In sum, the hadith is authentic. No one can doubt this after examining these routes and seeing some of the leading hadith authorities authenticate them—unless he is among those followers of vain desires whose hearts Allah has sealed, like that ignorant al-Sakhāf (1), who opposes the way of the believers and the knowledgeable scholars, declaring weak what they have authenticated. This is what he did with this hadith, for which he wrote a treatise—may his mouth be smashed—entitled, “The Reported Statements of the Hadith Masters Demonstrating the Fabrication of the Hadith: ‘I Saw My Lord in the Most Beautiful Form’!”

By Allah, he has lied about them. How could he, when foremost among the hadith masters is Imam al-Bukhari, who authenticated it, as has preceded? Imam al-Tirmidhi, his student, and others followed him. Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr said in al-Tamhīd (24/325):

“Its meaning, according to the scholars, is that it occurred in his dream. It is a good hadith, transmitted by reliable narrators.”

This al-Sakhāf knows with certainty that the hadith which the hadith masters declared fabricated is the truly fabricated report mentioned above: “that he saw his Lord upon the earth ...” and so forth. It is not the hadith concerning the dispute, which was a dream vision, as is explicitly stated in some of its routes and as the scholars have maintained, as mentioned above.

By Allah, I fear that there may be a group of corrupters in the land behind this man, who have made him a vehicle for corrupting the religion and facilitated for him the means of writing and publishing, so that he may persist in attacking the pious predecessors and the scholars, deliberately opposing them, and accusing them of anthropomorphism. Among his latest pronouncements is his explicit assertion that the belief that Allah is in heaven is the creed of the polytheists and the anthropomorphists. The same applies to the vast majority of scholars who authenticated the hadith of the slave girl: “Where is Allah?”,