exchange salām with one another.

I later located the same report in ʿAmal al-Yawm wa’l-Laylah by Ibn al-Sunnī, no. 241, through a different route: Ḥammād ibn Salamah said, “Thābit and Ḥumayd narrated to us from Anas,” with the same wording. This chain is authentic.

The famous ḥadīth of “the man who prayed poorly,” narrated by Abū Hurayrah, also supports this practice:

“The Messenger of Allah ﷺ entered the mosque. A man came in and performed the prayer, then approached and greeted the Messenger of Allah ﷺ with salām, and the Messenger of Allah ﷺ returned his salām. He said, ‘Go back and pray, for you have not prayed.’ The man went back and prayed as he had done before, then came to the Prophet ﷺ and greeted him with salām again. (He did this three times.)”

This ḥadīth was recorded by the two Shaykhs, al-Bukhārī and Muslim, and others. On its basis Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān argued in Nuzul al-Abrār (pp. 350–351) that “if a person greets someone with salām and then meets him again shortly thereafter, it is recommended to greet him a second and even a third time.”

The narration is also proof of the legitimacy of greeting those inside a mosque, a point likewise established by the ḥadīth of the Anṣār greeting the Prophet ﷺ in the Qubāʾ mosque, mentioned earlier.

Yet despite all this, we still find some partisan individuals who pay no heed to this Sunnah: one of them will walk into a mosque and give no salām to the people there, claiming that doing so is disliked. Perhaps what we have written will serve as a reminder to them and to others, and reminders indeed benefit the believers.