and strive to spread corruption throughout the land.” And He said of Pharaoh:

“Then he turned away, striving.”

ʿUmar ibn al-Khattāb recited: “Proceed to the remembrance of Allah.” Thus, the striving commanded for Friday prayer means proceeding and going to it.

The word “striving” is originally a generic term. In customary usage, when a term encompasses two categories, people often give one category a distinct name, leaving the general term exclusively for the other. For example, “blood relatives” encompasses all relatives: those who inherit prescribed shares, those who inherit as residuary heirs, and those entitled to neither. Once those entitled to prescribed shares and residuary heirs were distinguished by their own names, “blood relatives,” in the customary terminology of jurists, came to refer exclusively to those entitled to neither.

Likewise, the term jā’iz (“permissible”) encompasses acts and contracts that are obligatory or binding, as well as those that are not. Once certain acts were designated obligatory and certain contracts binding, the term jā’iz, in their customary usage, became restricted to the other category.

Similarly, the term khamr (“wine”) is a general designation for every kind of drink. But once drinks made from things other than grapes were given the distinct name nabīdh, khamr came, in customary usage, to refer exclusively to grape juice. Some scholars consequently thought that the term khamr in the Quran and Sunnah referred exclusively to that. Yet hadiths transmitted from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, through so many independent chains as to establish certainty demonstrate its general scope. There are many similar examples.