6 – Nasr ibn ʿAlī al-Jahdamī narrated to us, saying: My father informed me, saying: Al-Muthannā ibn Saʿīd narrated to us, from Qatādah, from Abū Ayyūb—namely, ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Mālik al-Azdī al-Marāghī—from Abū Hurayrah, may Allah be pleased with him, from the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, who said:

“If any of you fights, let him avoid the face, for Allah created Adam in his image.”

Abū Bakr said: Some who have not pursued knowledge carefully have mistakenly supposed that his words, “in his image,” mean the image of the Most Merciful. Exalted and majestic is our Lord, far above this being the meaning of the report. Rather, in the words, “He created Adam in his image,” the pronoun “his” refers to the person being struck or insulted. He, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, meant that Allah created Adam in the image of this person being struck, whose face he instructed the assailant to avoid striking, and whose face was disparaged. Thus he, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, forbade saying:

“and the face of anyone whose face resembles yours.”

This is because Adam’s face resembles the faces of his descendants. Thus, when someone insults one of Adam’s descendants by saying, “May Allah make your face ugly, and the face of anyone whose face resembles yours,” he is disparaging the face of Adam—may Allah’s blessings ⦗85⦘ and peace be upon him—whose descendants’ faces resemble their father’s face. Understand, then—may Allah have mercy on you—the meaning of this report. Do not fall into error or deliberately misrepresent it, lest you stray from the straight path and be led to profess a likeness between Allah and His creation, which is misguidance.

7 – A similar report has also been transmitted with a more obscure wording—meaning, more obscure than the wording we have mentioned in Abū Hurayrah’s report: