When standing at ʿArafah, the best course is to strive earnestly in humble entreaty, supplication, and remembrance of Allah, rather than fast and thereby weaken oneself for these acts.

During the first ten days of Dhū al-Hijjah, the best course is to increase one’s worship, especially proclaiming Allah’s greatness, declaring that none has the right to be worshipped but Him, and praising Him. This is better than jihād that is not an individual obligation.

During the last ten days of Ramadan, the best course is to remain in the mosque, seek seclusion, and observe a devotional retreat, rather than engage in social interaction and occupy oneself with people’s affairs. Indeed, according to many scholars, this is even better than devoting oneself to teaching them religious knowledge and instructing them in Quran recitation.

When your Muslim brother falls ill or dies, the best course is to visit him during his illness, attend his funeral, and accompany his funeral procession, giving this precedence over your seclusion and collectedness of heart.

When calamities strike and people cause you harm, the best course is to fulfil the duty of patience while continuing to mix with them, rather than flee from them. For the believer who mixes with people in order to bear their harm patiently is better than one who does not mix with them and suffers no harm from them.

It is best to join them in good, for this is better than keeping apart from them in it, and to keep apart from them in evil, for this is better than joining them in it. If, however, one knows that by mixing with them one can eliminate or lessen the evil, then mixing with them is better than keeping apart.

Thus, the best course in every time and circumstance is to give precedence to whatever pleases Allah at that time and in those circumstances, and to occupy oneself with the duty, task, and demands of that moment. These are the people of unrestricted devotion, whereas the preceding categories are people whose devotion is confined to a particular form. Whenever one of the latter steps outside the form of worship to which he is attached and leaves it behind, he feels as though he has undone and abandoned his worship. He therefore worships Allah in only one way.

The person of unrestricted devotion, however, has no particular form of worship that he seeks to favour over all others. Rather, his aim is to pursue whatever pleases Allah Most High, wherever it may be found; his worship revolves around that. He continually moves through the stations of servitude to Allah: whenever a station is brought into view, he strives to advance towards it and occupies himself with it until another station comes into sight. Such is his constant practice in