the unlawful, like a shepherd grazing his flock around a protected pasture who is liable to enter it.” This is recorded in the two Sahīh collections.

In the Sunan collections are his sayings:

“Leave what makes you doubt for what does not make you doubt.”

“Righteousness is that with which the soul is at ease and the heart is tranquil.”

In one narration in Sahīh Muslim, he says:

“Righteousness is good character, and sin is what troubles your conscience, even if people give you their rulings.”

“He saw a date on his bed and said: ‘Were it not that I fear it might be a date given in charity, I would have eaten it.’”

As for obligatory acts… (1)

However, errors concerning scrupulousness arise in three ways.

The first is that many people believe it consists in abstention. They therefore see scrupulousness only in avoiding the unlawful, not in fulfilling obligations. This afflicts many religiously observant and scrupulous people. You may see someone scrupulously avoiding a lie or a dirham of doubtful provenance because it comes from a wrongdoer’s wealth or an invalid transaction. He also scrupulously avoids inclining towards wrongdoers on account of religious innovations, and towards those given to immorality in worldly affairs.

Yet he neglects duties incumbent upon him, whether individual obligations or collective obligations that have become his personal responsibility: maintaining ties of kinship; fulfilling the rights of neighbours, the needy, companions, orphans and travellers; and fulfilling the rights of Muslims, those in authority and people of knowledge. He also neglects enjoining right