Then the Messenger of Allah said...

Then the Messenger of Allah said: If he heeds to what he was ordered to do he will verily enter paradise. In another narration by Ibn Abi Shaybah, (he [S] said): “If he heeds to it…” Abu Hurayrah is reported to have said: A bedouin came to the Messenger of Allah and said to him: O Messenger of Allah, guide me to an act that when I do I can enter paradise.

He (S) said: You should worship Allah without taking anything into partnership to Him, establish the prescribed prayers, pay the zakat, and fast the Month of Ramadan. The man said: By Whom in Whose hand is my soul, I shall neither add anything to this nor omit from it. After he left, the Prophet said: Whoever likes to look at a man from paradise inhabitants, he is asked to look at this man.

In his comment on these traditions, al-Imam al-Nawawi said (in the very words): 144 “Know that any reference to hajj (pilgrimage) was never made in hadith of Talhah or Gabriel hadith through narration of Abu Hurayrah. Besides, in some other traditions no reference was made to fasting (sawm), nor to zakat in some others.

In some of them doing kindness to uterine relations was mentioned, and paying out the khums (one-fifth) in some others, while no any reference to iman (faith) was made in some others. So there was diversity among these traditions in regard of several traits of faith (iman), by addition, cutting out, confirmation and omission.

A reply was given by al-Qadi ‘Iyad and other than him, that was epitomized and rectified by al-Shaykh Abu ‘Amr ibn al-Salah, saying: This difference is not coming out from the Messenger of Allah, but it is dissimilarity among the narrators in memorization and exactitude. One of them was sufficed with narrating what he learnt by heart, conveying it without negating or confirming the additions of others.

Though his content with this is an attempt to show that what he reported was the whole of the hadith, but the contrary of this was proved when other trustworthy narrators reported the same hadith, demonstrating that his confining to it was only due to his failure to memorize the whole hadith. Don’t you see the hadith of al-Nu’man ibn Nawfal, regarding whose traits the narrations differed, by addition and reduction, though the narrator of all of them being one and the same?!