do they have partners who have prescribed for them a religion that Allah has not authorized?” For this reason, He Most High says:

“Say, ‘If you love Allah, then follow me; Allah will love you and forgive you your sins.’”

Thus He made following His Messenger a requirement of their love for Allah, and made Allah’s love for them a consequence of their following His Messenger.

Ubayy ibn Ka‘b—may Allah be pleased with him—said:

“Adhere to the right path and the Sunnah. Whenever a servant who follows the right path and the Sunnah remembers Allah and his skin shivers with fear of Allah, his sins fall away from him as dry leaves fall from a tree. Whenever a servant who follows the right path and the Sunnah remembers Allah in solitude and his eyes overflow with tears out of fear of Allah, the Fire will never touch him. Moderate effort upon the right path and the Sunnah is better than strenuous effort contrary to the right path and the Sunnah. So take care that your deeds, whether moderate or strenuous, conform to the way of the prophets and their Sunnah.”

This is discussed at length elsewhere. If this practice were enjoined and recommended, and served to set hearts right in their devotion to the One they worship and love, the scriptural proofs would have indicated it. It is well known that during the three most excellent generations, concerning which the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—said:

“The best of generations is my generation, in which I was sent, then those who follow them, then those who follow them,”

none of the people of goodness and religious devotion—in the Hijaz, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Egypt, or Khurāsān—would gather for this newly introduced form of listening to reform their hearts. For this reason, the leading scholars, such as Imam Ahmad and others, disapproved of it. Al-Shāfi‘ī even counted it among the innovations of the heretics, saying:

“I left behind in Baghdad something introduced by the heretics, which they call taghbīr, by which they turn people away from the Quran.”