people of wickedness and religious innovation. Allah Most High has never commanded anyone to repeat a prayer performed as He commanded, to the best of that person’s ability. Thus, the sounder of the two scholarly views is that anyone who prays to the best of their ability need not repeat the prayer. This includes someone who performs dry ablution for fear of the cold, someone who has neither water nor earth and prays as their circumstances allow, a prisoner, and those with exceptional or common, persistent or intermittent excuses. None of them is required to repeat a prayer initially performed to the best of their ability.

It is established in an authentic report that the Companions prayed without either water or dry ablution when Ā’ishah lost her necklace, and the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, did not command them to repeat their prayers. More striking still, he did not command those who had omitted prayer out of ignorance of its obligation to make it up. When Amr and Ammār entered a state of major ritual impurity, Amr did not pray, while Ammār rolled in the dust as an animal does; he did not command either of them to make up the prayer. Nor did he command Abū Dharr to make up his prayers when he would enter a state of major ritual impurity and refrain from praying. Likewise, when a woman suffered severe, abnormal uterine bleeding that prevented her from praying and fasting, he did not command her to make them up.

Nor did he command those who ate during Ramadan until they could distinguish a white cord from a black cord to make up their fasts. They had misunderstood the verse, thinking that the words of Allah Most High,

“Until the white thread of dawn becomes distinct to you from the black thread,”

referred to an actual cord. The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, therefore said:

“It means the blackness of night and the whiteness of day.”

He did not command them to make up their fasts. Nor did he command the man who prayed incorrectly to repeat his earlier prayers. And those who prayed towards Jerusalem in Mecca, Abyssinia, and elsewhere after that direction of prayer had been abrogated (by the command to pray towards the Kaaba, and continued praying towards the Rock until they learned of