alleging fictitious defects that are so exaggerated that even Ibn Ḥazm—whom they hold up as the imām of everyone who imitatively declares hadiths weak—falls short of them, as will be shown, God willing.

Some well-known contemporary scholars have paved the way for such denial and weakening, among them Shaykh Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī, who follows Shaykh Muḥammad Abū Zahrah—whose legal opinion on the matter was cited earlier. Indeed, al-Qaraḍāwī may be counted among Abū Zahrah’s students, having graduated from his intellectual school and suckled from its milk. Al-Qaraḍāwī states explicitly in his book “The Lawful and the Prohibited” (p. 291, 12th ed.), under the heading “Singing and Music”:

“Among the entertainments that refresh the soul, gladden the heart, and delight the ear is singing, and there is no objection to its being accompanied by non-provocative music.”

In doing so he relied on the view of Ibn Ḥazm and his weakening of the hadiths that prohibit music, quoting on p. 293 Ibn Ḥazm’s words:

“Everything transmitted on this subject is false and fabricated.”

The Shaykh—may Allah pardon us and him—ignored the successive refutations that specialists in hadith, its preservers, and scholars more knowledgeable than Ibn Ḥazm—such as Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn Ḥajar, and others soon to be mentioned—have directed at him over the years.

He also overlooked Ibn Ḥazm’s manifest exaggeration in condemning the hadiths as baseless and fabricated, for the mere presence of a flaw in a report does not require branding it fabricated—especially when it is found in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, as even beginners in this science know. How much more so when there are other sound hadiths on the issue as well, as will be shown; even if they were weak