From Abū Bakrah: he reached the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—while the Prophet was bowing, before he himself had entered the row. He later mentioned this to the Prophet, who said, “May Allah increase your eagerness, but do not repeat that action.”

Dear reader, place this wording side by side with the text cited there and you will see that my statement, “Its root is in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī…,” is both correct and precise—knowledge acquired through long experience with this noble science. That other version contains two additions that are absent from al-Bukhārī and its context differs as well. The additions are:

1. Abū Bakrah’s walking to the row.
2. The Prophet’s—peace and blessings be upon him—question, “Which of you bowed outside the row and then walked to the row?”

For this reason Ibn Ḥajar, in Fatḥ al-Bārī (2/268), attributes these two extras to Abū Dāwūd and others. So was the deluded critic truthful when he claimed, “The ḥadīth in its entirety, word for word, is in al-Bukhārī”? Who, then, is the one clouding the issue? I leave the verdict to the readers. May Allah bless Muhammad, who said: “If you feel no shame, then do as you wish.”
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There is yet another individual who has lately become a trial for the public and for the Islamic library—one to whom the proverb aptly applies, “He turned into a raisin before even becoming a sour grape.” Like the first, though different in style, that man casts doubt upon the Sunnah by attacking al-Albānī personally, accusing him of shortcomings and ignorance, whereas this one feigns praise for al-Albānī and respect for his knowledge yet strikes at the Sunnah directly by declaring as weak those sound ḥadīths that the scholars have authenticated.