there has come to you from Allah a light and a clear Book.”

“Through it Allah guides those who seek His pleasure to the ways of peace.”

And He said:

“O you who believe, enter into Islam completely.”

This diversity may concern obligations in some cases and recommended acts in others. An example of the former is that some people are obliged to undertake jihad, others to pay zakat, and others to teach religious knowledge. This occurs in both individual and collective obligations.

Individual obligations include each man’s duty to establish the congregational and Friday prayers where he lives, together with the people of his locality; to pay the zakat due on the kind of wealth he possesses, distributing it to eligible recipients in the vicinity of his property; to face the Kaaba from his own location; and to make the pilgrimage to Allah’s House by the route available to him. He must also honour his parents, maintain his ties of kinship, and treat his neighbours, companions, slaves, and those under his authority well. These and similar duties vary in their particular objects, although the community shares the same general obligation. At other times, obligations vary according to ability and inability, as with the differing forms of prayer for residents and travellers, the healthy and the sick, and those in safety and those in fear.

Collective obligations vary in the same ways as individual obligations, but they also have a distinctive form of variation: they become individually binding upon someone when no one else fulfils them. Thus, an obligation may become individually binding at one time and place upon a particular person or group, and at another time or place upon a different person or group. This occurs, for example, in holding positions of authority, undertaking jihad, issuing fatwas, adjudicating disputes, and other such matters.