of the man level with the woman’s middle; for the sunnah in the funeral prayer is that the imam stands at the man’s head (1) and at the woman’s middle (2). If he reverses this arrangement, placing the women nearer to the imam and the men behind them, it is still valid, because this order is recommended rather than obligatory.

“Whoever has no one standing with him except a disbeliever, ...”

His statement, “Whoever has no one standing with him except a disbeliever”: the phrase “except a disbeliever” is in the nominative case, as the subject of “standing.” The nominative is therefore required here, because this is an unrestricted exception. An unrestricted exception is one in which the group from which the exception is made is not mentioned; when it is not mentioned, the word following “except” takes its grammatical case according to the governing elements that precede it.

“Whoever” is a conditional noun. His statement, “then he is alone,” is a predicate whose subject is omitted, and the sentence is the response to the condition.

After mentioning the person who is physically alone, the author now begins to discuss the one who is legally deemed to be alone. Thus, he says, “Whoever has no one standing with him ...” That is, if a man stands behind the row with a disbeliever beside him, he is legally deemed to be praying alone, because the disbeliever’s standing in the row with him is as though he were not present: the disbeliever’s prayer is invalid, and so his joining another in the row cannot be valid. This applies when he knows it; but if he does not know that the one standing with him is