is a grave mistake and a manifest deviation, for the “praise” the ḥadīth forbids can be understood in two ways. The first is praise in absolute terms, and the second is praise that exceeds proper limits. On this basis, the ḥadīth may be taken as a prohibition of praising him ﷺ at all, as a means of blocking the path to excess and because it is sufficient that Allah Exalted has chosen him as a prophet, a messenger, a beloved one and an intimate friend. Allah—glorified be He—has already extolled him, saying, “And indeed you are upon an exalted standard of character” 1. After such a declaration from God, what can human beings possibly add? What value does any of their speech have beside this divine testimony?

Thus, the greatest praise of him ﷺ is to say of him what our Lord has said: that he is His servant and His messenger. That is the highest commendation he ﷺ can receive, containing no excess or negligence, no exaggeration and no deficiency. When our Lord described him at the very zenith of his honor—during the Night Journey and Ascension, when he was shown some of his Lord’s greatest signs—He still described him as a servant, saying, “Glory be to Him who transported His servant by night from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque” 2.

Alternatively, the intended meaning may be: do not go to extremes in praising me—do not attribute to me more than I deserve or confer upon me any of the attributes that belong exclusively to Allah, magnified and exalted.

Yet the more likely meaning of the ḥadīth is the first, for two reasons. First, the continuation of the report itself, in which he ﷺ says, “Rather, say: the servant of Allah and His messenger,” meaning: be content with the description Allah, mighty and majestic, has given me in selecting me as His servant and messenger. Second, the heading under which some hadith masters placed the narration; Imām al-Tirmidhī, for example, recorded it under