Section: The writer’s baseless assertion that the Prophet ﷺ was fond of well-groomed faces and disliked disfigured people or those with thick beards

The author of the spurious article says: “The Prophet ﷺ felt at ease with radiant faces and neatly trimmed beards, but the sight of a disfigured person frightened him. There is no stronger proof than Allah’s words to His noble Prophet in Surah al-Kahf, when He revived the Companions of the Cave, whose appearance was terrifying because of their long fingernails and bushy beards. Allah says: ‘Had you looked at them, you would surely have turned away in flight and been filled with dread of them’ (18:18). Their frightening appearance, he argues, was caused by the beards that covered their faces and the nails that dragged along the ground, and by nothing else—they were merely human beings of average height. For that reason, this image of terror allegedly remained fixed in the Prophet’s mind; whenever he saw someone with a thick beard, he would recall the Companions of the Cave and could not bear the sight. Consequently, he uttered the well-known hadith which, according to the writer, the ignorant have taken to mean that beard density alone signifies Islam, represents the righteous predecessors and the earliest Muslims, and implies that anyone without a beard is a renegade heretic. Thus, to prove one’s Islam, one must grow a beard. This, he maintains, is a flimsy pretext clung to by ignorant commentators.”

The reply to this consists of several points. First, it may be said that the author of this false article has stumbled in this claim to the utmost extent and has produced in it