On the authority of ʿAdi ibn Ḥātim (may Allah be pleased with him): He said, “I heard the Prophet ﷺ reciting the verse, ‘They have taken their rabbis and monks as lords instead of Allah’ (at-Tawbah 9:31). I said to him, ‘We do not worship them.’ He replied, ‘Do they not declare unlawful what Allah has made lawful, and so you treat it as unlawful; and do they not declare lawful what Allah has made unlawful, and so you treat it as lawful?’ I said, ‘Yes, indeed.’ He said, ‘That, then, is their worship.’” (1) Reported by Ahmad and al-Tirmidhi, who graded it sound.

Biographical and lexical notes
• ʿAdi: ʿAdi ibn Ḥātim al-Ṭāʾī, a renowned Companion of firm faith; d. 68 AH at the age of 120.
• ittakhadhū: “They took” or “they made.”
• aḥbār: the scholars of the Jews.
• ruhbān: the monks of the Christians.
• “As lords apart from Allah”: because they followed them in permitting what Allah had forbidden and forbidding what He had permitted.
• “We do not worship them”: he assumed worship was limited to prostration and similar acts.
• “Do they not declare unlawful…?”: a clarification of what it means to take them as lords.

(1) Hadith number preserved as in the original.