—and from their followers, and from the followers of those followers who came after them as well?

There is no doubt that the reply will be exactly as the early scholars used to say: “Had it been good, they would have beaten us to it.”

That is one point. The second is this: when it comes to kissing some object, is the default ruling permissibility, or is the default ruling prohibition?

At this juncture it is necessary to cite the ḥadīth recorded by the two Shaykhs—al-Bukhārī and Muslim—in their Ṣaḥīḥ collections, so that whoever wishes to take heed may do so, and so that people may realize how far today’s Muslims have drifted from their righteous predecessors, from their understanding, and from the way they addressed new issues that confronted them.

The ḥadīth states: ʿAbbās ibn Rabīʿah said, “I saw ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb—may Allah be pleased with him—kissing the Stone, meaning the Black Stone, while saying, ‘I know that you are only a stone; you can neither harm nor benefit. Were it not that I saw the Messenger of Allah ﷺ kiss you, I would never have kissed you.’”1

What, then, is the purport of these words from al-Farooq, ʿUmar: “Were it not that I saw the Messenger of Allah ﷺ kiss you, I would not have kissed you”?

So why did ʿUmar kiss the Black Stone when—as the ḥadīth itself makes clear