because in that age one might still justify it: even so, they would not finish the night prayer of Ramadan in ʿUmar’s day until dawn, as has already been noted. Despite this alleged “lightening,” their imam recited between twenty and thirty verses in a single rakʿah. Added to that, they kept the pillars—standing, bowing, prostration, and the intervals between them—proportionate, lengthening each posture so that one was nearly as long as the next, and filling them with plentiful glorification, praise, supplication, and remembrance, exactly as the Sunnah prescribes.

Today, by contrast, none of that long recitation remains for anyone to shorten and then make up for by increasing the rakʿahs. Most mosque imams—as is plain to see—already abbreviate the recitation in this prayer so drastically that, were they asked to shorten it further, they would find no way except to omit all recitation after the Fātiḥah, or, at best, to content themselves with a verse as brief as “mudhammatan.” I have even heard that some of them have actually done so. As for the very Fātiḥah they recite, they strip it of its sweetness and resonance through the speed with which they rattle it off, to the point that many of them reach its end… ⦗71⦘