roosters crowing and donkeys braying, and on similar occasions. In these circumstances, such remembrances are better than reciting the Quran.

Moreover, most spiritual seekers do not understand the Quran when they recite it. They have not yet tasted the sweetness of faith through which the Quran increases their faith. When they devote themselves to remembrance, it grants them a measure of faith whose sweetness and delight they experience. Remembrance is therefore more beneficial to them at that point than recitation they do not understand, when they do not yet possess the faith that would grow through reciting the Quran. But once a person has been granted faith, the Quran increases his faith in a way that remembrance alone cannot. This, then, is “a third principle.”

“A fourth principle” is that a person may perform a deed of greater merit without fulfilling its conditions or being sincere in it. By neglecting its conditions, he falls below someone who performs a deed of lesser merit in full.

These principles and others like them make clear the answer to this questioner, although this sheet cannot accommodate a detailed explanation. And Allah knows best.