the Quran and the Torah.”
He replied, “Recite this one night and that the next.” Its chain of transmission is weak (1).
If it were sound, it would grant a concession for alternating one’s nightly recitation between the still-unaltered Torah and the Quran. In our time, however, no such concession applies, for all existing manuscripts of the Torah may have been subject to alteration. Nonetheless, we revere the Torah that Allah revealed to Moses and we believe in it.
As for the scrolls presently in the hands of those who have gone astray, we have no certain knowledge of what they actually contain. We therefore adopt a position of restraint, neither honoring them nor disparaging them. Instead we declare, “We believe in Allah, His angels, His books, and His messengers,” and that comprehensive affirmation of faith suffices us—praise be to Allah.
Ikrimah ibn ʿAmmar narrated, on the authority of Muhammad ibn al-Qāsim:
ʿAbd Allah ibn Ḥanzalah maintained that ʿAbd Allah ibn Salām once passed through the market carrying a bundle of firewood. Someone asked him, “Has not Allah made you affluent?”
He answered, “Indeed He has, but I wanted to suppress arrogance. I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ say, ‘No one who harbors even a mustard seed’s weight of pride in his heart will enter Paradise.’” (2)
(1) Because Ibrahim ibn Abi Yahya al-Aslami al-Madani is matruk al-hadith—that is, the traditionists have discarded his reports—and some even accused him of fabrication, the isnad is extremely weak, verging on the spurious. It also clashes with the hadith of Jabir b. Abd Allah, in which Umar came to the Prophet ﷺ and said: “We hear accounts from the Jews that amaze us; should we write some of them down?” The Prophet replied: “Are you still bewildered, as the Jews and Christians were bewildered? I have brought you a revelation that is clear and unblemished. If Moses were alive, his only option would be to follow me.” This report is hasan (sound); Ahmad, 3:338 and 378. It has a supporting chain from Abd Allah b. Shaddad in Ahmad, 3:470–471, and another from Umar in the Musnad of Abu Yaʿla. See Majmaʿ al-zawaʾid, 1:173–174.
(2) Al-Hakim narrated it in al-Mustadrak, 3:416, through Salim b. Ibrahim, the copyist of masahif, from Ikrima b. Ammar, and declared it sahih; al-Dhahabi objected: “Salim is weak.” The marfuʿ portion without the surrounding story is nevertheless authentic from Ibn Masʿud ﵁ and is recorded by Muslim (no. 91), Abu Dawud (4091), and al-Tirmidhi (1999) with the wording: “No one will enter Paradise who has in his heart an atom’s weight of arrogance.” A man asked, “Indeed, a person likes his clothes to be fine and his sandals to be fine…,” and the Prophet replied: “Indeed, Allah is…"