The views on this issue come to seven in all, because those who regard the wording as ambiguous divide into two schools.

1. The first maintains that the apparent sense of the negation is to deny the very act itself in tangible reality, even though that act is, in fact, performed. Consequently one must presume an unspoken ruling—either invalidity or mere imperfection. Neither of the two enjoys any priority over the other, and both cannot be presumed together, for an implied ellipsis cannot encompass more than one meaning.

2. The second school holds that the phrase evidently targets the legal reality, yet it wavers between denying perfection and denying validity, as noted earlier. This is the position transmitted by al-Māwardī from the leading investigators.

As for the majority of jurists and theologians, they do not find any ambiguity here; nevertheless, they themselves split into five opinions.

The first of these five is that the wording is to be carried exclusively upon the negation of perfection. This is the apparent sense of Aḥmad’s statement in the earlier report narrated by Ḥarb (1). The justification is that the expression has been used at times to deny validity and at other times to deny perfection, as in his saying: la salāta li-jāri al-masjid illā fī al-masjid (there is no prayer for the neighbor of the mosque except in the mosque) and his saying: la salāta li-multafit (there is no prayer for one who turns his head), and similar reports. Were the phrase taken as literal for both senses, or literal for just one of them, we would be driven either to figurative interpretation or to positing homonymy; hence it is treated as literal only with respect to the meaning common to both cases—that is, the negation of perfection.