—especially when the place itself is superior; no act of altruistic yielding is to be accepted.

Ibn al-Qayyim, however, held that it is not disliked. He cited the fact that Abu Bakr asked al-Mughīrah to bring the Prophet ﷺ the glad tidings of the Thaqīf delegation’s embracing Islam, and that ʿĀʾishah yielded to ʿUmar by allowing him to be buried in her house beside the Prophet ﷺ. Accordingly, if a man asks another to give up his spot in the first row, neither the request nor the yielding is blameworthy.

Benefit Two: Shaykh Taqī al-Dīn said: What many people do—sending mats and the like to the mosque on Friday before they themselves arrive—is forbidden; indeed, it is unlawful by unanimous agreement of the Muslims. As for the validity of the prayer performed on such a mat, scholars have two opinions, for the person has usurped a portion of the mosque.

Benefit Three: The hadith points to an important issue over which two deviant sects have split, whereas Allah has guided the saved group, Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamāʿah, to the truth.

The first sect is the Qadariyyah, the deniers of qadar (divine decree). They negate Allah’s all-encompassing creation, will, and volition, claiming that affirming these attributes for Allah nullifies human responsibility and cancels the obligations assigned to people. They restrict the texts that affirm universal creation and will to everything except human actions, and they assert that the servant creates his own deeds by his own power and will. In effect, they posit two creators, which is why they have been called “the Magians of this community,” for the Magians say that Satan creates evil while Allah creates good.

The second sect is the Jabariyyah, who go to extremes in affirming qadar until they deny that the servant performs any act in reality. Actions are, in their view, ascribed to a person only figuratively: it is said, “He prayed, fasted, committed fornication, or stole,” purely by metaphor, not in fact. To them, a human being is like a feather blown about by the wind.

They claim that this is the true affirmation that no one decrees in reality but Allah alone, and that human actions are attributed to people only as a figure of speech.