1325 – On the authority of ʿĀʾishah (may Allah be pleased with her) who said: The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) declared, “The most detested of men in the sight of Allah is the obstinate, quarrelsome disputant.” Recorded by Muslim (1).

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Vocabulary of the hadith
• al-aladdu (also al-ladūd): one whose disputation is fierce; aladduhu means he overwhelms his opponent in argument. Its plural is ludda. Allah the Exalted says, “and that you may warn a stubborn people” (Maryam 19:97), meaning people who contend in falsehood.
• al-khaṣm, with an open khāʾ and a kasrah on the ṣād, denotes a person who overpowers the one he is disputing with; this is forbidden when done in the service of falsehood.

Points derived from the hadith
1 – al-aladdu is the adversary whose contentiousness is intense and who stubbornly refuses the truth. Allah says, “He is the most obstinate of opponents” (al-Baqarah 2:204) and “that you may warn a stubborn people” (Maryam 19:97). Such a person is hated by Allah because his obstinacy is not aimed at seeking the truth or reaching what is correct; he merely wants to prevail over his opponent—even through falsehood. Al-Tirmidhi recorded (1994) from Ibn ʿAbbās that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “It is enough sin for you that you persist in disputation.”
2 – Al-Ghazālī said that the censure applies only to someone who argues in falsehood and without knowledge—such as one who accepts a case before learning on which side the right lies, or who exceeds what necessity requires and even resorts to lying in order to harm his opponent.
3 – As for the person who pleads for a legitimate right in which he has been wronged, employing the recognised legal avenues of argumentation and the principles of