnah of his prophet. You should repent to Allah and start doing your wudu' correctly and pray correctly if you have any doubts on how to do something ask and do research!