terms of intelligible things, as claimed by heretical esotericists such as Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī and others like him. For this reason, they do not regard observance of the revealed laws as obligatory for anyone who has attained true knowledge. They say that such observance was not obligatory for the prophets either; rather, the prophets practised it because this completed their conveyance of the message to the nations, so that people would follow their example—not because it was obligatory for the prophets themselves. Likewise, in their view, it is not obligatory for those members of the community and scholars who have attained full realization.

A group of misguided Sufis adopted this view, supposing that the ultimate purpose of acts of worship is to attain knowledge, and that once knowledge is attained, acts of worship are no longer obligatory. Some of them may cite His saying:

“And worship your Lord until certainty comes to you.”
Al-Hijr 99

They claim that certainty means knowledge. This is mistaken according to the consensus of Muslims, including scholars of Quranic interpretation and others. Muslims agree that the obligation to perform acts of worship, such as the five daily prayers, and to refrain from prohibited acts, such as indecencies and injustices, remains binding upon everyone so long as their reason remains intact, regardless of how far they have advanced. The prayers never cease to be obligatory for anyone except a menstruating woman, a woman experiencing postnatal bleeding, or someone who has lost the use of reason.

Nevertheless, anyone who loses awareness through sleep must make up the prayers, according to the widely transmitted and accepted Sunnah and the agreement of the scholars. As for someone who loses awareness through fainting or a similar excusable condition, there is a well-known disagreement: some, such as Ahmad, require the prayers to be made up in all cases; others, such as al-Shāfiʿī, do not require this; while others require making up those that