I say: The correct view is that covering the ʿawrah is obligatory but not a condition for the prayer’s validity. Declaring something a condition requires evidence over and above a simple command, and we have found no proof for those who claim conditionality—save what al-Nawawī cites when he says:

“Our evidence is the established obligation to cover, based on the ḥadīth of ʿĀʾishah: ‘Allah does not accept the prayer of a menstruating woman unless she is wearing a khimār,’ and so on.” He adds: “There is, by consensus, no difference between men and women.”

Yet, as you can see, this ḥadīth concerns women alone. Al-Nawawī then extends its ruling to men by analogy—an analogy that is invalid, for the potential fitnah arising from a woman’s exposure is patently unlike that of a man’s, as is obvious.

Al-Shawkānī stated the matter excellently in Nayl al-Awṭār. After recounting the evidence the majority cite to prove conditionality from the preceding aḥādīth, he writes:

“These proofs, at best, establish obligation. As for conditionality—where the absence of covering would nullify the prayer—they cannot serve as evidence for it, because a condition is a legal, operative ruling that cannot be proven by commands alone. One might try to argue conditionality from the ḥadīth under discussion (i.e., the ḥadīth of ʿĀʾishah), yet that reasoning is not free of impurities. First, we say: we deny that the negation of ‘acceptance’ necessarily establishes conditionality, for acceptance has been negated for the prayer of the runaway slave, the one whose belly contains wine, and the person who consults a soothsayer, while the validity of their prayer remains unanimously acknowledged.”