and this is why he said, “Except that Allah has permitted you to speak during it.” It is well known that eating and drinking are also permitted during circumambulation. Eating, drinking, and excessive movement are prohibited acts that invalidate prayer, yet none of them invalidates circumambulation. At most, they are disliked during it when done without need, just as fidgeting is disliked during prayer. If someone interrupts circumambulation for an obligatory prayer or a funeral prayer that is commencing, he may resume his circumambulation from where he stopped.

Prayer, however, is not interrupted for such things. Thus, the prohibitions of prayer do not apply to circumambulation, nor do its obligatory acts, such as the formal acts of concluding and commencing prayer. How, then, can it be said that circumambulation is like prayer in what it requires and what it prohibits? Whoever holds that minor ritual purification is obligatory for circumambulation must provide evidence from the revealed law, and I know of none that makes it obligatory.

Upon further reflection, it became clear to me that purification from ritual impurity is neither a condition for circumambulation nor obligatory for it, without doubt. Minor ritual purification is, however, recommended for it. The evidence of the revealed law indicates only that it is not obligatory, and nothing in the revealed law establishes that minor ritual purification is obligatory for circumambulation.

Accordingly, we do not concede that circumambulation, as a category of worship, is superior to Quran recitation as a category. Rather, recitation is superior: it is the finest of the words spoken in prayer, while prostration is the finest of its physical acts. Circumambulation, by contrast, contains no obligatory remembrance of Allah.

If it is said, “Some circumambulation has been made obligatory,” the response is: “Recitation has been made obligatory in every prayer; no prayer is valid without recitation. How, then, can circumambulation be compared