He—may Allah have mercy on him—was asked:

What punishment is someone who curses Mu‘āwiyah liable to? Did the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—say these hadiths: “If two caliphs fight one another, one of them is accursed,” and “‘Ammār will be killed by the transgressing group”—and it was Mu‘āwiyah’s army that killed him? Did they revile the Prophet’s household? Or did al-Hajjāj kill a man of noble lineage?

He answered:

Praise be to Allah. Whoever curses any of the Companions of the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—such as Mu‘āwiyah ibn Abī Sufyān, ‘Amr ibn al-‘Ās, and others like them; or those superior to them, such as Abū Mūsā al-Ash‘arī, Abū Hurayrah, and others like them; or those superior to these, such as Talhah, al-Zubayr, ‘Uthmān, ‘Alī ibn Abī Tālib, Abū Bakr al-Siddīq, ‘Umar, or ‘Ā’ishah, the Mother of the Believers, and the other Companions of the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—deserves severe punishment, according to the consensus of the leading religious scholars.

The scholars differed over whether such a person should be punished by death or by a lesser punishment, as we have explained at length elsewhere.

It is established in the two Sahīh collections, on the authority of Abū Sa‘īd al-Khudrī, that the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—said:

“Do not revile my Companions. By Him in whose hand is my soul, if one of you were to spend the equivalent of