is poor may take a reasonable amount.”

These teachers may be paid from the Muslims’ public funds for teaching, just as imams, muezzins, and judges are paid. This is permissible when there is need. Whether one may receive such a stipend while financially self-sufficient is a matter on which the scholars hold two views. No Muslim has ever said that performing these duties without payment is impermissible.

Anyone who says that it is impermissible must be called upon to repent; if he does not repent, he is to be put to death. However, he may mean that he is poor and that teaching without payment would prevent him from earning a living for his dependants. Providing for his dependants is an individual obligation upon him, and he may not abandon an individual obligation for something that is not individually obligatory. If this is what he means, and he also believes that teaching for payment is permissible either when there is need or without qualification, then his statement rests on an interpretation. By agreement of the imams, he is neither deemed an unbeliever nor a transgressor on that account; rather, he is either correct or mistaken.

The reasoning of the scholars who prohibit hiring someone to provide this service is that these duties—teaching the Quran, hadith, and jurisprudence, leading prayers, and giving the call to prayer—may only be performed by someone qualified to perform acts of devotion. An unbeliever may not perform them; only a Muslim may do so. This differs from services that both Muslims and unbelievers can perform, such as building, sewing, weaving, and similar work. When an act is performed for payment, it ceases to be worship of Allah, for it becomes something owed in exchange for compensation and is performed for the sake of that compensation. When an act is performed for compensation, it is no longer