For this reason, the scholars agree that this addition is a fabrication. Fabrications concerning recitation aloud proliferated because the Shīʿah favor reciting it aloud, and they are the most mendacious of all sects. They therefore fabricated hadiths on this subject, thereby confusing people about their religion. Thus, in the statements of the leading Sunni scholars of Kufa, such as Sufyān al-Thawrī, we find that they list wiping over leather socks and refraining from reciting the basmalah aloud among the practices of the Sunnah, just as they mention giving precedence to Abū Bakr and ʿUmar and similar matters. This is because reciting it aloud was among the distinguishing marks of the Rāfidah.

For this reason, Abū ʿAlī ibn Abī Hurayrah, one of the leading scholars of the Shāfiʿī school, held that it should not be recited aloud. He said: “Because reciting it aloud has become a distinguishing mark of our opponents.” Likewise, some scholars of the Shāfiʿī school favored making graves mound-shaped, because making them flat had become a distinguishing mark of the people of innovation.

The hadith of Abū Hurayrah therefore demonstrates that the basmalah is neither part of the obligatory recitation nor part of the recitation divided between Allah and His servant. Its indication that it is not to be recited at all is clearer than the indication in the hadith of Nuʿaym al-Mujammir that it should be recited aloud. For the hadith of Nuʿaym al-Mujammir states that he recited, “In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful,” and then recited the Mother of the Quran. This indicates that, in their view, it is not part of the Quran. Abū Hurayrah’s hadith in Muslim corroborates this, for he said:

“The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, ‘Whoever offers a prayer in which he does not recite the Mother of the Quran, it is deficient; it is deficient.’ A man said to him, ‘O Abū Hurayrah, I am sometimes praying behind the imam.’ He replied, ‘Recite it