We can illustrate this with a concrete example. The Almighty says, “Recite whatever is easy for you of the Quran” (al-Muzzammil 73:20). Certain schools have taken this to refer to the act of recitation itself, claiming that the obligatory portion of Quran in the prescribed prayers is no more than a single long verse or three short verses! They maintain this in spite of the sound hadith in which the Prophet ﷺ said, “There is no prayer for the one who does not recite the Opening of the Book.”1 In another report he stated, “Whoever performs a prayer in which he does not recite the Opening of the Book, his prayer is defective, defective, defective—never complete.”2

The import of these two hadiths has therefore been set aside—on the strength of the above interpretation of the verse—on the pretext that the verse merely commanded recitation, and that, in their view, the Quran may only be explained by sunnah that is mass-transmitted; in other words, what is mutawātir can be interpreted only by what is likewise mutawātir. Consequently, they dismissed the two aforementioned hadiths, relying on their own opinion or on the tenets of their school in interpreting the verse.

Yet the scholars—all exegetes, early and late without exception—have made it clear that what is intended by the noble verse “Recite” is: “Pray whatever portion of the night prayer is easy for you,” for Allah, Mighty and Majestic, mentioned