more beneficial.

This is like someone who benefits from supplication rather than remembrance, or from remembrance rather than Quran recitation, or from recitation rather than voluntary prayer. Worship from which he benefits—with an attentive heart, eagerness, and love—is better than worship he performs heedlessly and without desire. Likewise, food that a person craves when hungry benefits him more than food he does not crave or eats when he is not hungry.

The same may be said here: consistently practising the less preferable form may benefit him more because he loves it, his heart is attentive, and he understands that remembrance. When we say that varying these forms of remembrance is better, we are likewise giving preference to variation as a general practice. What is less preferable may benefit some people more because it suits them, just as its category may be superior under Islamic law in certain places, times, and circumstances. Thus, what is generally less preferable may sometimes be superior without qualification for everyone, as explained earlier. It may also be superior for certain people because they benefit from it more fully. This is the condition of most people: because the less preferable practice suits their imperfect states, they may derive benefit from it that they do not derive from the superior practice, whose demands they are unable to meet.

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The same applies to the “prayer in times of fear”: one may pray it in one form on one occasion and another form on another occasion, as when following someone who has memorized one form and omitted another. A particular form may also be