that one should keep pointing and moving the finger until the taslim, for the supplication precedes it; this is the position of Malik and others. Imam Ahmad was asked: “Does a man indicate with his finger during the prayer?” He replied, “Yes—firmly.” Ibn Haniʾ records this in his Masaʾil from Imam Ahmad (p. 80). I therefore conclude that moving the finger in the tashahhud is an established sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ, practiced by Ahmad and other leading scholars of the sunnah. Let those who claim that the practice is mere frivolity unbefitting the prayer fear Allah: they refrain from it despite knowing its authenticity, and they force linguistic interpretations that neither the Arabic style nor the imams’ understanding will bear. It is curious that some people hasten to defend an imam on other questions—even when his view contravenes the sunnah—on the pretext that declaring him mistaken amounts to disparaging him. Yet here they forget that principle: they reject this well-attested sunnah and mock those who apply it, thereby—knowingly or not—deriding the very imams whom they usually defend without right, for in this matter the imams have adhered to the sunnah. Indeed, in ridiculing the practice they mock the Prophet himself, for he is the one who brought it; and what, then, is the recompense of anyone among you who does that…? As for the statement of Shaykh Ali al-Qari in Tazyin al-Ibara (p. 17): “The sound, preferred view among the majority of our companions is that one points with the musabbaha (index finger), raising it at the words of negation and lowering it at the words of affirmation, and then continuing upon that, for the clasp of the fingers at the moment of pointing is agreed upon, and nothing has come to alter it; thus the default is to keep a thing as it is until the end of the act,”— this reasoning is unsound as proof, for it rests on the assumption that lowering the finger after raising it is established in the sunnah, whereas, as shown above, it is not.