“Nothing can be established in the mind
if daylight itself requires proof.”
If someone like you—after what you have done to the authentic Sunnah, and after opposing the leading hadith scholars, both early and later—is not among the people of deviant desires, then there is no one in this world of whom it can rightly be said that he is among the people of deviant desires. In your view, the righteous Salaf must then have erred when they applied this term to innovators who opposed the Sunnah. You further claim that this term must be removed from the scholars’ lexicon because, as you have said, it is impossible to know what lies in people’s hearts! You have also ignored the wise saying: “No servant conceals an inner disposition except that Allah clothes him in its garb: if it is good, then good; and if it is evil, then evil.” Some unreliable narrators have attributed this to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, but it is not authentic, as I explained in al-Ḍaʿīfah (237). The poet likewise said:
Whatever trait a person may possess,
even if he thinks it hidden from people, it will become known.
This is Allah’s way among His creation. Were it not so, the earth and all that is upon it would be corrupted; it would not be possible to distinguish the believer from the disbeliever, or the righteous from the wicked; and there would be no such recognized matter in the Sacred Law as love for Allah’s sake and hatred for Allah’s sake, along with the well-known rulings that follow from this among all Muslims. This is self-evident and cannot escape any rational person—unless he is an obstinate denier among the people of deviant desires! Allah is the One whose help is sought, and there is no might or power except through Allah.
Moreover, Brother Muhammad Saʿīd ʿUmar Idrīs has appended to al-Ājurrī’s book, The Prohibition of Backgammon, Chess, and Diversions, a study authenticating the hadiths concerning diversions, including this hadith about musical instruments. In it, he effectively refuted Ibn Ḥazm’s grading of it as weak and explained its obscure wording. Consult it, for it is beneficial (pp. 276–298).
- At the end of Hadith (122):
Al-Qāsim ibn al-Faḍl also explicitly used the direct-transmission formula in the versions recorded by al-Ḥākim and al-Tirmidhī. Ibn Ḥibbān, however, inserted al-Jurayrī between him and Abū Naḍrah in the narration of Hudbah ibn Khālid al-Qaysī, and this is an anomalous narration. For Abū Nuʿaym transmitted it in The Proofs of Prophethood (p. 318) through the route of