“when musical instruments become widespread, female singers abound, and wine is consumed.”

Third: Ibn al-Qayyim, in Ighāthatu al-Lahfān, directly after the hadith of musical instruments, writes—in summary (1/260–261):

“The proof lies in the fact that maʿāzif are all instruments of amusement; there is no disagreement among the linguists on this point. Had they been lawful, the Prophet ﷺ would not have censured those who deem them lawful, nor would he have mentioned that permissiveness side by side with declaring wine and unlawful sex permissible. In this very hadith, those who legalize musical instruments are threatened with the earth swallowing them up and with being transformed into monkeys and swine. Although the threat encompasses all the listed acts, each deed receives its allotted share of censure and warning.”

This truth is perfectly clear—so spare me the side-roads.

The bitter reality is that Shaykh al-Ghazālī and others like him among today’s preachers and writers possess no coherent scholarly method for the rulings and issues they advance, neither from a juristic nor from a hadith standpoint. What we find instead is blind randomness, often coupled with following personal whims. At one moment you see him siding with the opinion-driven rationalists—so-called today—opposing sound, unambiguous texts; indeed he has outstripped them by far, contradicting all the imams and jurists without exception (I have cited some examples in the introduction). At another moment you find him a rigid literalist, hard as solid rock, slavishly imitating certain extremist Ẓāhirī imams, even if that means contradicting all the scholars of hadith and fiqh. Just as he followed Ibn Ḥazm in declaring authentic hadiths on musical instruments weak, he likewise followed him in distorting the hadith through a false interpretation—yet Ibn Ḥazm, for all that, was more clear-minded than he in choosing