their differing orientations, the man called Hasan al-Saqqaf had the audacity to deny it with utter brazenness, thereby opposing the way of the believers. In his annotation to Ibn al-Jawzi’s Repelling the Doubts of Likening God to Creation, he asserted (p. 62) that it is a weak hadith. He then went further, declaring (p. 64) that it is a false hadith!

He then proceeded to challenge my authentication of it on the basis of its corroborating reports, doing so prejudicially and in deliberate disregard of the hadith masters who declared it authentic. He also cast doubt on what I had cited from certain manuscripts that his own eyes had never seen. Nothing drove him to this except an overwhelming Jahmite tendency that has overrun his heart, so that he is no longer able to understand what the scholars, earlier or later, say. Among those I had mentioned there as having declared it authentic were al-Tirmidhi, al-Hakim, al-Dhahabi, al-Khiraqi, al-Mundhiri, al-Iraqi, and Ibn Nasir al-Din al-Dimashqi. I now add to them the hadith master Ibn Hajar, in his recently published work Al-Imtaʿ (pp. 62–63), to the point that he composed the following verses on its meaning:

Whoever shows mercy to those on earth,
It is time for him to receive mercy from Him in heaven.
So show mercy to all creation, for among us
The Most Merciful shows mercy to the merciful.

Among the later scholars who declared this hadith authentic are the two al-Ghumari shaykhs: Ahmad al-Ghumari, in his book Fath al-Wahhab bi-Takhrij Ahadith al-Shihab (1/459), said:

“We have transmitted it through several routes.”

He also cited al-Tirmidhi’s and al-Hakim’s authentication and endorsed both of them.

The other al-Ghumari was Shaykh Abd Allah, who declared the hadith authentic in his book which he entitled Al-Kanz al-Thamin. He included it there as no. 1867 and stated in its introduction that everything in it is authentic. He is Shaykh Ahmad al-Ghumari’s brother, though younger than him in both age and learning. Both are among those whom al-Saqqaf venerates and blindly imitates; whenever he mentions either of them, he calls him “my master”!

What, then, can an impartial Muslim say about such a man, who opposes those hadith masters and follows a path other than theirs—indeed, who even opposes his own shaykh and master, as he calls him, Abd Allah al-Ghumari? There can be no doubt that he is “in manifest error.”