“You will be many, but foam”: the hadith of wahn

The Prophet ﷺ said the ummah would one day be many, yet “foam, like the foam of a flood”, because of wahn in its hearts: “love of the world and dislike of death”. Al-Albani graded it sahih by its two routes. Scholars from al-Tibi to al-’Abbad read it as a mirror for every generation, whose cure begins in the heart.

People search for this hadith as “the hadith about the ummah being weak”. It is one of the most quoted descriptions of the ummah, and one of the most searching, because it puts the cause of weakness inside the believer.

The hadith

Thawban, the freed slave of the Prophet ﷺ, narrates:

Is it authentic?

Abu Dawud’s chain has a weak link: its narrator Abu ’Abd al-Salam is unknown (majhul), as Ibn Hajar and later al-Albani said. But Abu Asma’ al-Rahabi narrates the same hadith from Thawban in Musnad Ahmad, and that chain is sound:

• Al-Albani called Ahmad’s chain good and concluded: “the hadith, by the two routes together, is sahih in my view” (al-Silsilah al-Sahihah 958).
• Shu’ayb al-Arna’ut’s team graded Ahmad’s chain hasan (Musnad 22397), and Shaykh Ibn Baz cited it with “a hasan chain”.
• Shaykh ’Abd al-Muhsin al-’Abbad of Madinah notes al-Albani’s grading and adds that its meaning is “as clear as the sun at midday”.

Ahmad’s wording differs slightly: the nations come “from every horizon”, and wahn is “love of life and dislike of death”. Abu Hurayrah’s narration of a similar exchange, also in the Musnad (no. 8713), has a weak chain; Shu’ayb al-Arna’ut’s team grade it hasan only through Thawban’s.

What the words mean

• “Call one another” (tada’a): gather and call each other. The picture, as Mulla ’Ali al-Qari (d. 1606) and al-’Azim Abadi (d. 1911) explain it, is of diners round a dish who take from it with no one to stop them.
• “Many” (kathir): “in number, but few in support”, al-’Azim Abadi writes.
• “Foam” (ghutha’): Ibn al-Athir (d. 1210) defines it as what rides on top of a flood: froth, dirt and debris. It goes where the water takes it. Al-Qari sums the image up: “scattered, weak in condition, light-minded, with your hopes dispersed”.
• “Awe” (mahabah): the fear and respect others feel.
• “Wahn”: weakness, from a root that means to weaken. The hadith does not leave it to the dictionary. It defines the weakness it means by its cause: love of the world and dislike of death.

Why love of the world and dislike of death go together

Al-Qari and al-’Azim Abadi say the two “go together inseparably, as if they were one thing”. Al-Ghazali (d. 1111) explains why, in his book on remembering death:

One immersed in the world, bent over its delusions and loving its appetites, will inevitably have a heart heedless of remembering death. He does not remember it, and when reminded of it he dislikes it and shies away.

Attachment makes parting heavy, he adds, and death is the parting; “whoever dislikes something pushes it away from himself.” The Prophet ﷺ named the same danger to the Ansar when wealth arrived from Bahrain:

He also said that two hungry wolves let loose among sheep do less damage than a person’s greed for wealth and status does to his religion (Tirmidhi 2376, sahih (al-Albani); sahih (Ahmad Muhammad Shakir)).

Not every dislike of death

When the Prophet ﷺ said that whoever loves to meet Allah, Allah loves to meet him, ’A’ishah said, “All of us dislike death.” He answered that this was not what he meant: the believer, given the glad news of Allah’s mercy at death, loves to meet Him (Muslim 2684, sahih (Muslim); our translation). Scholars draw the line from there:

• Islamweb Fatwa Centre (Qatar), fatwa 40902: dislike of death is of two kinds. One is the inborn aversion Allah placed in every person, and “this is not blameworthy”. The other, which shows weak faith, is what the Prophet ﷺ called wahn: indulging in pleasures out of ignorance of what the world really is.
• Al-Ghazali: a person who dislikes death only because he fears it will come before his repentance is complete “is excused”, as long as he keeps preparing.

A mirror for every generation

The hadith does not name a year, and the scholars quoted here did not read it as one moment in history. Al-Tibi (d. 1342) wrote, and al-Qari repeated in Makkah around 1600: “We have been tested with this, as though we were the very people meant.” Four centuries later, Shaykh al-’Abbad told his students in Madinah:

Muslims today are very many, but they are occupied with the world, eager for the world and afraid of death ... But this does not mean it has happened only in this age; it may have happened in the past and will likewise happen in the future.

Ibn al-Qayyim (d. 1350) placed the hadith among the reports on what sins do to a people, after the words of the Companion Abu al-Darda’: “How insignificant creation is to Allah when they neglect His command.”

What contemporary scholars say

• Shaykh Ibn Baz (d. 1999), in a lecture on the causes of the Muslims’ weakness, traced this wahn to ignorance: people became foam, “with no insight into what is obligatory on them”. The illness, he said, is made of several illnesses “born of ignorance, turning away and heedlessness, until death became something dreaded and this world something preferred and desired”. The way out: beneficial knowledge, understanding the religion, putting Allah’s pleasure first, doing what He obliged, leaving what He forbade, and sincere repentance.
• Shaykh ’Abd al-Muhsin al-’Abbad: the great numbers have no weight because Muslims have not done what Allah obliged them to do.
• Mufti ’Abd al-Rahim Lajpuri of India, author of Fatawa Rahimiyyah: “The best cure for all ills and suffering today, is that we should turn to Allah and express our sincere regret and apology for our misdeeds”, keep away from disobedience, and pray the five daily prayers regularly.

