Sheikh: “Well, here it comes… they even say—‘on its own two legs,’ you see?! This is among the most groundless of falsehoods. How could Allah have created Muhammad from His light when the very first thing Allah created was the Pen? The ḥadīth is authentic, as I mentioned a moment ago: ‘The first thing Allah created was the Pen. He said to it, “Write.” It asked, “What shall I write?” He said, “Everything that will occur until the Day of Resurrection.”’

After that we know the Messenger’s lineage: he is Muhammad son of ʿAbd Allah son of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, and so on until the chain of descent stops. In any case, who is his earliest forefather? Adam—peace be upon him—for all of you, as he—peace and blessings be upon him—said in the sound ḥadīth, ‘All of you are from Adam, and Adam was from dust.’(1)

So how can Muhammad—between him and Adam there are countless ancestors—be said to have been created from light before all of them? Such a claim would require a kind of faith, a gigantic brain that simply does not exist in this universe, for anyone to believe such myths. Yet the masses of Muslims, and even some of the educated among them—as you can see, Shaykh al-Shaʿrāwī included—believe this fable.

This ḥadīth is in neither al-Bukhārī nor Muslim, nor the Four Sunan, nor in forty, nor in four hundred collections. It has absolutely no basis whatsoever except—if the expression be allowed—in the minds of the fantasists. There alone it exists. Is this what Islam is?

Islam is: ‘Allah said, His Messenger said, the Companions said—without obfuscation,’ and so on to the end of Ibn al-Qayyim’s verse.

“Riḥlat al-Nūr” (39B/00:18:08) and (40A/00:00:00)