Nor is there anything in Ahmad’s words to support this. It is difficult, if not impossible, and is an innovation with no basis in Islamic law. The inner surfaces of the fingers can scarcely cover the whole face. They only resorted to this in order to reserve some dust for the backs of the hands after wiping the face.

They may be answered as follows:

Just as the palms need not be wiped after the face—a point on which there is no disagreement—the same applies to the backs of the hands. For even if they wipe the backs of the hands with the palms, using the inner surfaces of the fingers, the palms are wiped along with the face; wiping with the hands comes before wiping the face, as Ibn ‘Aqīl said.

For this reason, al-Majd preferred the view that observing the prescribed order is not obligatory in tayammum. Rather, the backs of the hands may be wiped before the face, as the authentic hadith indicates. The authentic hadith also indicates that the face and the backs of the hands are wiped with that same dust, and that wiping the backs of the hands with whatever dust remains on the hands suffices.

All the wordings of the hadith describe wiping the face with the hands and wiping one hand with the other. He did not reserve part of the inner surface of the hand for the face and another part for the hands. Rather, he used the inner surfaces of both hands to wipe his face and his hands, wiping one hand with the other.

Al-Qādī and those who agreed with him, following the jurists of al-Shāfi‘ī’s school, answered that when someone performs tayammum because of a wound on a limb, he must perform it at the point when that limb would have to be washed. He thus interrupts the stages of ablution with tayammum. This is an innovated practice involving immense harm and hardship that is not