and second: his—peace and blessings be upon him—prohibition of the act, and a prohibition, as a rule, signifies that it is unlawful. Al-Ḥāfiẓ al-ʿIrāqī says in his commentary on al-Taqrīb:

“This ban on a worshiper spitting in front of him or to his right—does it amount to outright unlawfulness (taḥrīm) or merely to discouraged behavior (karāha tanzīhiyya)? Al-Qurṭubī replied that the Prophet’s, peace be upon him, turning toward the people in anger proves the unlawfulness of spitting on the qiblah wall and that the sin is expiated by burying the phlegm or scraping it away, just as he said in general about the entire mosque: ‘Spitting in the mosque is a sin, and its expiation is to bury it.’ I add: another proof that spitting toward the qiblah is unlawful is the report transmitted by Abū Dāwūd with a sound chain from al-Sāʾib ibn Khallād, in which a man led the congregation and spat toward the qiblah. The forthcoming hadith states that the Prophet—peace be upon him—said to him, ‘You have offended Allah and His Messenger.’ A number of Shāfiʿī scholars—among them al-Muḥāmilī, Salīm al-Rāzī, al-Rūyānī, Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Jurjānī, and the author of al-Bayān—spoke unrestrictedly of spitting in the mosque as merely disliked, whereas al-Nawawī, in Sharḥ al-Muhadhdhab, ruled categorically that it is forbidden, apparently relying on the wording in the sound hadith that labels it ‘a sin.’”

The ḥadith master [Ibn Ḥajar] said:

“This reasoning—namely, his statement, ‘for Allah is before him’—shows that spitting toward the qiblah is forbidden whether one is inside the mosque or elsewhere, and even more so while praying. Hence the debate over whether spitting in the mosque is merely discouraged or strictly prohibited does not apply here.”

He then cited the hadith of al-Sāʾib and the hadith of Ḥudhayfa, both of which will be mentioned shortly:

“A man led a group in prayer and spat toward the qiblah while the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, was watching, whereupon the Messenger …”