Thirty-Two Faraid, and the Nikāḥ a Scholar Will Not Perform

As already set out, one such ʿālim was Imam al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, a tābiʿī who had seen a great many of the Companions in his own lifetime, and it is he who compiled the list of fifty-four farāʾiḍ that the ʿulamāʾ have used as a teaching tool across the centuries, generation after generation. Some scholars, teaching the most basic Muslim — someone at the very rock bottom of practice, with no real momentum in their religious life at all — draw a smaller set of thirty-two from within the fifty-four, covering wuḍūʾ, ghusl, tayammum, īmān, Islām, and ṣalāh: six in īmān, five in Islām, four in wuḍūʾ, three in tayammum, and twelve in ṣalāh — the conditions, pillars and essentials, shurūṭ and arkān, of each. So particular were the scholars about this thirty-two that, when an imam is about to conduct a nikāḥ, a marriage, between two people, he will ask them: do you know the thirty-two farāʾiḍ? It is as basic a question as asking a high-school student whether they can read and write. A couple intending to marry who cannot answer it is told plainly by the imam that he cannot perform their nikāḥ — that it would not be valid — and sent away to learn these foundational arkān first.

The obligations already treated in the parts before this need no repeating in full here: the oneness of God; clothing that is lawful to wear; the purification of wuḍūʾ; the five daily prayers, farḍ ʿayn upon every Muslim from puberty onward, together with ghusl; and trust in Allah's (swt) own promise of provision — a promise, in his words, given "billions of years" before a person was even born, as certain as the birds that leave their nests each morning, range and feed all day without any anxiety, and return each evening to rest with full stomachs, never once complaining that the day's provision fell short. Allah (swt) closes one door only to open another, since He is the One who has guaranteed the provision in the first place.