Three-Narrator Ahadith

Grade as stored: [{"graded_by": "", "grade": "Ṣaḥīḥ", "priority": 50, "grade_detail": "Musnad Aḥmad 3/102, no. 11995. Its isnād is ṣaḥīḥ according to the conditions of Muslim. The exact report is recorded by Muslim (Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, no. 136), while al-Bukhārī narrates from Anas the closely related wording: “People will continue questioning until they say: ‘Allah is the Creator of everything; so who created Allah?’” (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, no. 7296). It is also narrated from Abū Hurayrah with the instruction that, when this insinuation arises, one should seek refuge in Allah and cease pursuing it (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, no. 3276; Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, nos. 134-135).\nThe question, “Who created God?”, is not a further step in the argument for God; it changes the meaning of the word God. The premise is not that everything needs a creator. If everything required a creator, then the proposed creator would require one as well, and nothing could ever explain why anything exists. Rather, whatever begins to exist, changes, depends on conditions, or could possibly have failed to exist requires an explanation beyond itself. Such things are contingent. Allah is not proposed as the first item within that chain; He is the necessary, uncaused reality upon which the entire chain depends. To ask, “Who created the uncreated Creator?” is therefore a category mistake, like asking, “Which direction is north of the North Pole?” It assumes that the one invoked to explain created and dependent reality is Himself created and dependent.\nThe deeper issue is not whether there can be a first event in time, but whether contingent reality can be self-explanatory. A series of dependent causes, whether finite or infinite, does not become independent merely by having more members. Each member still receives its existence or causal power from another. The series therefore cannot be the ultimate explanation of why anything contingent exists at all. Reason requires a reality that does not receive existence, is not composed, produced, limi