they were told, “We will kill you unless you disbelieve,” so they bartered away the Hereafter for the life of this world. They chose unbelief in order to remain alive, preferring this world to the next, and Allah does not guide an unbelieving people. We ask Allah to guide us and you.

He must, therefore, loathe the idea of returning to disbelief after Allah has delivered him from it just as he would hate to be cast into the Fire.

The author—may Allah have mercy on him—then cited the ḥadīth of Abū Hurayrah, may Allah be pleased with him, in which the Prophet ﷺ said: “Seven types of people will be shaded by Allah in His shade on the Day when there is no shade but His: (1) a just ruler; (2) a youth who grows up worshipping Allah; (3) a man whose heart is attached to the mosques; (4) two men who love one another for Allah’s sake—meeting for that reason and parting for that reason; (5) a man whom a woman of rank and beauty seeks to seduce, but he says, ‘I fear Allah’; and (6) a man who remembers Allah in seclusion and his eyes overflow with tears.” These are described as seven, but the point is not to limit them to only seven individuals; rather, they are seven categories whose actual number is known only to Allah, exalted is He.

We will not discuss here the purpose for which the author cited the ḥadīth, for we have already explained that elsewhere. Instead, we wish to address an issue in which many ignorant people have gone astray: the Prophet’s words, “Seven will be shaded by Allah in His shade on the Day when there is no shade but His.” Some, out of ignorance, imagined this to mean Allah’s own shade—that Allah Himself will shield them from the sun. This is a reprehensible misunderstanding spread by certain self-styled scholars who claim that the method of Ahl al-Sunnah is to leave texts upon their literal, outward meaning. One may ask: where, exactly, is that outward meaning? What in the wording of the ḥadīth suggests that the Lord—glorified and exalted—is personally shading them from the sun?