If their companions leave them to do what they propose, they will all drown; but if they seize their hands and stop them, they will be saved, and everyone will be saved.” Recorded by al-Bukhārī.

[Commentary]
The author—may Allah have mercy on him—quotes, under the chapter “Commanding the Right and Forbidding the Wrong,” the report transmitted by al-Nuʿmān ibn Bashīr al-Anṣārī (may Allah be pleased with him) in which the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: “The likeness of the one who stands firm upon Allah’s limits and the one who falls into them…”

“The one who stands firm” is the person who remains upright upon the religion of Allah: he carries out what is obligatory and abandons what is forbidden.

“The one who falls into them”—that is, into Allah’s limits—is the person who commits the prohibited or neglects the obligatory.

Their case, the Prophet explained, is “like a people who cast lots for a place on a ship,” meaning they drew lots—this is expressed by the word sahm, known today as qurʿah—to determine who would be on the upper deck.

Some of them ended up on the upper deck and others on the lower. Those on the lower deck, whenever they needed water to drink, had to pass by the people above them, for water could only be reached from above. So they said, “If we were to bore a hole in our share of the ship, we could draw water without troubling those above us.” That is what they conceived and intended to do.

The Prophet (peace be upon him) concluded: “If the others leave them to carry out what they intend, they will all perish; but if they restrain them, they will be saved, and everyone will be saved.” The reason is that if they pierce a hole in the bottom of the ship, water will enter and eventually drown