His statement: “It is also reported with a chain traced back to the Prophet: ‘The religion most beloved to Allah is the easy, upright way.’”

I say: It is an established convention among hadith critics that introducing a narration with the phrase “it is reported” is a signal that the report is weak. Al-Mundhiri follows this usage throughout al-Targhīb, as was explained earlier in the methodological section of this book. I am convinced that the author—may Allah preserve him—knows and acknowledges this rule,1 and on that basis one would assume he considers the hadith weak. Yet it is not weak; rather, it is hasan. The author should therefore have graded its chain as hasan, for Ibn Ḥajar explicitly did so in Fatḥ al-Bārī—perhaps the author simply did not come across that statement.

Someone might object: “Perhaps the author did see it but deemed it unsound because the hadith is transmitted by Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq, who was a mudallis, and he narrated it with an ‘anʿana.”

I reply: While this objection has merit in principle, my experience with the author is that he generally gives precedence to Ibn Ḥajar’s opinion over what pure hadith methodology might conclude. I noticed this when he was publishing sections of this book in the Egyptian magazine al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn. I contributed a rebuttal there to one of his articles in which he cited the forthcoming ḥadith of ʿAlī under “What is forbidden to someone in a state of major ritual impurity,” with the wording: “Nothing kept him from reciting the Qurʾān except major ritual impurity.” In that rebuttal I demonstrated the weakness of the report according to the principles of hadith criticism. He then replied, in essence, that Ibn Ḥajar had graded it hasan. I wrote a second response explaining that such an answer rests not on hadith principles but on mere imitation, which carries no weight in scholarly debate. For some reason the magazine did not publish that second rejoinder.

Therefore I oblige the author—may Allah preserve him—to classify the present hadith as hasan on both grounds: out of deference to authority and through independent investigation in accordance with the rules.

As for the first ground, it has already been demonstrated: Ibn Ḥajar’s declaration that its chain is hasan.