to observe stillness when he stood for prayer, just as he commanded him to bow and prostrate. His unqualified command entails obligation. He also told him:

“For you have not prayed.”

He thus denied that the man’s first performance constituted prayer. An act can only be denied when one of its obligatory elements is missing. If, however, it is performed as Allah, the Mighty and Majestic, has required, it cannot rightly be denied merely because some recommended, non-obligatory element is missing.

As for the claim some people make that this is a denial of completeness, as in his saying:

“There is no prayer for one who lives near the mosque except in the mosque,”

the response is: Yes, it denies completeness, but does it deny completeness with respect to the obligatory elements or the recommended elements? The former is correct. The latter, however, is false: nothing of this kind ever occurs in the words of Allah, the Mighty and Majestic, or in the words of His Messenger, nor is it true. For if all the obligatory elements of an act are complete, how can the act rightly be denied? Moreover, if that were permissible, it would be permissible to deny the prayer of most people of earlier and later generations, since fulfilling every recommended element is exceedingly rare.

Accordingly, whenever acts are denied in the Quran and Sunnah, this is only because some of their obligatory elements are missing. An example is the saying of the Most High:

“But no, by your Lord, they will not believe until