and Haddām ibn Jihāf, and tales such as Time, The Ghoul’s Head, Kalindaja, and other works of his. These mention places that do not exist, campaigns that never occurred, and names and entities unknown to any scholar. They transmit reports that contradict Allah’s Book, His Messenger’s Sunnah, the consensus of the Muslims, and what has been transmitted through numerous independent chains from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace.

They attribute to the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and his Companions words and deeds of which Allah has declared him innocent. These resemble the reports of the Nusayrī heretics and their like, who fabricate accounts involving excessive veneration of ‘Alī and others. They contain attacks upon Islam and corruption of it that warrant putting those who utter such things to death. If such a person is ignorant, he must be called upon to repent; if he repents, he is spared, but otherwise he is executed. The least that should be done to anyone who narrates such material is to punish him sufficiently to deter him from doing so again. Likewise, anyone who rents these books to someone who reads them and believes their contents deserves punishment, as does anyone who copies them.

Scholars must expose the falsehood they recognize in these works and others like them. For just as it is obligatory to expose the falsehood of what has been transmitted from him in hadiths such as those of al-Bukhārī, it is obligatory to expose the falsehood of the fabricated hadiths falsely attributed to him that are known to be lies, just as scholars have explained the circumstances of those narrators who lied about him