He retorted in protest, “That is not correct! The prohibition of singing and musical instruments is established in the Prophetic Sunnah.”

I replied, “That is a truth from which only the doomed will stray.”

Al-Ghazālī then added:

“I said to him, ‘Come, let us read together what Ibn Ḥazm wrote on this subject, and then see what you will do… Ibn Ḥazm said….’”

Such was his statement, yet he failed to report what subsequently took place between them. Perhaps that scholar made it clear to him that this is not the scholars’ method; rather, it is the approach of ignorant imitators who cling to the words of scholars—even when those words contradict the Quran and Sunnah—whereas a true scholar meets proof with proof. If you are pleased to quote Ibn Ḥazm as your evidence, what will you say about the eminent hadith experts and jurists who rebutted Ibn Ḥazm’s weakening of al-Bukhārī’s report and others—such as Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, al-Nawawī, Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn al-Qayyim, and the rest, as will appear shortly? Were this put to him, he would only dig in his heels and respond with the proverb, “It is a goat, even if it flies.”

Our present aim is to expose the flaws in this man’s citation from Ibn Ḥazm. He blackened three pages with ten ḥadiths, the last of which is al-Bukhārī’s report that Ibn Ḥazm declared defective on two counts: a break in the chain of transmission and the transmitter’s uncertainty about the Companion’s name, as will be shown. Yet the man concealed these critiques and in their place cited Ibn Ḥazm’s remark:

“Al-Bukhārī’s muʿallaq (suspended) narrations are to be accepted, for they are, for the most part, connected isnāds. However, Ibn Ḥazm says that in this case the isnād is broken, for there is no link between al-Bukhārī and Ṣadaqa ibn Khālid, the transmitter of the ḥadith.”