- Al-muḥarram (prohibited), also called al-maḥẓūr: committing it incurs punishment, whereas refraining from it in obedience earns reward.
- Al-makrūh (reprehensible): refraining from it in obedience earns reward, while committing it does not incur punishment.
- Al-mubāḥ (permissible): doing it does not incur punishment, nor does leaving it earn reward; the two sides are equal.
This is the basic status of that which is permissible. However, if one performs it with a righteous intention, it falls under the commanded acts, and if he performs it with an evil intention, it falls under the prohibited acts.
Stipulative rulings (al-aḥkām al-waḍʿiyyah)
These are the Lawgiver’s pronouncements that make something a cause, a condition, or an impediment, and they also include validity and invalidity.
• Cause (sabab): designating something as a sign that the legal demand has now attached to the responsibility of the accountable individual, as in the Almighty’s words, “Establish the prayer at the decline of the sun” (17:78); the decline of the sun is made the sign that the command to pray is now directed to the person.
• Condition (sharṭ): that whose absence entails the absence of the ruling. Thus, if ritual purity is missing, the effect that depends on it—namely, the validity of the prayer—is also missing; its presence, however, does not in itself necessitate the presence or absence of the ruling.
• Impediment (māniʿ): that whose presence entails the absence of the ruling, the opposite of a condition—for example, unlawful killing, which prevents an heir from inheriting when he has killed the one from whom he would normally inherit, even though the cause of inheritance is present.
• Validity (ṣihḥah): that upon which the intended effect of an act is realized, whether the act is an act of worship or a contract. An act of worship clears the liability and discharges the obligation; a contract is valid when its effects—such as the transfer of ownership—take effect.
No act of worship or contract is deemed valid unless its conditions are fulfilled and its impediments are absent.
Shaykh ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Saʿdī said: “This is a major principle and a great maxim. Whoever masters it attains immense benefit and is spared much confusion and ambiguity. Its meaning is that rulings are not complete until their conditions are fulfilled and their impediments removed. If the conditions are missing or an impediment exists, the ruling does not apply; thus prayer, zakat, …"