as al-Dhahabī transmits from him in Siyar, 18/202. The report is also found in al-Targhīb and other sources, as will be shown shortly. Why, then, did al-Ghazālī not refer to it? I hesitate to say he acted like an ostrich in the face of the hunter.

Fifth: Al-Ghazālī still was not satisfied with dismissing the ḥadith on the strength of Ibn Ḥazm’s earlier verdict—“It is nothing.” Instead, he distorted the wording and said, “Its isnād is nothing,” as noted above.

Such a slip can only stem from his profound ignorance of this discipline or from a heedlessness born of passion. Long ago it was said, “Love for a thing blinds and deafens.” The altered phrase simply cannot stand alongside Ibn Ḥazm’s statement, “We know of no route for it,” for no rational mind can combine an outright denial of any route—that is, any chain of transmission—with an attribution of a chain, even if one hints at its weakness by saying, “Its isnād is nothing,” all in the same place.

So know your own limits, O shaykh, that you may know your Lord, and conduct yourself according to the Prophet’s ﷺ teaching: “He is not one of us who does not honor our elders, show mercy to our youngsters, and acknowledge the right of our scholars.” (al-Taʿliq al-Raghīb 1/66)

Realize, then—standing as you are on the brink of your grave—the stature of the scholars of ḥadith and sunnah and of the jurists of this ummah. Do not deviate from them by so much as a hair, beguiled by your dialectic, your pen, and your writings, for our Prophet ﷺ said, “The most detested man to Allah is the obstinate adversary.” (Agreed upon)

You know with absolute certainty that material life—let alone religious life—cannot be sound in any society unless its members, in every field, defer to the specialists among them. No examples are needed; the point is self-evident. A person who wishes to determine the authenticity of a ḥadith or its legal purport, for instance, does not consult a journalist or