and stretches out his legs among them while they are seated, this is not considered a breach of dignified conduct. As the common proverb says, “Among friends, formalities in etiquette are set aside.”

In any case, the criterion for dignified conduct is that one should neither say nor do anything for which people would criticize him.

Thus, there are four conditions: knowledge of medicine, Islam, uprightness, and a specified number—namely, two.

This is because it falls under the heading of testimony, which requires Islam, uprightness, and plurality of witnesses. If any of these conditions is absent, their statement carries no weight. Yet, regarding the manner of prayer, they said that a person may pray sitting if one trustworthy Muslim physician says, “Standing will harm you.” They distinguish between the two cases by saying that the latter is religious information concerning matters of religion, whereas this concerns financial matters. This is the restriction the author has placed on it.

The correct view in this matter is that if a skilled physician says that this is a serious and dangerous illness, his statement is accepted, whether he is Muslim or a disbeliever. If we were to follow what the author has said, we would not trust any non-Muslim physician, even though we sometimes trust a non-Muslim physician more than a Muslim physician when the former is more skilled than the latter.

Furthermore, the medical profession makes it unlikely that a disbeliever would act treacherously, for two reasons:

First, every person wants his profession to succeed. Thus, even if a physician is a disbeliever, he wants his practice to succeed and to be correct in treatment and surgery.

Second, some physicians are callers to their religion despite being disbelievers,