to one’s parents.”
The ḥadiths on this point are many.
Second: “burying girls alive.” Allah Most High says, “When the infant girl who was buried alive is asked, for what crime she was killed” (Quran 81:8-9). He also says, “Do not kill your children for fear of poverty; We provide for them and for you. Indeed, killing them is a great sin” (Quran 17:31). The Prophet singled out daughters because this was the practice of the pre-Islamic era of ignorance.
Third: “Withholding and saying, ‘Bring!’” that is, he holds back the obligatory rights due from him—such as zakat and mandatory maintenance—yet is greedy to accumulate wealth that is not lawful for him, seizing people’s dues through forbidden stratagems.
Al-Ḥāfiẓ said: the gist of the prohibition is to refuse what one has been ordered to give and to demand what one has no right to receive.
Fourth: “He disliked for you ‘he said, she said.’” What is meant is spreading reports one has not verified and to which one has no real connection; such a person slips and errs often. This contradicts the Islamic virtue described in the Prophet’s words: “Part of a person’s excellence in Islam is to leave what does not concern him” (al-Tirmidhī 2317).
Fifth: “He disliked for you excessive questioning.” Allah says, “O you who believe, do not ask about things which, if made plain to you, would distress you” (Quran 5:101).
Al-Bukhārī (6859) and Muslim (2358) relate from Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ that the Prophet ﷺ said, “The gravest offender among the Muslims is the one who asks about something that was not forbidden, yet it is forbidden because of his questioning.”
Ibn ʿAllān, in his commentary on Riyāḍ al-Ṣāliḥīn, observes that the preferred understanding of “questioning” is broad: it covers posing difficult and convoluted issues without necessity, inquiring into people’s affairs, the events of the time, or asking an individual for the detailed particulars of his private circumstances—all of which may be disliked.
A number of the early generations held that contriving questions about matters that are impossible