and the Reminder is, by explicit text, divinely safeguarded; therefore every word of the Prophet ﷺ is likewise preserved through Allah’s protection, necessarily and in its entirety, and must have reached us. Had the ḥadīth which this person claims the ummah unanimously abandoned and which he alleges to be abrogated truly been so, then the abrogating text on which they supposedly agreed would have perished and failed to be preserved. That would amount to denying Allah’s promise that He protects the whole of the Reminder. Were such a thing possible, much of what the Prophet ﷺ conveyed from his Lord would have been lost. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ refuted this notion during the Farewell Pilgrimage when he declared: “O Allah, have I conveyed?”

We do not deny that an authentic ḥadīth or a verse whose recitation remains sound can be abrogated—whether by another authentic ḥadīth or by a recited verse—and that consensus regarding that abrogation is established; indeed, such cases exist. What we insist upon, however, is that the abrogating text must also be extant among us: transmitted to us, preserved, conveyed verbatim so that its wording stands before us. What we reject outright is that the abrogated text be preserved and transmitted to us while its abrogator has vanished and its wording has never reached us. This, for us, is impossible; it can never occur anywhere in the world, for it is altogether nonexistent—it has already entered into the realm of the impossible.