He was asked about someone who heard a man say:

“If you had done such and such, none of this would have happened to you.”

Another man who heard him said, “The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, forbade this expression. It is an expression that leads the one who utters it to disbelief.”

A third man said, “Regarding the story of Moses and al-Khidr, the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said:

‘May Allah have mercy on Moses. We wish he had been patient, so that Allah might have told us more of their story.’”

The other man cited the Prophet’s saying, may Allah bless him and grant him peace:

“The strong believer is better and more beloved to Allah than the weak believer”—until he said—“for the word ‘if’ opens the way for Satan’s work.”

Does one of these abrogate the other, or not?

He replied:

Praise be to Allah. Everything Allah and His Messenger have said is true. The word “if” is used in two ways:

(The first is to express grief over the past and distress at what has been decreed. This is what he forbade, as Allah Most High says:

“O you who believe, do not be