Muslim also transmits—through Abū Naḍrah, from Abū Saʿīd—the report: “We had scarcely conquered Khaybar when we came upon this plant while the people were starving…,” and the ḥadith continues.
Ibn al-Munīr writes in his Ḥāshiyah: “Some of our companions have classed the leper and others with the eater of garlic, barring all of them from the mosque. This, however, is debatable, for the one who eats garlic has, of his own choosing, brought upon himself the cause of prohibition, whereas the leper’s affliction is sent from heaven. Yet the Prophet’s ﷺ statement, ‘whether because of hunger or for some other reason,’ indicates that they are to be treated alike.” End quote.
It appears that he took al-Bukhārī’s phrasing in the chapter heading—“and likewise the statement of the Prophet ﷺ …”—as though it were the very wording of a ḥadith, whereas in fact it is al-Bukhārī’s juristic reasoning and his permissibility of citing a report in paraphrase.
Accordingly, the ḥadith itself does not support the meaning al-Bukhārī inferred, for it is quite possible that the Prophet ﷺ was unaware that hunger and necessity had compelled them to eat; this, indeed, is the more likely. Had he known, he would have excused them, as in al-Mughīrah’s narration. Thus the ḥadith establishes a distinction between one who is driven by need and one who is not, rather than equating them, as Ibn al-Munīr assumed on the basis of al-Bukhārī’s paraphrase. Reflect on this.
- Reserving a fixed spot in the mosque for prayer, without moving elsewhere. This is based on the ḥadith:
“The Prophet ﷺ forbade pecking like a crow, sprawling like a predatory beast, and for a man to adopt a fixed place in the mosque (one version reads: ‘the same standing-place’; another: ‘the spot in which he prays’) as a camel stakes out its ground.”
The report is transmitted from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Shibl, who said: “He forbade…” and so on.