has two wordings: one unrestricted and the other restricted, or one general and the other detailed. “Whenever he sat in prayer, he placed his hands upon his knees, raised the index finger of his right hand—the one beside the thumb—and supplicated with it...” Thus, the sitting is left unrestricted. The other states: “Whenever he sat for the tashahhud, he placed his left hand upon his left knee and his right hand upon his right knee...” This hadith confines the sitting to the tashahhud. Ibn al-Zubayr’s hadith likewise has these two wordings.

Thus, the first wording, “he sat,” encompasses every sitting, such as the sitting between the two prostrations and the sitting between the second prostration and the second rakʿah, known to the scholars as the sitting of rest. I would therefore say: “Before long, we may see some of them gesturing with it in these two sittings!” Yet only a short time passed before I was told that some students were gesturing with it between the two prostrations! Then, at the beginning of 1404 AH, I saw this with my own eyes in one of the graduates of the Islamic University when he visited me in my home! We are still awaiting the emergence of the third innovation: gesturing with it during the sitting of rest! Then what I had awaited did occur—and Allah’s help is sought!

A similarly misleading abridgment, which gives the impression that gesturing is prescribed in every sitting, also occurs in Wāʾil’s hadith, as narrated by ʿĀṣim ibn Kulayb from his father, from him. It is found in Musnad Aḥmad (4/316–319) in two versions. The first mentions the gesture unrestrictedly, without confining it to the tashahhud. Aḥmad recorded it (4/116–117) through Shuʿbah, from him, with the wording: “He spread out his left thigh from the right one and gestured with his index finger.” Ibn Khuzaymah likewise recorded it in his Ṣaḥīḥ (1/345/697), but added at its end: “That is, while sitting for the tashahhud.” This explanatory addition is either from Wāʾil or from one of its transmitters; the former is more likely, for reasons that follow. In another wording in the Musnad (4/316), through ʿAbd al-Wāḥid, it reads: