disparaging people’s lineage, seeking rain through the stars, and wailing over the dead.” He also said:

“If a woman who wails in mourning does not repent before her death, she will be made to stand on the Day of Resurrection wearing a robe of tar and a garment of scabies.”

There are numerous reports concerning this. How much worse, then, when it is compounded by wronging the believers, cursing and reviling them, and helping those who promote discord and religious deviation to achieve their intended corruption of the religion, along with other deeds that Allah Most High alone can enumerate.

Some who profess adherence to the Sunnah transmitted fabricated hadiths, and had such hadiths transmitted to them. On these they based the distinctive observances they adopted on this day to oppose the observances of that other group. Thus they countered falsehood with falsehood and answered an innovation with another innovation, even though one of the two is more corrupting and more helpful to those who promote religious deviation. One example is the lengthy hadith in which it is reported:

“Whoever bathes on the day of ‘Āshūrā’ will not fall ill that year, and whoever applies kohl on the day of ‘Āshūrā’ will not suffer inflammation of the eyes that year.”

There are similar reports about “applying dye on the day of ‘Āshūrā’ and shaking hands on that day,” and other such practices. This hadith and others like it are fabricated lies, by the agreement of those versed in hadith scholarship. Although some hadith scholars have cited it and said, “It is authentic, and its chain of transmission meets the criteria of the Sahīh,” this is unquestionably an error, as has been explained elsewhere.

None of the leading scholars of the Muslims recommended bathing on the day of ‘Āshūrā’, applying kohl or dye on it, or other such practices. Nor was this mentioned by any of the Muslim scholars whose example is followed