The answer is: Someone may say that intending imitation is a condition, because he said, “Whoever imitates,” and the verb-form tashabbaha implies both an act and an intention. However, whoever considers the underlying reason will realize that whenever resemblance occurs, the ruling applies. Shaykh al-Islam, may Allah have mercy on him, explicitly stated that whenever resemblance occurs—even without intent—the ruling applies. This is because the underlying reason does not vary according to whether one intended it or not. The reason is that whoever sees this man would say, “This is a disbeliever,” and that does not require intention.

But suppose that a person is in a country where none of the disbelievers wears this clothing, and he does not know about the clothing worn by disbelievers in their own lands. If he then wears clothing resembling the attire of disbelievers in their lands, without intending to do so, then we may say in this case that this is not imitation, because the underlying reason has entirely ceased to exist.

If someone were to say: According to your view, then prohibit piloting aircraft that carry missiles and the like, since those who fly them are disbelievers.

The answer is that this is not among the forms of dress with which they adorn themselves and adopt as their distinguishing emblem. Rather, it is a machine operated by disbelievers and by Muslims alike. When the Companions, may Allah be pleased with them, conquered the lands, they boarded ships made by the disbelievers, who had greater knowledge of them, and they did not say, “If we board a ship, we will have imitated them.”

His statement, “And its end is the end of the time for the Zuhr prayer,” means that the end of the time for the Friday prayer is the end of the time for the Zuhr prayer. This is when an object’s shadow, apart from its noon shadow, becomes equal to its length.

The sign of this is that, when the sun rises, every upright object has