247 – “When a servant enters Islam and perfects his Islam, Allah records for him every good deed he had previously put forward and erases from him every evil deed he had previously committed. After that the settling of accounts takes place: a good deed is rewarded tenfold up to seven-hundredfold, whereas an evil deed is recorded only as it is—unless Allah pardons it.”

Al-Nasāʾī related it (2/267–268) through the route of Ṣafwān ibn Ṣāliḥ, who said: “Al-Walīd narrated to us, saying: Mālik narrated to us from Zayd ibn Aslam, from ʿAṭāʾ ibn Yasār, from Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī, who said: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said the above.”

I say: This chain is authentic. Al-Bukhārī cited it in suspended form in his Ṣaḥīḥ, saying, “Mālik said: Zayd ibn Aslam informed me of it,” but he omitted the clause about the recording of the earlier good deeds. Ḥasan ibn Sufyān, al-Bazzār, al-Ismāʿīlī, al-Dāraqutnī in Gharaʾib Mālik, and al-Bayhaqī in al-Shuʿab all transmitted it with a continuous chain through other routes from Mālik.

Al-Ḥāfiẓ (Ibn Ḥajar) said in Fatḥ al-Bārī (1/82):

“All the other transmissions contain the wording that is missing from al-Bukhārī’s version—namely, the writing down of the good deeds performed before Islam. The expression ‘Allah writes’ means: He commands that it be written. Al-Dāraqutnī, through the route of Zayd ibn Shuʿayb from Mālik, records the wording: ‘Allah says to His angels: Record ….’ Thus it has been suggested that the compiler deliberately omitted what others narrated because it seems problematic according to the established principles.”

Al-Māzarī said:

“The unbeliever is not in that position; he is not rewarded for any righteous act performed while he was in associationism, for one of the conditions of drawing near is to know the One to whom one is drawing near, and the unbeliever does not meet that condition.”

Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ supported the presentation of this objection. Al-Nawawī, however, judged it weak, saying:

“The correct view—which the researchers uphold, and which some have even claimed is a matter of consensus—is that if a disbeliever performs commendable deeds such as charity or maintaining family ties, then embraces Islam and dies upon it, the reward for those deeds is recorded for him. As for the allegation that this conflicts with the principles, that is not conceded, because some …”} However, the remainder of the sentence continues on the next page.}