Covering the 'awrah in prayer: Is it a condition or an obligation? And what is the ruling on a woman praying without a head covering or with her feet exposed?

The questioner : A brother asks, saying: "Covering the 'awrah in prayer is an obligation, not a condition. How accurate is this statement? And based on this, the prayer of one who prays in trousers is considered valid."

The Shaykh : In reality, regarding the conditionality of the 'awrah in prayer, covering the 'awrah in prayer is agreed upon by the four Imams and others. There is no explicit evidence that satisfies every seeker of knowledge, and therefore such a question arises from thisThe questioner : But it is a contemplation of one hadith that perhaps opened for him the door to conviction regarding the conditionality he denied, and from that, the validity of the prayer of one who prays with his 'awrah exposed, especially if it is a woman. I mean by that his saying (peace and blessings be upon him): , So what does thisThe questioner : want from this hadith more than the denial of the acceptance of the prayer of a woman who prays without a head covering, exposing her head, unless he is a Zahiri who has no scope or wide horizon in jurisprudence. So I say that the one who prays with her head exposed, her prayer is not accepted. But if she prays, for example, with her front and back exposed, her prayer is accepted, if jurisprudence has reached such an understanding. It is undoubtedly something we do not congratulate him for, just as we do not congratulate one who sings about his literalism when he said in interpreting the hadith of Abu Hurayrah: That old Zahiri said, "If one urinates in a vessel and pours the urine from the vessel into stagnant water, it is permissible." This is what they say. What does the hadith say: . A small pond here has no flowing water, so it is not permissible by consensus to urinate in this stagnant water. But some of the Zahiris deviated and said: If one urinates in an empty vessel and then pours this urine from the vessel into stagnant water, it is permissible. What did he observe... in terms of Arabic expression, this one who urinated in the empty vessel and filled it with urine, it is not true that he urinated in stagnant water in reality from an Arabic perspective. This is said: he urinated in the empty vessel.
But the point of the matter is that that Zahiri said, as long as he did not urinate directly in the stagnant water, but rather urinated in an empty vessel, then if he pours this urine from the empty vessel into the stagnant water, it is permissible. This is strange because everyone understands that the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), when he prohibited urinating in stagnant water, first intended to preserve either the purity of the water or at least the cleanliness of the water, because it may not become ritually impure; the water may be abundant, for example, so this urine does not make it impure no matter how much it is, but it is at least contaminated. So when the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) prohibited urinating in stagnant water, he intended at least to preserve the cleanliness of the water, apart from its impurity or the preservation of its purity. This or that is achieved even by that means that that person imagined. And the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), when he prohibited urinating in stagnant water, addressed a natural matter, not a fictional one, because this second example, where one urinates in an empty vessel and then pours it into stagnant water, means it is more fictional than realistic. He imagined this image, but in the Levantine expression: what animal engages in this image? It comes to the empty vessel, fills it with urine, and then pours it into the stagnant water. This is a purely fictional image; he imagined it to display his Zahiri philosophy. He says: The first matter is not permissible, and the second matter is permissible. Why? Because the Messenger prohibited urinating in stagnant water, and this one did not urinate in stagnant water. We say linguistically he did not urinate in stagnant water, but jurisprudentially there is no difference between it and the first, so the result is the same. Just as the common person says: "All roads lead to the mill." And as I have imagined more than once, a man, sir, did not urinate in the empty vessel; there is a long pipe, possibly at the top of a mountain. He urinates in this pipe, and the urine flows into the stagnant water. We would say, is there a difference between urinating directly or through this pipe? This is rigidity. Similarly, we want to say if the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) said: that this is evidence that it is not permissible for a woman to pray unless she is covering her 'awrah, because her head is part of the 'awrah. But there is a greater 'awrah and... than that. If she prays and her thigh is exposed, for example, this is more problematic and more invalidating of her prayer. And therefore, this one hadith is sufficient as evidence for the rigidity that covering the 'awrah.