who among them is nearer, they hope for His mercy and fear His punishment. Surely your Lord’s punishment is ever to be shunned.

Third: Among the reports he deemed weak are some against which he advanced no clear objection; with these we have no quarrel. My reply, then, will be limited to the first and second categories. With Allah lies all success.

Section One: Ibn Ḥazm criticized two of the six hadiths—the first and the third.

Concerning the first hadith, I have already cited two independent routes that lead to ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ghanm from Abū ʿĀmir—or Abū Mālik—al-Ashʿarī.

The first route is al-Bukhārī’s recension: Hishām ibn ʿAmmār narrated, “Ṣadaqah ibn Khālid related to us …” until his chain reaches ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ghanm al-Ashʿarī, who said, “Abū ʿĀmir—or Abū Mālik—al-Ashʿarī told me—by Allah, he did not lie to me—that he heard the Prophet ﷺ …”

Ibn Ḥazm faulted this report on two grounds: a break between al-Bukhārī and Hishām, and the alleged anonymity of the Ashʿarī Companion. Thus he remarked in al-Muḥallā 9/59, the last hadith of the chapter in his work:

“This isnād is broken; there is no connection between al-Bukhārī and Ṣadaqah ibn Khālid. Nothing in this entire chapter is sound—every single report in it is fabricated.”

So he claimed. Yet any student of hadith—let alone a scholar—can see the excess and overstatement in such a verdict. Even if the interruption were established, it would not justify branding the text itself a fabrication, all the more so when the report appears connected through another chain in his own sources and through a third chain in ours, as shown earlier and as will be demonstrated presently. Despite all this, al-Qaraḍāwī, al-Ghazālī, and those who followed their lead have simply shut their eyes to these facts.