(1) Reports are divided, according to how they have reached us, into *mutawātir* (mass-transmitted) and *āhād* (non-mass-transmitted) reports. a. A *mutawātir* report is one transmitted by successive groups whose collusion upon a lie is ordinarily inconceivable, from the beginning of the chain of transmission to its end. b. An *āhād* report is anything that does not meet the criteria of *mutawātir*. See al-Nawawī, *Taqrīb al-Nawawī* (Al-Nawawī’s Abridgement), 2:176, as printed with *Tadrīb al-Rāwī* (The Training of the Narrator); al-Qāsimī, *Qawā'id al-Tahdīth* (Rules of Hadith Transmission), p. 146; and Dr. Mahmūd al-Tahhān, *Taysīr Mustalah al-Hadīth* (An Introduction to Hadith Terminology), pp. 18–21. (2) These include the Mu'tazila and later scholars who followed them, such as Shaykh Muhammad Abduh, Mahmūd Shaltūt, Ahmad Shalabī, Abd al-Karīm Uthmān, and others. See *al-Farq bayn al-Firaq* (The Difference between the Sects), p. 180, edited by Muhyī al-Dīn Abd al-Hamīd; *Fath al-Bārī*, 13:233; Dr. Abd al-Karīm Uthmān, *Qādī al-Qudāt Abd al-Jabbār al-Hamadhānī* (Chief Judge Abd al-Jabbār al-Hamadhānī), pp. 88–90; and Shaykh Muhammad Abduh, *Risālat al-Tawhīd* (The Epistle on Divine Oneness), p. 202, revised by Muhammad Rashīd Ridā. See also Abū Lubāba Husayn, *Mawqif al-Mu'tazila min al-Sunna al-Nabawiyya* (The Mu'tazila’s Position on the Prophetic Sunnah), pp. 92–93; and Dr. Ahmad Shalabī, *al-Masīhiyya: Muqāranat al-Adyān* (Christianity: A Comparison of Religions), p. 44. See also Shaykh Mahmūd Shaltūt’s *al-Fatāwā* (Legal Opinions), where he states on p. 62: “The scholars unanimously agree that hadith reports =