may Allah cause us to die loving the specialists in hadith and their followers among the mujtahid imams, and resurrect us in the company of the working scholars under the banner of the Master of the Messengers. All praise belongs to Allah, Lord of the worlds.” Thus ends his statement. Furthermore, in al-Ta‘liq al-Mumajjad ‘ala Muwatta Muhammad by ‘Abd al-Hayy al-Lucknawi (p. 106) it is written: “Ibn al-Humam in Fath al-Qadir, al-Shumunni in Sharh al-Niqaya, and others report that Abu Yusuf in his Amali stated exactly what Muhammad stated. It is therefore clear that the three leading scholars of our school concurred in permitting the pointing gesture, for it is established from the Prophet and his Companions by numerous narrations transmitted through multiple chains that cannot be denied or rejected. More than one scholar has adopted this view; Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr even said: ‘There is no disagreement about it.’ We complain to Allah about the behaviour of many of our juristic colleagues—such as the authors of the Khulasah, the Bazzaziyyah al-Kubra, the ‘Attabiyyah, the Ghayathiyyah, the Walwalajiyyah, the ‘Umdat al-Mufti, the Zahiriyyah, and others—who stated that the preferred position is to omit the gesture, and some of them even called it makruh (disliked). What led them to that view was only the silence of our imams on the matter in the texts known as Zahir al-Riwayah; they did not realise that the imams’ approval is in fact transmitted through several reports, nor that the hadith evidence is plentiful. Therefore beware—indeed, beware—of relying on their opinion in this issue when it contradicts what is authentically established from the Prophet, his Companions, and, in fact, from our own imams as well. Even were it authentically reported that our imams explicitly negated the gesture while the Messenger of Allah and his Companions affirmed it, the practice of the Prophet and his Companions would still deserve priority and obligatory acceptance. How, then, when our imams themselves have affirmed it too?"