—the hadith of Thawban—whose wording and isnad are judged sahih by a number of scholars, as you will see, and which explicitly prohibits a gold necklace. How did the Doctor deal with it? He ignored it completely, neither quoting it nor even alluding to it. Instead, he cited the hadith of Rabi b. Khirash—which I weaken below (pp. 258–59)—and the hadith of Asma bint Yazid, which I had mentioned only as a supporting report (p. 237); he declared the latter weak on grounds of an unknown narrator, a flaw that does no real harm in corroborative narrations. He then concluded: “Not a single hadith invoked by the opponents is free from criticism and weakening; therefore none of them constitutes valid evidence for what they claim.” What does the Doctor mean by this? Only two alternatives exist. Either he does not know the hadith of Thawban—something I find unlikely—or he does know it and has included it in the reports he casually dismisses. If so, what becomes of the authentication given it by al-Hakim, al-Mundhiri, al-Dhahabi, and al-Iraqi? Are they all, in his view, mistaken, while he alone deems unsound what they declared sahih? I can hardly imagine such audacity in this field, for no one undertakes it except one truly proficient. Or has he weakened the hadith merely because it contradicts his own school and opinion? If that is the case, it is certainly not the method of genuine scholars. And if he judged it weak because the scientific principles of hadith criticism actually demand that verdict, then why not state the decisive defect that, in his estimation, undermines the authenticity affirmed by those eminent authorities, instead of spending his time on the obvious weakness of the other two reports?