Allah, exalted is He, says in the midst of the sūrah:
“Those who associate partners with Allah will say, ‘Had Allah willed, neither we nor our fathers would have practiced idolatry, nor would we have declared anything forbidden.’” (Q 6:148) (1).
It is well known that the starting point of this prohibition was to abandon matters that are in themselves lawful, imagining that such abstention constituted devotion. The root of that imagined devotion, however, lay in imitating the disbelievers—even when no (2) deliberate intent to imitate them existed.
Hence it has become clear to you that one of the principal causes for the fading of Allah’s religion and its laws, and for the spread of disbelief and sin, is imitation of the unbelievers; just as the foundation of every good is to maintain the ways and statutes of the prophets. For that reason innovations in religion carry such gravity even when they do not involve copying the unbelievers—so what, then, when they combine both traits?
Accordingly, the ḥadīth states:
“No people ever introduce an innovation without a like portion of the Sunnah being taken away from them.” (3)
Moreover, (4) Abū Dāwūd narrated in his Sunan—and others as well—through the chain of Hushaym (5), who said: Abū Bishr (6) told us, from Abū ʿUmayr b.
(1) Surah al-Anʿam, verse 148.
(2) The printed edition adds the clause: “even if he did not intend to be religious,” a wording absent from all the manuscripts.
(3) Ahmad relates in his Musnad, on the authority of Ghadif b. al-Harith, a hadith that ends with the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him and his family, saying: “No people introduce a bidʿah (innovation) except that Allah removes from the sunnah something of equal measure….” Musnad, 4/105. Al-Suyuti cites it in al-Jamiʿ al-Saghir and grades it ḥasan; al-Jamiʿ al-Saghir, 2/480, no. 7790.
(4) Manuscripts A and T read: “so he narrated.”
(5) Hushaym b. Bashir b. al-Qasim b. Dinar al-Sulami, Abu Muʿawiyah, al-Wasiti: reliable, memoriser, firmly established, unanimously regarded as an imam. Ibn Hajar says: “trustworthy, firmly grounded, but prone to much tadlis and concealed irsal.” He died in 183 AH at nearly eighty years of age. See: Ibn Hajar, Taqrib al-Tahdhib, 2/320, no. 103.
(6) Jaʿfar b. Iyas, Abu Bishr, known as Ibn Abi Wahshiyyah. Ibn Hajar writes: “trustworthy; among the most accurate transmitters from Saʿid b. Jubayr, though Shuʿbah considered him weak in his reports from Habib b. Salim and Mujahid.” All six canonical collections narrate from him. He belongs to the fifth generation and died in 126 AH. See: Taqrib al-Tahdhib, 1/129, no. 70.