As for ʿIkrimah’s having actually heard the report from ʿĀʾishah—he was the freedman of Ibn ʿAbbās—Abū Ḥātim affirmed it in one statement and denied it in another; yet, in the principles of legal methodology, an affirmative testimony overrides a mere denial.
The ḥadīth clearly shows that when a disbeliever embraces Islam, the righteous deeds he performed during the pre-Islamic era (jahiliyyah) will benefit him, whereas if he dies upon disbelief those deeds will not help him at all; rather, his kufr nullifies them. We spelled this out at length under the previous ḥadīth.
It further proves that the people of the age of ignorance who died before the mission of Muḥammad are not included among the ahl al-fatrah (those to whom no messenger’s call reached). Had they belonged to that category, Ibn Judʿān would not have deserved punishment and his good deeds would not have been obliterated. Many other reports support this point, some of which have already been cited.
250 — “There is to be no causing harm and no reciprocating harm.”
This is an authentic ḥadīth. It has come down in mursal form and has also reached us with connected chains from Abū Saʿīd al-Khuḍrī, ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbbās, ʿUbādah ibn al-Ṣāmit, ʿĀʾishah, Abū Hurayrah, Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allāh, and Thaʿlabah ibn Mālik, may Allah be pleased with them all.
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The mursal route: Mālik relates in al-Muwaṭṭaʾ (2/218) from ʿAmr ibn Yaḥyā al-Māzinī, from his father, that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said the above words. This chain is sound despite being mursal.
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The connected route from Abū Saʿīd al-Khuḍrī: ʿUthmān ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿUthmān ibn Rabīʿah ibn Abī ʿAbd al-Raḥmān related to us; ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Muḥammad al-Darāwardī narrated from ʿAmr ibn Yaḥyā al-Māzinī, from his father, from Abū Saʿīd al-Khuḍrī that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said it and added:
“Whoever harms others, Allah will harm him; and whoever deals harshly, Allah will deal harshly with him.”
Al-Ḥākim recorded it (2/57–58) and al-Bayhaqī (6/69–70). Al-Bayhaqī remarked, “ʿUthmān ibn Muḥammad is the sole narrator of it from al-Darāwardī.”