1. Allah the Exalted says: “Nothing prevented their expenditures from being accepted from them except that they disbelieved in Allah.” [al-Tawbah 9:54] If their expenditures are not accepted from them, despite their benefit extending to others, then acts of worship whose benefit does not extend beyond the worshipper are even more deserving of not being accepted from them.

2. When the Prophet ﷺ sent Mu‘adh to Yemen, he said: “Let the first thing to which you call them be the testimony that there is no god worthy of worship but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah. If they respond to that, then inform them that Allah has made five prayers obligatory upon them each day and night.” (1) Thus, he placed the obligation of the prayers after the two testimonies of faith.

If someone were to ask: If Islam is a condition for Friday Prayer to be obligatory, is the disbeliever then free of sin because Friday Prayer is not obligatory upon him?

The answer is that he is not free of sin. The preponderant view among the scholars is that the disbeliever is addressed by the subsidiary rulings of Islam just as he is addressed by its fundamental principles. The evidence for this is Allah’s saying:

“Except the companions of the right, in gardens, asking one another about the criminals: ‘What led you into Hell?’ They will say, ‘We were not among those who prayed, nor did we feed the poor. We used to engage in vain discourse with those who engaged in it, and we used to deny the Day of Recompense, until certainty came to us.’” [al-Muddaththir 74:39–47]

The point of evidence in these verses is that they mentioned among the reasons for their entering the Fire that they were not among those who prayed, nor among those who fed the poor. Indeed, I would say that the disbeliever is punished even for his eating, drinking, and clothing. Yet these are not unlawful for him in the sense that he is prevented from them; rather, he is punished for them.