except for the Lord, exalted is He. In that case, there is no figurative usage. Yet no one has any room for objection once the report from the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, is established. The verse condemns many of the deviant sects who abandoned the Book of Allah Most High and the Sunnah of His Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, in favour of the statements of their scholars and leaders. The truth has the greater right to be followed; whenever it becomes clear, the Muslim must follow it, even if the independent legal reasoning of the scholar he follows failed to reach it.”

Note: I have come across two opposing positions taken by two annotators of this hadith. Both overlooked the error in attributing to al-Daraqutni a weakening of Ghutayf ibn Aʿyun, and thus came out with astonishing claims.

As for one of them—Brother Abu al-Ashbal al-Zuhayri—on the basis of this alleged weakening, he presented us with a novel claim: that Ghutayf was of unknown status, because Asad ibn ʿAmr and al-Qasim ibn Malik narrated from him! In fact, they only narrated from Ruh. Accordingly, he said:

“Ibn Hibban declared him trustworthy, while al-Daraqutni declared him weak; so, at the very least, one may say of him, for example, ‘There is no harm in him.’”

This is a strange formulation, whose invalidity is plainly evident; there is no need to prolong the rebuttal of it.

As for the other—one called Hassan ʿAbd al-Mannan—he said in his annotations to Ighathat al-Lahfan (2/375):

“This is a weak chain of transmission. Ghutayf ibn Aʿyun is weak, and he is unknown.”

His description of him as “weak” alludes to al-Daraqutni’s alleged weakening of him, which, as mentioned above, has no basis. Moreover, his combining the description of weakness with that of being unknown combines two contradictory descriptions, as I explained in my reply to him, no. 152. There is therefore no need to repeat it. *