To impress upon them the ugliness of shirk, the Prophet ﷺ urged his Companions and began with an opening that made every listener pause and long to hear the rest: “A man entered Paradise because of a gnat, and a man entered Hell because of a gnat.” Something so slight produced consequences so momentous that the audience naturally asked for an explanation.

He then detailed the story: Two men—apparently from the Children of Israel—wanted to cross an area in whose courtyard stood an idol. Anyone who wished to pass was required to slaughter something for it as an act of homage. The idol-worshippers demanded that the two men comply with this polytheistic rule. One of them pleaded poverty, so they were content with the barest token, for their true aim was merely to gain his agreement to shirk. He therefore sacrificed a single gnat to the idol; they let him continue on his way, and by that deed he entered the Fire of Hell, for he had committed shirk and consented to it.

They then asked the other man for an offering, but he replied that such an act was shirk and utterly impossible for him. They killed him, and he entered Paradise because he had refused to commit shirk.

Relevance of the ḥadīth to this chapter: it shows that slaughtering is an act of worship, and that directing it to anyone other than Allah constitutes shirk.

Lessons drawn from the ḥadīth:

1. The danger of shirk remains grave even when the act involved is trivial.
2. Shirk leads to Hell, whereas tawḥīd leads to Paradise.
3. A person may fall into shirk without realizing that it is the very shirk that incurs the Fire.
4. The ḥadīth warns against sins, even those that seem minor.
5. The man entered Hell for a deed he never intended at first; he did it only to escape the harm of the idol-worshippers.
6. If a Muslim commits shirk, his Islam is nullified and he enters the Fire, because this