551 – Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) reported that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “Whoever does not give up false speech, acting upon it, and ignorant behaviour, Allah has no need for him to give up his food and drink.” Related by al-Bukhari and Abu Dawud, and this is Abu Dawud’s wording. (1)

Vocabulary of the ḥadith
• “Whoever does not give up (man lam yadaʿ): two jussive particles converge on the verb; the one directly governing the verb is the second, while the first governs only the clause’s position.
• “yadaʿ” (he gives up): from wadaʿtuhu adaʿuhu wadan, meaning “I left him.” The imperfect was originally vocalised with kasrah; the wāw was then elided, and the vowel opened because of the following guttural consonant. Some early scholars maintained that wadaʿa is a verb whose perfect form had died out among the Arabs so that only the imperative and imperfect remain, hence the sense here is “he did not leave.” The correct view, however, is that the perfect form still exists but is infrequent, as al-Miṣbāḥ notes. The Qur’anic verse, “Your Lord has not forsaken you” (93:3), is read with this lightened form, and a poet said, “He strove with him in love until he forsook him,” also with the lightened verb. The verbal noun appears in the Prophet’s saying, “Certain people must desist from their forsaking the Friday prayers,” narrated by Muslim (865).
• “zūr” (falsehood)—with ḍamma on the zāʾ, sukūn on the wāw, ending with an unpointed rāʾ—denotes any speech that veers from the truth, including lying and slander; its gravest form is false testimony used to seize what is unlawful or to nullify what is right.
• “and acting upon it”: i.e. acting according to what Allah has prohibited, such as giving false testimony and every other forbidden matter.