all the chains go back to ʿĀṣim ibn Kulayb, from his father, from Wāʾil alone, including the version narrated by Zāʾida ibn Qudāmah from ʿĀṣim in which movement is stated explicitly. He has exerted visible effort in tracing every one of these reports, supplying the volume and page numbers of their sources—work for which we pray Allah will reward him generously.

Nevertheless, I hold—and Allah knows best—that Zāʾida’s singular wording which explicitly mentions movement does not warrant declaring his report anomalous, for the following reasons.

First: the scholars received it with acceptance and acknowledged its authenticity, even those who did not act upon it, such as al-Bayhaqī, al-Nawawī and others. All of them agreed to interpret and explain it, whether they openly authenticated it or merely conceded its soundness. Everyone realises that interpretation is predicated on authenticity; had al-Bayhaqī considered the report weak, he would not have bothered to interpret “moving” as “pointing without actual motion,” as noted earlier. He could simply have dismissed it as anomalous, as our Yemeni brother did. Al-Bayhaqī was driven to reinterpret movement only because of the ḥadith of Ibn al-Zubayr which explicitly negates movement, whereas the Yemeni regards the ḥadith of Ibn al-Zubayr itself as anomalous—and that, as shown above, is the correct view. Thus Zāʾida’s narration remains without an opposing text, save for those reports that speak only of pointing, and a reply to them will follow.

Second: the mention of “pointing” in those narrations is not an explicit negation of movement, for common linguistic usage allows pointing to be accompanied by motion. If a person were to point to someone far away and say, “Come closer,” or point to people who had stood for him and say, “Sit down,” no one would infer from the wording that he did not move his hand. We need not go far for an example: consider the ḥadith of ʿĀʾishah—may Allah be pleased with her—regarding the Companions who prayed behind the Prophet ﷺ while he was seated; he gestured to them to sit down. The report is agreed upon; see Irwāʾ, 2/119. Anyone of sound intellect understands that this gesture was not merely the simple raising of his hand ﷺ, as would be the case in ordinary pointing.