Is continuity in ablution obligatory, and if the answer is no, what is the answer regarding the hadith of the man with the wet spot?

The questioner : However, one of our brothers sent you a message and tasked us with presenting these questions he wrote to you. They are scholarly questions, and perhaps you have already answered some of them, but this brother, our brother Saud al-Maliki, one of our brothers in Jeddah, sent this message and requested that we present these questions to your ears, so that Allah (Mighty and Majestic) may open for you what satisfies the thirst and brings the distant near, and averts from the hearts of those who wish evil for this Ummah, who answer without any basis of truth, relying or not relying on a book or a Sunnah. Our brother says: “Our esteemed Shaykh—addressing you—(may Allah preserve him) and grant us a long life with him and benefit us with his knowledge. Peace be upon you and Allah’s mercy and blessings. After that: I praise Allah the Exalted for guiding me to understand His religion through what you have presented and continue to present, which are valuable books and beneficial tapes. I ask Allah to extend your life and bless your time. And I say with sincerity that you are the imam of this era, for I have found in you what has satisfied—of course, the correct word is “satisfied”—my thirst with beneficial knowledge, guidance, and conduct that reminds me of the life of the Salaf. I do not like to prolong this, our esteemed Shaykh. These are some questions, and we ask you, (may Allah preserve you), thanked and not commanded, to answer them with some detail as much as possible. May Allah reward you with all good for us, for Islam, and for the Muslims. The first question: Is continuity in ablution obligatory, and if the answer is no, what is the answer regarding the hadith of the man with the wet spot? This is the first question.”

The Shaykh : What I believe is that continuity in ablution is obligatory. The hadith of the wet spot to which he referred is clear evidence for the obligation adopted by a group of the great scholars, especially Imam al-Shafi'i (may Allah have mercy on him). This is because the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) ordered him to repeat his ablution and perfect it, and he did not order him merely to wash his feet again. We do not find for those who oppose this ruling, in their statement and in their restriction to saying that continuity is a recommended practice, any argument by which they can refute the indication of this hadith, except that they stopped at the action of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and his continuity in his ablution. If we stopped at this action alone, there would be a basis for saying it is obligatory, because it is not established—or, to be more precise, it is not narrated—from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) that he ever neglected continuity on any day. There would be a strong basis for some scholars to say that continuity is obligatory by inference from the constant and perpetual perseverance of the Messenger (peace be upon him). How much more so when, in addition to this following, there is his (peace be upon him) command to that man who had done his ablution poorly, leaving a wet spot on the surface of his foot that the water had not reached, ordering him to perfect his ablution. For this reason and that, we are content with the school of those who said it is obligatory.

The questioner : May Allah reward you with good.