“If they were to crawl into a lizard’s hole, you would follow them into it.”
They asked, “Messenger of Allah, do you mean the Jews and the Christians?”
He replied, “Who else?”
Al-Bukhārī also narrates from Abū Hurayrah—may Allah be pleased with him—that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said: “My community will indeed follow the ways of the earlier nations, span by span and cubit by cubit.” They asked, “The Persians and the Byzantines?” He said, “Who else among mankind but them?”
All these reports are conveyed as factual predictions that this imitation will occur, while at the same time censuring whoever engages in it—just as the Prophet foretold the portents of the Hour and the unlawful practices people would commit as it approaches. It is therefore clear that resembling the Jews and Christians, or the Persians and Romans, is among the matters Allah and His Messenger have condemned, and this is precisely what is sought here. One may not object, saying, “If the Qur’an and the Sunnah have informed us that this will happen, what is the benefit of prohibiting it?” For the Qur’an and the Sunnah have likewise indicated
(1) A discussion of this ḥadīth appeared above on p. 79. It is recorded in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī under nos. 7319 and 7320, and in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim under no. 2669 through several chains. Neither Bukhārī nor Muslim, however, contain the wording “as exactly as one arrow’s fletching matches another”; the two Ṣaḥīḥs read instead: “hand-span by hand-span and cubit by cubit.”
(2) The Imām is Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Ibrāhīm ibn al-Mughīra al-Juʿfī al-Bukhārī, Abū ʿAbd Allāh, author of the most authentic book after the Book of Allāh, namely Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī. The ummah unanimously acknowledges his mastery of ḥadīth. Ibn Ḥajar says in al-Taqrīb: “A mountain of memorization and the imām of the world in the jurisprudence of ḥadīth.” He died in 256 AH at the age of sixty-two. See: Taqrīb al-Tahdhīb 2:144, no. 43.
(3) See Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Book of Holding Fast to the Book and the Sunnah, chapter “You will surely follow the ways of those before you,” ḥadīth no. 7319, Fatḥ al-Bārī 13:200.
(4) The printed edition reads: “the resemblance of this ummah,” clarifying the antecedent of the pronoun.
(5) In manuscript B: “did that.”
(6) Manuscript B also omits this phrase.
(7) In manuscript Ad Ṭ: “had already been omitted.”