What institutions say

• Islamweb Fatwa Centre (Qatar): love of the world is “the chronic disease” the hadith points to: when souls love the world, “they turn away from lofty matters and busy themselves with trivial ones” (fatwa 18945). It adds that remembering death and taking heed from it is something the Shariah asks of us, and quotes al-Daqqaq, via al-Qurtubi: whoever remembers death often is given three things, “hastening to repent, contentment of heart and energy in worship” (fatwa 183303).
• Dorar al-Saniyyah (Saudi Arabia), in its explanation of the hadith: the large numbers bring no benefit because of a lack of courage and severe disunity, and wahn is “greed for the world, gazing longingly into it and abandoning work for the Hereafter”. Its encyclopedia of character lists the causes of wahn as mostly inner ones, from weak faith and sins to wasted time, and its cures as strengthening faith, detachment from the world, preparing for death with good deeds, and dua.

The cure starts in the heart

Every source on this page puts the cure where the hadith puts the disease. The Prophet ﷺ gave two simple practices for it:

The narration adds: “meaning death.” And he took ’Abd Allah ibn ’Umar by the shoulder and said:

Ibn Rajab (d. 1393) called this hadith “a foundation for shortening hope in this world”: the believer does not take the world as a homeland, but lives in it “as though on the wing of a journey”. Al-Ghazali said the only cure for love of the world is faith in the Last Day, “for love of what is precious is what erases from the heart love of what is paltry”. And Ibn al-Qayyim:

When the servant’s morning and evening pass with no concern but Allah alone, Allah takes on all his needs, carries for him all that worries him, and frees his heart for His love.

The ummah today is about two billion people, as our page on the numbers shows. The hadith’s point is that numbers were never the question.

Common questions

Read next: How many Muslims are there in the world?

Sources

1. Al-Albani, Silsilat al-Ahadith al-Sahihah, no. 958, 2/647-648 (Arabic). shamela.ws
2. Musnad Ahmad (Mu’assasat al-Risalah edition), no. 22397 (Thawban) and no. 8713 (Abu Hurayrah), with the notes of Shu’ayb al-Arna’ut and his co-editors (Arabic). shamela.ws
3. Al-’Azim Abadi, ’Awn al-Ma’bud, on Sunan Abi Dawud, hadith 4297, 11/272-273, with al-Mundhiri’s note on the narrator (OpenITI text, Arabic). github.com/OpenITI
4. Mulla ’Ali al-Qari, Mirqat al-Mafatih, on Mishkat no. 5369 (Dar al-Kutub al-’Ilmiyyah, 2001), 9/551-552 (OpenITI text, Arabic). github.com/OpenITI
5. Ibn al-Athir, al-Nihayah fi Gharib al-Hadith, entries ghutha’ (3/343) and wahn (5/233) (OpenITI text, Arabic). github.com/OpenITI
6. Al-Ghazali, Ihya’ ’Ulum al-Din, Kitab Dhikr al-Mawt (Dar al-Ma’rifah), 4/449-457 (OpenITI text, Arabic). github.com/OpenITI
7. Ibn Rajab, Jami’ al-’Ulum wa al-Hikam, on hadith 40, “Be in the world as though you were a stranger” (OpenITI text, Arabic). github.com/OpenITI
8. Ibn al-Qayyim, al-Jawab al-Kafi (al-Da’ wa al-Dawa’) (Dar al-Kutub al-’Ilmiyyah), pp. 27-28, and al-Fawa’id (Dar al-Kutub al-’Ilmiyyah, 1973), p. 84 (OpenITI texts, Arabic). github.com/OpenITI and github.com/OpenITI
9. Ibn Baz, lecture on the causes of the Muslims’ weakness and their cure, Riyadh, 1399 AH, in Majmu’ Fatawa wa Maqalat Mutanawwi’ah 5/101 (Arabic). binbaz.org.sa
10. ’Abd al-Muhsin al-’Abbad, Sharh Sunan Abi Dawud, lesson 483, on hadith 4297 (Arabic). shamela.ws
11. Mufti ’Abd al-Rahim Lajpuri, “Reasons for Allah’s displeasure and the remedy”, Qibla Hanafi archive. islamqa.org
12. Islamweb Fatwa Centre, fatwas 18945, 40902 and 183303 (Arabic). islamweb.net, islamweb.net, islamweb.net
13. Dorar al-Saniyyah, explanation of the hadith (no. 69992) and Mawsu’at al-Akhlaq, entry al-wahn, sections on its causes (5184) and on the means of getting rid of it (5186) (Arabic). dorar.net, dorar.net and dorar.net

Qur’an and hadith on this page

• Qur’an 13:11
• Bukhari 3158, sahih (al-Bukhari)
• Bukhari 6416, sahih (al-Bukhari)
• Muslim 2684, sahih (Muslim)
• Muslim 2961, sahih (Muslim)
• Abu Dawud 4297, sahih (al-Albani); hasan (Zubair Ali Zai)
• Abu Dawud 4297, sahih (al-Albani)
• Tirmidhi 2307, hasan sahih (al-Albani); hasan sahih (Ahmad Muhammad Shakir)
• Tirmidhi 2376, sahih (al-Albani); sahih (Ahmad Muhammad Shakir)