Ahmad 6513

Its isnad is sahih. Yahya, Ahmad's teacher, is Yahya bin Saeed Qattan. And Yahya, the teacher of Hisham Dastawai, is Yahya bin Abu Kathir. Muhammad bin Ibrahim is Ibn Harith Taymi. Khalid bin Madan, with a fatha on the mim, a sukoon on the ayn, and a light (unshadowed) dal, both the ayn and dal being undotted letters, bin Abu Kurayb, with a damma on the kaf, Kalai, was a well-known trustworthy tabii, one of the best of Allah's worshippers. Bukhari gave his biography in al-Kabir 1/2/161-162, and Ibn Saad in al-Tabaqat 7/2/162. Kalai, with a fatha on the kaf and a light (unshadowed) lam, is a nisbah to Dhul-Kalaa, a clan of Himyar who settled in Syria.This hadith was narrated by Muslim (2:154) and Nasai (2:298), both through Yahya bin Abu Kathir, with this isnad. Abu Dawud narrated its meaning through other routes, see Munziri 3908-3910. See also what has already passed in the Musnad of Ali, 611, and in the Musnad of Abdullah bin Umar, 5751.Muassfar (saffron-dyed cloth) refers to what is dyed with safflower, a well-known red dye.This hadith indicates, by its explicit wording, the prohibition of imitating the disbelievers in dress, manner, and appearance, like the other sahih hadith, "Whoever imitates a people is one of them," which has already passed in the Musnad of Ibn Umar, 5114, 5115, 5667.The people of knowledge have not differed on this since the earliest generation, meaning on the prohibition of imitating the disbelievers, until we came to these later ages, when there sprouted among the Muslims a lowly, enslaved offshoot whose constant habit and practice is imitating the disbelievers in everything, submitting to them and being enslaved to them. Then they found, among those who cling to knowledge and claim affiliation with it, some who make their affair seem attractive to them, and who make light for them the matter of imitating the disbelievers in dress, manner, appearance, character, and everything else, until we became a nation that has nothing of the appearance of Islam except the appearance of prayer, fasting, and Hajj, despite the innovations that have crept into even these, indeed even various forms of imitating the disbelievers have crept into them too.The most prominent appearance they want to impose on the Muslims is the head covering they call the cap, or the brimmed hat, for which they have offered flimsy and false justifications. Some of the elders who claim affiliation with knowledge have given them the fatwa that there is no harm in it, since it is intended as protection from the sun! Yet they insist on nothing but showing that they intend by it nothing but protection from Islam!! Their writers and thinkers openly declare that this garment has the greatest effect in changing the head beneath it, transferring it from narrow Arab thinking to broad European thinking!!But Allah decreed for them nothing but abandonment, so they contradicted themselves and undid what they had said about the excuse of the sun, when they found they could not impose this disgrace on the nation. So they removed the head covering altogether, abandoning the tarboosh and the like, forgetting that the sun would now strike their heads directly, without the mediation of the tarboosh, and forgetting that they had called for the hat, claiming there was no protection for their heads from the sun except through it!!Then, a few years ago, the occupying English army withdrew from the country, from Cairo and Alexandria, with its well-known appearance. But we did not wait long before we saw them dress the Egyptian army and the Egyptian police in hats like those of the English, so the nation, in both capitals and throughout the country, did not lose the sight of the occupying army, which had imposed disgrace on the country for seventy years, as though they could not bear to lose the appearance of humiliation they had grown accustomed to, found palatable, and been raised in the embrace of.Whenever I saw this repulsive sight, the sight of our soldiers in the dress and manner of our enemies, I felt nothing but disgust, and I recalled the saying of the pre-Islamic poet Umayrah bin Jaal, censuring the tribe of Taghlib,"If they departed from a land of oppression, they carried it upon themselves, and increased their plunder, deeming it lawful..."