The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, "When you hear a man say, 'The people are ruined,' he himself is the most ruined of them." Allah says that he is the one who is ruined.
حدثنا عبد الرزاق أخبرنا معمر عن سهيل عن أبيه
قال رسول الله ﷺ إذا سمعتم رجلا يقول قد هلك الناس فهو أهلكهم يقول الله إنه هو هالك
Its isnad is sahih. Malik related it in Muwatta, p. 984, from Suhayl, with similar wording, "If you hear a man say, 'The people are ruined,' then he is ahlakuhum." Muslim related it (2:293), and Abu Dawud (4983), both of them via Hammad bin Salama, and also via Malik, both of them from Suhayl. Abu Naeem related it in Hilya 7:141, via Sufyan Thawri from Suhayl, with the wording, "If a man says, 'The people are ruined,' then he is among the most ruined of them." Abu Naeem said, "Muammal and others related it from Thawri, in similar fashion."The scholars disagreed long ago about his saying "fahuwa ahlakuhum." Is the kaf read with damma, making it a superlative form, or with fatha, making it a past-tense verb? Abu Ishaq, Ibrahim bin Muhammad bin Sufyan, the narrator of the Sahih from Muslim, said after relating this hadith in the Sahih, "I do not know whether it is ahlakahum with fatha, or ahlakuhum with damma." Qadi Iyad said in Mashariq Anwar 2:268-269, "We related it with damma on the kaf, though it has also been said with fatha, ahlakahum." Ibn Sufyan noted the disagreement about it, saying, "I do not know whether it is with fatha or with damma."It has been said that its meaning is, if he says that out of contempt and belittlement of them, not out of grief and compassion, then the sin he has earned by speaking of them, along with his self-conceit, is worse. And it has been said that it means he is the most forgetful of Allah among them. Malik said its meaning is, he is the most bankrupt and lowest of them. And it has been said that its meaning concerns the people of innovation and those who go to extremes, who make people despair of Allah's mercy and declare that they will remain in the Fire forever for their sins, when he says that about the people of the mainstream community and about those who do not share his innovation. According to the fatha reading, its meaning is that they are not truly like that, and they are not actually ruined except by his own statement, not in reality from Allah.Ibn Athir said in Nihaya, "It is related with both fatha and damma on the kaf. Whoever reads it with fatha makes it a past-tense verb, and its meaning is that the extremists who make people despair of Allah's mercy say, 'The people are ruined,' meaning they have deserved the Fire for their evil deeds. So when a man says that, he is the one who has decreed it for them, not Allah Most High. Or, he is the one who, by saying that to them and making them despair, drove them to abandon obedience and indulge in sins, so he is the one who brought about their ruin. As for the damma reading, its meaning is that if he says that about them, then he is ahlakuhum, meaning the most ruined of them. He is the man who is obsessed with finding fault in people, is carried away by self-conceit, and considers himself superior to them."Nawawi said something similar in Sharh Muslim 16:175-176. However, he favored the damma reading based on the report in Hilya that we mentioned, "fahuwa min ahlakihim." And he cited from Humaydi, in Jam bayna Sahihayn, that he said, "The damma reading is more well known."In my view, all this is a forced interpretation into which they were led by the doubt of Abu Ishaq, the narrator of Sahih Muslim, and his uncertainty between the fatha and damma readings. Qadi Iyad first asserted the damma reading with certainty, meaning by that the reading in Muwatta, because the reading in Muslim contains Ibn Sufyan's uncertainty. Abu Dawud said, after relating it, "Malik said, 'If he says it out of grief over what he sees among people, meaning regarding their religious affairs, then I see no harm in it. But if he says that out of self-conceit and belittling of people, then that is the disliked thing which has been forbidden.'"But all of them failed to notice the report in Musnad, the one given here, which contains an addition at its end that is decisive in determining the meaning and settling the vocalization of the word. It is part of the marfu hadith, "Allah says, 'He himself is ruined.'" This statement, being a hadith qudsi, means that whoever says that has had his own ruin decreed by Allah. So by his statement, the one who said it is more ruined than they are, because Allah says, "He himself is ruined." There is no clarification beyond this clarification. Praise be to Allah.