righteous brother and noble prophet.’ When the Messenger of Allah ﷺ then passed by Moses in the sixth heaven, he greeted him and Moses returned the greeting, saying, ‘Welcome, righteous brother and noble prophet.’

Later, when the Prophet ﷺ came back from his Lord after fifty prayers had been enjoined upon him and his community for every day and night, Moses said to him, ‘Go back to your Lord and ask Him to lighten the burden for your community.’ The Prophet ﷺ kept going back and forth between his Lord and Moses until Allah reduced the number to five prayers. At no point was it ever reported that the Prophet ﷺ felt any discomfort at the sight of Moses’ thick beard or Aaron’s extremely long and dense beard, nor that he disliked looking at either of them.

As for the claim that the Prophet ﷺ said, ‘Honor the beards,’ the answer is that this is a fabrication against the Prophet ﷺ; nothing of the sort has been transmitted from him. What is authentically reported is that he said: ‘Let the beards grow.’ Another narration reads: ‘Give the beards fullness.’ Yet another: ‘Leave the beards alone.’ And another: ‘Let the beards reach full length.’

Concerning the contention that ‘Honor the beards’ means ‘trim and neaten them’—and not ‘leave them unrestrained,’ since, they say, they are already unrestrained—the reply is: Even if the wording ‘Honor the beards’ were actually established from the Prophet ﷺ, it would not mean ‘trim and neaten them’; rather, it would mean ‘let them grow and let them reach fullness,’ exactly as the authentic hadiths state from—