when one is unable to fulfil it, like other conditions. If a person could circumambulate only while naked, doing so would be less objectionable than praying naked. Yet praying in that state is obligatory by consensus; all the more, then, must he circumambulate naked if that is his only option. Scholars have discussed this little only because it is rare: hardly anyone in Mecca is unable to obtain something with which to cover himself during circumambulation. But suppose that someone were stripped of his clothes and his caravan were departing, and he could not remain behind. He would then be obliged to perform whatever circumambulation he could while naked, just as a woman experiencing non-menstrual bleeding and someone with urinary incontinence perform circumambulation, even though the prohibition against circumambulating naked is clearer and better known in the Quran and Sunnah than the prohibition against a menstruating woman circumambulating.

What I have stated follows from the explicitly stated general principles that encompass this case in both wording and meaning. It also follows from reasoning and analogy with comparable established principles. Anyone opposing this has merely found no statement by the recognized scholarly authorities concerning this particular situation, just as he has found no statement by them concerning someone who can circumambulate only while naked. Situations that did not arise in their times need not necessarily have occurred to them such that they would have been obliged to discuss them. These two situations either never arose in their times or arose only very rarely.

Their statements on this subject are unqualified and general. That would imply general applicability were the particular case not distinguished by considerations requiring it to be treated differently and separately. This particular case may not have been in mind when such general wording was used by one of