the rest sitting; rather, he said, “He sits,” and we do not call it the rest sitting, for if we call it the rest sitting, we remove from it the ruling of worship and it becomes merely for resting. But this is open to question, for resting in order to gain strength for worship is itself an act of worship, due to the saying of Allah, the Most High: “Allah intends for you ease and does not intend for you hardship” [al-Baqarah: 185]. Thus, there is no objection to the scholars unanimously calling it, as far as we know, the rest sitting, because we say: even if we call it the rest sitting, a person’s worship of Allah through it—when he rests by means of it in order to be more energetic for worship—makes it an act of worship.

Those who hold that one sits in all cases cite the fact that it is established in Sahih al-Bukhari, in the hadith of Malik ibn al-Huwayrith, that when the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, was in an odd-numbered rak'ah of his prayer, “he would not rise until he had sat upright” (1). Likewise, in the same hadith, it states that he would lean on the ground and then stand (2).

They said: This proves that it is a sitting in which one settles, because sitting upright means becoming settled. An example of this is the saying of Allah, the Most High: “That you may settle yourselves upon their backs, then remember the favor of your Lord when you have settled upon them, and say, ‘Glory be to Him who has subjected this to us, for we could never have subdued it ourselves. And surely to our Lord we shall return’” [al-Zukhruf]. Thus, if Malik ibn al-Huwayrith narrated this from the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him—and he is the one who narrated the Prophet’s saying, “Pray as you have seen me pray” (3)—and he came among the delegation of his people