Under the heading “Those Most Entitled to Lead the Prayer” he writes: 2 – From Ibn Masʿūd who said: the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “The people should be led in prayer by the one who is the most proficient in the recitation of the Book of Allah … .”

I say: What is correct is “Abu Masʿūd”—his name is ʿUqbah ibn ʿAmr al-Anṣārī al-Badri—for the ḥadīth is transmitted exclusively through his chain in every collection that records it.

He also says: “And it is related from Abū Hurayrah that the Prophet ﷺ said: ‘It is not permissible for a man who believes in Allah and the Last Day to lead a people in prayer without their consent, nor to single himself out with a supplication to the exclusion of them; if he does so, he has betrayed them.’ Reported by Abū Dāwūd.”

I say: Its isnād is weak and confused; some narrate it “from Abū Hurayrah,” others “from Thawbān.” The author later cites it through Thawbān, thinking it a different report—there we shall draw attention to this.

Moreover, the chain contains a narrator counted among the unknowns; I have explained all of this in Daʿīf Sunan Abī Dāwūd nos. 12 13.

Ibn Khuzaymah declared the second half of the report fabricated, a judgement endorsed by Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn al-Qayyim, because nearly all of the Prophet’s ﷺ ḥadīths on the prayer—while he is acting as imām—are phrased in the singular; some of these have already been cited above, 1/321. How, then, could such conduct be deemed a betrayal of those he is leading?

As for the first half, its meaning occurs in other narrations, some of which Ibn Khuzaymah himself authenticated in his Ṣaḥīḥ, 3/11, and which al-Mundhirī cited in al-Targhīb 1/175–171; several will appear later in this book.

I have also found his explicit weakening of the second half in Chapter 128, 3/63. There he quotes the ḥadīth of the brief pause, already cited by the author at 1/266, then refers to the ḥadīth of ʿAlī that follows it, and Ibn Khuzaymah said: