through their neglect of it. Do you not see how they separate from one another over their food at their tables, each eating alone—without any necessity—from his own plate, without sharing it at least with the person seated beside him, contrary to the preceding hadith (664)? Likewise, when a morsel falls from one of them, he considers himself too refined to pick it up, remove the dirt from it, and eat it. Among them there may even be pretentious scholars and pseudo-philosophers who do not permit this, claiming that it has been contaminated by germs and microbes! In so doing, they reject the very purport of the hadith, in which the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, says: “Let him remove from it what is objectionable, then eat it, and not leave it for Satan.”

Nor do they lick their fingers. Indeed, many of them regard this as bad taste and a breach of table etiquette. Therefore, they provide their tables with light, absorbent paper tissues known as Kleenex. Hardly does one of them find any greasiness on his fingers—or even on his lips—before hastening to wipe it away with a tissue, contrary to the explicit wording of the hadith. As for licking the dish—that is, using one’s fingers to lick the food remaining on it—they find it utterly repugnant and attribute it to stinginess or greediness over food. This is unsurprising in those who have never heard of this hadith and are therefore ignorant of it; rather, what is astonishing is those who go along with them and flatter them despite knowing it.

Then you find them all united in complaining that blessing has been removed from their salaries and provisions, however abundantly these may have been granted to them. Yet they do not realize that the reason for this is precisely their turning away from following the sunnah of their Prophet and their imitation of the enemies of their religion in their ways of life and livelihood.

So adhere to the sunnah, O Muslims! “O you who believe, respond to Allah and to the Messenger when he calls you to that which gives you life. And know that Allah comes between a person and his heart, and that to Him you shall be gathered.”

1405 — “I saw myself entering Paradise, and there was al-Rumaysa’, the wife of Abu Talhah. I heard footsteps ahead of me, so I said: ‘Who is this, O Gabriel?’ He said: ‘This is Bilal.’”

Related by al-Bukhari (2/425), al-Tayalisi in his Musnad (1719), and Ahmad