this case, it constitutes an unacceptable laxity, as is the case here. For concerning this Mas‘adah, al-Dhahabi said in al-Mizan, and al-‘Asqalani concurred with him in al-Lisan: “He is utterly unreliable. Abu Dawud declared him a liar, and Ahmad said: ‘We burned his hadith long ago.’” Of one such as this, it can scarcely be said that he is merely “abandoned”; as for calling him “weak,” that is not acceptable.

Secondly, I do not know Ahmad ibn Tariq al-Washi, and this nisbah is not mentioned by al-Sam‘ani or Ibn al-Athir. Thirdly, regarding Muhammad ibn ‘Uthman ibn Abi Shaybah, al-Hafiz said in al-Mughni: “Jazarah deemed him trustworthy, while ‘Abdullah ibn Ahmad declared him a liar.”

The general purport of the Prophet’s saying, peace and blessings be upon him, also attests to the meaning of the hadith under discussion: “The people of Paradise will enter Paradise hairless, beardless, and kohl-eyed, at the age of thirty-three.” Al-Tirmidhi graded it good, and it is authentic in view of its combined chains and supporting reports. I have explained this in al-Ta‘liq al-Raghib (4/245), and some of its chains have already preceded under no. 2512.

Note: I had previously documented this hadith in some of my works, such as Ghayat al-Maram (pp. 215–216), grading it good. Now it has gained further strength through this authentic hadith, together with what has been related in the exegesis of the verse: “Indeed, We have created them with a special creation.”

Despite all this, the well-known “Destroyer of the Sunnah” ventured to deliberately ignore al-Bayhaqi’s narration of the hadith of Aisha, which is free from the utterly unreliable Mas‘adah. I said “deliberately ignore,” rather than “be unaware”—as the principle of thinking well of a Muslim would require, although his many excesses and violations have left no room for a favorable opinion of him. I did not say “be unaware,” but rather “deliberately ignore,” because he knew of al-Bayhaqi’s narration. He did not cite al-Tabarani’s narration directly from his Mu‘jam, but rather through al-Durr al-Manthur, as he indicated by its volume and page number; and there it is attributed to al-Bayhaqi as well. Yet he feigned blindness to it. This, then, is concealment in transmission and a breach of scholarly integrity.