Arba'un 22 — if I pray the prescribed prayers

الأربعون 22 — أرأيت إذا صليت المكتوبات

The hadith of Jabir ibn Abdullah that a man asked the Messenger of God 'if I pray the prescribed prayers, fast Ramadan, treat the lawful as lawful and the unlawful as unlawful, and add nothing to that, shall I enter Paradise?' and he answered 'yes' — the twenty-second of al-Nawawi's Forty and of Ibn Rajab's commentary; transmitted by Muslim alone through Abu al-Zubayr from Jabir with the addition 'by God I shall add nothing to that', and through al-A'mash from Abu Salih and Abu Sufyan from Jabir in which the questioner is named as al-Nu'man ibn Qawqal; Ibn Rajab records two readings of 'treating lawful and unlawful as such': holding the belief that the lawful is lawful and the unlawful forbidden while avoiding it — transmitted from a group including Shaykh Abu Amr ibn al-Salah — and, plausibly, practising the lawful in the broad sense of whatever is not forbidden, covering obligation, recommendation and permission while not transgressing what is allowed and shunning the forbidden, which is the reading Ibn Rajab adopts, 'acting upon the lawful and avoiding the unlawful as stated in this hadith'; he reports from Ibn Masud and Ibn Abbas on 'they recite it as it should be recited' (al-Baqara 121) that 'they treat its lawful as lawful and its unlawful as unlawful', on the verse of the nasi' (al-Tawba 37) that the unbelievers fought in the sacred month one year and so rendered it lawful by practice, on al-Ma'ida 87–88 that it descended about people who forbade wholesome things to themselves in asceticism — by oath, self-prohibition or mere abstention — all termed 'forbidding', and on the proverb 'so-and-so neither permits nor forbids' for one who does not refrain from the forbidden nor stop at what is allowed; the hadith shows that whoever performs the obligations and refrains from the forbidden enters Paradise, a meaning mass-transmitted in such reports as the Abu Hurayra–Abu Sa'id hadith in al-Nasa'i, Ibn Hibban and al-Hakim — 'no servant prays the five prayers, fasts Ramadan, pays the zakat and avoids the seven enormities without the gates of Paradise being opened for him' — followed by 'if you avoid the enormities of what you are forbidden We shall acquit you of your evil deeds' (al-Nisa 31) (Jami' al-Ulum wal-Hikam pp. 477–488).