Yūsuf ibn Asbāṭ said, “It has reached me that when the iqāma is pronounced a person should say: ‘O Allah, Lord of this call that is heard and answered, bless Muhammad and the family of Muhammad, and grant us as spouses the ḥūr al-ʿayn.’ The ḥūr al-ʿayn reply, ‘How little you care for us!’ ”

I say: These two reports contain an explicit proof that blessings are to be sent upon the Prophet ﷺ immediately after the iqāma, and that is precisely what the ḥadīth of Muslim indicates in general terms.

Responding to the muqīm is the same as responding to the muʾadhdhin, except that one repeats the muqīm’s words “qad qāmat al-ṣalāh, qad qāmat al-ṣalāh,” for the Prophet’s general instruction is: “Say as he says.”

This is what the broad wording of that ḥadīth entails. As for the ḥadīth related from Abū Umāmah—or from another Companion—that when Bilāl began the iqāma and reached “qad qāmat al-ṣalāh,” the Prophet ﷺ said, “May Allah establish it and make it perpetual,” while for the rest of the iqāma he responded as ʿUmar (Allah be pleased with him) is reported to have done in the adhān—this ḥadīth is unanimously judged weak. The author of al-Tāj al-Jāmiʿ li-l-Uṣūl may claim, “Its chain is acceptable,” but he is merely following Abū Dāwūd’s well-known remark: “Every ḥadīth about which I remained silent in my Sunan is sound.”

Yet every careful researcher knows that Abū Dāwūd’s statement is not to be taken without qualification, for many of the ḥadīths he left without comment have in fact been criticized. Indeed, al-Nawawī says regarding some of them