al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Zaylaʿī the Ḥanafī in his Nasb al-Rayah; it is also reproduced in volume five of Silsilat al-Aḥādīth al-Ḍaʿīfah, no. 2176, which is currently in press.
Second: The sentence they have promoted as a standalone ḥadīth is in reality only a portion of an authentic report about polytheists who accepted Islam. Concerning them the Prophet ﷺ said, “They have the same rights we have and they are subject to the same duties we are subject to.” This wording appears in Sunan al-Tirmidhī and elsewhere on the authority of Salmān (may Allah be pleased with him), and in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Abū ʿAwānah, Ibn Ḥibbān, and Ibn al-Jārūd on the authority of Buraydah ibn al-Ḥuṣayb (may Allah be pleased with him). Both versions are cited in Irwāʾ al-Ghalīl, p. 1247, and in Ṣaḥīḥ Abī Dāwūd, 2351–2352.
Al-Ghazālī, however, annulled this sound ḥadīth with his crude opinion and blatant ignorance of the Sunnah, leaning instead on a report that has no basis at all. By Allah, had his book contained nothing but this single contradiction—indeed, this calamity—it would have been enough to undermine the value of the entire work and to expel its author from the ranks of the jurists. Authorship may be his, but true knowledge and jurisprudence belong to their people. What, then, when the book contains dozens—rather, hundreds—of such disasters, some of which have already been exposed by our brethren, the professors and shaykhs who refuted him—may Allah reward them well.
Among them:
Third: His statement, “So what of the wasted blood of one of their slain?” signals his rejection of the Prophet’s ﷺ saying, “A Muslim is not killed for a disbeliever.” This ḥadīth too is authentic: al-Bukhārī and others narrated it from ʿAlī, while al-Tirmidhī and others narrated it from Ibn ʿAmr, among additional chains. It is recorded in Irwāʾ al-Ghalīl, 2208/2209, and it is the position adopted by the majority of scholars, including Ibn Ḥazm in al-Muḥallā—whom he blindly follows in other errors and in rejecting the ḥadīth on musical instruments, yet does not follow here