to greet Alī as Commander of the Faithful, and he said: “He (1) is the master of the Muslims (2), the imam of the God-fearing, and the leader of those whose faces and limbs are radiant.” He also said: “This man is the ally of every believer after me (3).” Concerning him, he further said: “Indeed, Alī—who is from me, as I am from him—has a greater claim over every believing man (4) and woman.”’ Alī alone would therefore be the imam, and these are explicit texts on the matter (5).”
The response may be given from several angles:
First, he must be required to produce its chain of transmission and establish its authenticity. As is his habit, he did not attribute it to any book.
As for his statement, “It was narrated by the majority,” it is a lie. None of this appears in the well-known hadith collections (6)—not in the Sahih collections, the Musnads, the Sunan, or other such works. If one of those indiscriminate collectors transmitted it, as people of his ilk transmit such things, what a person of that sort knows is not authoritative proof that must be followed, by the consensus of Muslims.
Allah Most High has forbidden us to lie and to say about Him what we do not know. It has been mass-transmitted from the Prophet—blessings and peace be upon him—that he said:
“Whoever deliberately lies about me, let him take his seat in the Fire.” (7)
Second, this is a fabricated lie by the consensus of those knowledgeable in hadith,
(1) N, S, and B read: “that he is.”
(2) N, S, and B read: “the messengers”; the adopted reading, “the Muslims,” is from M and K.
(3) K reads: “every believer after me.”
(4) K reads: “and he is the ally of every believer.”
(5) K reads: “Thus, after him, Alī—peace be upon him—would likewise be so. This is an explicit text on the matter.”
(6) M reads the singular, “hadith.” S reads: “about something, if it had not yet occurred”; B reads: “about something that had not yet occurred.”
(7) This hadith is narrated from several Companions, including al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwām, Anas ibn Mālik, Abū Saīd al-Khudrī, and Abū Hurayra—may Allah be pleased with him. It appears in several places in al-Bukhārī, including 1/33 (Book of Knowledge, chapter “The Sin of One Who Lies about the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace”); and in Muslim, 4/2298–2299 (Book of Asceticism, chapter “Verifying Hadith and the Ruling on Writing Down Knowledge”). The hadith also appears in the Sunan collections of Abū Dāwūd, al-Tirmidhī, Ibn Mājah, and al-Dārimī, and in many places in the Musnad, including nos. 6486, 9888, and 7006 in the al-Maārif edition. In the introduction to his book al-Mawduāt (Fabricated Hadiths), Ibn al-Jawzī states concerning this hadith: “It was narrated from the Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—by sixty-one Companions, and I shall cite their narrations. The shaykh said: I saw that, in another copy, he cited it as transmitted by ninety-eight Companions, including Abd al-Rahmān ibn Awf and Abū Bakr al-Siddīq—may Allah be pleased with him.”