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Is the Hadith "Let none of you be spineless" authentic?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

The narration with the mentioned wording: "Let not one of you be an 'imma'ah' (a subservient person), saying: 'I am with the people; if the people do good, I do good, and if they do bad, I do bad.' Rather, accustom yourselves: if the people do good, you should do good, and if they do bad, you should not oppress," was narrated by Ibn al-Atheer.

And the narration of Al-Tirmidhi is: "Do not be 'imma'ah,' saying: 'If people do good, we do good, and if they oppress, we oppress.' Rather, accustom yourselves: if people do good, you should do good, and if they do bad, do not oppress." Al-Tirmidhi said about it: "This is a good, strange hadith; we do not know it except from this route."

Shaykh Al-Albani weakened its chain of narration, but it has been authentically narrated as a statement of Ibn Mas'ud (mawquf).

Summarized from the full answer at Ftawy · reviewed Sep 2, 2026

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