116—Muhammad ibn al-Husayn al-Farisi informed us; Ahmad ibn Sa‘id al-Thaqafi informed us; Muhammad ibn Yahya al-Dhuhali narrated to us; Abd al-Razzaq narrated to us; Ma‘mar informed us, from al-Zuhri, who said: I heard Abu Idris say:

“I met Abu al-Darda’ and retained what I heard from him; I met Ubadah ibn al-Samit and retained what I heard from him; and I met Shaddad ibn Uways and retained what I heard from him. But I did not meet Mu‘adh ibn Jabal. I was told that in every gathering he attended, he would say:

‘Allah is a just Judge—blessed is His Name. Those who doubt have perished. Ahead of you are tribulations in which wealth will become abundant and the Quran will be made accessible, until every man and woman, free person and slave, young and old, takes it up. A man will soon recite the Quran and say: “I have recited the Quran, so why do the people not follow me, even though I have recited the Quran? They will not follow me unless I introduce something else for them.” Beware of whatever is introduced, for every introduced matter is misguidance. Beware of the lapse of a wise man, for Satan may cast misguidance upon the tongue of a wise man, and a hypocrite may utter a word of ⦗100⦘ truth.’

He said: We asked, ‘May Allah have mercy on you, how are we to know when a hypocrite utters a word of truth and when Satan casts a word of misguidance upon the tongue of a wise man?’ He replied:

‘Avoid every ambiguous statement made by a wise man—the kind which, when you hear it, makes you say, “What is this?” Yet do not let that turn you away from him, for perhaps he will reconsider and accept the truth when he hears it. Indeed, truth has a light.’