Furthermore, we hold that any one of the aforementioned scholars who voiced this opinion is rewarded for his error, in light of the well-known hadith, for they strove for the truth but missed the mark. As for those followers of theirs who have read the very hadiths we have cited yet persist in imitating them in their mistake and turn away from following those reports, such people—without the slightest doubt—are in manifest misguidance. They fall under the warning contained in the very hadiths we have documented, and no benefit will accrue to them by calling what they drink by another name—ṭilāʾ (boiled grape must), nabīdh (date wine), whisky, cognac, or any other label to which the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, alluded in these noble traditions.

How true are the words of Allah the Exalted: “They are nothing but names you and your fathers have coined; Allah has sent down no authority for them.”

Second: The prohibition of musical and entertainment instruments, and the proof for this in the hadith comes from several angles:

a) His statement, “they will deem lawful,” is explicit that the items mentioned—including musical instruments—are, in the Sharia, forbidden, yet those people will regard them as lawful.

b) He grouped the instruments (maʿāzif) with matters whose prohibition is unequivocal—adultery and wine. Had they not been unlawful, he would not, God willing, have placed them alongside those two.

Moreover, many hadiths—some of them sound—have come down prohibiting various instruments that were known at the time, such as the ṭabl (drum), the qinīn, which is the ʿūd (lute), and others; nothing authentic has come that contradicts them.