he would have burned down the houses upon their occupants. But those houses contained women and children, for whom neither Friday prayer nor congregational prayer is obligatory, so punishing them is impermissible. Likewise, a pregnant woman is not stoned until she gives birth, because killing the unborn child is impermissible, as in the hadith of the woman of Ghāmid.

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No formal opening or closing is prescribed for prostration upon Quran recitation.

This is the established Sunnah of the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace), the practice of the majority of the early generations, and the position explicitly transmitted from the renowned imams. Accordingly, this prostration is not a prayer, so the conditions required for prayer do not apply to it. Rather, it may be performed without ritual purity, as Ibn ʿUmar used to do. Nevertheless, performing it while fulfilling the conditions required for prayer is preferable, and one should not neglect those conditions without an excuse. Prostrating without ritual purity is better than omitting the prostration.

However, it may be argued that prostration is not obligatory in this state, just as it is not obligatory for someone who hears the recitation, or for someone whose reciter does not prostrate, although the majority of scholars permit prostration in the latter case. Similarly, there is unanimous agreement that someone following an imam in prayer must prostrate in accordance with his imam, even among those who say that prostration is not obligatory otherwise. Some have interpreted Zayd’s hadith as indicating that