Each cause entails its own form of shortening: travel entails reducing the number of rak‘ahs, while fear entails abridging the prayer’s essential elements.

It would also be a sound interpretation to say that the shortening made conditional here concerns the prayer’s essential elements, since the traveller’s prayer consists of two rak‘ahs, complete rather than shortened. Hence Allah says:

“But when you are secure, establish the prayer.”

This makes clear that shortening prayers cannot be placed on the same footing as combining them. Shortening is the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and the practice he prescribed for his community. Indeed, offering four rak‘ahs while travelling has an even weaker basis than combining prayers while travelling.

It is established that he sometimes combined prayers while travelling, whereas he was never reported to have offered four rak‘ahs during travel. The imams disagree about both practices: they disagree over the permissibility of offering four rak‘ahs and over the permissibility of combining prayers, while agreeing that shortening prayers and offering each prayer separately are permissible. Thus, neither disputed practice should be equated with the Sunnah established through mass transmission, which the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, consistently observed during his travels and upon which the community has agreed. [One should therefore not adopt] (1) the view that what he did on several occasions during his travels [is unanimously agreed upon] (2), when the community has disputed it.

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As for prayer times, the governing principle is that, in the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah, they are of two kinds: a time of choice and ease, and a time of need and necessity.