—what medical scientists call a “bactericidal agent.” It destroys a great many pathogenic microbes, and those microbes cannot stay alive or exert any influence on the human body so long as the bactericidal agent is present. One of the fly’s two wings, moreover, possesses a special property: it draws the bacteria to that side. Accordingly, when a fly drops into a drink or some food and the germs clinging to its limbs are shaken off into the liquid, the nearest and most immediate destroyer of those germs is the very bactericidal agent the fly carries inside itself, close to one of its wings. Thus, where the disease is, its remedy lies close at hand; plunging the entire fly beneath the surface and then discarding it is enough to kill the germs that had been clinging to it and to neutralize their effect.

I once read in this very journal an extensive study on the subject by Dr. Saʿid al-Suyuti (first annual volume), and in last year’s volume (p. 503) I came across a brief note by the physicians Mahmud Kamal and Muhammad ʿAbd al-Munʿim Husayn, quoting Majallat al-Azhar.

Later I obtained issue 82 of the Kuwaiti periodical Al-ʿArabi (p. 144), under the rubric “You Ask, We Answer,” in which a certain ʿAbd al-Warith Kabir replied to a question about the authenticity of this hadith. He wrote:

“Regarding the hadith of the fly, which claims that in its two wings there is both disease and cure, the hadith is weak—indeed, reason itself declares it fabricated. Everyone knows that the fly carries germs and filth … No one has ever said that one wing of the fly contains disease while the other holds the cure except the person who invented or forged this hadith. Had it been genuine, modern science—which establishes the harms of the fly and urges efforts to combat it—would surely have discovered the fact.”

Such condensed remarks are rife with tampering and ignorance, matters that must be laid bare in defense of the hadith of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, lest someone beguiled by flowery speech be led to repudiate it!