for the servant until the divine address has reached him.

The second opinion is that he must make up what he missed in all circumstances, as some followers of al-Shāfiʿī and others maintain.

The third distinguishes between someone who embraced Islam in a territory of war and someone who embraced it elsewhere, as some followers of Abū Hanīfa maintain. The first opinion is the strongest.

Scholars have also disagreed concerning someone who deliberately missed prayer or fasting without an excuse: is making it up valid, or has the sin become established against him such that making it up will not be accepted? There are two well-known opinions, but this is not the place to discuss them.

The point here is simply that no Muslim scholar holds that prayer ceases to be obligatory for a person of sound mind, whatever his circumstances.

Thus, anyone who interprets the words of Allah Most High,

“And worship your Lord until certainty comes to you” (al-Hijr: 99),

as meaning that worship ceases to be obligatory once knowledge has been attained must be called upon to repent ن If he repents, well and good; otherwise, he is put to death.

The verse means: worship your Lord until you die. As al-Hasan al-Basrī said, “Allah has set no endpoint for the believer’s worship short of death,” and he recited the verse.

Certainty is what the deceased undergoes and thereby becomes certain of, as Allah Most High says of the people of Hell:

“And we used to deny the Day of Judgment * until certainty came to us” (al-Muddaththir: 46–47).

It is also reported in the authentic hadith collection that, when ʿUthmān ibn Mazʿūn died, the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “As for ʿUthmān, certainty has come to him from his Lord.”

The point here is that when these heretics, and those who share some aspect of their heresy, supposed that the perfection of the soul lay in knowledge alone, and thought that once this had been attained there was no