religious innovation, he may be executed to protect people from his harm, just as one who engages in violent aggression may be executed, even when no actual unbelief is involved. Not everyone whose execution is ordered is executed for apostasy. Accordingly, the execution of Ghaylān al-Qadarī and others may have been on this basis. These questions are discussed at length elsewhere; here we have merely drawn attention to them.

Section

As for someone who cannot recite al-Fātihah correctly, only someone similarly unable may pray behind him. Thus, one must not pray behind someone whose speech impediment causes him to substitute one letter for another, except in the case of the letter dād when he pronounces it from the front of the mouth, as many people habitually do. There are two views on this:

Some hold that one may not pray behind him and that even his own prayer is invalid, because he has substituted one letter for another: dād is articulated at the side of the mouth, whereas zā’ is articulated at the tips of the teeth. Thus, if he says “wa lā al-zāllīn,” the meaning would derive from zalla: “he continued doing such-and-such.”

The second view is that the prayer is valid. This is the more persuasive view, because the two letters sound the same to the ear, and the auditory impression of one is akin to that of the other, owing to the similarity of their points of articulation. The reciter intends only going astray, the opposite of guidance, and that is what the listener understands. The meaning derived from zalla does not occur to anyone. This is unlike the case of two letters