the five daily prayers erase the sins committed between Fajr and Ẓuhr, between Ẓuhr and ʿAṣr, between ʿAṣr and Maghrib, between Maghrib and ʿIshāʾ, and between ʿIshāʾ and the next Fajr. Each prayer expiates whatever sins have occurred in the interval before it. Therefore, if a person commits a misdeed yet performs these five prayers properly, they wipe away those sins. The Prophet ﷺ, however, conditioned this with the words: “provided the major sins are avoided,” that is, provided the gravest transgressions are left alone.

Major sins are every offense for which the Lawgiver has set a specific punishment. Thus, any act whose doer the Prophet ﷺ cursed counts as a major sin; likewise, anything that carries a prescribed legal penalty in this world—such as fornication—or a threat of punishment in the Hereafter—such as consuming usury; or anything that negates faith, as in his ﷺ saying, “None of you believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself”; or any deed from which he disassociated himself, as in, “Whoever cheats us is not one of us.” All such matters fall under the category of major sins.

The scholars—may Allah have mercy on them—differed over the Prophet’s words “provided the major sins are avoided.” Does the ḥadīth mean that minor sins are only expiated if one refrains from major sins, making the erasure of minor sins contingent upon two conditions: performing the five daily prayers and avoiding the major sins? Or does it mean that these acts serve as expiation for everything between them except the major sins, which are not erased, so that the wiping away of minor sins rests on a single condition: the observance of the five prayers, or Friday to Friday, or Ramadan to Ramadan? The latter is the reading that first comes to mind—and Allah