“for there is no prayer for one who does not recite it.” In other words, since the standing of the Fatiha is such that no prayer is valid without it, its exclusion from the prohibition is perfectly sound. The so-called pronoun of emphasis in the phrase “for there is no prayer …” is best understood in this very sense. So concludes the above-mentioned investigator. His analysis is so precise that, after this clarification, no one can plausibly cite the report as proof of an obligation. The same correct insight was noted by the scholar al-Sindi, who wrote: “The outward import of this narration is that reciting the Fatiha is permissible even when the imam is reciting aloud. Those who forbid it perhaps argue that, where prohibition and permission clash, prohibition prevails. Yet it is obvious that in the silent portions there is no clash, so the ban is not evident there. For that reason Muhammad [ibn al-Hasan al-Shaybani], some of the other jurists, and others inclined toward reciting the Fatiha during the silent parts, and ‘Ali al-Qari preferred this view in his Commentary on the Muwatta of Muhammad, judging it the safer course.” Since, then, the hadith points not to obligation but only to permissibility—and even to a non-preferred form of permissibility—it follows that the hadith of ‘Ubadah, their second and final proof for obligation, does not apply to the congregant; it concerns only the imam and the solitary worshipper. The congregant was explicitly exempted from the duty of reciting the Fatiha, though allowed to do so as a concession. The remaining question is whether that concession endured or was later withdrawn. In our view it was indeed withdrawn, as will be shown by the next hadith in this book. Admittedly, we possess no explicit text establishing that the forthcoming report is chronologically later than the one under discussion, yet sound reasoning and the weightier opinion demand it; for it is inconceivable that the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—should first forbid the Companions to recite behind him, only for them thereafter to disregard him by reciting the Fatiha and other passages. Such behaviour is utterly remote from the Companions, who recited the verse, “So let those who oppose his command beware, lest a trial befall them or a painful punishment” (24:63).