earlier times; therefore, let the statement be flung against the wall.

Second, if he really meant by “the Arabs” their elite and their scholars—as one would assume—his claim is still baseless, for the reports from those very scholars say the opposite.

The shaykh—may Allah forgive him—writes as though he possesses no scholarly background, or at least, as though he never consults a single fiqh reference or a specialised study by any of the ummah’s great investigators such as Ibn Taymiyyah or Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah. In this he resembles his disciple al-Ghazali and others like him. Otherwise, how could he have overlooked the statement of Ibn Masʿud (Allah be pleased with him): “Singing makes hypocrisy grow in the heart”? That report has been transmitted as marfūʿ (traced back to the Prophet ﷺ), but the sound version is mawqūf (stopping with the Companion), as Ibn al-Qayyim explained in Ighāthat al-Lahfān 1/248; for that reason I listed it in al-Daʿīfah, no. 430. And how could he miss the statement of Ibn ʿAbbās (Allah be pleased with him): “The frame drum is forbidden and musical instruments are forbidden,” which will appear on p. 92; or what Abū Bakr al-Khallāl cited in al-Amr bil-Maʿrūf, p. 27? There is also the report from al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī: “Frame drums have nothing to do with the affairs of the Muslims,” and the disciples of Ibn Masʿud used to split them apart—along with many other reports recorded in their proper places; see pp. 102–103.

Third, those who beat the frame drum were women, not men, and only on specific occasions. It was done at weddings—several hadiths on this I quoted in my book Adab al-Zifāf, pp. 179–183—or on the days of ʿĪd, as in the ḥadīth of ʿĀʾishah that will be cited at the end of this treatise. For this reason al-Ḥalīmī said, as recorded in Shuʿab al-Īmān 4/283.