Just as voluntary prayer—whether offered individually or in congregation—is lawful so long as no group turns it into a fixed, recurring assembly that begins to resemble the prescribed Friday prayer, the two ‘Eid prayers, or the five daily prayers, the same principle applies to voluntary Qur’an recitation, remembrance, supplication, and even travelling to certain venues for worship. All of these constitute a single category: we distinguish between what is frequent and conspicuous and what is occasional and unobtrusive, between what has become habitual and what has not. The very places where such worship is, in principle, permissible share this ruling. Innovation arises only when a practice is made a constant habit, until it is treated as though obligatory. At that point further legal questions follow—whether the act is deemed recommended or disliked, what effect a vow to perform it has, or whether it may be stipulated in a charitable endowment or a last will—for a vow is binding only in matters that count as devotion, and any act laid down as a condition in an endowment must, according to the prevailing view of our school and of the majority of scholars, be an act of righteousness and recognized good. We shall allude to this further, God willing.

These issues merit a fuller discussion than the present space allows; my purpose here is merely to draw attention to the newly invented “seasons.” As for practices performed during those seasons whose very type is already forbidden by the Sacred Law, they need no elaboration—such as raising voices in the mosques, the mixing of men and women, lighting an excessive number of lamps beyond what is required, or harming worshippers or others by word or deed. The ugliness of such conduct is evident to every Muslim. It falls under the broader heading of all other prohibited words and deeds in mosques: matters that are unlawful both inside and outside the mosque, like indecencies and foul language, and matters from which the mosque must be kept free, such as buying and selling, announcing lost property, administering legal punishments, and the like.