a refutation of the innovation of pointing with one’s finger outside the tashahhud. I have therefore singled it out for source documentation, so as to clarify the matter to people.

Ahmad (4/3) narrated it with the wording: “When he sat for the tashahhud, he would place his right hand upon his right thigh and his left hand upon his left thigh, point with his forefinger, and not let his gaze go beyond his gesture.” Abū Dāwūd and others narrated something similar, while one narration adds: “And he would not move it.” This addition is anomalous, as I have explained in Weak Abū Dāwūd (175). I have documented the sources of the first narration in Authentic Abū Dāwūd (908 and 909).

The hadith establishes that pointing with the finger is prescribed while sitting for the tashahhud. As for pointing during the sitting between the two prostrations, as some people do today, it has no basis except in a narration by ʿAbd al-Razzāq in the hadith of Wāʾil ibn Ḥujr. It is anomalous, as was explained earlier under the preceding hadith—an explanation you will not find elsewhere. All praise is due to Allah for His enabling grace, and I ask Him for more of His bounty.

2249 — “No one is more patient over hurtful words he hears than Allah. They ascribe a child to Him (and set up a rival to Him), yet He grants them well-being (and wards harm off from them), provides for them (and gives them).”

Al-Bukhārī (6099 and 7378), Muslim (8/133–134), Yaʿqūb al-Fasawī in al-Maʿrifah (3/149–150), Aḥmad (4/395, 401, and 405), and al-Bayhaqī in al-Asmāʾ wa-l-Ṣifāt (pp. 504–505) narrated it through several routes from al-Aʿmash, who said: Saʿīd ibn Jubayr narrated to us from Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī, from Abū Mūsā, as a hadith attributed to the Prophet.